FWIW there have already been alternatives / cousins for years, paid options from competing Morisawa (CinemaLetter) and Dynacomware (DFCinemaRin), one from defunct K.K. Kinema Font Lab (Cinema Calligraphy, top of quoted thread), and a completely commercially free option Cinecaption at the very least

It's silly because if you think about it yellow paint is -more- gamey. Arrows are obviously UI and not part of the universe, so you remove them with your minds eyes. Meanwhile yellow paint/diegetic elements are directly altering the environment of the game, making it less realistic

That's beautiful. I would get so stressed out, you can't even tell the pillars apart!! And there's no environment to memorize their positions either, what a wild choice.
This reminds me a lot of how FFXI and FFXIV try to do puzzles without having systems, which is fitting because it's all Square lol

...pipe dream. ive unmasked myself as a fake puzzle gamer by getting the name wrong, now no one will take me seriously even tho i speak the truth

A shame!!! Things didn't have to be this way. If everyone accepted puzzle is the ultimate genre we could live in a better world. We could have beautifully crafted innovative puzzle segments with a tacked on barebones unsatisfying shooter scene for flavor. Instead we get pipedrain. Woe is life

But then we get to the point where we have to communicate a whole new experience to the player on the spot, without building it up as a core experience and with no visual language to support it, and I think that's when yellow paint happens

I think most players don't even like them, gamedevs just subconsciously know puzzle is the most game element that a game can have. It's the primal form of video games. It just feels naked without a good puzzle

I'm of the opinion that if your challenge is "how do we make a photorealistic game give the sensation of being a master detective", you've already lost. If that feeling was important to the game you should have baked that in the choice of art direction in the first place

In Outer Wilds the excuse is setting, in Obra Dinn it's art style - but both could totally have littered their environments with detail for the sake of detail and chose not to. That's art direction serving the gameplay

I think what Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds have in common that help -a lot- the sense of self discovery is lack of detail. It's much easier to grab the players attention when you don't have a hundred decorative elements fighting for their attention