I've been thinking about the lack of minimaps in Bethesda games recently and how I appreciate that as a design choice. Exploration is the greatest strength of those games and having lots of things marked on a minimap would undermine that.
I saw this 2+ year old thread from @sweep talking about his then beef with minimaps and I thought it would be interesting to show how prevalent they still are. This doesn't mean that they are bad or lazy in these games, it's just interesting to see.
They have recently featured in major releases like Hitman, Final Fantasy XV, The Witcher 3, Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1, Mafia 3, seemingly all Ubisoft games, and Shadow of Mordor.
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Some big games from the last couple of years have haven't had them, which indicates that developers are at least thinking about if it's right for their game. DOOM, Metal Gear Solid V, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Fallout 4, Overwatch and Dark Souls III all go without them.
Looking forward, Zelda: Breath of the Wild has a minimap. For some reason I didn't think that series had them but looking back I guess a lot of them did. Maybe they could be toggled off. Horizon Zero Dawn looks like there isn't a minimap and it's instead using a compass and floating icons.
One interesting case is Mass Effect. To my understanding, there was a minimap in Mass Effect 1. In Mass Effect 2 it only appeared when you went to switch weapons. In Mass Effect 3 they took it out completely. I don't think Mass effect 3 even has a compass.
I'm not sure what that says about the changing level design through the Mass Effect series. It seems like Andromeda does at least have a compass though.
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Did you guys have a problem with minimaps two years ago? How do you feel about them now? And would you like to see less of them in the future?
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