Ubisoft was forced to add yellow paint to Assassin’s Creed Shadows because testers were getting lost in the game’s world

Gamers regularly complain about the yellow (white) paint in games that developers use to help users navigate the world, but as it turns out, they themselves cannot live without these hints.

Image source: Ubisoft

Assassin’s Creed Shadows creative director Jonathan Dumont told GamesRadar that the pseudo-historical open-world action RPG didn’t have a yellow coat of paint until playtesting.

According to Dumont, many of the testers for Assassin’s Creed Shadows couldn’t figure out which cliffs were climbable, either walking past interactable ones or banging their heads against inaccessible ones.

«”Players in playtests had a hard time finding their way forward when going through hidden paths. The environments are so lush and detailed that a small amount of cues was necessary,” Dumont said.

Hidden Paths in Assassin’s Creed Shadows are parkour challenges hidden throughout the game’s world (available only to Naoe) in which players must navigate a series of obstacles to reach a chest containing a reward.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes place in the open world of feudal Japan in 1579. There are two main characters – the agile and stealthy shinobi Naoe, and the legendary dark-skinned samurai Yasuke.