JarlFrank
I like Thief THIS much
You are de facto defending them by saying that there is no other way to do quests in a 3D environment, which is blatantly bullshit. I can turn off quest markers for 95% of Skyrim and get by just fine, so if it can be done in that piece of shit game, it can be done in any game. There is even a mod that rewrites the quest objectives so that the troublesome quests that cannot be done without a marker, can be done without them (unfortunately the mod maker didn't keep it up to date so it's a dead mod, but that's by the by). What do you know, this so-called 'extremely hard to do' thing can be done just by rewriting the quest objectives. Really makes you think.Except nobody is defending quest markers. It's just a simple fact that they are extremely hard to do well in 3D environments.
Given the scope and budget of this thing and apparent massive cuts they already had to do, I'd rather have a shitty navigation system that works, than theoretically great navigation system that actually sucks.
Speaking of navigation by environment done right, The Long Dark does it brilliantly. Not only there's no quest markers, they don't even give you a compass so you have to rely on position of the sun to remain mindful of your movement. The maps are pretty small, though. You can't have everything.
Isn't it interesting that 95% of what lazy developers (and apologists for them) say cannot be done or is extremely hard to do well can suddenly be done by a modder in their spare time.
"We're working on ultrawide support, we don't have any ulltrawide monitors in the studio!" Modder does it for them.
"We can't allow you to change FOV because it'll mess up the UI" Modder does it for them.
"We can't fix this power armor bug" Modder does it for them, then they reintroduce the bug in a later game using the same engine.
Quest markers are a byproduct of lazy, awful level and quest design. End of discussion. No ifs, no buts, no 3D environment this or that. If you cannot fit your quest into the game without quest markers, go back to the drawing board and redesign your levels, the quest itself, and probably major parts of the game, because you have failed to make a good game.
Fun thing about that, Dishonored 1 and 2 are great examples of games that have quest markers in them, but you can switch them off and you won't even notice they were ever there.
In Dishonored 1, I only needed to activate the marker twice, and that was in my own home base because one of my allies wanted to talk to me but I wasn't told where he was waiting for me.
During the actual missions though... you can switch them off and perfectly play, and you won't even notice that quest markers were ever an option. The levels are just well-designed with a natural progression and your goals are usually easy enough to find. It's usually "assassinate X" or "try the non-lethal way of eliminating X", and the means of doing it are obvious enough through exploration of the environment and layout of the places.
Dishonored 2 is even better at it, the level design in that one is just god-tier.
Considering how 3-dimensional the level design is in that game, playing it with markers on would actually be more confusing than helpful in some levels.
It's a perfect example of a game designed to be explored naturally, and it works well without those shitty dumbfuck markers. If your level design is good, markers are absolutely not needed.