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BotW is the only game I can no-HUD for a better experience

oneida said:
I personally find this approach terrible. HUD appearing and disappearing is distracting.
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That's the great thing about options, you can have it your way and others can have it their way.

Personally I find it to be the best, since it lets you remove screen clutter and only shows up when you need to see it, far less distracting then having things permanently on your screen when you don't want to see them.
 
Stiler said:
That's the great thing about options, you can have it your way and others can have it their way.

Personally I find it to be the best, since it lets you remove screen clutter and only shows up when you need to see it, far less distracting then having things permanently on your screen when you don't want to see them.
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I think we can conclude that if the HUD is characterized by "clutter you don't want to see", the HUD needs reworking. With BotW my health and status buffs are on the screen at all times, but they're very unobtrusive. The default HUD with radar and weather and noise meters and time of day gave me a goddamn panic attack.
 
oneida said:
I think we can conclude that if the HUD is characterized by "clutter you don't want to see", the HUD needs reworking. With BotW my health and status buffs are on the screen at all times, but they're very unobtrusive. The default HUD with radar and weather and noise meters and time of day gave me a goddamn panic attack.
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Aren't you doing exactly that by switching to the pro mode? The only difference between this and Horizon is that Horizon is more fine grained.
 
No HUD BotW is an amazing experience. Slightly off-topic, The Witcher 3 w/no HUD is also a very memorable experience. It's doable for I'd say 90% of the game.
 
Haven't found keeping it on very obtrusive compared with past Zeldas, but I could see playing it with the pro hud. Barely look at the meters or map as is.
 
Good to hear tree no hud option works well. I remember playing Ni No Kuni with no way points and one quest straight up never gave me any kind of hint or instructions for the next objective and it took me over 2 hours to remember about the way makers... I think relying on the hud must make game design much easier.
 
Yoda said:
No HUD BotW is an amazing experience. Slightly off-topic, The Witcher 3 w/no HUD is also a very memorable experience. It's doable for I'd say 90% of the game.
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Some side quests require you to have the mini-map enabled to see the radius of some quest location or to constantly check the map, which gets annoying.

But in general I agree, but I would maybe say it's more 80% of the time. On consoles without HUD mods anyway.
 
Everyone should play with no HUD whenever possible. Get these game designer's to implement more elegant solutions in game for the stats you need.
 
MrOogieBoogie said:
Horizon also has a very good "dynamic" HUD that displays info only when you need it, otherwise the only overlay is a directional bar on top.
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The Horizon UI is terrible. The only good thing about it is that you can make it disappear entirely, and even then you're stick with the quest icon and markers for every single resource under the sun.
 
I like no-HUD in racing games, mostly simulators. Other than that, I appreciate the information most of the time. I like knowing that there is a rain coming up or that a shrine is nearby.
 
I just turned pro hud on before even starting the game. And I find it gross the game gives you a mini map on the normal hud.
 
I've transition to playing games with little to no HUD activated at all. I'd like to give a shout-out to Assassin's Creed Syndicate no HUD experience. It's actually pretty great. Horizon is awesome in this fact because it's a joy to look at and the game has a world tailored to this experience. In Zelda, there are distinct landmarks so I don't even need to look at the mini map at all. A lot of things are intuitive. I just wish I could toggle the time on; I like to know what the time is.
 
It's not really a no hud mode though is it? It retains the crucial information like health and stamina. Dynamic hud is pretty great in Horizon too.

I agree that HUD minimal options are often great, but many games, including Far Cry and Horizon have great hud-minimal options.

I found Project Cars and Dirt Rally to be good games to play with no hud at all. All of the crucial information is conveyed via audio by your co-driver / team member.
 
I was really worried about losing the mini-map but this way I'm actually learning the areas on my own and not constantly looking for a waypoint to guide me towards. Obviously i'll still open the map as needed but I love it without all the stuff on the screen. Just let me venture wherever and not get distracted.
 
Horizon's dynamic HUD or whatever it's called, is really good. HUD when you want it, low HUD when you want to take in your surroundings.
 
I find the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games to be massively improved by hiding their hud. It makes exploring more about looking at the horizon than the compass, and makes you really learn what you can get away with in combat.
 
I keep hearing this and I don't agree. The HUD is useful and thoughtfully made like everything in this game. If you don't have it on long enough to notice when it's useful then you'll think it's useless. It took me quite a while to notice that the weather thing was an actual forecast for example.
 
I have my HUD on Horizon set to completely disappear unless something relevant is happening (like I get hit or level up) or I touch the touchpad. Love it since it really showcases the environments your in when you take away all the clutter.
 
Horizon is killing it with this dynamic, touch-enabled HUD. Especially if you force the Compass to be dynamic as well.

Nothing but you and the beautiful world until more information is called for. But the fact that there are so many thousands of custom configurations between an extensive and detailed HUD and absolutely none is what's so impressive. OPTIONS ARE GOOD, BABY.

Excited to play BotW with the Pro HUD, especially since the life bar is so minimal. I wish it and every other game offered customization options too though. What a smart, player-friendly feature.
 
The problem with no-HUD is most open-world games right now are designed around relying on the minimap or waypoint markers. In Witcher 3 unless you have that HUD mod installed you get lost really easily with the minimap turned off. In Far Cry 4 you basically have to use either the minimap or waypoints to not get lost.

I'm still just on the Great Plateau in Zelda but here I feel like I don't need the minimap to get around. Maybe it's just because the different parts of the Plateau are more recognizable and you can easily tell where you are by the geography. The other stuff like time of day, noise, and temperature are all sort of apparent by looking at either the environment or Link himself.

I do like how Horizon ripped off Skyrim's compass though, and I wish more games wouldn't have the compass bolted onto the minimap. If it's a choice between a minimap and waypoints appearing in the world, I choose waypoints now since you're at least still looking at the actual game.
 
Yup, turned the HUD off about an hour in, the game is smart enough to give you enough clues that an HUD it's not needed anyway

And it makes the exploration 10 times better
 
What I really love is that the waypoints you set up only show up in first person view. Best of both worlds right there.
 
The game could have been so much better with most of the HUD information on the gamepad, or even a large version of the map. Shame they had to cut those for switch parity.
 
ROTTR also does this very well. I don't remember how many options there were, but i loved the fact that there was no HUD, other than certain actions activating it, which resulted in a more immersive "cinematic" experience.
 
Been using Pro hud option for this as soon as I could switch it in game. It's fantastic and I haven't once felt that I needed the map, sound or temp meter.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
The game could have been so much better with most of the HUD information on the gamepad, or even a large version of the map. Shame they had to cut those for switch parity.
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i don't agree that the game would've been better with useless information in your hands instead of in a menu
 
Going by experience I assumed that the regular HUD would be bloated in a Zelda game so I turned Pro on before even seeing what the alternative was. Switched it off for a bit later on and knew that I made the right choice.

Dishonored 2 also deserves to be played with most or even all markers turned off.
 
This is exactly what i plan to do. From what I've seen, there looks to be enough landmarks to can keep track of your generation location with minimal map checking - the true test of a good open world game for me.
 
I turned it off straight away, and I find I'm memorizing landmarks and features pretty well. Even been avoiding towers so I don't rely on the map topology (only check it to see whether I'm heading north/south or the like).

Took me ages to find one place I was looking for though, looped around the back of it, struggled to find the entrance, loved every second. Definitely need to sort out another Xenoblade X playthrough with no mini-map.
 
I put it on promode without thinking and kinda forgot to turn it off. Many of BotW's hud features arent necessary like Witcher 3. I depended on the minimap in that game.
 
I keep it on for the weather, but it's the first open-world where I rely more on my sight/knowledge of the land than on the minimap. I'm usually the kind to instinctively focus the minimap and follow the green arrow, and look up for combat or npcs. Here I'll sometimes open the fullscreen map to assess my position, but otherwise I progress by sight, and it feels natural.
 
Wish there was an option to just turn off the mini-map. I actually liked the noise, weather, and d-pad displays. Plus they’re so tiny even on the gamepad it’s not like they get in the way of the environment.
 
You should try no hud and statistics on Forza Motorsport 6 with thr driver view, really great immersion. Makes the race so much more intensive not knowing what place you are in race, how close the other racers are to you and what lap you are in the race.
 
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