I have always liked open world games as a concept, but I have a very bad sense of direction. So whenever I play open world games I keep getting lost and frustrated. Eventually getting bored and dropping the game. I am curious how other people with bad sense of direction cope with this problem.
Yes as long as the game has a good map system. I hate it when some games don’t have an option to rotate the map to where you are currently facing.
Open world games usually give me a killer map that shows my exact location and heading. I can navigate the real world, too, when handed Google Maps. But I remember playing Minecraft back before the maps update and it was mostly just an exercise in nomadic survival. I’d leave my home for a 20 minute mining run and then never ever find the mfer ever again. Eventually I started a habit of creating a huge pillar of cobble near my home that stretched up to the map height limit and dumping lava buckets around it to make a literal glowing waypoint that I could follow back home.
Maps. Compasses, mini-maps, world maps, map pins, GPS systems.
I have a poor sense of direction in real life, but games are workable with the same crutches that make real life workable, for the most part.
I used to make maps by hand. Over time I got better and better at holding on to where I was. I’ve read studies that playing 3d games increases spacial awareness, so it might get better over time.
Other options I do when I’m too meh to bother is mods to add maps and quest tracking if the game doesn’t already have it
The two are surprisingly unrelated. I have an excellent natural sense of direction in real life, and I easily get lost in open world games if I don’t have a map.
