Remedy Entertainment's Kasurinen bets on diegetic navigation despite admitting alienation risk
Summary
Remedy Entertainment director Mikael Kasurinen confirms the studio's choice to skip "yellow paint" signposting in Control Resonant's open-world Manhattan was deliberate, aimed at preserving player autonomy over navigation.Kasurinen acknowledges the direct tradeoff: the approach can make the game feel impenetrable and risks alienating players who expect explicit guidance.
Remedy replaced explicit markers with a diegetic cue, a fixed point of gravity that governs rain and wind direction across the map, to keep players oriented without directing them.
Kasurinen offers no disclosed retention or completion data to support the design bet, the only public evidence so far is critical reception at launch.
"If it feels like it's like 'go here,' it's not anymore a decision for the player. Somebody already decided for you."
01
Kasurinen ties navigation design to player authorship
The debate around Marvel's Wolverine's Thought Trail navigation system formed the industry backdrop for Kasurinen's comments on the Dropping Frames podcast.
His stated principle is that any overt "go here" marker removes the player's sense of making their own decisions inside the world.
He frames the payoff as psychological: he wants players to feel like they are figuring out the path on their own, without the sense that the game handed them the answer.
"It has to feel like it's on you to make a decision on what to do with those elements that you see within the world."
02
The diegetic substitute was locked in before the backlash
Remedy anchors player orientation to a single fixed point of gravity that determines how rain and wind behave across the Pattern-warped streets of Manhattan.
The cue keeps players spatially oriented in a setting where "up" and "down" no longer have fixed definitions, without pointing directly at objectives.
Kasurinen has said Control Resonant carried four years of pre-production and two to three years of active development, meaning the no-yellow-paint stance predates the current signposting controversy sparked by Marvel's Wolverine.
That timeline signals a structural production choice made independent of the wider industry debate over signposting, not a reaction to it launching alongside.
03
Kasurinen's own account exposes the approach's onboarding cost
Kasurinen directly admits the strategy carries onboarding risk, acknowledging that it can feel impenetrable to new players and could alienate a large share of the audience quickly.
UI designer Edd Coates' outside analysis sharpens the stakes: players have absorbed an industry-wide visual language around yellow paint, expecting its presence to signal what's interactive and reading its absence as a negative sign regardless of a game's intent.
"There are upsides and downsides - if you give people too much information it's handholding, if you take away the information it becomes too difficult."
Coates' framing suggests Remedy's choice fights not only its own onboarding curve but also navigational habits players built across other big-budget titles.
04
Kasurinen frames confusion as a retention feature, without data to back it
Kasurinen's explicit goal is for players to ask themselves if they made the right choice and return to reconsider their route rather than complete a fixed path.
He ties this directly to replay value, arguing that revisiting decisions is what makes the experience sticky and interesting.
Neither Kasurinen nor Remedy has disclosed retention, completion-rate, or QA data to support that replay-value claim.
"If you want to get the most out of this world, you have to participate. That's the key thing."
What this means
For Publishers & Developers: Budget first-hour playtests tracking navigation drop-off before cutting explicit guidance systems.
For Investors & VC: Add first-session navigation drop-off metrics to diligence on exploration-led open-world pitches.
For Service Vendors: Pitch usability and player-research testing to studios shipping minimal-guidance open worlds.
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