I started playing Elex a few weeks ago. Still pretty early in, but there's something that's is nagging me more and more about it.
It was made by the same developers that made Gothic 2, an all-time classic I believe. What I especially love about Gothic 2 is the slow-burn beginning, where you start out as super weak, and have to basically do lots of super basic shit until you level enough, can afford armour and actually venture out into the unknown. On that level, Elex is very similar, and very nostalgic. But there is one big thing that this game has lost, that Gothic 2 was so good at: natural quest design and quest progression. The game virtually had no visual clues to tell you where to go and where to find things. The people giving you the quest tell you where you need to go, and you then need to find it on your own. This also forces the developer to not just magically assume the player will find the right book at the other end of the world to progress the quest.
However, Elex has the exact same Skyrim style quest markers and is heavily designed around them. At some point, someone wants me to find a missing person. The next thing is that you happen to find their diary randomly somewhere in town. Sure, maybe if your playstyle is such that you investigate every corner of the map, you may find it even without quest markers.
And sadly, even in cases when the game does give location descriptions, they are usually not saved in the quest data in the menu, like they were in Morrorwind.
This really robs the player of the chance to actually understand the world as if they live there. No need to learn up on unique geographic markers, or orientation points. Just follow marker. I get why devs do this, it's super efficient, saves dialogue and time, but god does it make this world feel incredibly fake.
