I find my brain extremely happy when a game provides ample opportunity to make connections, like in Dwarf Fortress, where I watch an event unfold, which can stir my creativity and imagination like nothing else. Writing a story out of it is extremely smooth and easy compared to other sandbox games.
I also find myself in love with immersive sims like Desu Ex and Thief, where level design and exploration take a front seat, every map is like a big playground with verticality and branching paths, where you find secrets and lore hidden around every corner in an atmospheric world.
What is immersion to you?
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I think a big one to me is when the world doesn’t revovle around me, when things happen without player input because the player isn’t the centre of the universe. Every NPC just wating in stasis or walking on a preset loop forever until I hit the next event trigger really kills immersion.
I only know a couple of games that do this:
Stalker: Anomaly X4: Foundations Dwarf Fortress
Edit: Forgot Saelig.
Off the top of my head:
- Rainworld
- Thrive (the npc cells undergo independant evolution and competition)
To a much lesser degree cyberpunk (and I would suspect fallout 4) with the correct mod sets can have the NPC factions carry out battles and limited warfare without any player intervention.
Immersion for me is when you can interact with the world in a realistic or internally consistent way.
This sounds dumb, but if you can walk into a bar and order a drink, that’s a level of immersion. If you can steal the beer off the shelf so ths bartender can’t serve you, that’s even more immersive because even the NPCs are bound to world logic.
That’s great immersion to me.
I would add to this that any interaction that happens in the world (as opposed to some kind of a menu) is an instant immersion boost.
For example Vintage Story has ruined crafting for me, at least in other games. Most games crafting is something that happens in a menu: you get the resources, you press craft and you get what you wanted to craft. In vintage story a lot of crafting happens in the game. For example I just finished smithing out my bronze chains for the chain armor and to do that I had to take 2 bronze ingots to a forge, fill the forge with coal, light it on fire, heat up the ingots, take one ingot to an anvil and then voxel by voxel start hammering the ingot into chain. When I run out of the metal from the first ingot (which you will because one ingot is not enough to make one piece of chain) I take the second ingot and place it ontop of the half-shaped chain and finish it up. That entire process uses only two menus, both at the anvil. The first menu lets you pick what you want to make from ingot so the game could show the shape you have to hammer out. The second menu isn’t really even a crafting menu, it’s just so you could choose what kind operation you want your hammer to do (which way to hammer voxels or to remove voxels from the ingot). I feel like I’m not doing the process proper service so I found a Youtube short that shows the same process but with shears instead of chains.
It’s so immersive for two reasons. First reason is that you literally shape the metal into the tool and the second reason is that the process takes actual time. I had to make 20 chains for my chain armor and it took me multiple in game days to make them because chains are very time consuming to make.
Now compare that to what that crafting would look like in most games. You’d have a smithing station, you take your 40 ingots to the station, you choose chains, pick 20 for the amount, press craft and maybe you have to wait a few seconds until all 20 chains are ready. Not only do you not actually make anything, making all that stuff also takes no time in the game because the crafting process is almost completely detached from the rest of the game world.
I no longer find that kind of crafting enjoyable because I’ve drank the forbidden immersion fruit and now a basic menu just doesn’t cut it. I want to see the thing get made. I want to see the effort and time that goes into making those things. It’s like you’ve had a taste of the best coffee ever and then you go to your friends place and they offer you instant coffee. You don’t want that cheap swill, you want the coffee Gale made in Breaking Bad.
EDIT: I will add that I’m not saying all games should have complex immersive crafting minigames. I’m completely fine with menu crafting in games where crafting is just a means to an end, but when crafting is supposed to be a core concept of the game why reduce it to a simple menu? It’s like having exploration a core concept of the game but then all travel happens in a menu.
“bound to world logic”
Have to agree, that’s why I’ve spent quite some time in Deus Ex bars. xD
On the other hand, if a game is deep in its subject matter, and I am knowledgeable of it, then I can really appreciate the bound to world logic philosophy, and I can see the effort of modelling it in the game according to that world logic.
“I like to pick them off at a distance, gimme the GEP gun”
“The Gep Gun is the most silent way to eliminate Manderley.”
It is entirely subjective of course.
When I can be entirely focused on a game and interacting with the game or things that happen don’t break that focus. Sometimes this can mean confortable controls, worlds that have natural barriers, and options to interact that cover what I am trying to do.
Limitations on interactions, characters being inconsistent, and finding it hard to do the things that I feel should be possible in the game are immersion breaking or may even keep me from being immersed. Introductions that are obviously telling you how the game works are not immersive, but if they feel like part of the game they can be immersive.
Helldivers 2’s boot camp is immersive because it feels like things you do in boot camp with a healing dose of in world propaganda. Expedition 33’s into was immersive because it was doing in workd things and barriers didn’t stand out even if the pathing was obviously restricted for game reasons because things were happening! Both games continue to be immersive, but they are also examples of games that are immersive from the first moment the game starts and they keep it up from then on.
I can get immersed in incredibly simple games, like Baba Is You. I have simple rules to follow and a world that conforms to those rules. I can tune out reality and immerse fully in the game.
The main thing is that I don’t need hi-res realistic 120 fps graphics for this to work, I don’t know if this is because the way my brain is wired or because I was raised in the 8 bit era and imagination was a significant part of that immersion.
Don’t get me wrong, I am currently playing planescape torment and love it but seeing everyone else’s response is actually blowing my mind a bit. I mean like, I love me my disco elysium’s and factorio-like games, but the thing that really sucks me in and gives me a shit ton of adrenaline are fps and boomershooters.
Something about chasing people down, watching all corners, and/or running for cover is just addicting.
I really wish I could get the same level of immersion with rpg’s but I guess I’m not that type of person ;_;
I am actually surprised that shooters and chill game people are not in this thread. You are the first one to bring up shooters. The rest are quite within my guess.
They could make shooters better again but don’t really care to do so. The bigger franchises are so that you need less skill and easier entry for casual players.
A thing that annoys me a lot is the soundscape in modern FPS that somehow makes it impossible to hear if someone is right behind you.
You need more indie titles to hear footsteps in tactical FPS.
Zomboid, for me personally, is one of the most immersive games. It’s a life sim with such in depth mechanics i feel like my character is an actual person growing
I kinda know what you mean, but I come from Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, not Zomboid. I lost my first character when I was happily siphoning gas from cars. At the same time, I was too relaxed and bumped headfirst into a gang of giant wasps, can’t fight or run because I was carrying a steel jerrycan, RIP. That was a month of work with this character. xD
I keep meaning to get into CDDA, but never get around to it. All I know is it’s highly suggested in the Zomboid community
When the digital world is cohesive and interesting, it becomes a believable world to exist in. It requires excellent writing and good visual/sound design. Some games I’ve gotten immersed in: World of Warcraft, Skyrim, SOMA, System Shock 2, Prey, Outer Wilds, Breath of the Wild, No Man’s Sky
You can objectively measure it by asking a person playing for a fixed amount of time how much time has passed and measuring the discrepancy. Games that lately immersed me the most are Intravenous (1/2) and Riftbreaker. Also, Streets of Rogue coop with kids.
how much time has passed and measuring the discrepancy
By this metric, Oblivion was right in the top 3 slot for me. Started playing Friday straight after work, and ended up being late for work Monday morning, no sleep.
In that period also nearly burned my house down - got hungry, put noodles on pot, went back to play for 5 minutes while they cooked. Got hungry, went to put noodles on, saw that I already did that and they were on fire.
For me I know I’m deeply immersed when my emotions are engaged. For example, if I actually feel good or bad or guilty about my decisions, actions etc. Latest game that has me hooked emotionally is Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. I feel terrible if I go around killing randoms for no reason. Or if I killed someone during a mission because it was easier to achieve my goal - I’m like that guy didn’t NEED to die in order for me to get X. I think it has to do with the that NPC’s do have a life within the world and their own personalities.
Immersive games, I don’t know exactly what makes them immersive for me, but they’re the games I turn off any other videos, music, and distractions. To get totally into. Some games:
- The Shadowrun Trilogy
- Disco Elysium
- Morrowind
I think it’s games where there’s interesting stuff to read and think about. I know I preferred Disco Elysium on it’s initial release, when only some of the dialog had voice acting.
For me it‘s management stuff. What occupies my brain the most is Crusader Kings 3, always something interesting to do, I can always burn 6 hours on a session easy. There‘s always something to think about but it‘s also pausable.
In 3D games, I need it to be stutter-free and smooth. I instantly see stutters (also because OLED screens flicker when there‘s a stutter) and it instantly takes me out. That’s probably my sole grievance with PEAK - the frequent stutters that take me out of it. I also need good sealing in-ears to shut out my surroundings. Oh, and no TAA blur…
I have a pretty broad interest in game genres, so I can get immersed even in silly stuff like the Henry Stickmen Collection - it just can‘t be sad or dark.
Same here, Vicky 2 was my old love, and I love the loop of looking after politics, economy and military. These days, I am playing Aurora 4x, and there is SO.MUCH.TO.DO.
