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.
Nothing takes me out of immersion more than pointless exposition. Stop talking to me, the player, and keep the conversation normal for my character.
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
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.
“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.
The only quality that matters is that sweet sweet dissociation. When I lose track of time in Rimworld and suddenly its midnight, thats immersion to me. When the controller rumbles in skyrim, thats the opposite of immersion because I feel my own hands touching a controller and am reminded I exist.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Immersion for me is when you cross NPCs engaged in something that has either no relation or no involuntary relation to the playable character.
I think of games like Elder Scrolls or Cyberpunk or Read Dead Redemption 1 & 2 where you can be walking somewhere and come across something in progress. Most immersive is when you can ignore the situation entirely if you choose to. Even more would be ignoring it and you never seeing it mentioned again in your playthrough. I’m not sure I can name any game that does this, in my experience. But I would love to play a game like that where I am on my way to something/somewhere and something interesting is happening and I have to make a choice to either experience this now before I never can ever again in this playthrough or keep going where I’m going. Kind of like real life and you see something crazy on the street going to work. If you don’t stop and look at that now, you will never see it again in your life unless it was recorded. You get a consequence of either missing out on work but seeing something crazy cool or the consequence of missing out on something crazy cool but making it on time for work.
I also find myself most immersed when the devs create a world that feels lived in and with things that don’t have official explanations. I think RDR1 & 2 have done this so well. I’m a player who likes to go off the beaten path and explore anything and everything. Coming across a random hatch in the middle of a grassy meadow but is never explained in game is so fascinating to me and I’ll spend many minutes trying to find any clues about what this is in the area. Very much like the real world and walking through an alley and finding a burned out car or something that just doesn’t get seen often but gets you wondering about the backstory and checking the nearby area for clues to see what may explain how this got here.
A good story with solid world building.
DA Origins. ME trilogy. Dishonored 1 & 2. D&D games always have some of that with complex character building to make up the difference when the story is less than stellar.
Like fun fiction, only you participate instead of reading.
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’ve been playing Sekiro lately. While it’s not generally on the top of “immersive games” lists, I find it immersive because of how cool the gameplay makes you feel. When you are just completely focused on timing each parry and reading the attacks of your enemy, it makes me feel like I’m actually in the game doing these feats. Combine that with the fact there are few cutscenes and little dialogue, and I’d say it feels pretty immersive.
Sekiro has the most immersive sword combat I’ve experienced, which is weird considering how simplistic the fundamentals of Sekiro are. But the visual representation of the fight is what makes it immersive. You’re not just flaying your sword around and the enemy isn’t just tanking slashes like they’re made of steel. Most enemies use their weapons to block your attacks and in the same vein you use your sword to block their attacks. Combat mostly revolves around breaking posture which creates an opening you use for the killing blow.
So much has already been well put, except one thing that reaaaaallly help MY immersion:
Sfx & especially music. Thinking of “life is strange” or “cyberpunk 2077” or the good old witcher.
The soundtrack of Caves of Qud really does it for me, so alien and immersive, the graphics weren’t much of a problem.
Haven’t played that one but am intrigued now.
And yes, gfx are indeed the least important factor of a great game. Yet it seems like the one most money is pumped into 🤷♂️
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.
