What is the most rewarding experience that YOU have had with BG3 after "one more thing"-ing yourself into several hours of play? Mine will forever be beating Raphael. Eff that dude lol
Suspension of disbelief is paramount to truly enjoying narrative games. Like most things my take on the word immersive is probably quite a bit broader than most: anything can be immersive if you're able to lose itself in the world that's being presented. To that end I think the chase for immersive games by game companies is destructive. A game that just grabs you and won't let you go like Undertale is immersive but is also lightning in a bottle. It's art, not art I particularly like, but art. You can't create something like that on command but you can create a facsimile by pushing graphics to extremes in pursuit of realism, using addictive mechanics to immerse your players in the game (immerse obviously used in the sense of waterboarding here, remember to check back every hour and get your free loot box key kids!), and creating stories that rather than being designed to truly tell something cool and unique are instead a list of tropes meant to fulfill the maximum amount of player's metaphorical checkboxes, or are manipulative to try and force unearned emotions (characters introduced specifically to be killed off for that jolt of emotion, more transparently done in movies I think but games will do it too). I can live with fewer immersive games and instead have more art to be immersed in.
Yeah, I think that 'immersion' is so buzz-wordy at this point that people now mostly use it to mean "my entire experience was immersive." but even in the world of "immersive experiences" (LARP etc) there will always be things that give you a moment of "lacking immersion" and remind you that you are interacting with something created by humans and I don't think that's a bad thing at all (IF your entire experience is not that.... and you aren't paying 6k for it... and it isn't otherwise a soulless grab for those sweet sweet dollars....someday I will stop referencing Jenny Nicholson's Star Wars Hotel video but not today lol) In gaming discussions, I see a lot of people starting to use "immersion" and "breaking immersion" to try and give credibility to their specific take (which is often "cinematic, open-world game with strong graphics = immersing" and "anything that I personally have to think about too hard 'breaks immersion'".) It becomes a way to dismiss anything that isn't a AAA, photorealistic graphics title as 'lacking immersion' which I don't think is true, nor should it be, and I also think insisting on that is actively minimizing the "art" that you mention in your comment.... but that's a whole other video lol. End of the day, I agree. I'm a story immersion gal. Gameplay elements can have some impact but if I have strong feelings toward the story of characters (negative or positive!) that's really the defining trait of my "immersion". Because of this, I sometimes actually kinda need a glitch or something like that to give me a little brain break. Thinking when I was playing Red Dead 2 and would get all up in my feels about the story and then see a wagon somehow levitate and have that little moment of "haha, that's funny" to ease tension, which ironically helped me immerse MORE in the story when I returned to it.
I think it's not a great idea for game designers to try and invoke the player to play and play and play. It's caused people to get burnt out, either because they have had too much of a similar experience, or just lack of moving around, sleeping, taking care of one's needs. 330 hours in bg3 for me :P
What is the most rewarding experience that YOU have had with BG3 after "one more thing"-ing yourself into several hours of play? Mine will forever be beating Raphael. Eff that dude lol
Suspension of disbelief is paramount to truly enjoying narrative games. Like most things my take on the word immersive is probably quite a bit broader than most: anything can be immersive if you're able to lose itself in the world that's being presented. To that end I think the chase for immersive games by game companies is destructive. A game that just grabs you and won't let you go like Undertale is immersive but is also lightning in a bottle. It's art, not art I particularly like, but art. You can't create something like that on command but you can create a facsimile by pushing graphics to extremes in pursuit of realism, using addictive mechanics to immerse your players in the game (immerse obviously used in the sense of waterboarding here, remember to check back every hour and get your free loot box key kids!), and creating stories that rather than being designed to truly tell something cool and unique are instead a list of tropes meant to fulfill the maximum amount of player's metaphorical checkboxes, or are manipulative to try and force unearned emotions (characters introduced specifically to be killed off for that jolt of emotion, more transparently done in movies I think but games will do it too).
I can live with fewer immersive games and instead have more art to be immersed in.
Yeah, I think that 'immersion' is so buzz-wordy at this point that people now mostly use it to mean "my entire experience was immersive." but even in the world of "immersive experiences" (LARP etc) there will always be things that give you a moment of "lacking immersion" and remind you that you are interacting with something created by humans and I don't think that's a bad thing at all (IF your entire experience is not that.... and you aren't paying 6k for it... and it isn't otherwise a soulless grab for those sweet sweet dollars....someday I will stop referencing Jenny Nicholson's Star Wars Hotel video but not today lol)
In gaming discussions, I see a lot of people starting to use "immersion" and "breaking immersion" to try and give credibility to their specific take (which is often "cinematic, open-world game with strong graphics = immersing" and "anything that I personally have to think about too hard 'breaks immersion'".) It becomes a way to dismiss anything that isn't a AAA, photorealistic graphics title as 'lacking immersion' which I don't think is true, nor should it be, and I also think insisting on that is actively minimizing the "art" that you mention in your comment.... but that's a whole other video lol.
End of the day, I agree. I'm a story immersion gal. Gameplay elements can have some impact but if I have strong feelings toward the story of characters (negative or positive!) that's really the defining trait of my "immersion". Because of this, I sometimes actually kinda need a glitch or something like that to give me a little brain break. Thinking when I was playing Red Dead 2 and would get all up in my feels about the story and then see a wagon somehow levitate and have that little moment of "haha, that's funny" to ease tension, which ironically helped me immerse MORE in the story when I returned to it.
I think it's not a great idea for game designers to try and invoke the player to play and play and play. It's caused people to get burnt out, either because they have had too much of a similar experience, or just lack of moving around, sleeping, taking care of one's needs. 330 hours in bg3 for me :P