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Immersive Sims
- Thread starter toro
- Start date
GrafvonMoltke
Shoutbox Purity League
Far Cry is an immersive sim
Blood West seems interesting but Hunt Showdown takes the cake on western supernatural immersive sims, even with multiplayer.
Also that list is missing Brigand: Oaxaca
Edit: ExeKiller is looking good also, damn. Can it be the Cyberpunk Western Fallout that "we" have been waiting for?
Also that list is missing Brigand: Oaxaca
Edit: ExeKiller is looking good also, damn. Can it be the Cyberpunk Western Fallout that "we" have been waiting for?
Last edited:
Dave the Druid
Educated
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2022
- Messages
- 193
Nah, that's rubbish. Utter rubbish. Fuck, I've posted this about 3 times on this site now but since Internet Archive might going the way of the dodo soon I'll post the actual text here. This is THE ACTUAL DEFINITION FROM LOOKING GLASS STUDIOS (specifically Tim Stellmach and Marc "MAHK" LeBlanc) IN 1997. Only thing that's slightly off is that at the time they were calling it Immersive Reality rather than Immersive Simulation at the time.
Here's the short version if you're lazy:
How Do We Do It?
Adapting a paper game genre to the computer requires the designers to change the way they think about the genre and discover the power of the computer as a medium. Role-playing is about imagining yourself in a situation, maybe a strange, wonderful situation, and expressing yourself in relation to that situation. The social avenue of expression we have at a weekend party game might be lacking, but the power of the computer to free our imaginations is great. You don't have to imagine the fantasy world you're supposed to be in because you can see it, hear it, and in some ways almost feel it. This feeling of being there is essential to the role-playing game, and it's what Looking Glass' "immersive reality" philosophy is all about.
That's the hard technical problem. The hard design problem is to put the computer in the role of the single, most important person at the gaming table -- the "game master" or referee. A good game master is creative enough to invent a compelling situation, and flexible enough to adjudicate whatever response the players can come up with. Inventing the situation is our job as writers; the response to the player we have to leave up to the computer.
The common approach to this problem involves scripting a variety of object behaviors, so as to construct puzzles for the player to solve. This is fun up to a point, but it generally disallows the element of improvisation which is such an important part of an RPG's creative challenge. To unlock this potential in our games requires designing not just puzzles and quests, but interacting systems which the player can experiment with. These systems include things like the physics simulation and player movement, combat, magic, and skills, and our "Act/React" concept of object interaction. By setting up consistent rules for each such system, and designing interactions between them in a common-sense but controlled way, we end up with what is in essence one big system.
Because of the way this big system is constructed, it remains fairly manageable (so we can ship games as close to on time as ever happens in this business). But paradoxically, the connections between subsystems lead to interactions of interactions, and these multiply to the point where even we the designers don't fully understand the big system. This is the essence of the concept of "emergent behaviors," a notion we picked up from the fields of Artificial Life and Systems Analysis, and about which there's probably lists of Ph.D. theses as long as your arm. (No shit, we really think about stuff like this. Why should the 3D graphics guys get all the fun playing with brain-grinding science?)
This "emergent behaviors" business happens unintentionally in all sorts of projects, but if you're aware of it it's something that you can purposefully design for. We actually like it when our playtesters manage to defeat a problem in a way that we never thought of, despite the bugs it sometimes causes, because game-design-wise these emergent behaviors are like free money from heaven. Once your players can surprise you like this, you know for damn sure they're being creative. Bet you didn't think I was ever going to tie this back into the old "personal expression through creative improvisation" theme, eh?
Adapting a paper game genre to the computer requires the designers to change the way they think about the genre and discover the power of the computer as a medium. Role-playing is about imagining yourself in a situation, maybe a strange, wonderful situation, and expressing yourself in relation to that situation. The social avenue of expression we have at a weekend party game might be lacking, but the power of the computer to free our imaginations is great. You don't have to imagine the fantasy world you're supposed to be in because you can see it, hear it, and in some ways almost feel it. This feeling of being there is essential to the role-playing game, and it's what Looking Glass' "immersive reality" philosophy is all about.
That's the hard technical problem. The hard design problem is to put the computer in the role of the single, most important person at the gaming table -- the "game master" or referee. A good game master is creative enough to invent a compelling situation, and flexible enough to adjudicate whatever response the players can come up with. Inventing the situation is our job as writers; the response to the player we have to leave up to the computer.
The common approach to this problem involves scripting a variety of object behaviors, so as to construct puzzles for the player to solve. This is fun up to a point, but it generally disallows the element of improvisation which is such an important part of an RPG's creative challenge. To unlock this potential in our games requires designing not just puzzles and quests, but interacting systems which the player can experiment with. These systems include things like the physics simulation and player movement, combat, magic, and skills, and our "Act/React" concept of object interaction. By setting up consistent rules for each such system, and designing interactions between them in a common-sense but controlled way, we end up with what is in essence one big system.
Because of the way this big system is constructed, it remains fairly manageable (so we can ship games as close to on time as ever happens in this business). But paradoxically, the connections between subsystems lead to interactions of interactions, and these multiply to the point where even we the designers don't fully understand the big system. This is the essence of the concept of "emergent behaviors," a notion we picked up from the fields of Artificial Life and Systems Analysis, and about which there's probably lists of Ph.D. theses as long as your arm. (No shit, we really think about stuff like this. Why should the 3D graphics guys get all the fun playing with brain-grinding science?)
This "emergent behaviors" business happens unintentionally in all sorts of projects, but if you're aware of it it's something that you can purposefully design for. We actually like it when our playtesters manage to defeat a problem in a way that we never thought of, despite the bugs it sometimes causes, because game-design-wise these emergent behaviors are like free money from heaven. Once your players can surprise you like this, you know for damn sure they're being creative. Bet you didn't think I was ever going to tie this back into the old "personal expression through creative improvisation" theme, eh?
The Word
Five years ago, Looking Glass revolutionized the first-person role-playing game with Ultima Underworld. The Underworld team brought a background in military simulators to bear on the turn-based, square-by-square model of role-playing games which was popular at the time, and established a new standard of freedom and realism. Despite the advances in technology since those days, there are still some ways in which the examples of Underworld (and its follow-on System Shock) have never been equaled.
We on the Dark Project have decided that it's time to exceed them. Our goal is a fantasy action/adventure game in the Underworld tradition, which draws on our experience as game developers and players; which merges the lessons we've learned from "paper" role-playing games, from the development in the computer game industry since System Shock, and from our own previous first-person games; and which charts a course to the future of adventure role-playing in virtual fantasy worlds.
Our Manifesto
(A Rant from Tim and Mahk)
We're role-playing gamers, fantasy/sci-fi fans, and computer game developers. We play all the same games you do, and we know as well as you do that "Computer Role-Playing Game" is a contradiction in terms.
Sitting around the table at a gaming "run" is a social activity and an exercise in imagination. Players express their imaginations through their social interactions and their creative approach to the problems of an adventure. The problem with the whole notion of the "computer role-playing game" is that this cannot happen the same way in a computer game. The social interaction which can be offered by a computer is pretty hollow, and most games don't provide a whole lot to replace it. The tedious mazes of pre-scripted menu options that some games (including our own!) have tried to pass off as "conversations" certainly don't cut it.
This probably sounds like we don't think role-playing can work on computers, but we do. It's a hard technical and design problem, but we like hard problems or we wouldn't be in this business. What many games have done, which isn't hard, is to copy the forms of a paper role-playing game, which keeps all the sheets of paper from the gaming table at the expense of all the people around it. A computer game can have all the trappings of a paper role-playing game (the Tolkienesque dwarves and elves, the "character classes," "to-hit rolls," and "experience levels"), but without role-playing it's not an RPG. It's computer strategy game about paper RPG's. Some of them are okay.
The point of all this talk about computer role-playing games is not to claim that this project of ours is or isn't an RPG. The point is that great games don't happen by shoe-horning your design into a rigid category made up by some magazine. We've spent years in pursuit of a truly immersive experience, and we see a continuous line of development from Underworld through System Shock to the Dark Project. We touched off a lot of discussion on the 'net (and yes, we were reading it all) about whether System Shock was an RPG, or a Doom clone, or whatever. Like as not the same people who thought System Shock was a Doom clone will think that this game is a Quake clone. And they'll be just as wrong.
What it will be is one thing that Shock was, which is a damned fine game, the like of which nobody else could (or would) do.
How Do We Do It?
Adapting a paper game genre to the computer requires the designers to change the way they think about the genre and discover the power of the computer as a medium. Role-playing is about imagining yourself in a situation, maybe a strange, wonderful situation, and expressing yourself in relation to that situation. The social avenue of expression we have at a weekend party game might be lacking, but the power of the computer to free our imaginations is great. You don't have to imagine the fantasy world you're supposed to be in because you can see it, hear it, and in some ways almost feel it. This feeling of being there is essential to the role-playing game, and it's what Looking Glass' "immersive reality" philosophy is all about.
That's the hard technical problem. The hard design problem is to put the computer in the role of the single, most important person at the gaming table -- the "game master" or referee. A good game master is creative enough to invent a compelling situation, and flexible enough to adjudicate whatever response the players can come up with. Inventing the situation is our job as writers; the response to the player we have to leave up to the computer.
The common approach to this problem involves scripting a variety of object behaviors, so as to construct puzzles for the player to solve. This is fun up to a point, but it generally disallows the element of improvisation which is such an important part of an RPG's creative challenge. To unlock this potential in our games requires designing not just puzzles and quests, but interacting systems which the player can experiment with. These systems include things like the physics simulation and player movement, combat, magic, and skills, and our "Act/React" concept of object interaction. By setting up consistent rules for each such system, and designing interactions between them in a common-sense but controlled way, we end up with what is in essence one big system.
Because of the way this big system is constructed, it remains fairly manageable (so we can ship games as close to on time as ever happens in this business). But paradoxically, the connections between subsystems lead to interactions of interactions, and these multiply to the point where even we the designers don't fully understand the big system. This is the essence of the concept of "emergent behaviors," a notion we picked up from the fields of Artificial Life and Systems Analysis, and about which there's probably lists of Ph.D. theses as long as your arm. (No shit, we really think about stuff like this. Why should the 3D graphics guys get all the fun playing with brain-grinding science?)
This "emergent behaviors" business happens unintentionally in all sorts of projects, but if you're aware of it it's something that you can purposefully design for. We actually like it when our playtesters manage to defeat a problem in a way that we never thought of, despite the bugs it sometimes causes, because game-design-wise these emergent behaviors are like free money from heaven. Once your players can surprise you like this, you know for damn sure they're being creative. Bet you didn't think I was ever going to tie this back into the old "personal expression through creative improvisation" theme, eh?
Five years ago, Looking Glass revolutionized the first-person role-playing game with Ultima Underworld. The Underworld team brought a background in military simulators to bear on the turn-based, square-by-square model of role-playing games which was popular at the time, and established a new standard of freedom and realism. Despite the advances in technology since those days, there are still some ways in which the examples of Underworld (and its follow-on System Shock) have never been equaled.
We on the Dark Project have decided that it's time to exceed them. Our goal is a fantasy action/adventure game in the Underworld tradition, which draws on our experience as game developers and players; which merges the lessons we've learned from "paper" role-playing games, from the development in the computer game industry since System Shock, and from our own previous first-person games; and which charts a course to the future of adventure role-playing in virtual fantasy worlds.
Our Manifesto
(A Rant from Tim and Mahk)
We're role-playing gamers, fantasy/sci-fi fans, and computer game developers. We play all the same games you do, and we know as well as you do that "Computer Role-Playing Game" is a contradiction in terms.
Sitting around the table at a gaming "run" is a social activity and an exercise in imagination. Players express their imaginations through their social interactions and their creative approach to the problems of an adventure. The problem with the whole notion of the "computer role-playing game" is that this cannot happen the same way in a computer game. The social interaction which can be offered by a computer is pretty hollow, and most games don't provide a whole lot to replace it. The tedious mazes of pre-scripted menu options that some games (including our own!) have tried to pass off as "conversations" certainly don't cut it.
This probably sounds like we don't think role-playing can work on computers, but we do. It's a hard technical and design problem, but we like hard problems or we wouldn't be in this business. What many games have done, which isn't hard, is to copy the forms of a paper role-playing game, which keeps all the sheets of paper from the gaming table at the expense of all the people around it. A computer game can have all the trappings of a paper role-playing game (the Tolkienesque dwarves and elves, the "character classes," "to-hit rolls," and "experience levels"), but without role-playing it's not an RPG. It's computer strategy game about paper RPG's. Some of them are okay.
The point of all this talk about computer role-playing games is not to claim that this project of ours is or isn't an RPG. The point is that great games don't happen by shoe-horning your design into a rigid category made up by some magazine. We've spent years in pursuit of a truly immersive experience, and we see a continuous line of development from Underworld through System Shock to the Dark Project. We touched off a lot of discussion on the 'net (and yes, we were reading it all) about whether System Shock was an RPG, or a Doom clone, or whatever. Like as not the same people who thought System Shock was a Doom clone will think that this game is a Quake clone. And they'll be just as wrong.
What it will be is one thing that Shock was, which is a damned fine game, the like of which nobody else could (or would) do.
How Do We Do It?
Adapting a paper game genre to the computer requires the designers to change the way they think about the genre and discover the power of the computer as a medium. Role-playing is about imagining yourself in a situation, maybe a strange, wonderful situation, and expressing yourself in relation to that situation. The social avenue of expression we have at a weekend party game might be lacking, but the power of the computer to free our imaginations is great. You don't have to imagine the fantasy world you're supposed to be in because you can see it, hear it, and in some ways almost feel it. This feeling of being there is essential to the role-playing game, and it's what Looking Glass' "immersive reality" philosophy is all about.
That's the hard technical problem. The hard design problem is to put the computer in the role of the single, most important person at the gaming table -- the "game master" or referee. A good game master is creative enough to invent a compelling situation, and flexible enough to adjudicate whatever response the players can come up with. Inventing the situation is our job as writers; the response to the player we have to leave up to the computer.
The common approach to this problem involves scripting a variety of object behaviors, so as to construct puzzles for the player to solve. This is fun up to a point, but it generally disallows the element of improvisation which is such an important part of an RPG's creative challenge. To unlock this potential in our games requires designing not just puzzles and quests, but interacting systems which the player can experiment with. These systems include things like the physics simulation and player movement, combat, magic, and skills, and our "Act/React" concept of object interaction. By setting up consistent rules for each such system, and designing interactions between them in a common-sense but controlled way, we end up with what is in essence one big system.
Because of the way this big system is constructed, it remains fairly manageable (so we can ship games as close to on time as ever happens in this business). But paradoxically, the connections between subsystems lead to interactions of interactions, and these multiply to the point where even we the designers don't fully understand the big system. This is the essence of the concept of "emergent behaviors," a notion we picked up from the fields of Artificial Life and Systems Analysis, and about which there's probably lists of Ph.D. theses as long as your arm. (No shit, we really think about stuff like this. Why should the 3D graphics guys get all the fun playing with brain-grinding science?)
This "emergent behaviors" business happens unintentionally in all sorts of projects, but if you're aware of it it's something that you can purposefully design for. We actually like it when our playtesters manage to defeat a problem in a way that we never thought of, despite the bugs it sometimes causes, because game-design-wise these emergent behaviors are like free money from heaven. Once your players can surprise you like this, you know for damn sure they're being creative. Bet you didn't think I was ever going to tie this back into the old "personal expression through creative improvisation" theme, eh?
Your image is way off. Like, how the fuck is Deus Ex: Mankind Divided in the 'Top Notch" tier but OG Deus Ex isn't? I get putting Prey 2017 in there because it's arguably the best modern one but Mankind Divided? Really? And where the fuck is Ultima Underworld?! Y'know, the game that fucking started it all? "An immersive sim needs fully fledged stealth mechanics"? I mean, Thief had fully fledged stealth mechanics but Ultima Underworld, System Shock 1, Terra Nova and Bioshock sure as shit didn't...
Sorry, I know you didn't make that image mate, but it's a bit shite.
Lord_Potato
Arcane
Since this thread has been posted in GRPG subforum I'd like to ask what's in your opinion the relation between immersive sims and rpgs? Are all immersive sims just a specific sub-genre of rpgs or these two genres only partially overlap?
What the fuck is this picture? Prey and Deus Ex MD are the best "immersive sims" or "RPGs" while Deus ex is much worse and Bloodlines is crap?I don't agree 100% with the picture below but I think it's a pretty good description of the genre.
Dave the Druid
Educated
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2022
- Messages
- 193
- Read my post above yours as it's the actual devs from Looking Glass basically answering this exact question while making Thief: The Dark Project
- Immersive Sims are real-time 3D games (usually first-person with a more-or-less unbroken first-person perspective but being in real-time 3D is the actual key bit) and always have been. RPGs can be 2D, 3D or anything in between
- Immersive Sims prioritize "systems-driven emergent gameplay allowing for degrees of player agency" like being able to blow up locked wooden doors if you can't find the key
- Immersive Sims can be RPGs but they don't necessarily need to have RPG mechanics at all (by which I mean stats, dice rolls, exp and numbers going up) since the actual focus is on systems-driven emergent gameplay rather than stats
- There's quite a bit of cross-over though as the first one of these games was Ultima Underworld, one of the most influential RPGs ever made. And some of the later ones like System Shock 2 and Deus Ex were incredibly influential FPS/RPGs
- It gets confusing as fuck as to what is or isn't one after about 2003-ish because around that time this kind of game completely disappeared for a while and a ton of shit you probably take for granted in 3D games was either invented by or massively innovated on by Looking Glass back in the 90s. On the other hand few games still dare go as far as Looking Glass did with their whole systems-driven emergent gameplay philosophy.
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Lord_Potato
Arcane
To make matters even more complicated Looking Glass still perceived System Shock 1 as a rpg (despite it not having typical elements of the genre like character development). When I get home I can find the appropriate quote in the game's manual.
430am
Educated
Whoever made this image should obliterate themselves as soon as possible.
Dave the Druid
Educated
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2022
- Messages
- 193
Oh I'll do you one better. This is also from the old Looking Glass website, specifically Doug Church's profile on the Thief page:
But yeah, if you consider RPGs to mean stats going up and numbers and leveling up and all that shit, then System Shock 1, Terra Nova, Thief: The Dark Project and Thief 2 definitely aren't RPGs.
After first working with Paul N, Dan S, and World Class Air Conditioning Unit Jon Maiara on a game featuring a friendly troll who called you Rodriguez, Doug Church worked on two sequels, one of which had a different name and no player attribute stats, and was thus a Doom clone, not an RPG. Following that, some typing on Flight was done (remember hoop courses, anyone? thought not). After some thinking and such, he got involved in Dark, which he likes to think will be like pinball, involving lots of panic and chaos and occasional deliberate actions.
Development Tools & Core Systems Programmer
Game Design Consultant
Haver of Fingers in All Pies
Underworld I & II: Project Leader/Programmer
System Shock: Project Leader/Programmer
Flight Unlimited: Programmer
Sizzle
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2012
- Messages
- 2,473
Why the hell do people keep insisting that VTMB is an Immersive Sim?
It's a clear-cut example of an RPG. Yes, you have multiple ways of approaching most objectives, but there's no emergent gameplay (a core part of any true Immersive Sim) that allows you to, for example, stack boxes so that you can reach a window you otherwise wouldn't have been able to.
It's a clear-cut example of an RPG. Yes, you have multiple ways of approaching most objectives, but there's no emergent gameplay (a core part of any true Immersive Sim) that allows you to, for example, stack boxes so that you can reach a window you otherwise wouldn't have been able to.
Dave the Druid
Educated
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2022
- Messages
- 193
Why? Because people are idiots. The better question is: How? And the answer to that one's pretty simple too. It's because Rock Paper Shotgun writer Alec Meer called it one back in 2007 saying:
And people have been repeating his mistake ever since, not realizing that:
- The mistake's in the text: immersive sim doesn't mean FPS/RPG hybrid and
- If you read the full piece he's describing an experience that's just about the opposite of an immersive sim:
They're still there, and they're still rare videogame triumphs of story-telling and character. What I see on this second playthrough, though, is that without them, Vampire is not a great game. Not in terms of bugs and the intellectual entropy of the last few hours, but in terms of not being a great game. Not by a long shot. What strikes me the most is what a collosal waste of space most of its places are. Almost nothing and almost no-one can be interacted with; there are rooms upon rooms that serve no purpose, often entirely empty and certainly with not a thing to press E to use within them. They're too primitive-looking (even by Vampire's 2004 standards) to add to the sense of world, and instead all they achieve is to make you get a bit lost. Outside, 90% of NPCs don't react to your presence, or even to each other's, though in fairness I did witness one street brawl, swiftly sucked into an Oroborous loop when one of the combatants got stuck on a lamp-post.
And there are so, so many doors. Doors that never open, doors that don't even have handles on them, doors that unlock only after a certain event trigger, doors inexplicably immune to the lock-picking ability I'd ploughed all my experience points into, and all of them always bafflingly protected from the vampiric superpowers that enable me to punch a man into bloody pieces. Purposeless, unopenable doors have always been a pet-hate of mine. Why do so many developers, especially of first-person shooters, persist in adding so many of them? Can they really believe that a flat, non-interactive texture will make a player believe this digital world is bigger than what they can see? In so many games, it adds an artificial, cheerless challenge - Find The Door. Find The Door is no fun. People don't play games because their idea of a good time is looking for a door, the one door amongst dozens that they're allowed to press the Use button on. Is this challenge deliberate, or is it because the art team seek ways to make a room look more decorated? If the latter, then there's a gap in the market for a company that specialises in stock 3D models of bookcases, posters, shelves, radiators, hat stands, bins, stuffed animals... Please, developers, stop making Find The Door challenges. I refuse to accept they're a necessary part of videogames.
And there are so, so many doors. Doors that never open, doors that don't even have handles on them, doors that unlock only after a certain event trigger, doors inexplicably immune to the lock-picking ability I'd ploughed all my experience points into, and all of them always bafflingly protected from the vampiric superpowers that enable me to punch a man into bloody pieces. Purposeless, unopenable doors have always been a pet-hate of mine. Why do so many developers, especially of first-person shooters, persist in adding so many of them? Can they really believe that a flat, non-interactive texture will make a player believe this digital world is bigger than what they can see? In so many games, it adds an artificial, cheerless challenge - Find The Door. Find The Door is no fun. People don't play games because their idea of a good time is looking for a door, the one door amongst dozens that they're allowed to press the Use button on. Is this challenge deliberate, or is it because the art team seek ways to make a room look more decorated? If the latter, then there's a gap in the market for a company that specialises in stock 3D models of bookcases, posters, shelves, radiators, hat stands, bins, stuffed animals... Please, developers, stop making Find The Door challenges. I refuse to accept they're a necessary part of videogames.
He's not entirely wrong about VtMB's unfinished nature but man does he have shit taste. Bloodlines is great, unfinished yes but he's making way too big a deal out of it. And he spelt "colossal" wrong.
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430am
Educated
It's more of the same if you liked the first one, I wouldn't say it's better or worse. Now whether it could be a good stealth game at all is a whole another discussion.
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2018
- Messages
- 8,615
It lets you play as Emily or Corvo, each with their own powers. It has a few levels that are head and shoulders above anything in the first game, although the quality overall is about the same. The story isn't great (or the point) in either game, but it was more memorable in the first one.
Gargaune
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2020
- Messages
- 3,623
the guynecologist, that's some great material on the subject, I'd also like to throw in Paul Neurath's earlier musings on the subject of "embodiment" in Ultima Underworld:
But I do take some issue with your "systems-driven emergent gameplay allowing for player agency" TL;DR, because I think it it's overly reductive to the emergent gameplay factor unless we complete it with "for the purposes of embodiment." I'll use that instead of "immersion" because it's circular and carries a lot of baggage in these conversations.
Now, the reason I'm picking at this nit is that, very often when these discussions come about, participants bemoan the "immersive sim" term claiming it has nothing to do with "immersion." But it does, it's right there in Stellmach's and LeBlanc's definition of the "immersive reality" philosophy and in Neurath's earlier thoughts on "embodiment" - while emergent gameplay is the critical vector, it's towards achieving that sense of "being there", similar to that of a tabletop RPG.
And this is such an important concept because it's essential to grasping the full vision that made those milestone titles what they were, that notion of comprehensive "embodiment" in an "immersive reality" achieved through mechanical design, of which emergent gameplay may be the foremost factor, but not the only one in a holistic approach. More concretely, the "immersive sim" as we have come to know it is a single-player 3D Action-Adventure game characterised by emergent gameplay systems and player agency, primarily First Person Perspective, low-abstraction mechanics and diegetic interfaces, and intricate, typically time-locked play spaces (as a consequence of development scope limitations), and it's the pursuit of Embodiment that makes the case for these implementations. From this perspective, you can draw a common line running through Ultima Underworld, Thief, Deus Ex, Arx Fatalis, System Shock 2 or Dishonored. Or even, albeit much more tenuously, STALKER or maybe Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
If I may harp on a little longer for the sake of completeness, I have occasionally encountered detractors of the "immersive sim" term mock whether that means the subgenre is related to other sims, such as space, mech, military or, hell, even racing sims, but while that's clearly not the case when quantifying the end result, there is, in fact, a strong common element in terms of high-level vision. Deus Ex has more in common in terms of core design philosophy (and only philosophy) with Assetto Corsa than with Call of Duty, even though when it comes to mechanical implementation, the situation is obviously reversed - both the immersive sim and the racing sim pursue giving the player a comprehensive, individual, low-abstraction experience of acting out their respective fantasies, with the former being more of an "adventure simulator" or "hero simulator" in both presentation and - crucially - gameplay.
The name of the genre (or rather, subgenre), however confusing or unintuitive it might be to some, isn't really the relevant item here, the point is that we do have use for a term reuniting the relevant titles and "immersive sim" did emerge to fill that role, at least until more recently, when games journalists started muddying things up with their usual, ignorant aplomb. If your buddy comes to you looking for recommendations after having just enjoyed Deus Ex, you might tell him to check out Thief or Arx Fatalis, but you won't immediately tell him to go play Skyrim (or Weird West). While there might be practical overlap in design and a common pedigree, there are significant departures in core vision there, part of which one of you guys (you yourself, if I'm not mistaken) recently quoted Greg LoPiccolo as outlining when it came to Thief:
As for the term itself, I'm not bothered if people want to change it to something else, but there is value in having one and "immersive sim" is simply what entered common use after Looking Glass. I dread the day when some game journalist comes up with "Deus Ex-like."
The Digital Antiquarian said:
But I do take some issue with your "systems-driven emergent gameplay allowing for player agency" TL;DR, because I think it it's overly reductive to the emergent gameplay factor unless we complete it with "for the purposes of embodiment." I'll use that instead of "immersion" because it's circular and carries a lot of baggage in these conversations.
Now, the reason I'm picking at this nit is that, very often when these discussions come about, participants bemoan the "immersive sim" term claiming it has nothing to do with "immersion." But it does, it's right there in Stellmach's and LeBlanc's definition of the "immersive reality" philosophy and in Neurath's earlier thoughts on "embodiment" - while emergent gameplay is the critical vector, it's towards achieving that sense of "being there", similar to that of a tabletop RPG.
And this is such an important concept because it's essential to grasping the full vision that made those milestone titles what they were, that notion of comprehensive "embodiment" in an "immersive reality" achieved through mechanical design, of which emergent gameplay may be the foremost factor, but not the only one in a holistic approach. More concretely, the "immersive sim" as we have come to know it is a single-player 3D Action-Adventure game characterised by emergent gameplay systems and player agency, primarily First Person Perspective, low-abstraction mechanics and diegetic interfaces, and intricate, typically time-locked play spaces (as a consequence of development scope limitations), and it's the pursuit of Embodiment that makes the case for these implementations. From this perspective, you can draw a common line running through Ultima Underworld, Thief, Deus Ex, Arx Fatalis, System Shock 2 or Dishonored. Or even, albeit much more tenuously, STALKER or maybe Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
If I may harp on a little longer for the sake of completeness, I have occasionally encountered detractors of the "immersive sim" term mock whether that means the subgenre is related to other sims, such as space, mech, military or, hell, even racing sims, but while that's clearly not the case when quantifying the end result, there is, in fact, a strong common element in terms of high-level vision. Deus Ex has more in common in terms of core design philosophy (and only philosophy) with Assetto Corsa than with Call of Duty, even though when it comes to mechanical implementation, the situation is obviously reversed - both the immersive sim and the racing sim pursue giving the player a comprehensive, individual, low-abstraction experience of acting out their respective fantasies, with the former being more of an "adventure simulator" or "hero simulator" in both presentation and - crucially - gameplay.
The name of the genre (or rather, subgenre), however confusing or unintuitive it might be to some, isn't really the relevant item here, the point is that we do have use for a term reuniting the relevant titles and "immersive sim" did emerge to fill that role, at least until more recently, when games journalists started muddying things up with their usual, ignorant aplomb. If your buddy comes to you looking for recommendations after having just enjoyed Deus Ex, you might tell him to check out Thief or Arx Fatalis, but you won't immediately tell him to go play Skyrim (or Weird West). While there might be practical overlap in design and a common pedigree, there are significant departures in core vision there, part of which one of you guys (you yourself, if I'm not mistaken) recently quoted Greg LoPiccolo as outlining when it came to Thief:
As for the term itself, I'm not bothered if people want to change it to something else, but there is value in having one and "immersive sim" is simply what entered common use after Looking Glass. I dread the day when some game journalist comes up with "Deus Ex-like."
KeighnMcDeath
RPG Codex Boomer
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2016
- Messages
- 15,417
The Dark Mod for Doom 3? I have not heard of this? I heard there was an RPG mod for Doom 3 but never investigated. Dungeon Doom or some shiz?
Doom Wiki - The Dark Mod
Wiki & link to main site
ModDB - The Dark Mod
ModDB - Dungeon Doom
Doom Wiki - The Dark Mod
Wiki & link to main site
ModDB - The Dark Mod
ModDB - Dungeon Doom
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luj1
You're all shills
I don't agree 100% with the picture below but I think it's a pretty good description of the genre.
lol prey "top notch"
prey is garbage
Cross
Arcane
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That's true, though Bloodlines technically isn't even a first-person game. You can play the entire game in third-person, but not in first-person, since melee combat and swimming force you into a third-person perspective. I always thought that was weird.
Lemming42
Arcane
This is I think the key to the constant confusion around the definition of "immersive sim" - pretty much every 3D game had similar systems to Ultima Underworld or System Shock 1 by the early 2000s.
To be honest I'm not really clear on what "emergent gameplay" means at this point - you can use the physics system in Half-Life 2 in all kinds of "emergent" ways (stack objects to reach new areas, place objects to create cover, etc) but nobody would call it an ImSim. Similarly, Bethesda games all allow for all kinds of "emergent" stuff (Morrowind's spellmaker being an obvious one) and all allow for multiple approaches in the way you might expect from an ImSim.
I also have no idea why Dishonored qualifies as an immersive sim, other than the fact that it deliberately echoes Thief.
Putting aside the quality of the games mentioned, you might reasonably recommend Skyrim as soon as you'd recommend System Shock 1, if your goal was simply to recommend something as close as possible in gameplay/design philosophy terms - Skyrim offers a similar open-ended systems-based approach to Deus Ex (you can use consistent stealth or combat mechanics to navigate large nonlinear spaces and bypass or ambush enemies who have predictable AI patterns, plus you can use various enhancements to aid your progress) while System Shock is far closer to a "pure" FPS.
I don't understand what ties System Shock 1 and Deus Ex together in a way that excludes the likes of Skyrim, either in gameplay terms or design philosophy. Skyrim clearly aims to give the player a sense of existing in a world in which their character has a certain set of thematically-appropriate abilities and mechanics that can be used to confront challenges in "emergent", player-decided ways.
The "embodiment" idea doesn't really make sense to me either - it made sense during the development of Underworld when allowing the player to navigate the world in an organic way reliant on consistent systems like jumping was still an innovation, but by the late 90s, every first person game sought some degree of "embodiment". The player convincingly "embodies" Gordon Freeman (in terms of having a sense of place in the world and navigating it with consistent mehcanics) as much as they embody Corvo, Emily, Daud or Billie.
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Gargaune
Arcane
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The Looking Glass school of Immersive Sim and the Bethesda Game™ both stem from the same progenitor in Ultima Underworld, but they take that heritage in different directions with their goals and implementations - the former if focused on the consistency of the stage, "depth" if you will, whereas the latter concentrates its efforts on breadth, on the scope of an open world.
For example, Deus Ex or Thief abstract the clock away in favour of the concreteness of a given stage, with actors performing highly appropriately to just to the then-and-there of the gameplay and narrative, whereas Skyrim channels its efforts into the grand open world, impressing the player with its scope even if its schedules and routines will very quickly break any illusion of verisimilitude. While both models leverage emergent gameplay mechanics, they're pursuing very different experiences with them, "narrow and deep" vs. "wide and shallow", it's just the reality of development where you have to prioritise one over the other.
Consider that Spector once talked about his pie-in-the-sky aspiration of modeling his fabled "one city block", which is a very different ambition from Todd's "see that mountain, you can climb it" philosophy. And I'm not saying as a diss, I don't use "immersive sim" as a badge of quality and I've been very open about enjoying Bethesda Game™, but all in all, they diverge more than they overlap and if I were your Thief-enthused buddy whom you recommended Skyrim to, I'd wonder whether you're upset with me for some reason.
As for "embodiment", I've latched onto the term because I think it tracks with the overarching sense of "being there" that Neurath sought with individual, free movement in Ultima Underworld and also what Stellmach and LeBlanc were later trying to advance with their "immersive reality", it's all the same high-level vision - putting the player into the adventure, into an illusion that doesn't just look convincing, but also plays convincingly. To recycle an example I've used before, stacking boxes isn't important just as a gameplay affordance, but also because it's what you'd instinctively want to do when trying to reach something high up and therefore it advances the player's engagement with the fictional space. And that engagement, that comprehensive and playable suspension of disbelief is at the core of the Immersive Sim experience, other design choices flow from it.
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