Immersive Sims

[Nifft Batuff]

I've tried my hand at drawing up such a chart a little while back. Positioning is susceptible to personal biases ofc, and it's probably best to avoid thinking of the opposite corners as being actual opposites, rather than just vectors going into different directions. I guess my definitions of 'RPG' and 'Stealth' find themselves on opposite ends because RPGs are those that abstract all mechanics and subsume them into numbers, whilst stealth builds around navigating a 3d environment based off cues signalled by the game in audio-visual format.

The 'circles' don't signify much, simply the outer slices that are named, the imm-sim star in the centre, and the intersections of two genres in between.

I've tosses out the new Deus Ex games and put them in Stealth action right beside MGS3, which I think is fair. I don't see how Human revolution is immersive. There are places where you cant jump a railing towards your own death, I don't remember the environment being very responsive, iirc they changed the limb health system to a standard health bar etc. I think MGS3 is more of an immersive sim than Human Revolution, even though it's not part of the genre either.

Some of the positioning is deliberate. HL2 is more of an immersive sim than a few other shooters. I think Witcher 1 is more of an RPG than Witcher 3, TES stays close to the genre throughout but evolves into more of an action-fest away from the stat centric Morrowind. Other games don't reflect that. There are several I have yet to play on that list as well.

Among the games that I have played, I would remove The Witcher, Bioshock, and Dragon Age for not having any imm-sim design, and add instead DOS/DOS2.

 

[Egosphere]

I've tried my hand at drawing up such a chart a little while back. Positioning is susceptible to personal biases ofc, and it's probably best to avoid thinking of the opposite corners as being actual opposites, rather than just vectors going into different directions. I guess my definitions of 'RPG' and 'Stealth' find themselves on opposite ends because RPGs are those that abstract all mechanics and subsume them into numbers, whilst stealth builds around navigating a 3d environment based off cues signalled by the game in audio-visual format.

The 'circles' don't signify much, simply the outer slices that are named, the imm-sim star in the centre, and the intersections of two genres in between.

I've tosses out the new Deus Ex games and put them in Stealth action right beside MGS3, which I think is fair. I don't see how Human revolution is immersive. There are places where you cant jump a railing towards your own death, I don't remember the environment being very responsive, iirc they changed the limb health system to a standard health bar etc. I think MGS3 is more of an immersive sim than Human Revolution, even though it's not part of the genre either.

Some of the positioning is deliberate. HL2 is more of an immersive sim than a few other shooters. I think Witcher 1 is more of an RPG than Witcher 3, TES stays close to the genre throughout but evolves into more of an action-fest away from the stat centric Morrowind. Other games don't reflect that. There are several I have yet to play on that list as well.

Among the games that I have played, I would remove The Witcher, Bioshock, and Dragon Age for not having any imm-sim design, and add instead DOS/DOS2.

The immsims are confined to the four pointed shape in the centre. So Bioshock being where it is, is to signal that to me it's not an immsim. Same for witcher and DA - action rpgs.

I've actually started to replay the original bioshock recently and I'm surprised it even gets brought up as an example of the genre. Freezing plasmid fails to put out fires on pipes, telekinesis plasmid does not pick up all objects (like fish - one example) - the game has little to no simulation of anything. It's all hard coded. The physics implementation alone in HL2 puts it closer to the genre than Bio imo.

 

[ciox]

I've actually started to replay the original bioshock recently and I'm surprised it even gets brought up as an example of the genre. Freezing plasmid fails to put out fires on pipes, telekinesis plasmid does not pick up all objects (like fish - one example) - the game has little to no simulation of anything. It's all hard coded. The physics implementation alone in HL2 puts it closer to the genre than Bio imo.

; the multiplier we use when the player has telekinesis as the current ability
; 2 means it will take twice as long for the AI to throw grenades
PlayerUsingTelekinesisReadyToUseMultiplier=2.0

 

[Doktor Best]

Playing Prey right now after years of having it in my backlog.

Going for hard difficulty, all survival modes active, core balance mod with half ammunition, half material gain and no free heal(operators only heal traumas, fountains dont work and food only regains 1hp)

I agree that the game is too generous with its resources. The mod balances it decently but it could even be harsher. There is a supposed difficulty spike in the game as i heard so lets see.

Another criticism i have is that there could be more secret loot to find. Exploration is good in this game dont get me wrong but Deus Ex was just a little more thorough with placing both easy to spot and easy to miss secrets so youre always incentivized to search every room like a crack addict who cant remember where he put his stash.

Anyways aside from that its a stellar game. Definitely the best modern immersive sim i have yet played. A shame it bombed on release and now Arkane is cursed to make bland multiplayer lootershooter #63847.

 

[Terenty]

The new Amnesia the Bunker seems pretty interesting, with devs claiming open ended, multiple solution gameplay and emergent monster AI


The last Amnesia was crap, but who knows, maybe they can pull off smth cool here

 

[InSight]

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

Emphasizing/highlighting the requirement of First-Person(FP) perspective/view.

immersive​

adjective
1. (of a computer display or system) generating a three-dimensional image which appears to surround the user.

The key word for immersion is surround.
2d perspective implies top/side view. Top view is distant, opposite to being surrounded. Imagine the differences of fisher's. One is above water, on boat, a more safer position but doesn't allow more viewing detail or interaction aside what the rod/tool limit. The other submerges/immerses inside the water, more details/interaction such as with algae while danger can surround or come from all sides.
Additional these market as CRPG(primarily are tactic/strategy games) often use of multiply avatars is bad/detrimental to immersion. It distance, lessen the stakes (if one character down, there is the other, loss of character doesn't end the game) and split focus/attention/attachment.
A different form of attraction/engagement/focus more based on calculation and control of more/multiply units from what these associated with immersion provides.
First Person is required if the term/name immersion is to hold value.

An exception when First Person would not be immersive, is when its conflicts with real world experience due to the games one-eye on chest view(contrast to 2 eyes use) format/range limit or other biological conflicts/issues.

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

One can conclude, that both aim to simulate a "reality". Computer games use stats, CRPG's use abstraction, Immersive Sim's 3d real-time allows direct use of stats as physics(or its game equivalent). CRPG format is a limit from its Table Top origin where the character's are from player projections/rules/game-mold.

Immersive Sims/Reality simulate environmental interaction, the physics as its strong point. Thief's stepping sound depending on floor. Kicking to fall damage in Dark Messiah.
RolePlayingGames simulate character interaction, the communication as its strong point.
What "Immersive Sims/Reality" seems to lack compare to RPGs is more simulation of character interaction, a more advanced communication system which require more players, a party. A party also allows/leads to a specialization/roles and dynamics/combination/interaction between them.

Would these experienced with games of Looking Glass game design, mostly agree with such conclusions?

systems-driven emergent gameplay allowing for player agency.

Would the description fit RPG's? The main/prime diffrence would be the change from player to player's.

Holy shit, you might be right. Monopoly actually is an immersive sim. What the fuck?

This further support the need for FP perspective/view as core requirement both as genre or design philosophy which seem the developer's/founder/innovators themself were ignorant of, or taken for granted based on article quotes in post #6 (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/immersive-sims.147022/post-8457934)


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Immersive Sim is deemed a faulty term/name for it can apply to, be synonyms with any good FP game for they are immersive and all games are simulating be it by abstraction or directness/imitations, one aspect or many/combined aspects.

Gameplay too is faulty term for there are alternative efficient/shorter words that could have been used instead such as "game" or "play". A reason/explanation to its existence is as a developers jargon.

Together with MOBA, that makes 3 example of poor/bad, not well thought term/categories by game developers than spread by journalist.

 

[KateMicucci]

immersive sim = FPS with stealth and a lockpicking minigame

 

[downwardspiral]

The definition and game it includes are too broad.
RDR2 and Masquerade Bloodlines are too different.
Your average RDR2 Enjoyers won't even want to try Masquerade.
And postal 2?
I felt almost every game in that list should belong to different genres.
When I heard immersive sim. The first things come to my mind are games like
Falcon BMS
Arma
Star Citizen
Stormworks
Subnautica
Nauticrawl
Scavenger SV-4
More Sim ish and putting lots of emphasis in immersion.


If you define RPG as a numeric rule to simulate characters and environments.
Then every RPG is a Sim. But it probably isn't what people who play sim games would want to play.
You might as well just call the list first person action RPG lite.
Because if Bioshock is a sim game, then baldur's gate would be a top down sim game.
It asks the line between Sim, RPG and arcade FPS shooter.

RPG can include stealth, sandbox and survival elements
Action RPG is just that but action.
If a game has a more focus on Survival or sandbox, people will just call it sandbox game or survival game.
The proposed lists is basically a list for game that is jack of all trade but not excel in any particular element.
They don't have much RPG essence for people to call them RPG.
then what qualities they have for people to call them a Sim?
If the term itself is there to describe a more sandbox ish approach for some emergent gameplay. Then it just 1st person action/shooter RPG with lite sandbox element.
Might as well just call Zelda TOTK a 3rd person Sim.
It is less about a genre but more about an element.
Game like falcon and it's dynamic camcapaign has more emergent gameplay than many of the games list in immersive sim.
But falcon won't be listed in that list because it is a flight sim, despite it is more qualified in the list by it's own definition.
And if falcon is listed in that list than many more games can be listed as well.
Thus it is too wide for a genre so not very useful to define and find the game you want. You are more likely to find the game you want by asking people how much dynamic and sandbox ish the game is than asking people if it is an immersive sim.

 

[ind33d]

People don't understand what "immersive sim" means. Thief isn't an immersive sim because it has good maps or impressive lighting. It's an immersive sim because it makes you feel like a thief. The most important element in an imsim is tone. VTMB is a janky piece of shit that was probably impossible to reach the credits without patches, but walking around at night in that game makes you feel like a vampire, so it counts.

 

[Butter]

People don't understand what "immersive sim" means. Thief isn't an immersive sim because it has good maps or impressive lighting. It's an immersive sim because it makes you feel like a thief. The most important element in an imsim is tone. VTMB is a janky piece of shit that was probably impossible to reach the credits without patches, but walking around at night in that game makes you feel like a vampire, so it counts.

This is entirely subjective. This has already been explained well by others in the thread, but Thief actually simulates things, e.g. its sound propagation and Act/React system. Bloodlines doesn't simulate anything. It's just a FP/TP RPG with multiple solutions to a lot of quests, which makes people think of Deus Ex, so they incorrectly call it an immersive sim.

 

[ind33d]

People don't understand what "immersive sim" means. Thief isn't an immersive sim because it has good maps or impressive lighting. It's an immersive sim because it makes you feel like a thief. The most important element in an imsim is tone. VTMB is a janky piece of shit that was probably impossible to reach the credits without patches, but walking around at night in that game makes you feel like a vampire, so it counts.

This is entirely subjective. This has already been explained well by others in the thread, but Thief actually simulates things, e.g. its sound propagation and Act/React system. Bloodlines doesn't simulate anything. It's just a FP/TP RPG with multiple solutions to a lot of quests, which makes people think of Deus Ex, so they incorrectly call it an immersive sim.

Then is TES IV: Oblivion an imsim? It should probably count, based on that definition. I'm not sure, myself.

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

 

[Great Deceiver]

Regardless of gaslighting attempts, "immersive sim" is a retarded term that is entirely concocted by modern faggots and muh Doritos market trying to sell shitslop by bandwagoning on good games of the past. It describes precisely nothing. It's worthless as a category. No one used it back in the day, even if some cunt scrounges up an obscure single reference from a retarded magazine. It's the very definition of astroturfed "how do you do fellow kids". The fact that it's been adopted at the Codex is yet another indelible sign of the decline.

 

[Melcar]

A soulslike immersive sim metroidvania with rpg elements. Would you play it?

 

[Rocket-Propelled Game]

A soulslike immersive sim metroidvania with rpg elements. Would you play it?

At this point I've heard worse ideas. LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOO!

 

[gaussgunner]

People don't understand what "immersive sim" means. Thief isn't an immersive sim because it has good maps or impressive lighting. It's an immersive sim because it makes you feel like a thief. The most important element in an imsim is tone. VTMB is a janky piece of shit that was probably impossible to reach the credits without patches, but walking around at night in that game makes you feel like a vampire, so it counts.

This is entirely subjective. This has already been explained well by others in the thread, but Thief actually simulates things, e.g. its sound propagation and Act/React system. Bloodlines doesn't simulate anything. It's just a FP/TP RPG with multiple solutions to a lot of quests, which makes people think of Deus Ex, so they incorrectly call it an immersive sim.

No, he's right. Immersive sim is a retarded label for a game that makes you feel like you're the MC but that's exactly what Thief, Bloodlines, and Deus Ex are.

Does Witcher 3 count? I don't know, man. It doesn't make me feel like a monster hunter.

It makes me feel like

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

No, he's right. Immersive sim is a retarded label for a game that makes you feel like you're the MC but that's exactly what Thief, Bloodlines, and Deus Ex are.

Does Witcher 3 count? I don't know, man. It doesn't make me feel like a monster hunter.

It makes me feel like

Even though Polish Open World Cutscene Simulator 2015 was a definite improvement over Polish Cutscene Simulator 2011, it certainly doesn't deserve to be placed in the company of Thief and Deus Ex.

 

[Tweed]

immersive sim = FPS with stealth and a lockpicking minigame

In order for it to be immersive it needs to happen in real time within the world, not in some crappy GUI. Thief did it right, the interactivity comes from having to switch back and forth between picks all while making sure the coast is clear.

In fact, one of the best immersive moments of Thief is in the ruins where you infiltrate the old keeper hideout and find that door with the wall trap, if you're observant you'll realize you can circumvent the whole thing with a rope arrow.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

Immersive Sims/Reality simulate environmental interaction, the physics as its strong point. Thief's stepping sound depending on floor. Kicking to fall damage in Dark Messiah.
RolePlayingGames simulate character interaction, the communication as its strong point.
What "Immersive Sims/Reality" seems to lack compare to RPGs is more simulation of character interaction, a more advanced communication system which require more players, a party. A party also allows/leads to a specialization/roles and dynamics/combination/interaction between them.

Would these experienced with games of Looking Glass game design, mostly agree with such conclusions?

Som former LGers may actually nod here and there themselves. Both more traditional RPGs as well as LG's design actually originate from the same source (pen&paper role-playing). But whereas, say, Pathfinder WOTR tries to replicate the table-top-experience wholesale -- LGs tried to take advantage of what a real-time computer simulation can bring onto the table.

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.

http://web.archive.org/web/19980224020118/www.lglass.com/p_info/dark/manifesto.html

Whilst we're at it: Prey (2017) at its very heart is more of an RPG than any Polish Cutscene Simulator.

 

[Rocket-Propelled Game]

immersive sim = FPS with stealth and a lockpicking minigame

In order for it to be immersive it needs to happen in real time within the world, not in some crappy GUI. Thief did it right, the interactivity comes from having to switch back and forth between picks all while making sure the coast is clear.

In fact, one of the best immersive moments of Thief is in the ruins where you infiltrate the old keeper hideout and find that door with the wall trap, if you're observant you'll realize you can circumvent the whole thing with a rope arrow.

Would you deem it heretical to have the keys/inventory on a wheel menu? I love the urgency of Thief but always saw that little bit as a PC-ism that isn't necessarily necessary.

The Dark Mod has a grid-type inventory system, por ejemplor.

 

[ind33d]

Playing Disco Elysium drunk is an immersive sim

 

[Dave the Druid]

People don't understand what "immersive sim" means. Thief isn't an immersive sim because it has good maps or impressive lighting. It's an immersive sim because it makes you feel like a thief. The most important element in an imsim is tone. VTMB is a janky piece of shit that was probably impossible to reach the credits without patches, but walking around at night in that game makes you feel like a vampire, so it counts.

This is entirely subjective. This has already been explained well by others in the thread, but Thief actually simulates things, e.g. its sound propagation and Act/React system. Bloodlines doesn't simulate anything. It's just a FP/TP RPG with multiple solutions to a lot of quests, which makes people think of Deus Ex, so they incorrectly call it an immersive sim.

Then is TES IV: Oblivion an imsim? It should probably count, based on that definition. I'm not sure, myself.

I already argued this earlier in the thread. No. Oblivion really isn't one. The Act/React system is a system designed specifically to allow for realistic emergent behavior. So with something like fire anything that's on fire or will explode has a Fire Stimuli (or FireStim) attached to its Source. And then anything that should react to fire will have a FireStim reaction under its Receptrons. What this means is that object interactions in Thief aren't hard-coded but instead Thief's world just understands fire (for lack of a better way of putting it, look, I did a longer more in-depth 'tismy write-up or two earlier in the thread with more information if you're interested.)

Anyway, Oblivion (and Skyrim and Morrowind) don't do that. Fire's really just a damage type and while it has some neat visual effects it doesn't actually function like fire. It only damages enemies/NPCs. And that's just one example of a system Looking Glass came up with to facilitate emergent gameplay and allow for player agency. I'll admit that with something like, say, Far Cry 2 it starts getting confusing as to what-is-or-isn't-an-immersive-sim? Cause it isn't one in some respects but almost totally qualifies in other respects. But something like Elder Scrolls: Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim really don't qualify. And Bloodlines only gets called one because some Rock Paper Shotgun writer though Immersive Sim meant FPS/RPG back in 2007 and people have been repeating that error for the last 16 fucking years now.

 

[Spukrian]

So there are quite a few people here in this thread who know a lot about immersive sims and how their systems work... is there anyone here who knows how Human Revolution and Mankind Divided works?

 

[ind33d]

So there are quite a few people here in this thread who know a lot about immersive sims and how their systems work... is there anyone here who knows how Human Revolution and Mankind Divided works?

I played both on launch, why?

 

[Spukrian]

So there are quite a few people here in this thread who know a lot about immersive sims and how their systems work... is there anyone here who knows how Human Revolution and Mankind Divided works?

I played both on launch, why?

Do you know how the stealth system works in depth?