The first thing they should have nailed down during development was movement and combat, above all else.
In an action rpg the combat needs to be addictive, make players search out the next encounter.
There is a lot of truth to this. I've been thinking about it a lot lately and no matter how much you promote "alternative" solutions, 90% of players will always fall back on the primary mechanics. In Thief it's stealth, in action RPGs it is combat. That's just how it is.
So you need a primary mechanic under which to deliver all the other stuff. And you need to nail that primary mechanic down during early (!) development. It has to be solid. At least if you wanna play it safe. Sometimes the other stuff then even outshines that mechanic and everything is neato - "immersive sims" are actually well known for that (think of the shooting mechanics in Deus Ex). But if the most obvious mechanics of a game are lacking and the other stuff is vague - that's no good. Which is why I'm really concerned what combat will look like in the E3 alpha build. I kinda had the impression melee combat was mostly avoided in the last two videos (10 min gameplay and the trailer don't really show any). Hopefully because they were in the process of fixing it.
I mean it is possible to fix this, but the actual implementation isn't even the big problem. The big problem is providing proper assets and re-iterating the core mechanics with them. In this case you'd have to provide solid animations, then check how they work with the movement mechanics (and all other systems), fix whatever needs fixing, adjust whatever needs adjustment, check how it works out again and repeat that whole process several times. In most software companies those iterations (often called "sprints", depending on the collaboration mode) are normally between 2 and 4 weeks. If you wanna release in three months you gotta do 2 week sprints. But for two weeks you gotta run a
really tight ship. That is actually what makes my heart sink. I'm still hopeful they can nail down those core mechanics and deliver a solid dungeon crawler. Even if it isn't the big immersive sim revelation. That is really secondary at this point.
Gotta say, in kind of a tragic way, I'm learning a lot these days
Either we disagree, or I'm getting hung up on your singular use of the word "mechanic" (by definitions I follow, this would be a low-level action the player can take e.g. running, jumping, swinging a sword, etc.). For the most part, Immersive Sims are a "sum of their parts" genre, where the gameplay formula is built on a bunch of mechanics and systemic interactions between them. Other than
maybe Thief, none of them are really built on just one primary mechanic the way Super Mario Bros is built on its jump mechanic. If I get less pedantic and extend your comment to a group of core mechanics (Doom's would be run, shoot, and swap weapons), that's now true of a lot more games, but still not really of any Immersive Sim, again outside of maybe Thief. The gameplay formula of the Ultima Underworlds, System Shocks, and Deus Ex are predicated on a much wider array of design elements operating all at once, as a product of their kitchen sink design philosophy. System Shock doesn't properly have its core gameplay if you remove any one of: the combat mechanics, inventory and resource management, audio logs guiding goal completion, level design gated by player abilities and keycards/codes, cybernetic upgrades, security systems, respawning enemies, hacking puzzles, etc. On their own, many of these mechanics and systems aren't all that impressive, and they certainly couldn't carry the experience on their own. But taken in context, they all form a rich and deeply engaging whole (this leads to my own personal theory on why there are so many Thief fan missions and almost none for SS2 -- the gameplay formula for Thief is quite a bit tighter and can be made compelling without as many hand-placed interacting elements in the level design, more similar in complexity to Doom which more readily admits iterative level design). It is this feature of the Immersive Sim genre that leads its developers to often comment that their games only becomes "fun" in the final stretch of development -- until you have everything in place, it's hard to really pin down the core gameplay.
I wholeheartedly agree that this is a much riskier route than iterating on a foundation of a rock solid gameplay formula, and that's why most developers do that instead (hence Joe Fielder's "theme park rides"
comment). I also agree that it doesn't really look like Otherside has the time to pull it off by September, given how much is apparently still down the pipeline. The additional concern I've arrived at is that they aren't playing it safe in the one way that would count for an Immersive Sim, which is following their own design doctrines from back in the day. I
recently complained that the interaction animations in U:A were ignoring abstracted communication standards set by LGS et al with the original Immersive Sims, and more generally that their desire to "innovate" by throwing out a bunch of their own design conventions leaves me skeptical that they'll find their way. The old Immersive Sims had a design throughline, a set of principles that they never broke but always bent and shaped to fit the game at hand, and that's what made them so endearing and worth playing to this day (I say this as a more recent convert). With U:A, we're not seeing that picture come together in the same way, and that's what leaves me most worried. It's not just that I'm not confident they won't be able to push all the content through, but also that they won't have time to iterate on it to push their game in this more experimental direction. If they had started by iterating on the tried and true formula (more like Arkane did with Arx Fatalis, building on UU's gameplay with SS2's interface and interaction standard, while innovating on top with its magic system, quest reactivity, and so on), they'd still have an ambitious project but they wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel to do it.
I think an immersive sim is about trying to do what RPGs have aspired to do (simulation of adventure on personal level) with computational power, than actual RPG with all the usual trappings (visible stats, class, dice rolls etc.). So in that sense (ideal) immersive sim is very much a "traditional" RPG, even if its specifics are not aligned with traditions of RPGs established throughout the decades.
I tend to agree. While not necessarily the be-all, end-all definition of an RPG (and certainly not an all-inclusive one), games that allow you to 1.) (optionally) design/choose your character(s) and (non-optionally) direct their ability growth; and 2.) choose the way your character(s) approach the game mechanically, partly according to abilities, which requires the game to make multiple approaches available, are together a solid formula for scratching a very similar itch. Meaningful C&C, whether stemming from physical or social/story game interactions, is always hugely desirable.
Non-traditional RPGs like Deus Ex that excel in all three of these categories are invariably awarded the badge of office of a Right Proper RPG by the great minds of the Codex.
I learned these principles very early on in my life in the form of Quest for Glory I. You select and customize your character, direct his growth, interact with the game as befits his profession and abilities, and the things you do and say during the course of the game affect how it proceeds and, to a limited extent, how it ends.
I have no idea where this "immersive sim" jargon came from, though. I swear to Christ I hadn't heard it until I played through Prey and discussed it on the Codex a few months back.
Regarding the topic of the Immersive Sim genre, its roots in RPGs, and whether its name is worth keeping, I wrote
this:
While I agree "Immersive Sim" is a stupid/redundant/vague term (as with many genre names), I do think there are ways you can glean some meaning out of it. The whole genre started with Looking Glass Studios (or Blue Sky Productions at the time) trying to emulate what they felt was the core of the PnP RPG experience on the computer, with an immersive first-person perspective and the dice rolls replaced with as much real-time simulation as they could manage to give the impression of a reactive game world. Mostly, this is the argument I trot out when people claim that games in this genre are inherently better off for featuring fewer RPG abstractions, but it also illustrates where such a term might emerge.
Still, my point also shows how weak the term is. The fact that many people think RPG elements are antithetical to the spirit of the genre belies a failure of the terminology to communicate its history and essence. Clearly, an Immersive Sim need not be an RPG any more than it need be a first-person shooter, but it has its roots in such. There are elements from many genres that fit, many that don't, and many that are arguably necessary. The words "Immersive" and "Sim" hardly bring much to bear on any of these aspects, let alone that people can barely agree on what they even mean by "immersion", and that "simulation" brings to mind a totally different sort of game.
It can be hard to pin down any genre that consist of disparate elements, though, so I think it probably is better to tie it to the history (e.g. with "Underworld-likes" or "LGS-style games") and call it a day. That way, anyone claiming that Forklift Simulator 2014 and Prey belong in the same category has to contend with the fact that they're both being compared with the likes of Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Thief, and Deus Ex.
(I think you can take it up with Warren Spector for coining the term, if you're looking to assign blame)
