What breaks video game immersion for you?

[Negatempest]

*I have looked for this topic/thread, but anything similar to what I ask is at least half a year dead*

This has bugged me for awhile, but until I played DA2 is when I decided it was time to discuss it. Immersion is pretty difficult to break for me, I can easily put myself into the world and enjoy it for what it is. Now there are moments where it bends a little.

Some of these examples is when I saw a "Noble woman" walk elegantly while walking with the Champion, but once she walked away she walked very...manly. So I just chalk that up to "Man/woman has expertise she/he does not publicly announce". What really breaks my immersion is a habit RPG's tend to put into games. Every RPG ends with every enemy dead, unless the cutscene that follows makes the fight seem like a slap fight. Like when you throw everything you have in a fight to "dispell" a curse on a friendly NPC; poisons, explosions, earth-shattering sword swings, just for the NPC to shake off all the dmg that happened in the following cutscene like it wasn't severe and be okay. Why...why oh why are my attacks effective unless a cutscene says otherwise? This kind of shortcut to further the scene kills my immersion every time.

 

[Arctarus'sCookie]

When an AI gets stuck walking into a wall. Especially when he is carrying something important.

 

[Mr.Petey]

The rapid "thump thump" sound of a rag-dolled dead soldier/alien/general enemy fluctuating and stuck in the wall (although the latter in itself is cause enough to snap the immersion over bended knee)

 

[Judgement101]

Deus Ex when you stand 3.000001 feet in front of an enemy and he doesn't see you because hus sight distance is 3 feet.

 

[getofish]

when i got to pee.

but in all seriousness, i think what breaks it is when im playing it and the music starts to repeat to the point i notice it. Im not saying a game needs a 25 hour soundtrack but in oblivion that 2 minutre sound clip of walking around music sort of ruined the sense of yay i want to explore after hearing it for 6 hours straight.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Whenever someone messages me via Steam or calls me via Skype.

 

[Iwata]

When a character starts telling me which buttons to push on my controller.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Usually when I have to metagame. I.e., "I should probably get my shotgun out because the devs are trying to build up to a jump scare" or "I need to get that character's approval rating up X points" or even "hey, I just leveled up! Time to select my abilities!" And for obvious reasons multiplayer games could be better described as "fun" than "immersive." Note that immersion-breaking isn't always bad. Borderlands and Super Smash Bros aren't very immersive, but they're very fun.

 

[Dense_Electric]

Cinematics in games. When I'm trapsing down a corridor happy as can be and hit the trigger for the next cutscene only to have the game wrestle control away from me and tell me, "oh, you don't get to interact with your interactive medium anymore, time to turn your game into a movie *****!", it hurls me out of the experience like a fucking catapult. Thankfully I think more designers are starting to realize this, but a game should never show you doing something when you could actually be doing it. I'm playing a game because I want to interact with it, if I wanted to sit back and watch I would just watch a movie.

 

[NeutralDrow]

When someone calls me from the other room, or walks in.

Otherwise, once I get immersed, I have a deathgrip on it.

 

[Who Dares Wins]

Pop up windows. I'm just going on my way then *BLAM* a pop up window tells me the whole gaming mechanics and tutorials. Or *BLAM* you have gained a level. Real immersive Fallout 3/NV, real immersive.

 

[de5gravity]

achievements/trophies. ugh i hate these so much! seriously i wish there was an option to deactivate them.

 

[Smerf]

pressing the windows key

 

[Doge Dominico]

It's hard to break my immersion but it's very simple...99% of "Joke" characters. Alistair is one of the only characters that has ever made me laugh in a game, whenever someone cracks a joke my character facepalms so hard I go back in reality, just to start hate mail against the voice actor.

Also: This may seem a bit odd but I take silent protagonists over voiced characters any day, its just hard to stay immersed when my character talks especially if he has a terrible voice. That's why I will always like the DA 1 protagonist over Hawke, I mean I -like- Hawke, he -is- a good character and funny, but his voice just makes it hard for me to think I'm him, because, he makes me feel weak and unloved by women.

So basically voices.

 

[Rigs83]

Invisible walls but the wost wall break I ever had was in Vampire: The Masquerade. I was trying to kill this Russian mafia guy but I could not get into his hotel room because my lock picking skill was to low and I could not break down the wooden door with my fireman's axe. I repeat I could not break down a wooden door wit a fireman's axe! And non of his guards could hear the vampire banging on the door. That game had a lot of wall breaks, in an early mission I was in the rafters crouched above some thugs but the very second I stood up the all immediately spotted me and shot me dead.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

When an AI gets stuck walking into a wall. Especially when he is carrying something important.

This is a specific example of the broad reasons why many games aren't immersive in my opinion. Bad AI, illogical events and sometimes just the interface overall are reasons why immersion doesn't always flow.

So, first if a game is meant to be immersive, you have to think about what immersion actually is. Immersion is, as a basic example, when you get so sucked into a game you aren't aware of your surroundings. Immersion is when you hear someone cry for help in a game and you swivel around to see what could be happening instead of just shrugging and accepting it as something that happens a lot in the game. Immersion is when a scene plays out in a game and you feel like it's something that could really be happening, to the point that you simply don't question it.

It is important to know that making a game immersive is not easy, and kudos to the games and devs that have successfully done so.

 

[LostCrusader]

When I fight a dragon in either Dragon Age game and they rear up to flap their wings at me. I'm sorry but that should push me away from the dragon, not pull me in.

 

[Frank M III]

Well, for me it happened in Lux-Pain. I was having a great time and then there was a text error. Part of the conversation was replaced with like :hi, 389&^ we need to go to the school111!!!1" Or something like that. Talk about grinding the gaming buzz to a halt.

 

[Mr Thin]

When your character has phrases they repeat often.

Things like, "Take that!" or "Bet you didn't see that one coming!".

In fact pretty much any repeating dialogue throws a wrench in my involvement. The Mass Effect games are especially problematic, because I am constantly checking on my team-mates to make sure I didn't miss any conversations with them.

Those damn calibrations.

 

[Lightning Delight]

Human bosses that have way too much health, especially if all the other human enemies in a game have normal health. It's OK if the game has a logical reason for it, like Bioshock. ADAM lets everyone mess with their DNA, giving them more health. The bosses just do it more. However, it is annoying in a game like Prototype, when Cross has more health than you do, even though he is just a normal human. All the other humans can be killed in one shot, but Cross can take 100* hits before he dies.

*Not actual number, but I didn't feel like finding out the correct one.