What breaks video game immersion for you?
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Often I break my own immersion by multitasking. When I know I'm going to want to focus on the game because it's well enough designed that I can become immersed in it, level related stuff tends to break my immersion.
Sometimes it's when a particular segment is too hard, it kind of breaks your immersion to be playing the same difficult battle for the tenth time.
The other thing is complex leveling systems. I like complexity, but when every single choice I make leveling-wise throughout the game influences whether my final character is trash or perfect, I tend to spend hours researching the perfect leveling build.
So far my only big faults with this have been Oblivion and, to a lesser extent, Fallout 3 because both require you to level along quite specific lines to have a "perfect" character.
In Fallout 3 this was a problem to a lesser extent, but in Oblivion, after being unable to kill anything with my first character, I spent 100 hours leveling my second before touching any of the quests.
Skyrim sounds like it will be better though. Since all the skills are independent of each other, all that will matter will be the perks which will likely be based primarily on play style. I'm also going to set a rule for myself for it that I am not allowed to do any statistics or research beforehand.
You may notice that all these games are Bethesda's, well other than theirs, I don't tend to have any problem with immersion. It tends to be more of a choice, do I want to become completely immersed in the game, or do I expect the story line to not quite be compelling enough?
Sometimes it's when a particular segment is too hard, it kind of breaks your immersion to be playing the same difficult battle for the tenth time.
The other thing is complex leveling systems. I like complexity, but when every single choice I make leveling-wise throughout the game influences whether my final character is trash or perfect, I tend to spend hours researching the perfect leveling build.
So far my only big faults with this have been Oblivion and, to a lesser extent, Fallout 3 because both require you to level along quite specific lines to have a "perfect" character.
In Fallout 3 this was a problem to a lesser extent, but in Oblivion, after being unable to kill anything with my first character, I spent 100 hours leveling my second before touching any of the quests.
Skyrim sounds like it will be better though. Since all the skills are independent of each other, all that will matter will be the perks which will likely be based primarily on play style. I'm also going to set a rule for myself for it that I am not allowed to do any statistics or research beforehand.
You may notice that all these games are Bethesda's, well other than theirs, I don't tend to have any problem with immersion. It tends to be more of a choice, do I want to become completely immersed in the game, or do I expect the story line to not quite be compelling enough?
How about when the actual gameplay is entirely divorced from the cutscenes? Most Final Fantasy games are guilty of this, because of the Phoenix Down item. What's preventing you from using this on dead allies? Or for that matter, what stops the evil henchmen from throwing down a Phoenix Down when you kill their boss? They're very cheap, and you can carry 99 of them, so why aren't they used in cutscenes?
Or pretty much any other game to cutscene comparison: in the cutscene it'd just be hilarious if you needed to shoot somebody 86 times for them to die, but in gameplay you need to shoot that many times to down them.
Or pretty much any other game to cutscene comparison: in the cutscene it'd just be hilarious if you needed to shoot somebody 86 times for them to die, but in gameplay you need to shoot that many times to down them.
When the controls or camera shit me off... Like in Resident Evil 5.
As soon as I saw the trailer I was hooked... As soon as I played the demo I was amazed at the graphics and features...
... As soon as I found out that those annoying ass controls and camera lock on your shoulder was part of the game and not a test in the demo I just forgot about the game entirely.
God what a shitty way to reload.
As soon as I saw the trailer I was hooked... As soon as I played the demo I was amazed at the graphics and features...
... As soon as I found out that those annoying ass controls and camera lock on your shoulder was part of the game and not a test in the demo I just forgot about the game entirely.
God what a shitty way to reload.
Shitty Controls!!!!!
Everything else I can look past. The bugs that plague Bethseda games don't even bother me, but when I get a game that handles awfully its like torture
Everything else I can look past. The bugs that plague Bethseda games don't even bother me, but when I get a game that handles awfully its like torture
I know that feel.de5gravity said:
After that quest chain involving the old woman in the lighthouse, as I told her about her dead husband and the ruse put on by the entire town to keep her spirit up, I felt terrible until the entire moment was ruined by a trophy pop-up.
As for something else, I hate when NPCs in game try to sell me things like that guy giving you the Warden Keep quest in DA:O.
Third person perspective. I know some people dont think that is counter immersive. But to me it is the single most counter immersive thing that can happen to a game. I cannot feel like I am submerged into a world if I am looking at my own back. Regardless of the technological limitations of lacking peripherial vision, to not see through the eyes of the toon you are playing destroys any and all possibility to feel like you are fully enveloped and submerged in a world.
I find a massive disconnect in third person because its more like playing god, than it is like playing your char.
I still say... improve the technology... dont make half assed shortcuts by using 3rd person perspective.
I find a massive disconnect in third person because its more like playing god, than it is like playing your char.
I still say... improve the technology... dont make half assed shortcuts by using 3rd person perspective.
Bad face animation. This was one of the reasons I couldn't get into the Mass Effect series. I'm sorry, I don't care how tragic someone's backstory is, I just can't feel sorry for a mannequin.
To this I would argue that when it comes to video games aren't the words "fun" and "immersion" essentially interchangeable? Now bear with me a sec. Think about it, if your having fun playing the game then presumably that means you're immersed in it, and if you're immersed in it then presumably you're having fun. Following that logic then it I would assume that if you are having fun and thus immersed in the game enough then you wouldn't let little things like having to select new abilities when leveling up, or how there never seems to be any collateral damage in cutsceness, or characters telling you which buttons to press ruin this for you and if that's not the case maybe you should re-evaluate what kind of games your playing. Just saying.Kahunaburger said:
We might have different definitions of immersion, then - to me, immersion is the feeling of "being there," not just being engrossed. When I'm thinking in terms of the game world, and not in terms of the game itself, I call that "immersive."canadamus_prime said:
So I don't see Super Smash Brothers as immersive, because I'm thinking in terms of playing a video game with my friends, not in terms of the epic struggle between Captain Falcon and Diddy Kong. See also: chess, football, and Bad Company 2. I think the games mentioned are all excellent games, but I don't see any of them as immersive.
Just about every aspect of Oblivion.
Seriously for me that game was trying way too hard to be as un-immersive as possible.
Seriously for me that game was trying way too hard to be as un-immersive as possible.