Biggest immersion killers.

[Piotr621]

You know how it is. You find yourself playing a game, getting slowly sucked into it, when all of a sudden there is a door barring your way that won't open up no matter what you do, or a ruin that blocks your way in all directions, or all of a sudden not being able to jump over a small 1 foot high structure and BANG you're all of a sudden very aware that you are playing a video game. What would be your biggest immersion killer?

 

[Ezzay]

The god damn phone behind me ringing...

When I played through Crysis for the first time i made it my duty to unplug that phone from the wall.

In terms of the actual game? Hmm, graphical bugs really do it for me, nice and smooth and then WHAM, black dots where smoke should be. Damn beta video Drivers.

 

[Iskenator67]

Whenever the message Achievement Unlocked appears during the end scene.
Can you say "Buzzkill"?

 

[Piotr621]

Whenever the message Achievement Unlocked appears during the end scene.
Can you say "Buzzkill"?

Ha so true.

 

[Peach_hat]

I was just about to immerse myself in the escapist forums, until I read this.

OT; anything with clipping issues.

 

[rossatdi]

Repetitive dialogue in games like Oblivion.

Unskippable, 3rd person cutscenes. No games should ever do cutscenes away from your natural perspective UNLESS your character is not near the action.

 

[Sketchy]

The fact that I'm not actually doing any physical activity. That usually does it.

 

[shadow skill]

Bad controls, those have a way of killing all hope of immersion.

 

[Knight Templar]

Loading and invisable walls.

I'd like to put more into this but its clear why those ruin immersion.

 

[DoctorNick]

Crappy NPCs.

Being forced to replay a section.

Quicktime events.

 

[Mr_spamamam]

worst case ive ever seen is the start of fallout 3. you have been playing through parts of your characters life, and then just done your steve Mcqueen bit escaping the vault when a menue pops up asking if you want to fart around with the character creation a bit more. it might just be me, but i was really getting into the game and that spoilt it a bit for me. seems like Bethesda make a habit of it

 

[Ezzay]

Anyway, that "Do you want to change your character?" bit Bethesda uses once you're about to leave the tutorial. It's helpful, because it means I can skip the sewer (I just set up a save point at the very end if I want to make a new character,) but it breaks immersion like a ************.

worst case ive ever seen is the start of fallout 3. you have been playing through parts of your characters life, and then just done your steve Mcqueen bit escaping the vault when a menue pops up asking if you want to fart around with the character creation a bit more. it might just be me, but i was really getting into the game and that spoilt it a bit for me. seems like Bethesda make a habit of it

These aswell, Bethesda really needs to stop it with that crap.

 

[S.H.A.R.P.]

...
Quicktime events.

Oh yes. When playing F.E.A.R. 2, there's this part where you have to wrestle with a guy, and you have to senselessly mash your left mouse button to knock him over. I just laughed out loud because of the futility, which nearly got me killed. It took me about 5 minutes before I managed to blow his brains out. That was my first (I think), and hopefully my last quicktime event.

Also the un-skippable cut scenes of Assassin's Creed come to mind, when you saved someone and they made sure you knew it. First time it was ok, but the next 200...

 

[Zersy]

You know how it is. You find yourself playing a game, getting slowly sucked into it, when all of a sudden there is a door barring your way that won't open up no matter what you do, or a ruin that blocks your way in all directions, or all of a sudden not being able to jump over a small 1 foot high structure and BANG you're all of a sudden very aware that you are playing a video game. What would be your biggest immersion killer?

A HUD system

they always remind me that i'm playing a GAME !!

 

[Samurai Goomba]

Invisible walls, invincible trees/logs/buildings, invincible NPC characters, random battles and Quick Time Events.

All these things remind me that I'm playing a game, and I'm forced to abide by their rules. QTEs in particular remind me that I'm playing a game that wants to be Shenmue/Resident Evil 4. Force Unleashed had these absolutely ridiculous QTEs on some of the latter bosses. They were unbelievably long.

 

[Dragon_of_red]

My biggest annoyance is subtitles, they sometimes help but seriosly, if your playing a gamew for ages with no cutscenes, then one comes up and words are just flying everywhere, well, at the bottom of the screen, its not bad but it keeps reminding me that im in a game, and also fpr some reason, io cant watch the cutscene and look att he subtitles at the same time, i get confused and it ruins my imersion

 

[DrummerM]

Bad AI is always a big immersion killer for me.

 

[Jamanticus]

My goodness.....Nobody has mentioned crashes yet?!

Absolutely the worst immersion-killing part of a game, should it happen, is a crash. If a game I'm playing crashes, I stare at the screen for several seconds before thinking to myself, Great, way to ruin things for me, game/computer.

Sometimes I'll relaunch the game, but most of the time a crash puts me off of it completely for either several hours or the rest of the day.