Immersion breakers

[TheDoctor455]

"So ends our tale of the Lone Wanderer...
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!!!!!!!"

 

[Ben Legend]

My biggest immersion killer is when a character in a game will tell you something along the lines of, "A allows you to jump." It just makes me think, this is a game, no, no you do not say that in real life.

Worse than that, is when objects go through other objects in a game, completely kills the immersion for me.

 

[SonicWaffle]

See, I like this because it adds to the immersion - these people are traders. They are the ones that took bartering from a stall to a proper shop, and won't have a problem fleecing a person, paying, say, 500 Septims for an item worth several thousand and then selling it at cost.

It's a nice idea, but this kind of thing works both ways. These cunning traders, always out to get the best deal, will quite happily buy thousands upon thousands of Septims worth of total junk from me. I can go in there with 600 1 Septim arrows and they'll snap them up just as willingly as they buy magic swords and rings of power.

If these guys were always out for the best bargain with the highest return, they wouldn't be quite so pleased about filling their inventory (and emptying their purses) on worthless crap that nobody will ever buy because it mostly just lies around on the floor.

 

[Katana314]

Hm...I always had an opposing viewpoint on seeing your hands and feet.

See, my understanding is that in real life, you don't "notice" your legs. You feel them through your muscles inherently, so it's never any surprise that they're there. When you see them in a video game, it doesn't seem to add anything; you don't need to be reminded that you have feet. In real life, I look down because I want to see what's below me. In a game like HL2, that's what you see.

Immersion for me comes more from a sense of agency; I do, and it happens. Ironically, it breaks so often in those first-person non-interactive cutscenes that games are so obsessed with.

 

[Cru31ty]

Here here!

I hate the eyeball-with-a-gun-on-a-unicycle that most fps characters tend to be. Much prefer it when you can look down and see yourself.

 

[ShakerSilver]

"I was in a videogame. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of."
-Max Payne

That is all.

 

[SonicWaffle]

See, my understanding is that in real life, you don't "notice" your legs. You feel them through your muscles inherently, so it's never any surprise that they're there. When you see them in a video game, it doesn't seem to add anything; you don't need to be reminded that you have feet. In real life, I look down because I want to see what's below me.

Maybe it's just me, but every time I see my own feet in a video game I try to shoot them, or swing a sword at my own legs, and it never has any effect. Even if I am an insane masochist, that kind of thing always reminds me that I'm just playing a game; I should be able to blow my own bloody feet off if I want to, and to hell with the consequences!

 

[StarofAzura]

Quick time events. I hate them, hate them, hate them.

 

[Sky Captanio]

As much as I enjoyed Mass Effect 2, there were two major immersion breakers for me:

The 'mission complete' section at the end of side-quests and main missions. It doesn't fit with an RPG, especially one such as Mass Effect. If it were an option to view in your private terminal then fine, but it shouldn't be mandatory.

I think that the mission complete screens were really handy. And they look like Cerberus reports which is pretty immersive. And it's a much better system than having to add up all your crap after a mission. Plain and simple it says: "You got this, this and this happened."

 

[Flour]

Like how in Half-Life 2, Gordon Freeman happens to possess the only car known to man that is capable of driving itself around - steering and all.

It actually makes sense. The car is (barely) hidden from the combine and is nothing more than an engine with some wheels. It does have a poorly explained use. What were the rebels going to do with it? They can't use it to attack the combine since the whole area would have been filled with rollermines and striders.

What ruins my Suspension of Disbelief(fuck immersion, this is more important) is 'realistic' graphics with everything clipping through other objects, getting stuck behind invisible walls, physically impossible actions, wrong physics and poor (voice)acting.
The difference between immersion and SoD is that the former depends on the latter. While you might not be fully immersed in a metal gear solid game, you can still accept that the world stops when you use the codec.

 

[Hazy]

Like how in Half-Life 2, Gordon Freeman happens to possess the only car known to man that is capable of driving itself around - steering and all.

It actually makes sense. The car is (barely) hidden from the combine and is nothing more than an engine with some wheels. It does have a poorly explained use. What were the rebels going to do with it? They can't use it to attack the combine since the whole area would have been filled with rollermines and striders.

I think you may have misunderstood me - Mr. Freeman's limbs are not visible while driving the car.

Ergo, the car essentially drives itself.

I could care less what it's purpose was, but until I see some arms on that steering wheel, that shit is a ghost car.

 

[SarahSyna]

The biggest immersion killer to me is when first person games don't let you see your damn feet.

I don't care how immersive your story is, how amazing and atmospheric it is, its all fucking pointless if I can just look down and realise I'm just a floating camera with .

Nothing rips me out of immersion more...

This this this. I swear, half the reason I like The Darkness so much is because when I look down I can see Jackie's body and his feet as well as his hands. It just really helped the immersion some amount when it looked like there was an actual body there as opposed to a floating gun.

It's even weirder in games where you have the hands, but still no feet, like in Bioshock. It's like the guy is a double amputee with hover attachments where his legs used to be.

I don't know if you could call it a bug but it snaps me out of a game when the animation of the character running isn't quite in speed with the rate at which your figure is moving forward. Also strafing while running forward and all that happens is you doing a weird running diagonal slide Instead of your legs twisting slightly or turning your body or whatever they feel like throwing in to cover you running in a game.

The whole 'animation not catching up to the speed' is another thing that got me in Bioshock. Not the animation though, but the sound. I don't know if it was just a glitch or if I got something wrong but it seemed like the guy could go full metres without putting his foot down.

The whole sideways crab slide is why I never play in third person view in Oblivion. It just looked... weird.

 

[oppp7]

I agree. For a game that's so reliant on immersion it did throw in a lot of stuff that flings you out of the game. My favorite part was when Weynon Priory was atacked and the NPC ran to tell me about it and we had a mildly long conversation while the enemy was chasing him! But it's ok, because the enemy respectfully stood completely frozen in the background when I talked to the NPC.

 

[Sky Captanio]

Like how in Half-Life 2, Gordon Freeman happens to possess the only car known to man that is capable of driving itself around - steering and all.

It actually makes sense. The car is (barely) hidden from the combine and is nothing more than an engine with some wheels. It does have a poorly explained use. What were the rebels going to do with it? They can't use it to attack the combine since the whole area would have been filled with rollermines and striders.

I think you may have misunderstood me - Mr. Freeman's limbs are not visible while driving the car.

Ergo, the car essentially drives itself.

"Now Mister Freeman let me introduce you to Kitt.

 

[Treblaine]

The biggest immersion killer to me is when first person games don't let you see your damn feet.

I don't care how immersive your story is, how amazing and atmospheric it is, its all fucking pointless if I can just look down and realise I'm just a floating camera with .

Nothing rips me out of immersion more...

Well I see it the other way, there are worse things than seeing no feet, like looking down and seeing feet that just don't move right.

See the standard FPS controls it is easy to get the camera to move around smoothly and naturally as if it were a real point-of-view. But trying to stick a body underneath that that moves properly has been notoriously difficult in the past, the legs can seem to just skitter around like a zombie moon-walking on ice.

I'd rather see no feet than feet that can't interact well with the ground.

This isn't a problem with 3rd person games as the camera is not fixed to wherever the head is, but can just hover behind the avatar.

OT: I personally don't like systems with an UNNECESSARILY SIMPLE limited inventory system, classic one is Resident evil where a tiny key takes up the same inventory slot as a gigantic 4-barrel rocket launcher!

Resident Evil 4 had it better with a square-based system. At least that has some flexibility though it was quite illogical as weight didn't seem to be any limit at all. Annoyed that Resi 5 abandoned it.

Another minor pet peeve I have is say I have a shotgun and completely out of ammo, I pick up an ammo crate which recovers 100% of my ammo capacity... only it doesn't because once I have reloaded the 6 shells into my shotgun i now have max-capacity minus-6-shells.

A few games do it right, so say your max-ammo store is 30 shells plus 6 in the shotgun right? Picking up a max-ammo crate brings your ammo store to 30+6.
So really the maximum ammo I can carry should not merely be "30 shells outside the gun" but rather "absolute total of 36 shells, either 36 in store and none in gun, ranging to 30 in store and 6 in the gun"

Admittedly this is more annoying for a game with fewer round of ammunition like a rocket launcher where you have only 20 rockets in-store but 4 in your gun, that's 20% of your maximum capacity of rockets lost if you pick up a 100% ammo crate with an empty gun!

 

[Irridium]

The whole sideways crab slide is why I never play in third person view in Oblivion. It just looked... weird.

Agreed.

Is it really that hard to program in a diagnal running animation?

My choices in that game were either "first person floating camera" or 3rd person who runs really, really wierd.

 

[Mercurio128]

Stairs.

Why in the name of God can't someone program an animation for climbing stairs in which a persons feet actually contact the stairs in a normal manner.

Total immersion killer when you're in 3rd person and the characters' feet can seemingly find purchase in the gaps between steps just as well as the actual steps themselves. (see any FPS or Oblivion for examples..)

 

[Flour]

Like how in Half-Life 2, Gordon Freeman happens to possess the only car known to man that is capable of driving itself around - steering and all.

It actually makes sense. The car is (barely) hidden from the combine and is nothing more than an engine with some wheels. It does have a poorly explained use. What were the rebels going to do with it? They can't use it to attack the combine since the whole area would have been filled with rollermines and striders.

I think you may have misunderstood me - Mr. Freeman's limbs are not visible while driving the car.

Ergo, the car essentially drives itself.

I actually hadn't noticed that. But it's been a while since I have played the unmodded Half Life games.(I prefer SMOD CSS Sci-Fi which is just a collection of CSS maps converted to Half Life 2 and given CSS-like objectives)

 

[SarahSyna]

Resident Evil 4 had it better with a square-based system. At least that has some flexibility though it was quite illogical as weight didn't seem to be any limit at all.

That's because if you're fighting a nutjob cult and you find a rocket launcher you are not leaving that SOB behind, no matter how much it weighs.

 

[Irridium]

The biggest immersion killer to me is when first person games don't let you see your damn feet.

I don't care how immersive your story is, how amazing and atmospheric it is, its all fucking pointless if I can just look down and realise I'm just a floating camera with .

Nothing rips me out of immersion more...

Well I see it the other way, there are worse things than seeing no feet, like looking down and seeing feet that just don't move right.

See the standard FPS controls it is easy to get the camera to move around smoothly and naturally as if it were a real point-of-view. But trying to stick a body underneath that that moves properly has been notoriously difficult in the past, the legs can seem to just skitter around like a zombie moon-walking on ice.

I'd rather see no feet than feet that can't interact well with the ground.

This isn't a problem with 3rd person games as the camera is not fixed to wherever the head is, but can just hover behind the avatar.

I personally don't mind if the feet aren't implemented perfectly, I just want to be able to see them. At least then I can see that I'm controlling a character, and not a floating camera with arms.

Yes, it is hard to implement well, the only game I can think of that did it really well is Halo 3.

But still, it should be mandatory for games that require lots of precise jumping. I can't judge a good jump if I can't see where my feet are positioned!

I ran into that problem many times in Half Life 2.