Little things that make game worlds more immersive

[endtherapture]

Immersive is a big buzz word right now. What are little things a game can do to to make the game so much more immersive?

I have been playing the original Witcher game again and a really simple touch is having flocks on birds that run away when you walk up to them. It's a tiny touch which makes the game world feel much livelier and eerier.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

I'd say the general landscape and it;s surrounding wildlife can be pretty immersive for me, games like KOA reckoning was immersive with it's art style and general bloom with leaves falling, replaying Assassins Creed II I had completely forgotten that the game featured a day/night cycle (I thought it always changed when new missions were taken) and climbing while the sun rises was pretty nice to look at.

Skyrim I'd say was pretty good with it;s northen lights though I can't say the same for the night since it always seemed too bright and I had to install some mods to get it just right to make it feel more immersive.

I will say though, games that can pull off really good water effects will always get some love from me like the Bioshock series, I've always often stopped and just stared at the water for as long as 5 mins and times in Far Cry 3 where I'd just swim around the edges of the beach.

I'm trying to remember a decent game that had plenty of good fog effects, I believe the Witcher series has that but I haven't played enough of them to see it in detail but I do love that effect.

 

[Muspelheim]

Oh, I've got one I've been wanting to bring up.

Many modpacks to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games add a little zipper sound effect when you press the inventory button. It's a really small addition, but it does quite alot for the atmosphere. It reinforces that you are opening your pack or a pocket to fish out a sausage or whatever it is whenever you go to your inventory screen. It's just a good bit of pretend-feedback.

Another little immersion aid I tend to miss in most other games is the work put into ArmA 2 to make you feel as if you have an actual body. Most games feels more like you are a hovering pair of arms, but they really went the extra mile to give you a physical presence in the game world that you just don't see that often in FPS games.

For instance, you could hold down shift and look around with only your head, rather than with your whole body at once, so you could look in one direction and aim in the other. Hardly sounds useful, but I miss the feature every time I'm being chased in a game and can't glance over my shoulder while maintaining the direction I was running in.

Oh! And you could flatten grass by laying down on it. I loved that feature partly because it reinforced a feeling of physical presence and partly because I could see what I was doing. It still makes me roll along like a cow in the stuff just because I can.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

It has to have really good audio. Sounds that feel they belong and absent when they don't. Silence is just as good as being bombastic. Knowing when and how the sound will be used. Know if you're going to have music or all-natural effects. Maybe a mixture. As an example, I used to play Far Cry 3 a lot. There were times when I really enjoyed having the music on and other times when I turned it off because it felt more intense. For some reason, I feel more empowered when it plays since it seems to play into the notion of Brody as an apex predator while the absence of music seems to underly intense focus on a potential threat. Admittedly, FC3 was also the game that showed me framerate matters.

I find that stealth and horror games get this idea really well a la Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Alien Isolation.

Halo also seems to do its audio very well from my limited experience. I'm not a fan of the series but can imagine myself playing it whenever that catchy badass theme goes through my head.

 

[Porkchop Express]

I think a good soundtrack is important. Bizzarely I think having good background music in a game can add to the realism.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

There's a cool little thing that Dark Souls 2 does that a lot of people never notice:

Whenever your weapon hits the ground or a wall it causes sparks. This isn't unique, a lot of games do that. What Dark Souls 2 does differently though is that these sparks aren't just a little visual thing, they can actually affect the game world. Say there's an explosive barrel near you, you can set that explosive barrel off by hitting a wall with your sword and letting the sparks hit the barrel.

Such a tiny little detail that most people will never notice, but it shows how much thought and care was put into the game.

 

[BarkBarker]

a world beyond my interaction and consequences tends to do the trick. Wildlife that don't exist purely for my interaction, behaviours in creatures and people that seem believable, a willingness to delve into the worlds many facets while maintaining my suspension of disbelief is something I rarely see, often you go too far in and find holes or strange leavings of world building and boom you are in a game again. Sounds of nature do well and the animation is a MASSIVE element, I know I'm playing games when animations don't look believable, even mo-cap can seem forced as it is people acting, it doesn't have to be lifelike movement just consistent and an awareness that there is so much more than the face and muscles to a believable person. ALSO......I wanna see physical contact. Not a high five, not a hand slightly hovering above your back and patting, embracing someone close and feelings the tightness of that hug. That makes me so happy and immersed I could melt away.

 

[Legomaniac91_v1legacy]

Its a little hard to describe, but the closest approximation would be to have the player's actions directly affect the world around them. A good recent example would be Shadow of Mordor with its nemesis system, but one of the best examples would be Skies of Arcadia/Skies of Arcadia: Legends. All the sidequests in that game don't just give you money, gear, and XP, they flesh out the story and characters of that game. The discoveries showcase the myths and legends of the world, the Moonfish hunting develops one of the villain's backstory, most of the Wanted battles end with you turning your enemy's life around. All this really helps pull you into the game world and gives motivation for wanting to save it. Plus, seeing all the people you helped and met through the course of the game show up the fight in the final battle is just plain badass!

 

[sanquin]

I have some examples from ArcheAge.

-you can turn on/off lights alongside the road. You can also interact with wells, bushes, crates of apples, etc and get the item you'd expect.
-You can't just click on a button to mount your...well, mount. You first summon him, then have to click on him to get on with a short animation.
-Sword swings actually feel heavy. If you use a two-hander, the animations show your character bracing for the force before actually swinging.
-You have rowboats which feel INCREDIBLY heavy to turn, as it should be. Plus the water has proper waves that interact with anything floating in it. You can also leave your boat behind at the shore. It will only despawn if you despawn it directly, or if you log out.
-Mounts and rowboats allow passengers.
-You can become an actual pirate. As in a third, separate faction. And there is real naval combat involved.

These things are what gave me the feeling of being more immersed at least.

And then there are two obvious ones.
-Nature feeling like it's running a course of it's own. For instance wildlife having their own daily schedule like wolves hunting in packs or some deer going to their favourite pond to drink water. Or plant life reproducing and such things as a forest fire lit by lightning being possible.
-People being believable people. The Witcher 2 came pretty close. At first the world does feel very immersive, though after a short while the patterns in their AI are easy to spot. A matter of suspension of disbelief I suppose.

 

[klaynexas3]

I'll be the weirdo and say that the fact that I had to take my own notes while playing Ultima IV, reading the spell book to craft spells, reading about monsters and such, all of it that most people would find inconvenient, I found to be more immersive. It made me feel like I was on an adventure, not just generic hero #73682, but that I had to learn about the world and go at my own pace.

 

[Vault101]

charahcters seen "wearing" the objects/power ups you collect

NPC's wandering around rather than standing stock still

NPC's lips moving (which is often a given but still)

good character animations

filling the world with non combatants....for all its nice artstyle Borderlands fails at this

allowing the player appropriate amounts of freedom

Never taking control from the player seems to do the trick.
Also ledge grabbing.

I kind of disagree....depending, I don't mind watching a cutscnee if the difference is only who has control of the camera

of coarse I am very biased towards story and anyone will tell you..players fuck everything up, so you eather restrain them on a leash or allow them to run wild, I don't think either is a particularly invalid approach

I can definitely understand if your forced to sit there (for no reason) while a pre scrited event say....kills a character, but I think its workable

 

[JagermanXcell]

The world having interconnectivity + variety in it's connectivity.

The easiest examples I could think of would be most open world games, but one thing they can't grasp is EXPANSIVE variety in it's locale. So the best example in this case that pulled it off flawlessly would be Dark Souls 1.
Everything is interconnected. Even the world map all connects, so whenever you feel like you're going deeper and deeper into the setting's earth, you technically are. Whenever you're slowly ascending a fortress and you reach the top, you get opportunity to really feel the ascension when you reach the top. You get to look down and realize "wow I was just there!... and boy was it different from what I faced just now!".

To be more specific, something along the lines of the journey from the Undead Burg to Ash Lake.
You go from a destroyed settlement->to maze like sewers->deeper you find a colonization of poison and death infested swamp->go DEEPER via the inside of a giant arch tree and you find a hidden yet EXPANSIVE underground lake that managed to survive through eons time in the game's setting, and it makes sense from the the journey's context.
A world where the areas change, but the world connected, is always there.

And while i'm still on Dark Souls...

NPC's lips moving (which is often a given but still)

This.
I mean sometimes you don't need it, but (for ex.) Dark Souls 2 for the oddest reason added a sprinkle of character animations, paired with zero lips moving so it looked like every NPC was a talented ventriloquist. Commendable in one area... but jarring (and silly) in the other.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

It has to have really good audio.

I agree completely. Good voicework, good sound effects, good music- all of these can lend greatly to a game's immersion; some publishers forget that we listen to games as much as we look at them.

And it doesn't have to be something fantastic or overblown, either. When I played through Half-Life 2, about halfway through the canal sections (with the airboat) I came upon a little cul-de-sac where some resistance members had been found by the Combine. Once I'd cleaned the area out, I was getting ready to go back to the boat... and I stopped, and listened. And all I heard in this lonely, dried-out canal cul-de-sac was the blowing of the wind and the soft tinkling of some out-of-sight makeshift wind chime. And an unexpected feeling of melancholy, a realization of just how far in over his head poor Gordon was, hit me from out of nowhere; it was a supremely powerful moment, and even though I've forgotten much of what else happened in the game, that little slice of gameplay stayed with me.

 

[Nazulu]

To me it's how much I can use and move around everywhere, as well as it not being too predictable. And for games that are heavily story based, then also how each character acts, animates and whether their dialogue suits everything else.

 

[vid87]

I like little side stories you find out of nowhere, especially the more it fits into the overall lore. They don't have to be official side quests, just little conversations or scenarios mostly separate from the main narrative. For example, in Final Fantasy 12 late in the game you come to a city and can find a trainer with a band of Moogle dancers he is very obviously abusing (I think he sold them as slaves). Come back later and you find the Moogles revolted, kicked his ass, and got their happy ending. Also, the Batman Arkham series is just crammed with those kinds of things that convey story without any dialogue or cutscenes - such a simple little thing, but as a longtime Batman fan this blew my mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5-kzDTt22g

 

[bigfatcarp93]

Okay, I have a weird one that tends to apply to games where you explore civilized or once-civilized areas:

Being able to jump on top of guard rails.

Like, whenever you see a rail for a catwalk or balcony or staircase, being able to just hop up and stand on top of it. The ironic thing is that this is hilariously unrealistic; maintaining your balance on something so narrow would be difficult enough, but JUMPING BODILY ONTO IT should only end in disaster. But working under the assumption that my character just climbed up works much better, and I find that on a subtle level, it's the sort of thing that makes me feel like I'm physically interacting with the world.

A good example of the difference this makes is the Half-Life games. In most of them, you can jump up on top of any rail. But Portal 2 didn't allow this. It was a tiny thing, but it made a noticeable difference for me in terms of taking away the illusion of freedom, which has always been important to my Half-Life experience: the games have never been open-world, but they feel like they are. Even walking along a narrow catwalk, where the game was obviously railroading me onto a linear path, it didn't feel that way as long as I could, if I so wished, hop the rail and fall to my doom. I never did, of course, but knowing that the option was allowed me to forget the fact that, again, I was being railroaded onto a linear path.

But taking that away in Portal 2 did make me feel railroaded onto a linear path. It didn't kill the game for me or anything, and I still had a blast with Portal 2, but it did make a difference, and the Enrichment Center, honestly, came to feel just a little bit less alive.

 

[DementedSheep]

Yep, I remember that from the Witcher. I think it also had NPCs take cover under ledges if it was raining. The games that it's easiest to pick this sort of thing up in are Bethesda sandbox ones because they're so heavily modifiable and you can see the effect. For example in skyrim there are mods that add birds that and birdlife (that will fly around and perch on things), ones that add a lot of background noises and ones that modify animal behaviour so they don't all just attack you and and will actually try and run. It makes a surprising amount of difference. Then there is frostfall which add a whole bunch of snow effects and makes it so you can freeze to death so you have to camp and warm yourself by fire, that sort of thing. Should be tedious but for some reason I like having to stop, set up camp and start a fire to wait out a snowstorm.

NPC background chatter.

Having dark areas/ night actually be dark and require a light source.

Having resistance when you hit something rather than the swing continuing like it didn't hit anything.

A lot of the stuff in Metro 2033. They put a lot of work into displaying information in ways other than an obvious hud.