precious immersion
- Thread starter harvz
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Shadow of the Colossus used both immersion with the boss fights and the lack of when you're on the fields travelling to properly build the game up, an experience I haven't seen elsewhere.
Let me explain: When you're travelling to the colossi, you are given time to reflect on your character and his actions. In otherwords, you compile the information from your actions, what you've seen, and just plain speculation to define this Wanderer, telling his story in a cutscene you control. When you're travelling, the Wanderer is a character you are examining.
However, during the boss battles, the intensity of the fights, the grip slowly fading, and the magnitude of the colossi brings you straight back into the game. You are now concerned with beating this things, sometimes to stay alive, other times because you are now trapped with them, and still other times for completely different reasons. Even when you know HOW to beat them, they still register as a real threat and your mind switches your thoughts to deal with these things at the exclusion of other concerns. In other words, when you're fighting, YOU are the Wanderer, meaning that the next time you travel, it's your actions you're examining projected onto the character.
So it uses immersion to add to the action, and the lack of it for the story, which in turn makes every story different to everyone.
Let me explain: When you're travelling to the colossi, you are given time to reflect on your character and his actions. In otherwords, you compile the information from your actions, what you've seen, and just plain speculation to define this Wanderer, telling his story in a cutscene you control. When you're travelling, the Wanderer is a character you are examining.
However, during the boss battles, the intensity of the fights, the grip slowly fading, and the magnitude of the colossi brings you straight back into the game. You are now concerned with beating this things, sometimes to stay alive, other times because you are now trapped with them, and still other times for completely different reasons. Even when you know HOW to beat them, they still register as a real threat and your mind switches your thoughts to deal with these things at the exclusion of other concerns. In other words, when you're fighting, YOU are the Wanderer, meaning that the next time you travel, it's your actions you're examining projected onto the character.
So it uses immersion to add to the action, and the lack of it for the story, which in turn makes every story different to everyone.
An immersive single player experience is a major selling point for me in a game. I find that the ambient sounds and musical score, coupled with good voice acting can more than make up for any number of other flaws.
STALKER tops my list. Mostly because the world you inhabit feels alive, ever-changing. The ambient sounds and monster noises are top-notch, and instill a sense of loneliness and dread. Shadow of Chernobyl had a very rushed atmosphere to it, like you could die at any moment....which you could. Call of Pripyat focuses more on vast emptiness and loneliness, peppered sporadically with the same nail-biting battles SoC brought to the table.
Half Life 2 is just a magnificent game world, thoughtfully constructed and wonderfully laid at your feet as the game progresses. I still think Nova Prospekt (slavic for New Perspective) is one of the most twisted facilities imaginable. The Overwatch woman's voice that booms through the city, the automated message sent after a Combine unit is killed, the kick-ass musical score. HL2 is a game that shows exactly how narrative and gameplay should be interwoven.
Fallout 3, despite being a game I love to death, is a little to sterile and static to truly suck me all the way in. That said my favorite parts from that game were wandering the wastes, with the wind whistling through my ears and sun slowly rising.
Condemned series remain among the scariest games I've ever played. No, not the kind of loud noise followed by guy jumping out at you cheap startle type of scare, but a truly immersive sense of terror and dread at every corner. The best horror games are ones that make you sure the next room has a monster in it, but when you enter to find nothing it makes it even worse.
STALKER tops my list. Mostly because the world you inhabit feels alive, ever-changing. The ambient sounds and monster noises are top-notch, and instill a sense of loneliness and dread. Shadow of Chernobyl had a very rushed atmosphere to it, like you could die at any moment....which you could. Call of Pripyat focuses more on vast emptiness and loneliness, peppered sporadically with the same nail-biting battles SoC brought to the table.
Half Life 2 is just a magnificent game world, thoughtfully constructed and wonderfully laid at your feet as the game progresses. I still think Nova Prospekt (slavic for New Perspective) is one of the most twisted facilities imaginable. The Overwatch woman's voice that booms through the city, the automated message sent after a Combine unit is killed, the kick-ass musical score. HL2 is a game that shows exactly how narrative and gameplay should be interwoven.
Fallout 3, despite being a game I love to death, is a little to sterile and static to truly suck me all the way in. That said my favorite parts from that game were wandering the wastes, with the wind whistling through my ears and sun slowly rising.
Condemned series remain among the scariest games I've ever played. No, not the kind of loud noise followed by guy jumping out at you cheap startle type of scare, but a truly immersive sense of terror and dread at every corner. The best horror games are ones that make you sure the next room has a monster in it, but when you enter to find nothing it makes it even worse.
Then why are you posting on a game forum....? Games are about enjoying someone else's imagination. Confusing, you are.McMarbles said:
Unless your sarcasm is lost upon me, Sir McMarbles.
OT: Fallout 3 and Kingdom Hearts had that immersion factor to it.
I remember playing the first Kingdom Hearts, jaw dropped because it was so beautiful. FYI, this was when it first came out. Wonderful games, the console ones, that is. However, Birth by Sleep is proving excellent and I am immersed yet again.