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"immersive sim" is a widely recognized genre at this point and Prey is definitely in it so yeah
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May 5, 2023 19:07
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yeah it reads better than Deusexlike for, uh, a variety of reasons
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May 5, 2023 19:19
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haveblue posted:"immersive sim" is a widely recognized genre at this point and Prey is definitely in it so yeah Since when? I mean that literally, not to mean "I don't believe you"; I'm just not familiar with the term. I googled it when I read your post and found people talking about it and using it to describe Ultima Underworld, System Shock and Oblivion. Is it just what Warren Spector called his games and now it's getting applied to other stuff?
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May 5, 2023 19:19
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Blue Footed Booby posted:Since when? It's been a (relatively) well-known term for years. Nobody really likes it, but it's relatively a good descriptor for certain design philosophies. 2016: https://www.polygon.com/2016/8/18/12539476/what-makes-an-immersive-sim-and-why-are-they-staging-a-comeback 2017: https://www.pcgamer.com/history-of-the-best-immersive-sims/ 2011: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=1&threadid=3091455&pagenumber=304&perpage=40&highlight=immersive+sim#post391142065 (the oldest SA post available with search) 2007: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/bloody-mess Kennel has a new favorite as of 19:33 on May 5, 2023 |
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May 5, 2023 19:25
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Yeah we realized there wasn't a good term for games that give you wide exploratory freedom and also a large toolbox to gently caress with enemies, so they invented one and then retroactively applied it to older games that fit that mold
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May 5, 2023 19:29
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Kennel posted:It's been a (relatively) well-known term for years. Nobody really likes it, but it's relatively good descriptor for certain design philosophies. Maybe it's just because I first started hearing that word used to describe Dishonored and Dishonored 2, but Immersive Sim always came off like people were trying to come up with a new label for stealth games to me.
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May 5, 2023 19:33
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I must've heard the term before, but apparently not in any way that stuck with me. I can definitely see the meaning is going for, it's just that "sim" has immediate connotations of things like world or city builders. I think of most of those games as shooters/action games first, so I'd naturally add the "immersive" part on top of that.
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May 5, 2023 19:40
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IMO, it's not a great genre name, but I've heard worse. Some people keep trying to push "0451 games", which is loving terrible.
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May 5, 2023 19:40
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King of Solomon posted:Maybe it's just because I first started hearing that word used to describe Dishonored and Dishonored 2, but Immersive Sim always came off like people were trying to come up with a new label for stealth games to me. I'd say that they often have stealth as an option, definitely, as a side-effect of trying to make a believable world. Because it'd be hard to believe that there was only ever one pathway to a place, and that every single pathway was guarded or at least equally guarded, and as part of motivating you to try not just going in guns blazing everywhere, you tend not to be as durable as Doomguy, so you're also incentivized to stealth it up a bit. But in, say, Deus Ex, with the right build, you can absolutely do some action hero poo poo, and the same goes for later-game Prey, and Dishonoured 1 and 2, and System Shock 1 and 2... most of them, really.
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May 5, 2023 19:42
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PurpleXVI posted:I'd say that they often have stealth as an option, definitely, as a side-effect of trying to make a believable world. Because it'd be hard to believe that there was only ever one pathway to a place, and that every single pathway was guarded or at least equally guarded, and as part of motivating you to try not just going in guns blazing everywhere, you tend not to be as durable as Doomguy, so you're also incentivized to stealth it up a bit. Yeah, admittedly a lot of this comes down to me not being very familiar with any specific game in the genre, I just understood the Dishonoreds to be stealth games first and foremost, and then suddenly people were calling them something else. If there's more to it than that, then cool, a different genre name makes sense, though I'm not sure I'd put Oblivion in that category.
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May 5, 2023 19:44
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Veotax posted:IMO, it's not a great genre name, but I've heard worse. Some people keep trying to push "0451 games", which is loving terrible. lol that's really bad
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May 5, 2023 19:54
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It's a mildly funny reference/inside joke but an incredibly bad genre name, yeah
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May 5, 2023 20:31
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It comes from how they traditionally use 0451 as the first keypad code in the game It's not the code in Deathloop, but if you try it, the game gives you an achievement called basically "yeah nice try"
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May 5, 2023 20:35
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Jawnycat posted:https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1070866542897660015/1104073267091869736/what_a_thrill.mp4 And he's climbing the stairway...to heaven.
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May 5, 2023 20:38
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haveblue posted:Yeah we realized there wasn't a good term for games that give you wide exploratory freedom and also a large toolbox to gently caress with enemies, so they invented one and then retroactively applied it to older games that fit that mold wait i thought that was sandboxes?
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May 5, 2023 21:29
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Carthag Tuek posted:wait i thought that was sandboxes? Sandboxes are goal-less, or at the very least very undirected. loving around in the sandbox is expected to be the majority of the game, and you're mostly doing it for its own sake or in service of some very long-term objective. An imsim will present you with more concrete goals like "there's a guy on the other side of this broken door that you need to talk to", which motivate the moment-to-moment gameplay of messing with enemy AI, using your tools to open, break, or bypass barriers, or just shooting things. PurpleXVI posted:But in, say, Deus Ex, with the right build, you can absolutely do some action hero poo poo, and the same goes for later-game Prey, and Dishonoured 1 and 2, and System Shock 1 and 2... most of them, really. Incidentally, I once played the first Deus Ex game with a rule that I had to drop everything I was carrying before loading into a new map. It's totally doable, though you need to make your peace with the fact that most of the time your only weapon will be the assault rifle. Turns out that with enough levels in the relevant skill, that weapon becomes ridiculously good.
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May 5, 2023 22:22
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Jawnycat posted:https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1070866542897660015/1104073267091869736/what_a_thrill.mp4 Good luck chainsawing god, doctor. 
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May 5, 2023 23:23
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The other name I've seen for that kind of game is "systems game" with the idea being that the game is designed around building coherent systems for action and behaviour that apply throughout the game, and then letting you loose to figure out how to work the systems to achieve your objective, instead of achieving objectives by just doing the way the designers programmed in for you to do it. I don't think that's any better of a name though.
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May 6, 2023 01:07
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vyelkin posted:"systems game" That should be what we call zachtronics games
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May 6, 2023 01:18
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Thieflikes
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May 6, 2023 02:13
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Thieftem shocknoreds
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May 6, 2023 02:26
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I still sometimes say Doomclones but I think it's a reference nobody ever gets. I mean, you guys get it. But like real people.
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May 6, 2023 02:42
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credburn posted:I still sometimes say Doomclones but I think it's a reference nobody ever gets. I mean, you guys get it. But like real people. I genuinely dislike the term "Boomershooters" that's grown popular to call 'em instead. But there's not much I can do to change people's minds on that one.
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May 6, 2023 05:22
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Nuebot posted:I genuinely dislike the term "Boomershooters" that's grown popular to call 'em instead. But there's not much I can do to change people's minds on that one. ok boomer.
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May 6, 2023 05:35
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The problem with "immersive sim" as a genre is that a lot of people are using it as a "prestige" thing. Sure the Action-RPG sub genre from the System Shock/ Deus Ex linage could probably use a name , but a lot of people are using it for a wide set of game genres with the qualifier being games they like and "respect". Thief and Splinter Cell(especially Chaos Theory) are just normal stealth games but they keep getting labelled Immersive Sim, likewise Skyrim(Morrowind might get it though) and a lot of ca 2000's FPSs are much closer to the design ethos of System Shock and Deus Ex but don't get that label, because they suck/ aren't regarded as highly.
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May 6, 2023 07:16
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Hel posted:The problem with "immersive sim" as a genre is that a lot of people are using it as a "prestige" thing. Sure the Action-RPG sub genre from the System Shock/ Deus Ex linage could probably use a name , but a lot of people are using it for a wide set of game genres with the qualifier being games they like and "respect". Thief and Splinter Cell(especially Chaos Theory) are just normal stealth games but they keep getting labelled Immersive Sim, likewise Skyrim(Morrowind might get it though) and a lot of ca 2000's FPSs are much closer to the design ethos of System Shock and Deus Ex but don't get that label, because they suck/ aren't regarded as highly. They're all action rpgs but people are precious about a couple of them
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May 6, 2023 07:21
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they're all adventure games because you have an adventure in them
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May 6, 2023 07:34
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Hel posted:The problem with "immersive sim" as a genre is that a lot of people are using it as a "prestige" thing. Sure the Action-RPG sub genre from the System Shock/ Deus Ex linage could probably use a name , but a lot of people are using it for a wide set of game genres with the qualifier being games they like and "respect". Thief and Splinter Cell(especially Chaos Theory) are just normal stealth games but they keep getting labelled Immersive Sim, likewise Skyrim(Morrowind might get it though) and a lot of ca 2000's FPSs are much closer to the design ethos of System Shock and Deus Ex but don't get that label, because they suck/ aren't regarded as highly. You could also pretty comfortably call Cyberpunk 2077 an imsim (there are systems that interact in unexpected ways, you're encouraged to solve problems in various ways including sneaking, it's possible to play nonlethally, there's hacking, etc).
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May 6, 2023 07:51
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Doc Hawkins posted:they're all adventure games because you have an adventure in them Unironically I believe that immersive sims are the inheritors to adventure games. You're still solving puzzles, but because we've been liberated from pre-scripted adventure game insanity by actually having engines that can simulate small sections of worlds, you're able to solve these adventures in logical ways and often with a multiple of different solutions. Hel posted:The problem with "immersive sim" as a genre is that a lot of people are using it as a "prestige" thing. Sure the Action-RPG sub genre from the System Shock/ Deus Ex linage could probably use a name , but a lot of people are using it for a wide set of game genres with the qualifier being games they like and "respect". Thief and Splinter Cell(especially Chaos Theory) are just normal stealth games but they keep getting labelled Immersive Sim, likewise Skyrim(Morrowind might get it though) and a lot of ca 2000's FPSs are much closer to the design ethos of System Shock and Deus Ex but don't get that label, because they suck/ aren't regarded as highly. I wouldn't really called Thief an "immersive sim" because of how limited your interactions are. You can stab, you can sneak, you can shoot bow, and enemies are pretty limited to reacting to just sound and sight. You can't distract them with things they like or really interact with the world much. In the same way, Skyrim and Morrowind really only have violence(and sometimes stealth as a precursor to violence) as a main mechanic. You can do a lot of crafting outside of the dungeoning, and a rare few pre-scripted quests have non-stabby solutions to things, but once again there aren't actually any particularly deep systems or systems that come together to make a real-feeling world. You'd need something like the rumours of Oblivion's original "radiant AI"(I don't really believe those stories were ever true, but they were funny and sometimes interesting) where NPC's were motivated by base desires that often got them wildly off track and hosed up the world massively, to get an immersive sim out of a Bethesda game. Some of the later Hitman games you could start considering immersive sims simply because of all the detailed little objects you got to gently caress with and how many ways you could accomplish most of your objectives, all the different types of violence and stealth you could employ. Simply staying unseen, disguises, distractions, shooting people, environmental kills, trap kills, setups that effectively got people to kill themselves, etc.
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May 6, 2023 08:22
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The latest Hitman games are getting there, and 3's Chongqing level feels like it's very deliberately evoking Deus Ex. I don't think I'd confidently call it an imsim though
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May 6, 2023 08:30
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Philippe posted:You could also pretty comfortably call Cyberpunk 2077 an imsim (there are systems that interact in unexpected ways, you're encouraged to solve problems in various ways including sneaking, it's possible to play nonlethally, there's hacking, etc). That's my point, the term has become so wide as to be meaningless for describing anything other than prestige or perceived quality because that basically describes Skyrim, which obviously can't be an immsim because it's dumbed down for babies, especially compared to Far Cry 2 which is obviously an immsim since it has weapon degradation and fire propagation. But also despite having hacking, multiple routes, sneaking , gadgets and social areas, Sin is obviously just a lovely FPS and not a true immsim, Splinter Cell is though because it reduced the options to just sneaking. It has basically become a term for "action-Rpg I like because I'm a person of good taste". PurpleXVI posted:I wouldn't really called Thief an "immersive sim" because of how limited your interactions are. You can stab, you can sneak, you can shoot bow, and enemies are pretty limited to reacting to just sound and sight. You can't distract them with things they like or really interact with the world much. I agree, Thief is a stealth game, and not a ImmSim in the "Like Deus Ex" meaning, but it keeps getting stuck with the label because it was made by Looking Glass and is a cult classic. The point is that the label of ImmSim has become meaningless because people keep trying to jam all their favourites into it because of prestige reasons. But I also disagree that just having more options is what makes an immsim, because that really just a matter of fidelity, budget and effort, not a genre definition. Hitman is a great example, The difference between Hitman 1-3 2016-2021 and Hitman 1-3 2000-2004 is basically just a matter of more, not one of change. It was always(in the good levels at least) about walking around to take in the area, figure out what levers could be pushed, and setting things in motion. The later ones just hade more sand in the sandbox( IMO do it's detriment). PurpleXVI posted:Unironically I believe that immersive sims are the inheritors to adventure games. You're still solving puzzles, but because we've been liberated from pre-scripted adventure game insanity by actually having engines that can simulate small sections of worlds, you're able to solve these adventures in logical ways and often with a multiple of different solutions.
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May 6, 2023 08:41
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Hel posted:But I also disagree that just having more options is what makes an immsim, because that really just a matter of fidelity, budget and effort, not a genre definition. Hitman is a great example, The difference between Hitman 1-3 2016-2021 and Hitman 1-3 2000-2004 is basically just a matter of more, not one of change. It was always(in the good levels at least) about walking around to take in the area, figure out what levers could be pushed, and setting things in motion. The later ones just hade more sand in the sandbox( IMO do it's detriment). I think that a lot of options does not by itself an immersive sim make, but also that you cannot have an immersive sim without a lot of options, because immersive sims to me are defined by having believable worlds (in a mechanical sense), which tends to mean a lot of interacting systems, which inherently give you a lot of levers to pull. If your only lever is "gun" or "sneak" or "fireball," then I'd have a hard time seeing the imsim in it. Like the ideal of an imsim would be a 100% simulated real-ish world, and let's say you have to get to work in the morning in the real world, your options: Walk Steal a bike and ride Drive your car Take a taxi Take the bus Hijack a car and make someone else drive you there Decide to call in sick instead Walk outside, lever up a manhole cover, and hide in the sewers for a week The more "real" and "immersive" the videogame world, the more options you're always going to have.
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May 6, 2023 08:51
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PurpleXVI posted:I think that a lot of options does not by itself an immersive sim make, but also that you cannot have an immersive sim without a lot of options, because immersive sims to me are defined by having believable worlds (in a mechanical sense), which tends to mean a lot of interacting systems, which inherently give you a lot of levers to pull. If your only lever is "gun" or "sneak" or "fireball," then I'd have a hard time seeing the imsim in it. Like the ideal of an imsim would be a 100% simulated real-ish world, and let's say you have to get to work in the morning in the real world, your options: See this is for me really a fidelity thing, Because your options IMO amount to Walk Drive Vehicle(Stolen or Owned) Get a driver(Legal or Illegal) Ignore / Decline Quest With the separate options being flavour/fidelity differences rather than significant genre ones. So having 4 choices, or 4 choices but with 12 variations doesn't really feel like enough to change the genre for me. Like sure Hitman now has 300 different environmental kills, but they are still just environmental kills with different variations. Mechanically they are the same as having one( or well 4 for the different hidden/ noisy variants)
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May 6, 2023 09:06
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i wish a suffragist would start punching each of you in the head
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May 6, 2023 09:07
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streets of rogue is fun as heckPurpleXVI posted:The more "real" and "immersive" the videogame world, the more options you're always going to have. i remember they used to call this ideal a "gestalt game", meaning total, or all-encompassing
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May 6, 2023 09:11
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:i wish a suffragist would start punching each of you in the head It's not a true imsim unless this can happen. Doc Hawkins posted:streets of rogue is fun as heck And also an imsim and I love it, ask me about my 115 hours of game time.
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May 6, 2023 09:12
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For me, the key traits to an immsim (I like that term better than the full 'immersive sim' but it still ain't great) are: -Multiple approaches to a given problem are viable. The common trifecta is stealth, combat, or social, with hacking or magical methods that don't neatly fall in those three occasionally filling one or cropping up in a fourth slot. -A character-building system that rewards both focus on one style or generalist builds. -Free-roaming areas large enough to accommodate multiple routes to an objective, in keeping with the multiple approaches. Skyrim fails on all three fronts 95% of the time, because it usually sends you into a linear dungeon where your primary goal (Or the thing preventing you from accomplishing a goal) is to stab something in the face, and generalist builds will rapidly fall behind a dedicated stealth archer (while you were leveling crafting, the draugr were training). It's an action RPG. Hitman fails because it has no character building, 47 is equally skilled with a sniper rifle, a nailgun, or a can of pasta sauce. It's an action puzzle game. Farcry 2+ fails because regardless of whether or not you stealth, the solution to a problem is nearly always to kill every motherfucker in the place. It's an FPS. The Dishonored universe only just fails point 1. It has everything else, but your only options are to kill someone or sneak past them and everything is in service to that. They're stealth action games up until Deathloop, which is an action stealth game. But as I was typing all that out and revising and looking things up to make sure I had my story straight, I realized I don't care what it's called. We live in the era of tags, we don't need to just slap one word or a short, punchy phrase on the box to let people know what they're getting. You can call it an immersive sim or an action RPG or a stealth dating visual novel, I'm gonna look at the user tags and see #eldritch horror #heartwarming #assassination and go "Huh, looks neat."
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May 6, 2023 09:17
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Blue Footed Booby posted:Since when? Redfall's Creative director
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May 6, 2023 10:14
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i think an immersive sim is when your sim goes swimming and you take the ladder out
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May 6, 2023 10:45
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Can we have a name for climbing glue blobs and turning into a mug to roll into tight spots to access new areas? That was so much fun
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May 6, 2023 13:02
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