14 réponses à ce sujet

[K3m0sabe]

Immersion or lack of it. Its the defining atribute for an RPG.

It was what made me appreciate the genre, since having frist played Ultima 7: Serpent Isle. The NPC schedules, the food, the drink, the living atmosphere of credibility that populated the game world.

Several other RPG's tried to achieve the same level of immersion, namely the Elder scrolls series (Oblivion in particular), with NPC's having their own daily routines, their own needs, their own motivations.

Although i enjoy Bioware games, they always felt like you were travelling from one set piece to another, with NPC's having static locations with no sense of people having lived in the towns.

I'm sure Dragon Age will be a hugely enjoyable experience, but i also look forward to Bioware going beyond what they know, what they feel comfortable with, and make their next game in the series a more "immersive" experience.

What are the communities thoughts on this?

[minamber]

Oblivion actually felt less immersive than many Bioware games for me, simply because the setting was not coherent or believable.

The whole level-scaling thing which caused your character to be able to become champion of the arena at level 1, for instance, was quite enough to completely break any immersion, imho.

But maybe that's just me

[K3m0sabe]

Regarding the level scaling, i agree it was a bad game design choice.



Another game that added an excellent layer of immersion that i didn't mention on my previous post was the Witcher.

[Designation1z6874r0]

While I agree sometimes in RPGs you can't help but feel out of place, in Baldur's Gate 2 I felt very immersed in the story each time I played it and it stands as one of my favorite games of all time.

The only thing in DA:O that I can think of that actually breaks the immersion is that there is no Day/Night cycle, aside from that I believe DA:O will go far beyond any games we have access to today.

Modifié par Designation1z6874r0, 27 octobre 2009 - 04:15 .

[Manithal]

I agreed with with the above post about Oblivion - having a "living" environment felt very fake in that game. It isn't always the npcs that immerse me it is mainly the storyline. I like opened games but rarely do I actually finish them where as with games that are very story driven they pull me in like no other.



Games have different immerse and role play merits to me. In dragon age I see the role playing as assuming the role of the character to save the world etc. In a instance where I want to role play and assume the role of anything else (doing my own plots or with friends) I look for MMOs for that sense. So I don't think that things like the lack of a day/night cycle will hurt immersion it just doesn't cross my mind for a story like DAO

[Cvoid_Sonneillon]

I personally prefer games where they don't have NPC's with daily routines since to me it breaks the immersion by making the game more of a pain to play then fun to play.



I want to play a game for the fun of playing not so I have to remember a list of where some NPC is at any given time. Also I don't want to have to sit around waiting for some NPC to show up according to some script which makes the character predictable and robotic in nature and in turn just makes me meta game (such as reading guides to figure out the ruitines or using cheats to speed up time or make it s specific in game time) which breaks the whole immersion aspect of the game.



Right now I'm replaying Fallout 3 while I wait for DA:O to come out and I find it more of a nuisance waiting for the right time for the shops to open up. For example if I get to Megatown at 9PM I either have to find something to do to kill 11-12 hours of in game time (which is what 30 minutes real time? ) or do the wait option to fast forward the the game to the time I want it to be. Either way to me its a pain and something I don't like dealing with.

[Serpent-eyes]

I knew I was immersed in Morrowind when an in-game thunderstorm happened and I thought it was happening in real life! I think I probably had the volume up too high. That's what I get for playing the computer next to a window...

I think it's important that the world draws you in, on the other hand, I wouldn't want to be so immersed in the game that I started neglecting my need for food, water, and sleep. (Note to self: Headaches mean stop playing.) That's why I liked having that message in Guid Wars that says: "You have been playing for ____ hours. Please take a break." It kills the immersion, but it reminded me that I needed to tear my eyes away from the screen for a bit.

Yes, I know, I'm a pathetic nerd.

[LdyShayna]

While immersion is important in an RPG, as one can tell by the above, what CAUSES and BREAK immersion changes dramatically from person to person. It is just like fun in that way.

Everyone wants a fun game, and most RPG fans want an immersive game, but what causes a game to be immersive or fun is not going to be universal constants.

[daelyn75]

One thing about Oblivion that broke the immersion for me was that while it was fine that they had their daily schedules, when they would go to eat at a tavern they brought their own food. . . Also if you touch, not pickup anything on the tavern tables all hell would break loose and a guard would be on you in a moment after the bartender and everyone else in the place try to kill you. Right . . immersion. It takes just as much imagination in that game to immerse yourself as it does in any of Biowares static games.



Even so it was at least an attempt forward. In the next elder scrolls game I hope they make it more realistic, farmers actually bring in food, store it then go to trade it to a merchant who then sells it in town. When you go to a tavern other people order from the bartender and get their food from them. Shops get a closed sign on their door or window so you know they are closed instead of checking the door to see if its locked or not, lights go on inside buildings at night, (Yes I have that mod for that) and people actually stop having the same conversations over and over.



This on top of the level scaling . . .



But yeah enough with Oblivion, bring me Dragon Age Origins please.

[PsychoBlonde]

Well before Oblivion had NPC's with routines, there was Gothic, which was much superior in my mind. The NPC's didn't wander away to completely different villages, they stayed around their house/workplace so you could FIND them quite easily. (You had to be able to find them--no helpful quest pointers to tell you where they were.) But they did things like make stew, fix their house, smoke, drink, chat with their neighbors, play musical instruments, work at the forge, practice swordplay, mine, etc. etc. etc. It was AWESOME.



Gothic stands alone as one of the most immersive games I've ever played. It had a storyline full of eventfulness that pulled you along, it had tons of nooks and crannies to explore and rewards for exploration, it had a small but very detailed world with a great deal of individuality so you could learn your way around it and feel rewarded for that. It was even reasonable why you were singled out to do the saving.



Even the dark forests in that game were immersive. They pulled a few little graphical and auditory tricks that made them seem very dark, deep, and spooky and OH BOY did it work, especially since the nasties you couldn't easily see sneaking up on you had a tendency to kill you in one hit. Extremely tense situation.



I can do without most of that stuff, though, if the *people* are well-realized. You can do that by having them wander around and have tons of animations, I suppose, or you can do it through writing. Bioware tends to do it through writing, and it works just as well. It's just a slightly different experience.

[Shattered Shield]

There is such thing as too open for me......everyone is using Fallout and Elder Scrolls as examples. Now they were very fun games but they were too big to me sometimes. I played them 2 or 3 times before i couldnt play anymore because they were just so massive I would get bored and not want to play.



With BG2 it had everything i come to base RPGs off of. I didnt get lost . I would get sucked into the story. the same goes for all of Bioware's other titles Ive played. I view RPGs like I do a good novel. If the story doesnt draw me in in the first 2 chapters I dont wanna finish it.

[vyvexthorne]

For me it has always been the big game worlds that suck me in.. the GTA series (from 3 on) isn't an RPG in the sense of levels and building characters.. but it is in the sense that I have thoroughly found myself immersed into the world and characters. RPG's have had a harder time with background npc's... When characters just stand in one spot that seems so unrealistic to me. Gothic 1 and 2 has done the best job out of any rpg I can think of with background and main npc's. People went to work, went home, cooked, ate, sat, drank, talked to other npc's, went to the pub and yet their movements throughout the town was very easy to follow. There were no loading screens to contend with.. You didn't have to load every time you go in and out of a building or section of town. Oblivion's npc's would go some place seeming like they had a purpose.. but then when they got there they would just stand around.. sometimes just looking in a corner.. or pacing a room. Fallout 3 was a little better with the Npc's but not much. I really like Bethesda but they really need to start modeling real human movement in their games.. Maybe that's what it is.. the npc's are just too stiff. .. I'm really looking forward to Red Dead Redemption... If Rockstar games ever decided to make an rpg.. I think it would blow a lot of pre-concieved rpg notions away.

[K3m0sabe]

@vyxecthorne



Exactly, that was the point i was trying to convey on my first post. Game worlds need to feel "lived in", if everything is static and immutable, then the game is less a "role playing game" and more of a "play as you read" adventure where you just read the dialogue and proceed as planned with no interest in the world surrounding you.

[Teron]

I think it is also a matter of intent. Bioware games always intent to focus on tight storytelling and immerses youinto it. Like you correctly stated more like a book where you can choose your own path from time to time. They create setpieces you interact in. Games Like Oblivion are really more about exploration. They have a plot and a story but mostly the point is to "make your own fun" however you like to. They are a Sandbox to explore, where you actually can spend most of the time playing and ignoring the plot completely. I think it is great that we have both RPG subgenres so to say and developers on both sides that are good with what they do. Wich is more immersive is a decision that everyone has to decide for themselfes.



Personally I find Oblivion and others of its ilk much more immersion breaking for reasons already stated then lets say Baldurs Gate or Mass Effect. For the latter games i dont expect shedules or anything but i am much more part of the story and universe because it is tight around you and basically has your character as the lead, not the shopkeeper ( ;-) ). I have to agree that one of the few games that bridge the two genres are the Gothic series, wich I adored part 1+2 of. They really nailed alot on the head, especially in 2.



I cant wait for DAO for another bout of Storydriven goodness and I cannot wait for the next iteration of Bethesda to see how they move forward.

[dtsazza]

Part of the problem with a massive sandbox like Oblivion, is that there's so much potential content to manage, that the overall quality is bound to be lower. Oblivion in many ways did fairly well in trying to pull it off, but the ironically because they set the bar so high and missed it by a little bit, I found it more obvious that it was a game. Little things like the conversations that the townspeople would have being very repetitive and obviously limited after a while, the fact that they magically know when you have a skill above 70 (but won't say anything if it's at 69), the fact that merchants know what items are stolen somehow (even trivial, fungible things like a loaf of bread).



In my view at least, it's much more immersive to take a more limited scope and realise it perfectly, rather than to take a more ambitious scale, do arguably very well but have lots of little rough edges and inconsistencies that ruin the illusion.