PrimeJunta

You have something there, TrashMan. I think immersion in a game is a combination of zoning and suspension of disbelief. That makes games particularly tricky, as they have to both craft a world believable enough to live in, and mechanics workable enough to pull you into the zone. Few do both well.

Oh, and about the topic? I'm hoping no cinematics and no cutscenes. I like the intertitles with Kaz's ink art, and hope that's they way they're going to go all through. Of course I'd be happy to see their concept art used elsewhere too. It gives the game a really nice hand-crafted look and feel.

@Karkarov: I wonder, is there any way at all that could get you to admit you're wrong about this? Would a standard textbook do, like, say, Introduction to Game Development? Or The Game Localization Handbook (Deming/Chandler)? Or hell, even a major industry site? Over five million Google hits for the terms, or 75000 or so hits for the strict phrase? If not that, what? Show me something like that and I'll happily admit I was wrong. (Okay, maybe not happily but still.) Y'know, evidence instead of just "that's the definition pout stamp." (Also, shuddup Hormalakh. This stuff is important.)

If I had to name one quality that makes anything immersive for me, it has to be 'coherence.' If a game, book, movie, or whatever has an internal logic and sticks to it, and if it has something at least a tiny bit interesting to say, I find it pretty easy to become immersed in it. The specifics of that internal logic don't matter much at all. Consider the original, theatrical release of Star Wars trilogy. It had really tight internal logic, in everything from the fundamental laws of its universe, to its history, to the characteristics and motivations of the people in it. All of this was expressed in dialog, in the visuals, in costumes, in special effects. Every little bit supported every other little bit, and the instances that violated this logic were really rare, and often unintentional. George Lucas's "enhancements," however, were for the most part jarring, and many of them broke immersion for me. For example, the furry critter that does the rock'n'roll number in Jabba the Hutt's lair. He's visually completely different from the other critters; his musical style is different; the way he moves is different. When he hops on-screen, it's like someone's poking me in the eye with a finger. I'm suddenly reminded that I'm watching a movie, and my immersion is broken. The same applies to games. If they hang together and respect their own internal logic, and if they have relatively scarce instances that remind me that it's a game, I get easily immersed. To start with of course the game has to communicate its internal logic to you; you're sort of half in the game and half out of it. If you get over that, all it has to do is stick with it. "Do it well, or don't do it at all" would perhaps be a good maxim to follow. I'd rather play a game with fewer but coherent and well-developed systems or content, than one with lots but incoherent and half-arsed content and systems. Shadowrun Returns, for example, is a pretty neat little game because it's coherent. There would've been room for any number of other systems in it, but given a limited amount of resources, I'd much rather play it with the system it has now and the level of polish it has now, than with two or three times the amount of systems and content but with it hanging together that much more poorly.

You know, I may be wrong about this, Sharp_one, but I get the feeling that now you're just being stubborn for its own sake. I mean that insistence on immersion being entirely and totally subjective, with no possibility of identifying features or qualities that promote or detract from it. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it just makes conversation a little... well, unhelpful and meaningless. Good design, by the way, is more than just simple rules like that. There are known and fairly widely accepted general principles of good design; parsimony for example. I'm pretty sure that we could arrive at similarly high-level yet still meaningful qualities regarding immersiveness, should we try. Anyway, I think I'm about done with this discussion, unless you have something to add? Thanks for your patience in explaining your point of view; I appreciate the trouble you took with it. In the future I'll try not to participate in derailing threads with meta-discussions like this. Since you considered my previous suggestion helpful even though you disagreed with it, I'll dare to make another one: would you, in the future, consider simply stating your disapproval of a topic, and not pursuing that branch of the discussion any further should someone react negatively to it? That would be considerate of people who don't share your views, and wish to discuss the topic at hand.

I believe it would not let us reach meaningful conclusion. Just like "why (insert food here) is tasty" discussion would not. Okay, now I think we've reached a level where we can talk concretely. I can give you some examples of things that I think create or break immersion. I'll start with a few common immersion-breakers: Lack of artistic coherence. Specific example: armor and weapon designs in Oblivion. They were all over the place and didn't hang together. You ended up wearing Gothic plate and wielding a katana. Poor characterization. Specific example: Leliana in Dragon Age: Origins. The romance minigame completely wrecked her as an independent character with a personality. (Same applies to most of the others, with or without a romance, except Dog.) Poor or inconsistent user interfaces. Specific example: firearms in VtM: Bloodlines. Poor voice-acting. Specific example: the original English VO's in The Witcher. A lot of them sounded painfully like what they were, a bored actor reading from a paper in a studio, half-heartedly attempting to get some emotion in there somewhere. (I actually played the game in Polish, with subtitles, on my second round, even though my understanding of Polish is extremely limited, as the closest language I can make any claim to speaking is Ukrainian.) Would discussing any of these fall within your acceptable parameters? If so, would it be valid to discuss them from the point of view of, say, how they contribute/detract from immersion? Yet design is a subject that is taught, studied, written about, and discussed in great depth and volume. There are entire schools devoted to design. Is all of that pointless?

What if a discussion allowed us to reach some kind of meaningful conclusions about more concrete things that create immersion or break immersion? Would that be helpful? Would "What constitutes good design?" be a valid topic for discussion? If so, why would this discussion not end up as a demand for fanservice, whereas the related discussion "what contributes to immersion?" would? Why would such opinions not be "dependent on player not designer" in some way that, say, "immersion" is? Good. That's what I do too. In my opinion, attempts to shut down discussion are, generally speaking, both meaningless and unhelpful if not downright harmful. Now that I've stated this opinion, are you more or less likely to cease such attempts? Put another way, was this attempt to shut down such shutdown attempts helpful?

Not fully true. i believe forum should be: a) to give feedback about released content b) giving feedback and ideas about elements that would be beneficial and meaningful for the game. You probably could argue that this immersion discussion could be at b) but I don't find it neither helpful nor meaningful. Thank you. Followup questions: Why do you think specifically immersion is a non-meaningful, non-helpful topic? Can you give examples of topics that would be helpful or meaningful? How do you determine whether a topic is helpful or meaningful? Do you think it's helpful to make a call to shut down a discussion that doesn't meet your criteria of helpful and meaningful (rather than, say, just not participating in such discussions?) If yes, in what way? If not, am I misconstruing your intent, because I do read many of your posts as precisely such attempts? Thanks in advance for replying.

@Sharp_one, call it a difference between influence and control. I don't want control over PE. I would like a measure of influence. As in, I would like them to listen to our concerns, consider if there's something there that might have a point and might fit the ideas they have about the game they're making, and if so, maybe work it in somehow. This is in fact pretty much how they've been proceeding. They've been throwing ideas at the wall, listening to feedback, and adjusting. I'm a software designer myself and that's more or less how I work. Giving the users control over the design is a bad idea and usually leads to disasters, in games as much as any other type of design. Giving them a measure of influence over it while retaining control can lead to good things. Another thing is that IMO the function of these forums isn't only to talk to Obsidian. We're also talking with each other, about any number of things related to PE. These discussions can be entertaining, educational, edifying, or whatever. I would still like to hear your answer to my question, by the way. If making a topic here is tantamount to asking Obsidian to address whatever is being discussed in the topic, and we shouldn't be asking Obsidian to address our concerns because fanservice, then what purpose do these forums serve? What's left for us to do that you would approve of?

Sharp_one, I re-read what you've said and I can really only extract one meaningful opinion from all of it. Correct me if I'm wrong about it: You believe discussions like this amount to demands for fanservice, and you believe that fanservice makes for poor games. Conversely, you believe that Obsidian is more likely to produce a good game by pursuing their ideas of what it is, after which each of us will play it and either like it, or not, depending on our personal preferences and whatever mood or state of mind we happen to be in. I agree with the second part of that sentiment – i.e., that fanservice makes for poor games. What strikes me as beyond nonsensical, though, is the other part – that merely discussing topics like "what makes a game immersive?" or "what features of Stephen King's writing turn us on or off to it?" amounts to demands for fanservice. That... just doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, if we can't discuss stuff like that, what can we discuss? Why are we even here? Serious question, by the way. I'm not trying to pick a fight here. I was a bit irritated at you earlier, but that passed.

@Karkarov, sorry, but I'm still not buying. From where I'm at, a cinematic is a pre-created sequence that uses cinematic techniques to convey a message. Whether it's pre-rendered or rendered in-engine is fairly irrelevant. This Revan scene, for example, uses a ton of these techniques. Intercutting, panning, zooming, rotating camera, so on and so forth. It happens out of flow of events: it's a flashback, not something that's happening to you in sequence as you play the game. It is most definitely a cinematic sequence, and a pretty good one at that. A scripted event, OTOH, happens in-flow. You're doing something, and then something scripted happens. The game may or may not freeze your controls and force you to watch it passively, or it may just start happening and you may or may not stop to watch. So in BG, the bit where Sarevok whacked Gorion was a scripted event. The opening movie where he threw that poor knight over the balcony was a cinematic. Yes, indeed, in that case one was in-engine and one was not, but that's simply because the IE doesn't let you do cinematics in-engine, being 2D and sprite-based. The KOTOR engine, OTOH, being 3D, is perfectly capable of being used for cinematics, and while the game also featured (rather bad IMO) pre-rendered cinematics, it used in-engine ones as well. So, again, Karkarov, where does your definition of "cinematic" that makes "pre-rendered" central to it come from? It doesn't make any sense to me. A feature should be defined by its function, not by the technique used to create it. A cinematic is a cinematic. If you have to, you can always make an additional distinction between pre-rendered cinematics and in-engine cinematics, of course. Edit: Oh, look what I found.

@Karkarov, whose definitions are those? 'Cuz the distinction seems pretty artificial to me, especially as in-game rendering gets closer and closer to film quality. By that narrower definition, though, I guess that makes my list of games that benefit from cinematics an even zero.

I have real trouble thinking of any game where cinematics contributed in any significant way to my experience. Wait. There is one. Knights of the Old Republic. The cinematic where Darth Revan removes her mask. That did do something. So it's not completely inconceivable that they might help. But that's about it really. In PE specifically, I think cinematics would be a complete and utter waste of resources. I trust they won't be doing that to us. I really like the look of those ink drawing-like intertitle panels. Tell the story with those. It worked for IWD, it'll work better for PE.

@Silent Winter, I didn't vote and don't intend to. I'm cool with any of the options. It all depends on how the whole thing hangs together.

No, sweetypie. I listed a few other things right in the paragraph you're quoting. But what if a significant number of those people agree? 'Cuz, you know, by and large they do. As in, most people agree that Torment had great writing, memorable characters, yadda yadda yadda, and Icewind Dale had great setting art and great combat encounters, yadda yadda yadda. Hell, even the disagreements can be meaningful. Once more: we do not need perfect consensus in order to be able to say something meaningful about what makes some particular game/book/movie tick. Um... understanding? Implementing those ideas in your own work? Being able to make more informed choices about what you do read/play/watch? Rather funny, coming from someone who's probably one of the three most argumentative and generally negative posters currently active on these forums. I just listed some reasons above. Attempting to browbeat Stephen King into changing his writing style doesn't figure very highly among them. I would like Obsidian to listen to my concerns, though, that's for sure. I think a meaningful discussion of "immersion" could help with that. It could also help my own creative efforts. Aww, a romantic. How sweet! I certainly hope so! "Listening to what the fans want" is not the same as "giving them what they say they want." You have to take it one step further, and infer from what they say what really pushes their buttons. I'm quite sure he -- like Stephen King, or Obsidian -- does just that. Giving them what they say they want is fanservice. BioWare does that. It is, indeed, a road to nowhere. Wow, you really have NO IDEA of what Shakespeare's audiences at the time liked, do you? I have no idea. I only watched the first season. It was already tedious and repetitive at the end of that. And finally -- you have succeeded in pretty effectively derailing this discussion. I was interested in discussing what kinds of things make a game immersive, and what kinds of things break immersion. You, on the other hand, have succeeded in turning this discussion into a meta-discussion about whether such a discussion is worth having in the first place. I'll take it one level further: why do you feel this meta-discussion is worth having? Does it increase your understanding, knowledge, or ability to make informed decisions? Does it help Obsidian make a better game? Does it serve some other purpose? 'Cuz I sure lost track. From where I'm at, it would be much simpler for you to just STFU about topics that don't interest you, and leave the rest of us to our discussion. Why do you feel differently?

Some of us did. "Reasonable conclusion" is not the same thing as "complete consensus." For example, I don't think I'd be going too much out on a limb if I stated that Planescape: Torment is generally regarded to have some great writing, great setting design, and memorable characters, whereas Icewind Dale is considered to have some of the best combat encounters and most beautiful environmental art among IE games. I do not recall proposing anything in this discussion. If you believe otherwise, hey, that's just your personal experience. Now, this I can agree with. To an extent, anyway: I can think of work which I find to be really good but not immersive. For example, I've gotten a great deal out of James Joyce's Ulysses, despite really struggling to get through it. I could only manage about five pages at a time. Yet it remains one of the most meaningful literary experiences I've had. >> This statement actually greatly proves my point. King is considered the king of horror novels, is widely known, respected, successful and accomplished author. And now you want him to change the way he writes because people find his monsters dopey, dumb, unfrightening and immersion breaking? Why would I want him to change his writing? That would be silly. I'm perfectly happy to enjoy his non-supernatural-monster fiction, and just read other writers for my supernatural-monster fix. So you think the only thing Stephen King has going for him are his supernatural bugaboos? Interesting. I actually hold his writing skills in higher regard than that. And the best way of making a 'good' game is to ignore what everyone else thinks is 'good?' Second: do you seriously believe Stephen King ignores what his readership likes and just pursues his art in some kind of vacuum? For real?

Unfortunately it's not. I always get super immersed in Stephens Kings books but my friend says that he cannot get into them. That does not follow. You can still have a meaningful discussion about what about them you finds immersive, and what about them jolts him out of it. When more people join the discussion, you can eventually arrive at categories like "things many people find break immersion" and "things many people find maintain immersion." Then you can discuss why things are in each category. Each individual's experience is unique, but there are still commonalities – and the artifact being immersed in (or not) will produce those commonalities. I would bet that if you got a hundred people to write down how they experienced The Lord of the Rings and Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, you would get two pretty distinct clusters of experiences. At the end of that exercise, you would have a fairly good collection of identified and, if you like, even quantified factors which contribute to, or detract from immersion – even as every player's/reader's experience is unique. Speaking of Stephen King, his monsters don't work for me. I usually find them ... dopey, I guess. Dumb. Un-frightening. Immersion-breaking. I get much more deeply into those of his stories that don't feature supernatural monsters. Four Seasons and Misery, for example. He writes some mean prose.

You do realize, Sharp_one, that that argument renders all discussion of any form of creativity completely pointless? Substitute "artistic value" or "enjoyability" or "playability" or any other such term for "immersion" and your argument will be just as valid. In other words, if you really believe that, what the hell are you even doing here? Why not just go sit in glorious solitude in your personal box of personal preference. I posit that it isn't purely a matter of personal preferences, only dependent on the receiver. It's a two-way street. The game does make a difference to immersion, enjoyment, gameplay, and what have you, not just the player. There are 'good games' and 'bad games.' There is 'great art' and 'crap art.' Justin Bieber is not the same as Nick Cave. Planescape: Torment is not the same as My Little Pony's Cake Shop. (I just re-read the above paragraph. I can't believe I'm even having to argue something like that. Jeez, some people.)

Direct link to the T:ToN "Crises" document. It really is a fine piece of game design IMO and well worth looking at. It's probably too late in the game for PE to take inspiration from it, but perhaps they've been working along similar lines – there is a lot of cross-fertilizaiton between the teams, right down to shared members.

@Karkarov, they took out the dedicated crafting skill, not crafting itself. The original idea was that the Crafting skill also affected item durability. After the discussion they decided that durability was more of a drag than a gameplay improvement, so they took that out. That left the Crafting skill without sufficient gameplay value, in their assessment, so they took that out as well. The upshot was that crafting is not associated with a dedicated skill, but instead crafting different types of items is connected to different types of other skills with other gameplay uses. So the mechanics are the same and crafting is still in, just not item durability, nor a dedicated skill.

I can think of only one good reason to put unkillable children into the game: because making them killable would be too much of a reputation risk for the company. That kind of thing can spin out of control, and e.g. make it much more difficult for Obsidian to work with publishers – which they need to do. (It would be kind of interesting to see what would happen, though. The discussion over which is more inappropriate, child-killing sprees in Eternity or Grand Jew Wizards and Mr. Slave in South Park: Stick of Truth.) Overall I prefer greater verisimilitude. Category violations damage it. So for example if everything is killable except children, that's jarring and I don't like it. IOW, I would prefer either everything, including children, to be killable, or things to be categorized into non-killable and killable according to some not-completely-arbitrary criterion. Most games of this type flag critters as friendlies or hostiles, and it's simply not possible to attack friendlies; that hasn't bothered me much before. Alternatively you could have a category of "background atmospheric critters" like dogs and cats and bunny rabbits and cows and sheep and cute little birdies, and make those unkillable. That would have the additional advantage of making them cheaper to make, since you wouldn't have to worry about fight or death animations, so you could have more variety for the same price.

As an aside, I really like the way Torment: ToN is approaching this through the notion of "crisis." It's broader than "encounter" but accomplishes similar goals – i.e., allowing many different ways to resolve it, and rewarding each of these resolutions in ways suitable to the resolution. See their latest update for details. (Also, :popcorn:.)

I'm with your definition, Osvir. I also think an "ironman lite" mode is a bit of a waste of resources; I think the people who want to ironman for whatever reason want the full shebang, and the people who don't, won't, odd outliers notwithstanding. Of course, they could just add a "Savegame behavior" configuration panel that lets you tailor savegame settings to your choosing. The only real worry I have about ironman in a game as complex as P:E are serious scripting/programming errors. If the game boxes you into a dead end through no fault of your own, or corrupts your only savegame, or something like that, it's kind of a screaming-fit level bummer. So I would consider a recovery tool acceptable; i.e., that the game did retain savegame history but you could only access it with an external tool similar to a console cheat.

In English, the chess term is "stalemate." :popcorn:

I could actually have voted for everything, because I'm not in love with any genre, time period, or cultural influence in particular. I do care about consistency and coherence though. Whatever the influences, it should hang together. Massive anachronisms or cultural weirdnesses bug me; I wouldn't like to see, say, knights in full Gothic plate wielding katanas, nor samurai with poleaxes for that matter. That wouldn't make sense. However, I'm a bit bored with generic-pseudo-medieval-western-fantasy, generic-samurai-fantasy, generic-kung-fu-fantasy, generic-space-opera etc. I think there's a huge range of underused settings and cultural influences out there, and I think they would make for a refreshing change of pace. Sumer or Babylon, pre-Columbian America, Pharaonic Egypt, pre-dynastic China, Oceania, sub-Saharan Africa... the possibilities are endless. So I omitted the ones closest to these IMO overused ones and voted for the others. I'm also not super-excited about historical RPG's as such; there are too many things to trip over. Like being overly constrained by the historical setting and not daring to do exciting things because they conflict with it, or drifting too far off it so it just looks anachronistic and embarrassing, like you didn't know better. If done well it could rock though. But instinctively I would prefer a fictional setting inspired by real-world history and culture – I'd rather have, say, an ocean setting with islands and war canoes and haka and moai, without stating that it's specifically Fiji and Tahiti and what have you.