Probably an odd question as it pertains to myself specifically, but I thought maybe others here have had similar experiences and can tell me.
When I was a kid I used to really get immersed into the games I played; I'd feel as though I was actually, feeling the very walls around me in dungeon crawlers, getting tense in fights and such, but nowadays I don't really get that sense any more. I'm in my mid-30's and now I'm thankfully able to afford any game I wish, I thankfully can choose how long I spend gaming, yet I just can't get immersed, I just can't get pulled in anymore.
My buddy told me about the Witcher 3 and told me it's great and immersive like only the oldest games ever were, and yet when I played it....I got kind of bored, and lost interest somewhat fast. One possibility is that maybe with modern proliferation of game knowledge, we can simply google for anything we want rather than let the game help us find what we need, pulling us out for that much of the game, another possibility is that we recognize mechanics and animations for what they are, and we try and memorize enemy combat animations, and our own iframes and such, even if instinctively.
I honestly can't remember the last game I played where I got immersed into the game and just felt the world rather than just see it.
My usual response whenever anyone says anything negative about games is "play better games". I don't know for sure that this advice applies here, but I'm going to list some games I found intensely immersive anyway, and if you haven't played them, you might consider giving them a shot. For reference, I too have never been able to get into The Witcher 3, and I've tried several times.
First on my list of immersive games is Pathologic 2. It's not a sequel or anything, more of a remake, and it's amazing. You play as a doctor coming back to the strange steppe town you grew up in just as a plague breaks out. It's a survival horror game, but describing it like that really undersells it. It's beautiful and tense and the town really feels alive in a way few other "open world" settings ever have to me. I lost an entire day of my life the first time I played it. What I mean is, my partner came home from work and was like "ok, it's Friday, let's go do our shopping" and I was like "the fuck are you talking about, it's Thursday?". It was Friday.
Next up, a game I only found recently, and that's Subnautica. It's bug-filled and janky, but somehow despite that, I truly felt like I was living in that world. Maybe it's because the bad bugs only show up way late when you're already very invested, but it's an amazing game about crash-landing on an alien ocean planet and learning how to survive and dive ever deeper. There's a story that you piece together as you get deeper and deeper, and it's beautiful and surprising and not at all predictable, which is always a breath of fresh air for me. I tend to be able to see twists coming a mile away, but I had no idea what was going to happen in Subnautica. The base building is fun too, and the several vehicles you get to build and pilot are all very distinct and feel good to operate. I truly believe Subnautica has no business being as good as it is. It's somehow much more than the sum of its parts.
Next I'll mention Outer Wilds (not The Outer Worlds). Outer Wilds is a game about exploring a tiny, handcrafted, toy solar system. And I know that doesn't sound like it should be immersive, I literally described it as a "toy". But it is intensely immersive. There are "puzzles", for some loose interpretation of that word, but mostly it feels like you're actually exploring a solar system, using a variety of tools at your disposal. Yes, everything you find has been meticulously designed and placed there specifically for you to find, but it's incredibly easy to lose sight of that fact. The story here is written in such a way that wherever your curiosity takes you, you'll find something interesting. There are basically no "gates" to your progression, other than your own ability to successfully use your ship and jetpack and your ever-expanding understanding of the world and the tools at your disposal. The DLC is well worth playing as well. It has a very different flavor, but it's also amazing.
Finally, there's A Short Hike, which is, as the name implies, quite short. I actually think the shortness is a good thing, because it's the kind of game you experience in an afternoon and then you can leave it and go do other things. The setting and characters are charming and zooming around through the air once you've collected a bunch of golden feathers is intensely fun. I revisit it every year or so, because it really does feel like taking a short hike to somewhere you enjoy. Well, the gaming equivalent of that, anyway. I'd suggest messing with the graphical settings. I found the default chunky pixels to be too much, but dialing that back a little helped me enjoy how it looks.
I'll also add a few that I think are less immersive, but I still really enjoyed.
Morrowind is great, but it shows its age. Still, it's easily the best Elder Scrolls game, and I like that alchemy and enchanting are so ridiculously overpowered. And you really feel like a stranger in a strange land, which is pretty fun. Many of the NPCs are total jerks to you at first, which is kind of an uncommon experience in games. Also, you can levitate. Amazing.
Fallout New Vegas has a very alive-feeling world, but the gameplay is, well, not great. The quests and NPC interactions are top-notch though. You really get quite a bit of freedom in how you interact with people and how you decide to finish quests. It's very much not the "go here, kill a person, grab a trinket, go back to quest-giver" quest design philosophy.
Hollow Knight is really good. I don't really think there's a lot else to say here, if you haven't tried it, you probably should, but it's more obviously a "game" and less an "experience", if that makes sense.
On that note, Celeste is also great. It's a super hard platformer with a story that feeds off the gameplay. Again, it's a "game", not a world or an experience, but it's still really fun.
I've also been enjoying Elden Ring and Sekiro, but I wouldn't really say they're "immersive". If you like those kinds of games, great, and those two require much less wiki-searching than other FromSoft games, but still, they're not ones I'd always recommend.
Subnautica was a great game to look almost nothing up about and just explore. The world feels so big until you hit the end and you have real consequence if your mobile base gets fucked up.
Vehicles deploy-able from vehicles is an odd special interest of mine as well.
Oh yeah, I do think the less you know about Subnautica going in the better! I also kept being amazed that there was so much to the world, it does a really good job of feeling almost endless. And the Cyclops really is one of the coolest things I've seen in a game ever. Good stuff!
I was sad they made the main sub in subzero that weird modular thing, I loved walking around the cyclops and just looking out the windows.
I still haven't played Subzero. I will someday, but I want to forget how great Subnautica is a bit first, so I'm less likely to be disappointed by Subzero.
I cannot agree with this enough. I could write like 5 different essays about the brilliance of Outer Wilds. Play this game or else :xi-gun:
I too could write forever about how great Outer Wilds is! It's so good in every way. Basically a perfect game, in my opinion. Also, the soundtrack is an absolute banger. That main menu theme!
That fucking horn puts tears in my eyes man
I like the description of Outer Wilds as a space archaeology simulator. Calling the solar system "small" isn't wrong but I think it's better to call it "efficient." It's incredibly dense with stuff to find, no padded travel times, any empty space is visibly empty and mostly just exists because planets need a complete surface, you can just go to explore the latest hint you found and be there in like a minute, tops.
Subnautica is less densely populated, has more empty space and waiting, but I do think there's something to be said for the sense of scale that that adds. Outer Wilds makes the world feel big by making it super intricate and constantly moving, Subnautica is more literally big, less alien, and can be kind of meditative because of that.
Aldo they're both "long-take" games like Dad of Boy, with no loading screens or cutscenes except at the very beginning and end iirc.
not OP but thanks for the promising shortlist complete with descriptions
:rat-salute: I hope you enjoy at least some of them!
This is true to a certain extent. I never really got into Sekiro, Elden Ring was my first Fromsoft title, but I do find that it requires a fair bit of wiki-searching. The almost non-existent quest system is really obtuse (on purpose), but the sandbox nature of the open world makes it probably the most immersive game I've ever played. It's my favorite game of all time, and one of the very few in recent years that I've really lost myself in. The other two that come to mind are RDR2 and Disco Elysium. I have spent almost 70 hours on it and it feels like I've barely even scratched the surface.
The obtuseness of the quests and the completely passive narrative are what makes Elden Ring so immersive to me. It feels like I'm constantly searching for little environmental cues to understand what the hell is going on, and even so I'm still not sure at all. It's one of the few games where I can't really answer the question "what's the game about?", because I'm just there, feeling the vibes but not really understanding the world around me. It's very much like Morrowind in that regard, making you feel like a stranger in a strange land, as you said.
Elden Ring refuses to explain itself. Instead of getting a lore dump about something like the Eternal Cities, for example, I stumble upon them and find a giant robed skeleton sitting on a throne. That feeling of "what the hell is that thing supposed to be?" never fails to give me this sense of wonder. Yesterday I got to Leyndell for the first time, and I was just floored by the incredible beauty and the craftsmanship involved in developing that world that has this palpable sense of history to every little thing that you find.
Truly a work of art, 11/10 pretty much the best goddamn game I've ever played. It's definitely not for everyone though.
I basically agree with everything you've said here. Elden Ring absolutely is a masterpiece, and the environmental storytelling is top notch. It's my favorite FromSoft game, no question and I really like that the world feels rather less dead than the worlds of the Dark Souls games. But for me, it doesn't quite make it into the same category as something like Pathologic 2 or Outer Wilds. It's harder to get into and easier to get dragged out of. I've started probably twice as many play-throughs as I've finished, which is fine, really, the early parts of the game are super cool, but I think it says something that I have a hard time actually finishing a playthrough. I agree that Leyndell is extremely pretty, and, as long as I'm leveled correctly so I can actually kill the enemies, one of my favorite places to wander around.
That's right, I never played Pathologic, but Outer Wilds does drag you in (much like the black hole in the game, heh). I suppose the fact is that I have a thing for environmental storytelling, I have worldbuilding brain and I'm a sucker for this kind of thing.
Yeah I completely agree, I actually kept a leather journal that I wrote questions and noteworthy things in as I went through it, trying to piece things together. Made it really immersive and made it feel personal