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.
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.
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!
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’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.
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
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
My problem is the background hum of all of the more productive things i know i should be doing, looping constantly in the back of my mind and preventing me from being present while playing a game. I have a more enjoyable time when i recognize that that's happening and rationalize to myself that if I'm going to spend the next whatever amount of time playing a game regardless, then i might as well put that thought out of my mind and at least allow myself the chance to be immersed.
I think the anxieties of adulthood take up processing power that during childhood was more freely utilized in enjoying experiences. It can be managed consciously or suppressed with a more intense sensory experience like VR (or by increasing the sensitivity to the experience like with weed).
I've been playing some VR stuff with a couple friends recently and having the walls literally (virtually) around me for sure brings back some of that feeling of engagement i remember getting from games when i was a kid.
Your brain finished developing and getting lost in imagination was done away with. Or you did enough of it that your brain is over it. You are going to have to turn to harder and harder stuff to get the same thrills. You ever done VR? What about just R? If this keeps up the only way you will be able to enjoy finding zombies is if they are dressed up assistant managers fom a video store at the larp event you are going to. That being said if you do have one of those events near you, they are pretty fun and you should try it. I won a dark wizard cloak from a giant in a swordfight. It is hanging in my closet.
I think a part of the reason it was so easy to get immersed when you were you her is because you had less experience. I remember playing Skyrim or Minecraft as a kid and being endlessly amazed by the scale of them, but now I've seen so many games like them that it's a lot harder for me to get invested in them.
Personally I've found that a complete genre shift has made me much more engaged with video games and I've actually been having fun. I burned out on open world games, then strategy games, but for the past year I've been super hooked on pokemon. My advice would be to take a break or try something new that you've never tried before. Maybe you'll want to return to the games that used to absorb you after that, or maybe not, but it's worth a try
I may have to give that a shot; I feel burned out on so many familiar game types, so many genres and maybe mixing it up with something I've never played or experienced before might just be the change of pace I need to be struck with wonder again.
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.
Specific to the Witcher 3, the first few hours in the tutorial area suck. You're stuck in a small area with little to do and there's not really anything going on narratively either. The game's quality really lies in two things: the sheer, overwhelming quantity of detailed interactions and quests and how random little jobs can either be simple and straightforward tasks or elaborate and involved stories with no indication what will be what, and the extent to which random decisions come back to matter later on.
I've gotten past the tutorial area (even did all the quests in the area), and at first I was interested in it, but then the main storyline took off and I got to a new area and......the characters aren't pulling me in. Also the combat is kind of hard to enjoy. I'm tempted to also ignore much of the (micro?) management just to experience the storytelling, micro management such as breaking gear down so I can have materials to build good gear. The storytelling is kind of okay, but at a certain point I look at the map and I think to myself, "you know what? I can't be bothered to put in the work to go over there and pick up the quests in the area"
Something about the Witcher just isn't pulling me in to the setting.
Turn the map icons off, realize you will never be a completionist, and try to go to places that you have a reason to go to.
The icon hunt absolutely ruins the game otherwise.
You can get escapism fatigue just like with anything else.
Like you mentioned, sometimes you start to notice the formula and it prevents immersion. Oh, cool, this is the 300th Zelda clone and the Big Bad is named Gornandork. You might as well just play Zelda again.
There is also an aspect that is exposure and analysis. As a kid, the death of the author is usually a given. A story isn't a human coming up with something on the spot, it's a universe to learn about. Eventually, you realize that the Zelda story (again) isn't some carefully-designed lore or great work of fiction or a consistent world at all, it's just a games company trying to make as much money as possible by paying people to write a story that seems interesting but doesn't deviate too far from the formula. This kills some of the magic, as now you're a critic: rather than a revelation or joy, you see the soulless cash-grab, the (low) worth of the story to those involved, the pointlessness of it. You start to want more, as it will take more than lazy corporate riffing for you to get swept away, whereas before it was novel enough (to you) that you didn't notice. Pokemon is a pretty good example. It was never a great story, mostly a way to sell toys, but it printed money so they just do the same thing over and over and over again. I can't imagine the dryness of trying to follow the full story of the main series.
You might just want novelty, or even just (comparatively) good writing. Or you might need a break from the medium, find something with different tropes, or even just do something that isn't escapism but scratches a similar itch of distraction, obsession, entertainment, enjoyment. Sports, hiking, irl bar games, taking really good naps, making really good food, organizing your living space and life, and especially anything social that you enjoy.
Also you might just want to make a post that asks for non-samey video game recommendations, ha.
i found that i still enjoyed figuring stuff out at the beginning of games. but then you get to the point where you know most of the mechanics, you just have to actually get good at it. and that feels like work. unpaid work.
so i stopped playing games.
you just have to actually get good at it. and that feels like work. unpaid work.
Oof, yep, that one hits home. I play games to have fun, but when the mechanics becomes an obstacle the fun ends, and more and more games are aiming for that skill threshold. Indie games can be great for enjoying games as they realize that not everyone will 'git gud' and some are just there to enjoy the beauty of the environments, the stories and the characters, the fun of just dungeon crawling and discovering new things, etc. (probably why the early phase of Stellaris where you go around discovering anomalies and studying the different strange facets of the universe, making first contact and trying to understand your new galactic cohabitants is so much fun for me, more fun than when the primary meat of the game, the empire building becomes the chief part of the gameplay)
Yeah I just end up buying a lot more games. Primarily because I can spend my money freely, and I have an income. But also because the most fun part of most games is the very beginning, experiencing the mechanics and graphics and so on. And then almost every game becomes a boring slog where I can't even remember the plot (probably because I have 10 other in-progress games that I'm playing on and off). But it's a combo of game mechanics that are work (when I have actual "work" that I could be doing and feeling actually accomplished about), which require too much thinking and learning, and stories, settings, and mechanics that are cliche and clearly not something anyone was passionate about. I have the same feeling with most movies too. I feel the entire time that I'm sitting in front of a screen. I end up critiquing the movie in my head more than I actually watch it.
Someone else already mentioned Death Stranding, which I feel did actually work for whatever reason. Maybe it was Kojima. Maybe it was the sound design. Maybe it was the music. Or the combo of them. He did say it was the first "strand type game" xD, which I guess is true because it does feel unique.
Burnout.
After a while, you've just played enough games. You've seen everything there is to see, and experienced every feeling they can dish out. There is a finite amount of entertainment in video games, and you're at the end.
Put down the controller and find a new hobby. Preferably one that involves touching grass. You'll be happier and people will notice you look better.
Idk Burnout was more of an arcade experience imo, if you're looking for immersion you should go for Forza horizon 5 or gran Turismo. Burnout takedown was great imo
For me it was that I shifted my focus to other things. I used to spend wayyyy to much time gaming to the detriment of every other aspect of my life. I made a conscious effort to change, but when I come back to game now I just cannot get to that zen level of involvement where you can lose hours or even days to it. It's sad really because being able to get lost in a game would be just the medicine I need these days, especially with stress from work.
Try pirating Tetris Effect. It is the easiest game to enter "zen mode" with and you can do it for half an hour. Tetris was always super immersive for a puzzle game, but they really leaned into it with this one.
That "zen mode" is called a state of flow, and you can pretty much do that with anything. Cooking, playing tennis, jogging, you name it.
That actually occurred to me, and it would certainly explain why I can get excited about something like learning game development only to reach a certain point and then lose interest; or get invested in writing the novels I've always wanted to write only to reach a point and lose interest again.
But that's a much more complex problem to solve than finding a game that clicks with me
Yeah low motivation like that just screams depression to me. Something I found helpful is switching up what I'm doing fairly often but making sure to come back to things. If there's a game I like but I'm getting bored of it or you can feel that I will get bored of it soon, I'll stop playing for a while and switch over to something else for a few days or weeks before coming back.
That's not clinical depression, that's just the shine wearing off. You need novelty. A constant stream of brand new things to get excited about, then move on to the next one. A lot of people are like that, it's a hallmark of being a person high in openness.
That's not necessarily depression, could just be adhd or even less, it's just normal novelty-seeking. It's harder to stick with something after the luster fades a bit.
Yup, many of my friends are into that grimdark and edgy storytelling; I've been tempted to play Kingmaker but one thing holding me back is concerns about unequal encounters where your party gets ganked by powerful mobs frequently, but also, I spend maybe half an hour making each character in my party because I'm so used to spending lots of time character sheet building in the regular pathfinder TTRPG. I also downloaded literally every class mod available at the time, giving me a gigantic list of classes and archetypes to work with. A part of me is tempted to just go with simple templates and just stick the difficulty on easy so I can just enjoy the story and not get bogged down with character sheet building.
You're playing the part of the game you like best: creating new characters. Don't feel bad about it, keep doing it if that's what you like.
A common thread on /r/Skyrim was "I started over and created a new character today!" followed by excited details of the build and how it would develop over time. The next week, the same person would post a new build. And so on, and so on.
I would be curious what you thought/enjoyed about Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous. I played both Kingmaker almost to the end and Wrath till the end. I guess I like the roleplaying parts of it. Plus some of the companions are fun. Also wrath feels a bit like a choose your own adventure kind of thing which im a sucker for. Im not a huuuge crpg guy though. Like I do dabble a bit in the gerne but I havent played a ton of games in it.
Immersion comes from mystery, mystery fades with age and familiarity with the medium and its tropes. It sucks obv but it's not abnormal.
On the other hand, media savvy is it's own form of enjoyment, a second level of critical appreciation for the craft and all the various tricks and mirrors game devs use to make the good brain chemicals.
Also since everyone else is recommending games, I'll throw out Disco Elysium and Sunless Sea. Not quite "immersive" due to the obvious game abstractions from the story (and imo unnecessary burden of collecting money in both games) but they give you so much well-written and unique story to chew on and wonder about.
When is the last time you found a memorable soundtrack?
That grind? That's intentional to now sell you XP boosters and DLC.
What server do you play on? I love that game but I've never had people to play with so I gave it up years ago. If you have an active group, I'd be down to try again.
Games during the 90s were a special breed. It's not so much that they're better than modern games, but that every year saw massive improvements and paradigm shifts. The gap between SMW and SM64 was a mere 5 years. So, in 5 years you went from a 2d platformer to a 3d platformer. There's no modern equivalent of that. A modern equivalent would like going from a PS3 era third person shooter to a modern VR game in less than a decade. Doom 1 and Half-Life 2 are a decade apart. Doom 1 vs Deus Ex are less than a decade apart. Just going by FPS, you start out with Wolfenstein 3d (1992) and Doom (1993), then you move on to Duke Nukem 3d (1996) and Quake 1 (1996), then there's a followup with Unreal (1998) and Half-Life 1 (1998) before ending with System Shock 2 (1999) and Deus Ex (2000). You can do this to other genres. Fighting games follow the blueprint of SF2 (1991) with the exception of platformer fighters that follow Smash64 (1999).
Obviously, if you experienced 90s gaming as a kid, modern games would be so boring in comparison. Ignoring modern bullshit like lootboxes, the rate of improvement and innovation is so much lower. How much indie platformers have truly move pass their Cave Story (2004)/IWBTG (2007) roots? How many genres have been created since the 90s? Dark Souls-likes, MOBAs, Roguelikelikes, tower defense, a bunch of subgenres at best. Compare that with being a kid playing Doom for the first time followed up with playing Warcraft 2 for the first time followed up with playing Super Mario World for the first time, every game part of a new genre. This wouldn't be that big of a deal to a zoomer because they just see a bunch of genres and subgenres, but as a millennial, you would have experience with those genres coming into being for the first time. That magic of playing a game with absolutely no frame of reference and knowing that the other people playing the game don't have a frame of reference either is not so easily captured.
How much is The Witcher 3 (2015) truly different from Morrowind (2002)? "B-b-b-ut The Witcher 3 isn't really open-world, it's more polished and less janky, its lore is inspired by Slavic folklore, it has titties." Bruh, they're part of the same subgenre. 13 years had passed since Morrowind and the best thing you could come up with is The Witcher 3? Cmon son. Remember, it took less than a decade to go from Doom 1 to Deus Ex. The time gap between Morrowind and The Witcher 3 is more like the time gap between Wolfenstein 3D and Half-Life 2. Yeah, I would be pretty disenchanted in gaming too if it took id 13 years after Wolfenstein 3D to release Doom 1.
I more or less stopped giving a shit about gaming 5 years ago, and I can't say I'm missing much because gaming innovation is so slow anyways. Any major news in gaming since the release of Celeste? As a comparison, there was a time period 2019-2021 when I didn't follow Linux news that much and mostly stuck to running an out-of-date Xubuntu. When I resumed following Linux news and finally switched to a new distro, there's so much shit I had to catch up. It's because in that 3 year gap, so much has changed in terms of new distros, abandoned distros, distros that are in the hot seat for sucking, how much Wine has improved, new DEs, and so on.
