Against "immersion" (Destiny)

by electricpirate , Thursday, April 03, 2014, 20:20 (3895 days ago) @ scarab

This is a great example of what I'm talking about. All of those things aren't necessarily any different than the thousand other things that you suspend belief for, but all of those are just bad game design.

Immersion has become this general word we use to say good or bad in video games. It's lost most of it's effective meaning.

I don't use immersion in the sense that it means you can't tell the game from reality. For me immersion is 'being there', to be lost in the game, to have accepted its conventions, things behave as you expect given the premise of the game universe and not, necessarily, as you would expect for reality.

For example: in the Arkham games I am Batman, I'm stealthy, scary and can divebomb a baddy from 30 stories up, piledrive him into the ground and escape unscathed. That has nothing to do with reality. In reality, Batman can't work.

The things that break immersion for me are:

• you can't run up to a door and run through it by pressing (A) as soon as the prompt appears. You have to stop running then press (A) and then walk through the door
  
• I get stuck on corners when I press (A) to run
  
• I stand up at the end of a silent takedown - even if this exposes me to snipers! (grrr)
  
• I am forced out of batvision when I open a door

The first three break immersion because, in general, you are very capable as Batman, you move easily through the world and can do things that ordinary mortals can not (but I'm not talking Superman levels of power). Being unable to open doors on the run is not being capable - even ordinary people can run through doors.

Being forced out of batvision feels unnecessary and is inconvenient. It makes you think, "stupid game".

I suppose that all those examples are crimes against competence. And Batman's competence is one of the biggest selling points of the game for me. I feel: capable, dangerous, and scary when I play as batman.

I am batman.

PS - No Padraig, no you're not! ;-)