Hello everyone, haven’t seen each other for a long time. I don’t know if you missed me, but I am for you – yes. This time I would like to talk about how Immersive SIM works and why recently this genre has been going through the best of times, although it would seem enough to fans of immersion games.
And I know that this topic is not new, but I would like to understand this genre myself to determine for myself – what is the immersion of Sim.
What is the main difficulty in determining the Immersive Sim
I am almost sure that there will be many comments in the spirit of “Boris, you are wrong, but all because Immersive Sim is a very unstable genre. I’m not even sure that he can be called a genre at all, since he does not have genre -forming signs as such. This is rather the concept of narrative.
Immersive Sim is being built around the idea of the player’s complete immersion in the world invented by the author, as well as the provision of his opportunities to study this world on his own. Here is how immersive Wikipedia defines: “Immersive SIM offers the player a simulated world with the ability to perform many different actions so that any obstacle can be overcome by many unusual creative methods, including those not planned by the developer;Immersive SIM gameplay is to a large extent emergent – as opposed to other games that are relied on scribbled scenes and pre -planned events ”.
And here immediately the problem of determining the genre arises (let’s still call it a genre for simplicity). “The simulated world with the ability to perform many different actions so that any obstacle can be overcome by many unusual creative methods” – all this is equally applicable to what we call the “sandbox”.
Watch the JUST CAUSE series. You are given a large, destroyed world, means of interaction with objects of this world, and all. How you will go through the game, depends entirely on your imagination. This fits into the definition proposed by Wikipedia, but whether it is made of just CAUSE Immersive Sim? No, damn it!
With the idea of immersion, not everything is also so simple, since the very concept of “immersion” completely and completely depends on the subjective perception of each. It cannot be measured with a ruler or weighed on the scales and driven into the genre frames. It either works or not. Yes, there are some techniques and tools to tear the player out of his reality and put in virtual (we will talk about them below), but even they may not work against a certain type of gamers, which, for example, play games simply to turn off the brain for a couple of hours after work.
But let’s still try to collect the main signs of immersive games together. And yes, I will warn right away. Somewhere my thoughts will seem obvious, somewhere banal, somewhere stretched. But this is exactly how I see myself this genre.
Thought out the world
I believe that the thought out world is one of the main elements of immersive games. It can be absolutely delusional, but at the same time remain believable by preserving intra -game logic and compliance with its own laws. Take, for example, BIOSHOCK. At first glance, the world depicted by Ken Levin is a complete absurdity. A city built at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, mutants with a drug dependence on a substance that gives them superpowers, small girls, pumping blood from corpses and giant monsters that protect them-all this is like a plot of some kind of bi-muy released for DVD. And so it would have been if Levin had not worried about how everything works.
That the city was built on the bottom of the ocean specifically, since the industrial tycoon Andrew Ryan wanted to create a new type of ideal society that no one could influence from the outside. Hence isolationism and xenophobia. Когда главный герой попадает в Восторг, охваченный паранойей Райан сразу же пытается его убить, полагая, что выходца с поверхности специально прислали его недруги.
“So tell me, friend, what bastards sent you? KGB wolves or jackals from the CIA? Listen to me, delight – this is not a sunken ship that can be robbed, but Andrew Rain is not a naive girl who can dilute the government around the finger. That’s all. Buzz buy or goodbye – in any language in what you wish!”.
Superpowers in Bioshock could be mistaken for fantasy if Ken Levin had not given them an almost scientific rationale. Moreover, he did not just dump all the information on us, but gradually, step by step, told the story of the discovery of Adam. How fishermen discovered those living in the depths of slugs that produce stem cells that can rewrite a human DNA code. As scientists, led by Dr. Tennenbaum, tried to organize industrial production of this substance, how they fought over the creation of a strong connection between daddy and sisters. The last theme turned out to be so large -scale and interesting that it passes through the red line through Bioshock 2 (delta and Eleanor), Bioshock Infinite (Elizabeth and Nightingale) and the second episode of Burial at Sea, where Elizabeth, in fact, finds out the story of this connection when he studies the work of the doctor of Sushong.
Everything is interconnected
The relationship of various elements of the world is what makes it reliable on the one hand, and on the other – living. Take for example Dishonored. The world invented by the authors is similar to England from the industrial revolution, only instead of a steam engine, everything is built on the brivani – whale fat, from which people learned to extract electricity.
Therefore, tanks with groovania and mechanisms using this substance, we see everywhere throughout the game. But the most interesting thing is that the widespread whaling fishing affected the culture of the island empire.
Daud bandits living in the flooded quarter hide their faces behind whaling masks that inspire their opponents with horror and serve as a visiting card.
Members of the Gang “Dead Haging”, which is headed by Lizzy Strage, use whale harpoons and sea crimson as a weapon.
Sailors in the world of Dishonored, in order https://froggybet-casino.uk/ to protect themselves from trouble, strict amulets from the whale bone (in Tivia amulets were created from the beams of walruses), which are given by Corvo and Emily various passive abilities. Well, do not forget the cool title theme of Dishonored – the old English sailor song Drunken Sailor, in which the word Sailor (sailor) was replaced with WHALER (Kitoboy). In the course of the game you can hear more than once how a guard or bandits whisting this motive.
In good Immersive Sim, everything is connected with each other. One follows from the other, and the action gives rise to opposition. The spread of magical abilities, the source of which is a stranger (local deity), on the one hand, led to the creation of a gang of Daud and the society of brig Sea witches, and on the other hand, the abbey of the townsfolk and the Order of Oracles – the organization of religious fanatics created specifically to combat the bearers of the abyss. Knowing about the mystical properties of the above -described whale amulets, the abbey caretakers prohibited their manufacture, sale and storage. Therefore, in the game, amulets did not lie on the road, but were well hidden and sold on the black market. Here is an example of how the plot explains the features of the game design. After all, in order to find a rune or amulet, you will have to sweat a lot.
During the rat plague in Danuol, Tollboys appeared – elite guards using huge metal stilts. This allowed them to protect themselves from the flocks of hungry rats, which could well gobble up a person, which the game showed on the example of ordinary soldiers.
As soon as the rat plague ended, the Tollboys disappeared, which can be judged by the conversation of the guards in the second part of Dishonored. One of them admits to a comrade that Tollboy liked him more than the mechanical soldiers of the jindosh, as they inspired people with fear.
The rats themselves in the second part of Dishonored were replaced by cadaveric wasps, which are found in a huge amount on the southern island of Serkonos – the homeland of Corvo Attano. This explains the presence Addermmir Institute, The head of which Alexandria Gipatia tried to find a remedy against the spread of the epidemic of corpse OS, studying their habits and physiology. Studies were also conducted there on the treatment of silver dust, which spreads from mines also located on the Serkonos. The Duke of Luke Abel, trying to replenish the treasury, abused silver prey, as a result of which silver dust spread throughout the island and led a whole quarter to decline. Action – opposition.
And I’m not talking about the fact that in Dishonored the player’s actions directly affect the development of the world, even if this sometimes works according to a rather strange logic. The more the hero kills people, the more plague rats/ corpse OS and weepers/ Guardians of the nest becomes around. This is understandable. But this is why the murder of the Zombie himself is counting as an increase in chaos, when you, on the contrary, are reducing it – then go figure it out.
The hero is in the subject
Another feature of the Sim’s immersion, it seems to me, is that in the works of this genre the hero, as a rule, is not a hit and aware of everything that is happening. Of course, this does not always happen, Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite is an example. But, nevertheless, this is a fairly common phenomenon.
The creators of science fiction and fantasy are very fond of the plot about fellow people, as this makes it possible to explain the features of the local world through the protagonist to the reader/viewer/player, who also does not understand anything and he has to chew everything.
But when the main character is already in the topic, this helps to immerse much better. Corvo Attano from Dishonored, Adam Jensen from Deus Ex, Garrett from Thief, Amanda Ripley from Alien Isolation, Arthur Morgan from RDR2 (did not expect, yes, yes?) – all of them were not torn off from context. All of them are part of this world, which means that the player is also.
Rich background
Rich background is one of the signs of an interesting and thoughtful world, which, as we have already found out, is the cornerstone of the Immersive Sim. In BIOSHOCK, the main events that have given delight and Colombia to their current state remained with brackets.
By the time Jack is delighted, the following events occurred in the underwater city: the opening of Adam, the creation of a scheme of daddy-gestress, the creation of the Fontaine empire, the confrontation of Ryan and Fontaine, the imprisonment of Fontaine, the Civil War of 1958. I will not even talk about the background of Colombia, because I will exhale before it ends.
IN Alien ISOLATION We arrive at the Sevastopol station, when the full of Bedlam reigns there, however, understanding what really happened, we will find out that the Ansidore ship landed on the same planetoid, where Nostromo sat at one time. His crew just also picked up Facehger, and then the infected woman was accepted at the Sevastopol station bypassing quarantine. And all wrap it up ..
Prior to the events of the game, the first contact with Typhon, which came to the Soviet satellite “Raven-1”, created the “Cell” program to study the alien organism, built the “Talos-1” space station (joint project of the USSR and the USA) and the opening of neuromodes took place. And all this is not pronounced to us directly, but shown through audio days, documents and letters of employees. This, by the way, is the following sign of the Immersive Sim.
Submission of the plot through conversations and the environment
I will probably be mistaken if I say that audio recordings, as a way to tell a story, were opened by the creators of Bioshock, but most likely I will be right if I suggest that it was after this game that this tool began to actively use in storoteling. However, not all scriptwriters were able to force the audio days to work for the plot, as Ken Levina’s team did.
The peculiarity of such a presentation of the material is not to inform the player in the forehead what happened to the owner of the diary, but to tell a small story that will perfectly fit into the current context. Having collected a sufficient number of these mini-stories, the player will not only be imbued with a game on an emotional level, but also make a whole picture of previously occurred events. Remember the audio days in Bioshock. There was a tragic story of parents who lost their daughter, and then realized that she became a little sister.
The story of the unfortunate mother, who, through tears, asks Masha to return home and tells her the code from the door, made a huge impression on me. It becomes even stronger when you find these very parents, or rather their corpses – two embraced bodies, a photo of a girl and a handful of pills.
This resembles Hemingway’s shortest story – “Children’s boots are sold. Not worn “. We find only the ending of history, but at the same time we understand everything else from the context.
Each audio day is part of the puzzle, from which the prehistory. And this is amazing.
Scriptwriters Deus Ex Human Revolution They act a little differently. There, all events are reflected in the media. The News television company, which is the local first channel, constantly broadcasts news in which it talks about the consequences of Jensen’s actions or other characters. However, all these messages are carefully edited and smoothed, and serve more for the formation of public opinion than for real coverage of events.
From the “Pikovsky” reports we learn the “official version” about the special forces raid to the Sharif Industize plant captured by terrorists, the construction of the Arctic station “Panhei” and about mass riotes in Detroit.
In contrast to “Picu”, “Lazar” works – the underground radio station of the Deuset Assange, which breaks the covers from the authorities and talks about corporate atrocities and Masonic conspiracies. Listen to “Lazarus” in view of the extremely emotional tone of his programs much more fun than the Pikovsky shower for the brains.
People, people! We are discussing shit dog! Bulloks, as they say in London. Merd, as they say in Paris. Skatt, as they say in Athens. Fufu-kaka, as they say in a fucking Beijing! In all languages of the world the same. I will keep you updated by the latest shitty news.
But here it must be understood that this is not true in its pure form, but the truth, the multiplied theory of conspiracy and paranoia. However, if we consider separately the lies of the “peak” and the apocalyptic speeches of “Lazarus”, it is the second that most often turns out to be closer to the truth. The beauty of such a presentation of the material is that the player can simply take into account both interpretations of events, compare them with what he saw himself, and draw conclusions.
It is also worth mentioning NPC conversations, which, even if they do not tell the player anything new, but create an idea of the world around him. For example, in one of Detroit’s gate, you can hear the dialogue of two inhabitants, one of whom reports that he is thinking of “praping his pitbul”. This information is not something important and does not play any role for the plot, but it allows you to realize the level of technology development. Augmentation in the world of Deus Ex spread so much that they became something ordinary.
In the transition of the metro, the man tells his girlfriend that he is crazy about the leading news “Peak” Eliza Kassan: “Damn, Eliza is so beautiful”. To which a friend reasonably replies that Eliza is so cool just to manipulate fools like you. All this works for the atmosphere and allows you to better understand the world order. If dialogs with plot characters are the first layer of the narrative, then the conversations of NPC, television, radio, advertising are the second. And together they provide immersion in the world of Deus Ex, which ultimately achieves the immersion of Sim.
In Dishonored through the conversations of characters, we are aware of the scale of the world. History throws the protagonist only to the islands of Gristol and Serkonos, but the attentive player knows very well that the islands of Morley and Tivia are also included in the island empire. Tivia is mentioned by killers from the Daud gang when they find Corvo poisoned by the royalists:
On Serkonas, you can hear the guard singing the song: “I loved the girl from Morley, but it quickly took her. I walked with the Gristol I alone, almost said goodbye to my head. “. And the password for a secret shop near the Palace of the Duke of Abel – “Better Serkon wine than a prison in Tivia” with the answer “And Tripper in Gristol is better than giving on Morley”. Thanks to such short scenes, the player can better understand how the island empire is arranged, and how the inhabitants of different islands relate to each other.
Separately, I want to focus on the elements of the environment, which can also tell a lot to the player. In one of the past blogs, I gave an example of a terrible awareness of the situation in the first Bioshock. When the hero first falls into the underwater city, the player immediately sees traces of blood on the floor, as well as posters of the manifestants “Delogy Dead”, “We are not belonging to Ryan”. This makes it clear that there was some kind of rally that grew into a clash. Having risen above, the player notices the scoreboard in the arrival hall of the bathyscaph, which shows that all flights are canceled. That is, something was so serious, which is why the transport system failed or quarantine was introduced. Two elements of the design of the environment told a small story, and at the same time caught up with fear.
In the game Batman Arkham Knight In one of the locations, you can notice the running line, which indicates the current cost of Lexcorp shares – Lex Lutor Corporation. And this little detail immediately gives an idea of the world of the game. You understand that somewhere there is a metropolis in which Superman solves its problems. Although it must be admitted that the worked out world in Batman is rather the merit of not the scriptwriters of the game, but the authors of the DC comics, who have expanded and developed their universe for decades.
Why is Immersiv Sims so few
I think the answer to this question is obvious. First, making such games is incredibly difficult. After all, you need to not only think through the main plot, but also the game world. Look at Dishonored. There, the authors came up with a whole geography with their biomes, history, social structure and form of government. This is comparable to the work of the scriptwriters of the film “Avatar”, who, when creating Pandora, thought out its flora, fauna and even created a full -fledged Na’Vi language in which we can say.
But not everyone has enough talent and patience to do such a colossal job. That is why potentially cool immersion SIM projects eventually turn out to be inoperative.
Here you can remember Mirrors Edge Catalyst 2016. Ask the average player what this is a game about, and he will answer you: “Well, this is shorter about the future, where there are illegal couriers“ running ”who decided to hit the parking lot on the road and defeated a big brother in the face of evil corporate. Everything is so, but there are a couple of nuances.
The Omnistat government brought the people to the handle with its totalitarian regime, as a result of which riots broke out in the country, which led to the collapse of the state into three parts – Omnistat, cascading (place of action of Mirrors Edge Catalyst) and Sabei. Over time, a conglomerate – the union of the largest clans, which once ruined the original omnistat, came to power in Cascady. The conglomerate established exactly the same totalitarian power, and the people again arranged a rebellion, but this time the uprising failed. During the clashes, the parents of the main character Faith Connors died.
Cascadian society became caste. The lowest class of Rabackasta wound a miserable existence in the sulfur lands and consisted mainly of simple hard workers. Middasta, consisting of office plankton, became the middle class. There was no such fierce surveve as in a rabbast, but Middastovtsy also did not live a full -fledged life. The top of the society was occupied by rich from Topkasta, who simply reaped the fruits of the other two classes. And although official propaganda said that the transition between castes is possible if it was hard to work, in fact there was no social elevators in a cascading society.
To combat the conglomerate, “running” and “black November” were created. And if the former were simply engaged in illegal courier services, then the latter were pure terrorists who “exploded shopping centers“ for the liberation of the people ”. It is also funny that in the game “Black November” is depicted as “correct radicals”. Well, that is, yes, they explode innocent people, but these are the rebels, they are fighting for a just cause – Viva La Rubstand and all that. And the name at the same time unequivocally refers to the actual Palestinian terrorist group “Black September”, which arranged a massacre during the Olympics in Munich in 1972. Who cares, read Wikipedia and watch the film “Munich”, he is cool.
Everything that I have now listed, you most likely will not notice in Mirrors Edge Catalyst, because part of the plot, smart heads from Dice decided to push into a comic book that was read one and a half somersault, and some were so mediocre in the plot that the story simply collapsed into parts. That is, most likely all these names and names will be delayed in your head, but the whole picture is unlikely to form. And it turns out that the Mirrors Edge Catalyst is the Immersive Sim by all signs. There is a rich background, some kind of world, audio days, but none of this works.
The second reason for the gradual extinction of the Sims immersion is that the players themselves have changed. In order to study the world for hours, read notes, listen to dialogs, you need perseverance and attentiveness. Players who want an hour to run into “Fordnite” and that there is a puff-drunk around, they simply will not waste time on immersion, considering it boredom. All this makes immersive games extremely risky projects from the point of view of business. So it was with Alien ISOLATION, so it was with PREY, it was with Bioshock Infinite, which, although it contained a “pylon-drunk” in a fair amount, but still did not impress the publisher and forced Levin to dissolve the team. Perhaps over time, when the current gaming generation grows up, and endless games-services will tire, people will begin to yearn again around the living worlds. In the meantime, we can believe in the best, wait for Half Life 3 and again recall our favorite games.
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