Immersion breaking

For lack of a better buzzword, what breaks the "immersion" in games for you?
For me it's
(somehow I accept that all 2D games are just a bunch of images but it bugs me when it's an image painted onto a 3D environment)

Item decay is a cancer.

Wow, you must have huge problems immersing yourself in the world of many old games.
Considering some of the best games ever made are old, you must be constantly miserable.

Autistic

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I like all of the games I've posted there but those things in them bug the hell out of me. I can settle into it though.

An autist on Holla Forums? Never.

Also this bullshit right here.
I just hate seeing behind the curtain in a game.
I could be wrong but I don't think it ever happens in any 2D game.

Im ok with walled off areas. You can still get immersed on these, or cliffs. But when you can clearly see somewhere with the path clean, and the game just stops you, that ruins the immersion. In the old days it also was that during tank controls, instead of rotating while moving the legs, the character would just spin like a store product. Or worst yet. walk in place like in Resident evil.

I remember a game called In Cold blood. it had similar controls to resident evil.
It really made the difference that the character made the proper feet movement while rotating his body in place.

First is a nitpick. Especially on a fucking turn based strategy game.
Second is hard to note when playing on a DS, more of a problem with emulators then anything.
Third is Technical Limitations, shouldn't need to say anythimg more.

C'mon OP, atleast give us a good example of breaking our immersion like

Nigger that's a unintentional glitch due to incompetent developers, OF COURSE IT'S GOING TO BREAK YOUR IMMERSION. This thread is clearly about intentional but still immersion breaking shit. Unless you mean: Pan the camera the right way and you can see inside the model but still see the eyes and teeth then yeah it's kind of a thing but c'mon. /autism

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Achievement pop-ups.

Why did achievements ever catch on as a thing? It's sad that nowadays they feel like one of the less cancerous shit in this industry.

Do game devs base their worlds off a fucking picture without any knowledge of how shit works?

The character animation was like bad stop motion but I motherfucking loved that game.
Also fuck invisible borders.


I'm playing DQ9 on 3DS and maybe it's the bigger screen, maybe a low res game on a better res system but the painted backgrounds are very very noticeable.
Nope. Some games at the time had characters with animated sprite mouths. Tenchu 2 comes to mind as an example. I also remember noticing at the time that the graphics of MGS1 were particularly bad.

Yeah I actually did mean when you pan the camera and see inside the model but I couldn't think of how to phrase it for google.

What game?

Why do they just not prevent the dome from casting shadows?

Yeah but it's worse in motion with the panning camera. You can really see that you're looking at a cardboard backdrop

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immersion isn't real.

FUCKING THIS.

Does anyone actually enjoy this mechanic? The only reason it exists is to pad the length of a game with meaningless busywork.

Depends if the game has actually worked the mechanic into its design. Try playing Shadow Tower.

This entire game, from the fucking bear to the ending. Especially the ending. It might've not even had a sense of atmosphere for any kind of immersion to set in because it is a visual novel, but still.

This was going to be a darker and grittier game possibly with one tone throughout the game instead of a jumbled mess of PSA bullshit and drama. Then corporate stepped in and canned the original project because they needed the mainstream audience.

Well they're not going to be IN the game I'd hope,


Not just busy work but needless frustration too.

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References to real world politics. Fuck the kind of developers that think their rhetoric will convert anyone to their thinking and not just annoy them.

Examples?

It would be nice if the character telling you all this is considered insane by everyone else, and looks it to.

I too would also like to see examples.
But when its lefties injecting politics into their productions there's usually the presumption that everyone agrees with them and they think they're making a joke or a statement that everyone is going to lap up.

Fuck those people.

It works in Fire Emblem, faggot

- bugs/glitches
- fourth wall stuff (though fun, it's weird for me when smash bros. characters slam into the screen)
- product placement
- shit annoying UI
- quick time events
- pic related

I don't mind cut scenes, but there's a limit.

Agreed, sort of. see: egoraptor video on megaman
I liked Don't Starve for throwing you in with nothing but the UI. However, it lost its charm when i went from trial-and-error frustration to forums-and-wikis for hidden stats, etc.

Can non-action games go without tutorials? Or do we just find fault when things like an NPC saying "press x to save your game so you won't lose your progress"?

in baldur's gate at least it was part of the lore (the iron was "poisoned" and rotten, and this is a huge story element)

Why put fucking allies in, then?

Noticeable loop points in music fuck everything up.

Companion AI who is "invisible" to the AI

TLOU is an example, although criticizing that aspect of TLOU is like criticizing the rim design on a burning truck full of propane tanks.

companion AI character who is invisible to the enemies*

pls no bully

Fire Emblem sucks.


Fallout: New Vegas needed that to balance the new loot system. In FO1/2, very few characters drop armor. Still you end up with enough guns to arm an entire army.


Fuck you man.

So Ryu beating the shit out of duck hunt dog with a giant flower rod is totally immersive, but you draw the line at characters flying into the screen?
please don't.

I don't think it's a dynamic shadow. It's part of the background texture.

It just doesn't match well with the floor.

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It looks like a hill in the background, not a shadow.

Tutorials are fine in the form of quick tips when playing an RPG with a convoluted system.
The Megaman tutorials were total bullshit. Do as any kid does and just press all the buttons. The only thing I'd like a heads up about is which button uses my grenades / screen clearing bombs / limited resources.

For some reason, I like the diorama thing.

Even worse than that:

Calm down, you'll wear it out.

It's often a mercy that the companion is invisible to the enemy since 99% of the time companions are fucking retards who would blow your cover.

Why do people make it sound like immersion only means self inserting into the game? If a game requires my full attention to play, I'm immersed. Usually happens with any difficult game like fighters or shmup.


If done right. It keeps you from using powerful equipment for too long or use certain items in certain situations. Powerful equipment has little uses. More practical weapons have many uses but aren't great. It could also be used to keep you from progressing too fast. Many games just have it without any thought put into it making it tedious and pointless.

It worked fine in OWH

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I swear nothing triggers my autism like that

wew, I can't believe I didn't think of that I chimp out so fucking hard every time.

Reminds me of some escort missions in Advance wars where you had to protect some AI controlled units against the enemy. I remember several times that the ally AI had like one recon left, and it decided that the best course of action was to pit it against a tank.

When the UI is some default unity looking thing; like transparent grey boxes with white Arial text even when the game is set in Medieval times and would benefit from some fucking effort.

Fuck that fucking bullshit!
To make matters worse

Steam greenlight programmers usually have no artistic or graphic design skills.

Also that shit plain skinny font you see in JRPGs and Souls games.

What font would that be?

Or when you choose a dialogue option and your character doesn't actually say the line that's selected, just some rough approximation or randomly punches a reporter because terrible writing


It's literally designed to get you addicted. Fucking games have psychologists using them as experiments and fine tuning them to make them more addictive. XP systems and achievements are just new forms of skinner boxes.


Item decay works if it's done well. 90% of the time it isn't. If it's a survival game and you're supposed to be careful about what you take with you and you have limited inventory space and stuff, simply relying on a sharp item to hack and slash the environment and the enemies with an edge that never dulls isn't really in the spirit of it.

The worst irritation for me is inconsistent level design. Like you're an immortal undead warrior who can slay gods, but you can't climb rubble behind the Winter Shrine. Or Uncharted, which is so inconsistent with Drake's abilities that the game just decides whether you can jump or fall that distance on a completely arbitrary basis. Naughty Dog games are fucking trash.

I think the thing that's always bugged me the most in RPGs is enemies scaling to match your level and equipment as the game goes on. If you're never supposed to become that much more powerful than the bandits and highwaymen, why are you even allowed to level up at all?

level scaling has almost always been a fucking poor substitute for actual storytelling. the only game i can think of that it doesn't ruin is wizardry 8

A game itself isn't immersion breaking user.

So basically you're all saying it should never exist.

Yeah, no.

kek

Why is that a problem? How are they incongruous with a fantasy world?
Or you simply just don't like them?