Non-linear RPG-esq FPS's

I really like Dark Messiah but I wouldn't call it an immersive sim (not even dishonored really). The majority of the game is on rails. I might give Arx another shot though, eventually. It felt extremely clunky the first time I tried it and I wasn't in the mood to adapt.

does it need mods or vanilla is fine?

Would Crysis be considered an Immersive Sim? It allows you to do missions however you feel like and allows you to customize both your suit and guns on the fly.

Boiling Point: Road to Hell and it's sequel, White Gold. They're very similar to Deus Ex, but much more expansive and open ended. It's the most sandbox FPS game in existence that isn't Fallout.

Precursors, similar game with the same engine but set in space.

Prey is System Shock 2 with better graphics and combat.

Fallout 4

Crysis is more similar to Far Cry 1 in term of freedom. They're just linear FPS games but without the railroading. The Delta Force series, Terminator Future Shock, and some other old FPS games have more open ended mission design.

Fallout 4 is linear for the story missions, and the overworld outside of the story missions is pretty shallow. Sure, after you go past some checkpoints in the story or go down one of the four branches, the overworld may get a new batch of paint but it's still the same.

Good stuff, love that you can just kill everyone in the game and still beat it.

Arx libertatis sourceport, use nightly build, not latest proper release.

as the other user mentioned, use arx libertatis. Keep in mind that the magic system involves drawing runes and the detection seems to be really wonky on modern systems. I think if you try to get the angle right it works a bit better. Magic is super powerful so it's worth wrangling with a bit.

Fallout 4 should not be put in the same sentence as nuPrey or any of the above mention games in the OP. It's barely an RPG, and it's a shitty "immersive sim" and Fallout game.

alright, any trustworthy place to download it?

Like any other RPG games of this type.

Do you do anything else than shooting in Crysis either? At least now there's more to loot.

So are Dude Sex and STALKER.

So is STALKER. FO4 even puts less emphasis on immersion because there's always a reason to visit unmarked places which is to loot upgrade items and find unique weapons.

Arx Libertatis? The official website maybe?
arx-libertatis.org/

I was asking for the vanilla game, I thought you needed the game to play arx libertaris

You do, for the art assets.

If you read the page there's a link in the third fucking paragraph telling you where you can get it. Get it from gog.

Check out the Ultima Underworld games OP.

Stalker is by far one of the most immersive games I've ever played, and you kind of admit FO4 lacks on the immersive part of "immersive sim"
I haven't played 4 but I've played other nuBethRPGS, which gives me a pretty good idea of how 4 will turn out. The distinct difference between BethRPGs and Stalker (and every other immersive sim) is every location in stalker feels like it was hand tailored, where as the vast majority of locations in BethRPGs seem like they've been made from a pool of assets you've seen 100 times already while sprinkling in a few unique locations (usually around plot important areas so the player is more likely to stumble upon them). They have other tricks like this, such as giving a generic dungeon a quest, to make the world feel more alive than it actually is, but for me personally the game always feels dead and hollow.

It's funny you mention unique items and weapons In stalker unique items are extremely rare and usually held onto by important or high ranking enemies, they also can't be repaired giving a stronger feeling of value. However if you look at a BethRPG there are unique items all over the place, always statswaps, unless it's a major quest like a Daedric quest in nu-Elder Scrolls

that was the point of the post. nothing defines them. they are all different yet classified under the same genre. dark messiah is a world apart from system shock and precursors is nothing like nuprey. The genre is illegitimate.

Don't consider it a genre but rather a philosophy how to develop a video game.

A "normal" game often feels very video game'ish in the sense that there's these obstacles like a locked door or a laser beam and the only way to go through them is by finding a switch or a key. Any other way get around them would be considered a glitch. Some doors are unbreakable, some aren't, some doors are just there as decoration.

A game developed to be an "immersive sim" sets out certain rules how the world functions like for every door in the game there must be a key somewhere. Every security cam must be connected to a computer and that computer can be used to control it. Every electric equipment such as security cam, laser beam or even certain types of doors must be powered with electricity and that if the electricity is cut off they won't function. When a game is designed this way, there's no longer just one way to get around certain obstacles but rather it's up to the player to come up with a solution according to the rules of the game. This way the game will feel more "immersive" rather than video game'ish.

So games of different genres can follow the same "immersive sim" philosophy.

I mean you get to choose your ending movie, yeah, but come on.

He probably means inside each level. In a few of them like the Hong Kong hub you're pretty free to fuck around and get reprimanded for entering the girls' restroom.

Everything is talking about is summarized in DX1's documentation, OP, if you're interested in reading about the genre philosophy.

Holla Forums will put nu- in the title of anything, so take it with a grain of salt. The game is fine outside of the abysmal pacing and paper-thin balance, if you end up getting into immersive simulation it's worth a look.

...

There's always going to be some autist nitpicking random shit. It's why I put RPG-esq in to because I didn't want people to bitch about calling stalker an RPG.

The only thing that is really keeping me at bay is it's made by Arkane and I really did not like Dishonored. I don't think they're the same studio who made Dark Messiah or Arx Fatalis.

FO4's interiors feel more handcrafted than STALKER's interiors tbh. I'm not trying to defend FO4, but haven't you seen what building interiors in STALKER look like? FO4 is nowhere as copypasted as FO3 and Oblivion anyway, every zone and ruin has it's own unique looks and even easter eggs that tell a story, they actually improved on that regard.

Actually, FO4 had too few unique items compared to other Beth titles. They're also pretty crappy compared to the self-customized weapons, they're only for those who are too lazy to upgrade their arsenal. They're pretty useless, and I hate that.

Are you too stupid to install Zone Reclamation Guide?

...

I've played nuPrey and I would tell you it isn't worth the time spent on it. I suppose it potentially could be, so you can go ahead and pirate if you really want to find out, but it's definitely not worth money and in my opinion not fucking worth your time. Enemies are dull and boring, combat simply does not feel satisfying at all, and it wasn't much fun to play. There's some limited entertainment value there but again, it's not worth the time investment. I eventually got so tired of the tedium that I uninstalled it shortly before the end of the game, because I could simply no longer give a fuck. It is definitely not something I would label as "game is fine."

also
the fuck? are you implying nuprey has anything to do with simulation? the fuck am I reading?

ZRP isn't a mod, it's a fix, and it's essential even for the first playthrough.

People never praised nuprey for the enemy design or the combat. They like it for being open ended and having depth in the customization, just like System Shock 2. SS2's combat was awful either.

If you hadn't uninstalled it right before the end you would understand how funny that sentence is. Even aside from that, are you familiar with what the term "immersive simulation" is supposed to mean? It doesn't have anything to do with what the word "simulator" means for any other genre.

Arkane self-describes it that way and it's called as such practically anywhere you could read about it, it's not like it's some weird descriptor I'm personally ascribing to it

Yeah, except there was never any repairing in SoC, which suggests to me you enabled extra features.

How does Daggerfall compare to Arx? I really like how rudimentary items like rope, sticks and bottles are incredibly useful in Arx. I noticed Elder Scrolls games usually are full of useless crap, but I never touched daggerfall which I hear is the peak of the series in terms of complexity.

Didn't mean to sage.

Bullshit, Screw from Freedom was intended by the devs to be able to repair your stuff, but that thing didn't make it to the final release.

So you modded it in.

It also doesn't mean what "immersive" is supposed to mean either.

SoC would be the least linear of the three, the other two are mostly as you described not that there's anything wrong with that.

There's no repairing by merchants in vanilla SoC, you can repair armour by stacking enough artefacts to get over 100% resistance to something and standing in it (e.g. 130% resistance to electro anomalies and standing in one to heal yourself and fix armour).
ZRP optionally allows you to re-enable repairing where the devs half-finished that option but it won't do that by default.

Immersive Sim is a worthless term used mostly by journalists to associate modern shit like Dishonored, Bioshock and nuPrey with much better games and blur the lines between genres. It gets applied to games from too many genres (everything from stealth through fps-rpg) to mean anything other than 'first person game with a basic level/stats system that I really like'.

Everything is an Immersive Sim if somebody likes it enough.

You're not wrong. The jist I got was a first-person game where you can wander around freely doing quests in areas you pass through while doing the main story. Deus Ex's Hong Kong/New York, Bloodlines Santa Monica/Hollywood/Every Hub, Most of the major locations in Stalker. Then people started pulling games in that have nothing to do with this (Thief, Dark Messiah).

Immersive sim was a term first coined by warren spector for ultima underworld and system shock 1.

Warren Spector is a retard, there's a reason the EMP cheat in DX is named after him. Taking his word as anything is falling into the common trap of assuming a single developer has huge influence on a game when normally it's a team effort.
You can cover 90% of the games claimed as immersive simulator with the term FPS-RPG or FPS-aRPG a being action here with the remaining 10% being modern FPS or Action-Adventure games with basic unlock systems that some pretentious journalist wants to link to the classics.
Thief is of course neither: it's a great stealth game (arguably the first true 3D stealth game) but the mere fact it's in first person and shares a few developers with later games means fuck all for it being an 'immersive simulator'.

Thief and DMoMM are mostly added due to people focussing overly on the studios who made them.

Because classifying these games as role-playing games isn't opening another autistic can of worms?

im not disagreeing im just saying
is not true, its an old term.

Deus Ex and VTM:B are quite clearly RPGs.
STALKER is an Action-RPG, granted that's a tad more controversial but really it has all of the elements the distinction between the two is RPG being more reliant on a character's stats and Action-RPG on player skill.
All three happen to also be in first person and indeed are shooters, thus FPS-RPG and FPS-aRPG.

I'm not aware of any uses of it other than Spector himself back around 2000 and then being adopted by said pretentious journalists a good few years later. The way it's used is heavily reminiscent of the 'Far Cry 2 is a misunderstood masterpiece' nonsense.

Couldn't go with RPG because people will nitpick that Stalker isn't an RPG while also being vague enough to include Skyrim (giant random generated game) and Dark Messiah (On rails linear, no questing)
Couldn't go with non-linear because people will bitch that all those games are linear, but couldn't make the distinction bewteen HL2/Dark Messiah linear and being able to go from hub world to hub world doing missions
Discover there is a term for this type of thing, but it's still so fucking vague that you could include virtually any game in it.

Kinda realized it would go this way but I was desperate for another game like the 3 I mentioned. I'm trying Arx. It's interesting, fun and addictive, but doesn't scratch the same itch. You basically are on the same main quest the entire game with an occasional side quest popping up, with the main drive being exploring for the sake of exploration. Not saying that's bad though.

Also hold up: some people consider Oblivion to be an immersive simulator?

FC2 is pretty fucking good if you get use to its quirks (like foilage being useless). It's my go-to game for when I want to sneak around with a silenced pistol taking people out or fucking around with the mortar. The level design for each area (except the checkpoints, but even a few of them) is excellent.

Bloodlines is in the running for immersive sim? I don't think I've ever heard that one. I have heard it for Arx Fatalis, and that's pretty clearly an RPG. Classifying S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as an RPG is controversial enough, but I was specifically talking about rpgcodex-tier autism around the term.
Don't see why we couldn't just leave it at the phrase "All genres are bullshit, but some genres are more bullshit than others". I don't think it's a meaningless term at all if it's an explicitly stated developer intention, but sure, it's overprescribed.

Not strictly the same thing, but I would recommend Hitman.
There's also Pathologic if you want some prime slavjank.

Like i said earlier, it was used to describe the first system shock (1994) if you think about the type of games released then it kinda does make sense but nowadays, any game with a first person perspective could be considered an immersive sim

archive.is/tpJX6

Far Cry 2 has gigantic but empty open world, constant driving, the meme-checkpoints, terrible gunplay, retarded degradation mechanics that combined with the unlock system turn it into a grindfest and cheating AI that ruins the stealth (foliage being apparently transparent as you mention and the whole 'one fag has seen you now they all have' nonsense). Things like the mortar were a cool idea but the hard 'each slot is only for one category of weapon' system meant you rarely took interesting guns out. I do hear there are mods to fix a lot of the above but you're still stuck in a repetitive grindfest of a game.
It should have done what Crysis and Far Cry 1 did and give you miniature open worlds for each mission.

You wouldn't believe what people try and stick into the term but VTM:B is pretty much in every immersive sim.
please use archive.is/immersive-sim/3015-5700/games/
archive.is/pcd6K
Well yes, RPGcodex has some issues in that respect.
Because most genres are well-defined while immersive sim is just a gut-feeling term that boils down to 'thing I like that's in first person'. It's worse even than roguelite: roguelite is a handful gameplay elements (procedural generation and permadeath) that can apply to almost any genre and not a genre in and of itself but it is at least consistent. Note: roguelike is however a genre.
While we're on the subject open world is also a gameplay element and not a genre.

Have you got a source on it? I'm pretty sure Spector made it up in 2000 or 2001 (post-Deus Ex) and applied it retroactively. Not calling you a liar or anything I just genuinely am not sure of the exact origin.
Well yes, they'd mostly be FPS-RPGs. Given that FPS was itself a new genre at the time it's easy to see why there'd be confusion.

archive.is/0Swjl
Page 2 of that second archive link.

I dont have a source, I played and finished both system shock games for the first time last year and was so impressed by how well they held up I went on an autistic journey reading and watching every interview I could find concerning the games' developments. Thats where I first heard the term immersive sim used.

Well the term is certainly used for them, it's just that the origin of the term (apparently) was a bit later and it was applied retroactively.

Stealth was wonky but it worked and the silenced pistol was near sniper accurate so whatever the gunplay complaints are (it honestly feels almost identical to stalkers) they don't interfere with stealth since a headshot is always a 1shot kill. The level design was basically perfect for stealth minus most of the checkpoints to.

Farcry 2 has a lot of things that don't get noticed. Such as if enemy AI knows you're there they will hide until you come out, which makes players complain that the enemies respawn while you're still in the area when in reality they're hiding. Snipers have no laser so they can see you from draw-distance; I doubt most people complaining about stealth figure out where the snipers are and make sure to sprint to a safe location when it's not staring directly at you. Hell I bet some people don't even wait till night time to do stealth, which makes it significantly easier.

That being said it still has 2 really bad issues. Enemy AI is a hivemind, meaning if one knows where you are they all know where you are. Even if one see's you for a split second and you shoot him before he says anything (I remember I got flack for complaining about this in a stealth thread on here but didn't mention the game name. This is aids and FC2 isn't the only game that does this) Sometimes you can be seen and sneak away still. It's iffy. Really the best way to play is not to be seen at all. Foilage I don't even really care about. If you learn how to stealth in this game you kind of tune it out and gravitate towards hard cover like walls.

That being said I basically only play it for the stealth in mission areas such as the airport, cattlefarm, oil rig, etc. The other African simulation crap is just a meme and the checkpoints are obnoxious. Still it's one of the better stealth experiences I've ever had, but like I said you have to git gud

Fag the FAL is a fucking peashooter.

I think all guns 1shot on a headshot.

Shit, MGSV has a terrible case of this. One enemy yells and all the alarms go off and everyone starts shooting at you. You legit sometimes can't go to some areas without every enemy around you getting alerted.

In FC2 the enemy doesn't even have to yell. You can shoot him before he even makes a sound, but he telepathically alerts everyone in the area.

Fuck off with that retarded term.
Back to >>>/reddit/ with your shit taste

Wrong, he used it first for Deus Ex in a Gamasutra interview.

Then don't run your mouth like a nigger.

In MGSV you have maybe half a second before all the alarms go off. And this is a game where you get rewarded for stealth. I don't even remember MGS3 being that bad.