Fighting games are hereafter known as “236-likes”
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That player interaction is fully in-world, quite happy to let you explore and cover ground already travelled, and enemies that, while immortal, can be approached in different ways? I will admit to being not as versed in this one in particular; I haven’t played it directly and watched the speedrun during SGDQ this year. I may have mistook it for one: it’s hard to follow what actually is in the “Berlin” interpretation of immersive sim. :V
its all just linear advenure game design in Soma plus immortal avoid em up monsters that were so tedious that the devs patched a ‘you can ignore them’ mode into the game.
System Shock 2 has been sucked
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I’m more astonished that Subnautica didn’t get called out for inclusion in that list. The only way it feels like an immersive sim is that you’re literally immersed in water. It is in no way an inheritor of the Thief/Deus Ex/System Shock legacies.
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Yeah it’s clearly a Minecraft descendant.
Although there is a kinship between immersive sims and Minecraft descendants: and that kinship is simulationism.
I think the tell is that SOMA isn’t interested in the world beyond dressing; there aren’t many objects to interact with, nor are there NPCs to disrupt through varied interaction. It’s proscribed solutions and limited interactivity, to support pacing a more controlled pacing and horror.
I normally call Alien: Isolation strictly a AAA interpretation of Amnesia, which has proven to be the most influential horror game since Resident Evil, but it definitely added a lot more environmental interaction and storytelling through epistles. But I think it’s still firmly planted in horror descended from adventure game, as it’s not interested in letting the player express themselves and experiment within the space.
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So why are we discussing what sounds like a broad genre, except that it’s only Looking Glass/Arkane dev-driven because every other example brought up has been dismissed as not part of it?
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I like to call it a micro-genre; it’s very distinct but it’s like a game tossed back and forth among a small group of people.
Even some of the best-known indie stuff that brances off it – Fullbright Games & Gone Home, Minor Key Games’ Eldritch and Neon Struct – turn out to be descendants of the Looking Glass tradition (or in these cases, BioShock 2’s 2K Australia!).
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Sorry, I got distracted by the possibility of “immersive” puns in regard to games about swimming and let that particular current carry me to a contrarian position I don’t really support.
I guess I’m curious what it is about the 4 and a half or so games you listed stand out most that brought you to include them in the discussion? I actually prefer the notion that we don’t consider this a rigidly defined genre, so I’d like to hear which elements you’d consider important versus which we can disregard.
I actually think Subnautica is more an 0451 than Soma! Its a linear adventure game with open ended area design where player knowledge/skill and character rpg stuff are intimately tied together
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To spitball a bit on how I would define the micro-genre, any game pre-occupied with a simulationy approach to its environment veers closer to 0451.
Soma, as was mentioned before, cares a lot about the visual fidelity of its environments but the interactions are limited to door opening (to the point that the narrative jokes about this, with the protagonist referring to the multitool he picks up as a ‘door opener’ well after its clear that it is narratively much more than just a door opener)
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I think that’s kind of what annoys me about all of this. Like it has become this micro genre, based on a very specific template set out by bioshock, and I feel like every iteration of this completely glosses over what is actually good about system shock 2.
I wasn’t kidding about Way of the Samurai 4 as immersive sim. Fits that odd Looking Glass legacy of having important named characters doing story things while other people named stuff like “Vicious Thug” come up and menace you for a dollar. Someone can get punched out during casual dialogue. Full of weird little systems intended to convey one specific mood and then disappear for all except the most devoted.
The genre is more than 0451-likes. It’s not the specific codified *Shock style that makes an immersive sim to me. You can transplant all sorts of weird mechanics into the same basic structure.
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I’ve only played the first; is 4 your touchpoint or do you know if it’s different than earlier entries?
The first is really interesting but it makes me want to place it in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure genre, which I suppose, in its full flowering, becomes the time loop genre: Majora’s Mask, Outer Wilds, 12 Minutes, …Way of the Samurai?
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anyway I’m just past the shodan reveal and I still don’t feel any worse about the game. it’s gotten “easier” but not any less tense. I feel like I’m constantly having to work to maintain enough resources to surive and I still feel very fragile and die easily to many enemies. it’s definitely possible (and ideal) to run around wrenching most enemies but they do throw you in situations where you need to be able to run and gun or manage multiple enemy types at once and you can’t just rely on melee attacks during those situations.
there are areas where the regenerator is central enough to what you’re trying to accomplish to where it’s practical to just spam respawning till you can power your way through, but, often you have to retread enough to where it’s a substantial resource drain (especially because enemies respawn) so it never really feels broken to me.
and I think there are just peculiar ways about how the game tells its story and drops hints about the big plot twist that are just very well executed.
the game certainly has a lot of jank and tedium and annoying parts but I just think despite all that it is accomplishing something very special and for me at least it has not ceased being very compelling.
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but maybe I just like it because the sound design is so good idk
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I definitely count Way of the Samurai 1 and Gone Home as particular extremes of the 0451 like (and my preference is for WotS 1)
Way of the Samurai is a particular (and coincidental) expression of Spector’s One City Block
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if we’re gonna go down this route I lowkey feel like megaman legends is an immersive sim too
like it’s basically blue sky anime deus ex imo.
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I’ll have to think about that more, Way of the Samurai is good stuff but I’m having trouble unlinking it from Outer Wilds right now