I love The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
It's one of my favourite games of all time. Specifically on PC. What makes Skyrim so special is how unabashedly moddable it is. You can practically change anything in the game, it's so robust that it's almost become a game engine of its own.
But one thing that Skyrim players often go to absurd lengths to protect is their immersion. And if you look on Nexus you'll see some truly unnecessary mods. There was one that actually crashed my game from the strain it put my PC under just to simulate flocks of birds.
All in the name of immersion.
Immersion in a game is kind of a strange thing. When people talk about something breaking their immersion, they usually mean that they've seen or heard something that took them out of the experience. Sort of like a wrestler breaking kayfabe. The game isn't supposed to acknowledge that it is a game. The NPCs shouldn't do things that are inhuman and uncanny.
Keep the mask on.
When I was in school we did film study. I remember there was a kid in the back who would yell and interrupt the film every few minutes, until the teacher eventually go fed up, paused the film, went to the whiteboard and wrote in big black letters
SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF
Where that line is for everyone is going to be different. For some it's not seeing hanging signs in Skyrim sway realistically in the breeze. Other people can interpret the 16x16 sprites of an NES game as full living breathing world.
There's something that stuck with me. I remember MovieBob saying it but I don't think he's the first, that's where I heard it first though.
"Are you guys sure you don't mean engagement?"
It's a lot harder to suspend your disbelief when you're staring at signs instead of doing something engaging. You know why you don't ask worldbuilding questions about the mushroom kingdom? There's a goomba coming to kill you, you do not have the time. Get running. The clock is ticking down.
I have a feeling that modern games are all trying so hard to make complex simulations of real life that we've confused the quality of the simulation with the quality of the game. What pedestrians do in Grand Theft Auto, what the other drivers on the road do in Watch Dogs, whatever the moon logic was behind the swordplay in Kingdom Come Deliverance, seriously, what is with the game's combat, why did we bring back Daggerfall's worst feature?
Games are about play. Or at least, they are to me. It is about being playful, it is about playing. Some argue that games don't need to be fun, and I think there are some games that can make an interesting point or be a worthwhile experience by being deliberately unenjoyable, at least for certain stretches.
But it'd really suck if that was every game, or even a majority of games.
I'm not worried about my immersion. Suspension of Disbelief comes easy to me. And it's not stuff like janky AI or broken physics that do it, one of my favourite games is Skyrim. It's usually stuff like bad character writing, people making decisions that don't make a lick of sense. Why can't I send the radiation proof super mutant to go and flip the switch in the big radiation tank, Bethesda? Why must I, a regular wastelander who is very much not immune to radiation, go into that room and die? He's my friend, he'd do it if I ask, it's no inconvenience to him.
I think a lot of people would actually agree. Just make s fun game. We'll figure out our immersion later. And if it's that much of a problem, well...
There's always Nexus.
