AAA Illusion: Working to Create an Immersive Experience

It feels like all I do these days at the start of these posts is apologize…so I’m going to stop doing it.  Time’s going to pass, but I hope I don’t abandon this blog, because I think it is important.  With that said, let’s get right into it.

            On my last post, a friend commented on my discussion of games and limitations.  While they could understand my perspective and how limitations were important, they offered an interesting counter-argument and asked that I explore it.  The idea being that, as limitations became fewer and games became more powerful, they could create an immersive experience through far more advanced smoke and mirrors.  Using illusion, the game designers were able to craft an experience that was far more engaging than in previous gaming generations, where people could literally get lost in the game worlds.

If you want to craft an immersive game world, you can't rely on futuristic visors.  You need to rely on smart design choices.

            Appropriate examples of this were games like Skyrim, Dark Souls, or Half-Life 2, which offered rich, engrossing worlds that tried to make the player feel as if they were part of them.  As if they were real.  However, my friend also asked me to comment on one important aspect of these illusions.  They seldom ever hold up.  You see, for all the power of modern gaming, people still like to take short cuts or they make bad design decisions, or they just can’t check games as well as they should.  And this hurts the illusion they’re trying to sell and overall, the experience of the game.

            Two perfect examples of this are the Grand Theft Auto games and the Silent Hill games.  While Silent Hill has always benefited from limited graphics, making monsters more unnerving and the environments more haunting, they can be incredibly frustrating for not selling their illusion.  In almost every Silent Hill game, a good 70-80% of all doors you see will be locked and unable to enter.  Now, this might make sense if it’s late at night and you’re in an office building or what have you…but if the buildings are abandoned or part of some demonic other world, why even put the doors there if they’re just going to be locked?  It’s like teasing the players with worlds they could explore, but can’t because the designers got lazy or ran out of money.

The floor plan for the apartment building in Silent Hill 2.  Note the obscene amount of X'ed out entrances.

            Likewise, in Grand Theft Auto, there are so many places people can go and things they can do, offering an illusion of real freedom, but the least explored part of the game?  The inside of buildings.  So much work is put into making the city look and feel alive however players see so many office buildings, shopping centers, car dealers, etc. and they can approach them on the outside, but often, they can’t go inside.  Same with Prototype or Infamous…there are so many places to explore outside, but the use of a door is a mystery to the main character.  And herein lies a big problem for modern gaming.  They are making design choices that simply aren’t immersive for the purpose of aesthetic value.  In a Silent Hill game, everything is tense because of all the doors and the dread of what could lurk behind them.  And in a GTA game, the city would look weird if it was just a whole bunch of walls with no doors.  Aesthetically, they aid the game’s atmosphere and overall look, however, they also hurt the illusion of a real world the game is trying to make.

Hey, hey!  See all those buildings?  Those windows?  Those doors?  Yeah...you're not allowed into those.

            To further demonstrate this idea, I want to look at three current generation games.  Skyrim, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Dark Souls.  The first two attempt to create a truly immersive world, but fail for relatively simple reasons, while the third actually manages to create a world that feels alive.  Starting off, Skyrim.  While one could argue about the aesthetic quality of the menus in the game, the user interface, character creation, and various abilities that the game allows players to indulge in, such as smithing, tanning, or alchemy, give it a feeling of freedom, as if the players are in total control of their destiny.  They can go anywhere and do anything.  However, Skyrim, big as it is, has limits.  And those limits tend to be invisible walls.  Skyrim is a game that suffers from the developers simply creating a box and saying, “You can’t go past here, even if you can see past it.”  Forests or mountains will simply have a wall where players cannot move past, even though they can see past it.  This happens far too often in sand box games.  Some can circumvent it, but when people simply choose to indulge in invisible walls, it greatly hurts the immersion.  And the many bugs, while amusing, also hurt the game’s realistic feel.  Seeing a dragon flying upside down or a mammoth floating in mid air might be fun the first time, but if it keeps happening, players will just continually be reminded that they are in a game…not in Skyrim.

Do I even need to say anything?  "You cannot go that way."  Really?!  Tcch...lazy invisible walls

  Xenoblade Chronicles, ironically, fails for almost completely opposite reasons.  It creates a lush, beautiful world for players to explore with tons of details, such as a giant, looming in the background that players will actually get to climb on.  And, more importantly, no invisible walls.  Players can jump, run, and swim nearly anywhere they can see.  Sometimes those jumps will be too much for them and the fall will kill them, but the point is, if their hit points are high enough, they can literally go anywhere.  The environments allow a true freedom of exploration that is free of bugs.  However, where the game fails is in the combat.  While the overall aesthetic is impressive, as character appearance changes with different armor and there are no random encounters, the gameplay is built like a faux MMORPG, which forces players to auto attack, rely on computer controlled AI, and spam their skills without really feeling in control of their character or their party.  The combat makes players very much aware that they are playing a game and this is heartbreaking.  For all the detail and immersive elements in the game, the combat just pulls players out of the experience.  It is sticky, slow, and teeth grindingly frustrating, as it is heavily focused on grinding.  However, rather than having one to one control like in a Dragon Quest game, the designers took control away from the players for this baffling choice of battle system.  There are also several “time saver” features, such as the ability to manipulate time to make it day or night whenever players feel like.  While this may aid in the unbelievably monotonous and boring quests in the game, it really hurts immersion.

See that scenery in the distance?  You can go to all of that.  There are no walls here.  Pity the combat sucks so hard.

 In my opinion, Dark Souls is probably one of the few games to create an immersive, illusory world that players can get lost in and invested in.  Made even more so by the online element.  Dark Souls features a world that, with a few exceptions, such as being warped to a new area, is completely interconnected, with varying shortcuts and ways to get around with no loading screens and, more importantly, no invisible walls.  No intentionally invisible walls at least.  The game does have several hidden walls that players can find however, anywhere a player can see, they can go.  And, they have one to one control over their character in the game.  What makes the game even more immersive is that players can encounter phantoms of other players, who will attack them, aid them, or leave them messages, creating a truly living world with other players who act like real people, sometimes leaving fake clues, helping out of kindness, or who act with malice for no other reason than they enjoy it.  The game isn’t perfect, as players who die of falling can get hung up on certain objects to humorous effect and there are a few spots here and there where, even if you can get to them, they impede your character when they really shouldn’t.  However, on the whole, Dark Souls offers one of the most immersive experiences in gaming, which is important, since there is very little story.  The game relies on its dark atmosphere and crushingly realistic design choices to sell the world.

Look at that level design.  You can go anywhere you can see, including off the ledge if you so choose.  Total freedom.  You know...until the game kills you.

 Now, looking at these three games, some tips can be gleaned.  First, if you’re going to make a game where players can go anywhere, don’t create an overly complicated battle system or one that removes control from the player.  It will only annoy them.  Second, if you want to release a big, immersive, sandbox type game, check it for bugs.  Check it.  And check it.  And check it again.  Patches might be needed to fix the game, but don’t use a future patch as an excuse or a crutch.  Make the game right the first time.  And finally, most importantly, make the game feel organic.  No invisible walls.  In Dark Souls, they have limitations in place but they’re not invisible.  Crevices, mountain walls, deep patches of water that players can see and that any respectably armored warrior would be unable to swim through all dot Dark Souls and they act as boundaries.  They are all visible and players know to test their limits at their own peril.  Skyrim, however, can have players going through a forest and hit a wall, even though nothing is in their way.  This is remarkably easy to fix.  For example: If you want to create a wall that separates Skyrim from other areas in the world, why not put a literal wall there.  Like a border guard that refuses anyone entry and cannot be opened from that side.  It creates a literal wall, teasing players about what’s beyond but also telling them that their goal lies within that wall.  Or, if you have an area bordering the ocean, create several cliffs around the edge.  Allow players to jump off the bluffs, but line it with jagged rocks.  They might die if they jump, but they’ll feel like the world is organic, as if they did that in real life it would have the same effect.  There are countless ways to make a world bounded, but in an organic way so that players do not notice how gamey it is.  Dark Souls may occasionally use warps, but they try to make them seem organic as well, such as having a crow or a gargoyle take players places rather than just a fade to black and a loading screen, something that even Xenoblade falls prey to at times, so that it seems like all the worlds are interconnected.  And while players need control over themselves, don’t let them control their world.  Don’t give them a weather controller or a timer feature.  They might think it’s cool and useful the first time they use it, but more often than not, they’ll eventually forget about it and using it again will only take them out of the game.

You want to create boundaries for the players?  Can't do better than an island.  Invisible walls not necessary.

 There is one other tip I have for game designers.  Put forth more effort.  I know game design is difficult.  Ridiculously so at times.  There are deadlines and changes that need to be made, testing for errors and recording voices or crafting cinematics and far too often the publisher can dictate additions to the game that may not make sense or which are far too time consuming to be reasonable.  However, if you are going to put three years into making a game, you may as well go all the way and make it as polished as possible.  Make the illusion complete.  Even if a room has to be copy pasted from others, that’s better than a locked door or one that’s painted onto a wall.  Now, not all games need to adhere to his.  Games like Culdcept Saga on the Xbox 360 have a distinctly gamey feel to them as part of their design.  They play similar to monopoly with a TCG element added in, so immersion is a non-issue with that kind of game.  However, if you’re trying to use illusion to create an immersive game experience then make sure the illusion is flawless.  Don’t get lazy.  Make the game world feel so real that players are literally scared of looking around them when they play a horror game or so intense that they can hear the birds and feel the breeze in an open world game.  Don’t put in invisible walls to save time rendering cliffs.  Don’t create battle or gameplay systems that are counter intuitive to the overall feel of the game just because it’s popular.  Don’t be satisfied with good enough.  If you’re going to create a world, create it the right way.

Nothing kills immersion like this crap.  Don't be lazy.  Close the gate, make the bridge broken, have a troupe of guards stopping you, do something!  Don't just say "Sorry, can't go this way any longer."

 This can be considered a big problem for modern gaming.  With the rise of technology, games have certainly become more beautiful, but they are also far more time consuming to create and thus, making a cliff or ten for Skyrim could take weeks, compared to adding in a room or two in Silent Hill which might only take a few days with existing resources.  On this, I can’t really offer any advice other than learn from the work of others.  Many games have preceded this current generation.  Some, like Half-Life and its sequel are truly immersive for different reasons.  Look at these games during the conceptual stages of game development and use them as a baseline for how to make the game world more engaging.  You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.  Learn from past mistakes.  Skyrim, for example, has the same invisible wall problems as its predecessor Oblivion.  If the developers had taken a lesson from their previous game and from fan feedback, they might have been able to rework the map of Skyrim a bit to solve the issue of walls.  Or in Xenoblade Chronicles, if you want a world without random encounters, why not look at other games that avoided them?  Chrono Trigger side stepped random encounters and even allowed players to battle without having to create a separate screen or interface for it.  Dragon Quest 8 and Blue Dragon from the previous and current generations respectively allowed enemies to be seen on the map screens before engaging them.  Developers may not play games as much as gamers do, but they should at the very least know their history and competition.  If their competitors or previous games have made use of a feature like theirs, learn from it.

Don't wanna break immersion?  Then random battles are not necessary.  But...be smart about it.

I know it is easy to say, “Well they should do this, it was better in this game, I’m smarter than you, etc.” and it might seem unfair or ungrateful for me to ask for more effort from already overworked and often underpaid game developers.  However, the truth is, if you want to make something that people have to pay for, you need to provide a better product.  The world is saturated with games right now, from the current and previous generations.  Dark Souls offered me an immersive experience that I managed to enjoy despite its frustration and while it was similar to games I’d played before, it went in a different direction that captivated me.  It was polished and even when I got frustrated, I still wanted to keep playing.  Xenoblade, by contrast, was heartbreakingly beautiful to watch, but was absolutely no fun to play.  The combat was so frustrating and took me out of the game so much that I gave up on trying to finish it because it simply wasn’t fun.  Why should I try to beat a game I don’t want to play, when I have at least five other games in my library that do what it does, but better?  I understand that game developers aren’t perfect.  They can make mistakes or overlook certain things, but at the same time, if I have to pay $50-$60 for a game, then I want my money’s worth.  I want something that I can enjoy, be immersed in, and not be taken out of.  I want illusion.  I want the game to tell me the perfect lie.  And, like with real life, if you’re caught in a lie…you ought to own up to it and have to suffer the consequences.  Above all other things though, I just want effort.  When looking at comic books, the critic Linkara said that sometimes poor design choices are ok.  That a lame idea can turn out great or at least decent in its execution.  And that sometimes, with a little common sense or research, a bad idea can be made better.  He stated that he didn’t want his comics to be re-written.  He just wanted good stories to be told.  He wanted effort.  And that is what I want.  If you’re going to try and sell me a world, don’t put up invisible walls or remove my ability to control my characters in combat.  Sell the illusion.  In this modern era of gaming, you can’t use limitations as an excuse.  Sell the illusion or don’t expect any of my money.