It's been a while since I played those games, but I don't really remember any of them have anything like MMO/high fantasy systems and mechanics, like Cyberpunk/Witcher has.
I'm struggling to understand what you mean when you're saying this, do you mean randomized loot systems and leveled enemies/zones, level scaling, loot tier?
The game has an RPG core (tiered loot, level scaling etc.) and an immersive sim design phylosophy when it comes to encounters and level design (interconnected systems that are affected by environmental interactions and reactive AI - yes I said it), that's all I've been trying to say.
One does not negate the other, albeit I would have loved hand placed stuff everywhere with a certain logic behind them instead of randomized loot based on level scaling, but I believe that's just a modern desing decision which plagues most RPG's nowadays sadly.
I'm not saying it's Deus Ex, I'm saying one can approach it like it's Deus Ex.
[Edited -- SigilFey]
One thing that classic immersive sims like DeusEx and Thief: The Dark Project had was the ability to pick up and stack objects. Or throw them, e.g. at enemies. While tons of objects in Cyberpunk 2077 have physics, I suspect the ability to pick up and manipulate things freely was not introduced because of open world.
Yeah, things that are "gamey" are very much against the imm-sim philosophy. Stuff like mods that you can add to your hat that will allow you to carry 500 guns instead of 300.
Good thing all the mods in cyberpunk are specifically designed sepparately for clothing categories, you cannot use mods designed for boots on your coats etc. ( as far as I remember, it's been a couple of months since I played last).
But I agree with the ''gamey'' aspect, Cyberpunk would have benefitted greatly from a more Elder Scrolls: Morrowind design influence (think hand placed items and deliberate exploration and enemy levels) than it's current form of Skyrim design philosophy (randomized loot and level scaled enemies) - but guess which one sold astronomically more than the other and you can clearly see which way the trend is going.
Either way, the encounter zones in Cyberpunk 2077 can be approached in an immersive sim fashion ultimately allowing one to experiment with their current build to find alternate routes and environmental interactions for vastly different experiences (like stealth build assassin or a hacker than can resolve a situation by simply hacking through the camera system and disposing of the enemies through environment interactions and remote hacks alone, or just take downs, versus a skilled gun slinger using tactical approaches with distractions and combinations of moves and gear to dispose of enemies that way etc. - there are many more ways to approach situations, like dialogue, alternate routes that bypass major sections which are skill checked, infiltration using desguises in some missions et. al.).
Sure it's got tiered loot and an ''enchanting'' system, but that doesn't negate the other aspects.
I don't know about others, but I certainly wouldn't call Amnesia an immersive sim - at least not Dark Descent one, which was just a straight up stealth-horror.
But I agree with the ''gamey'' aspect, Cyberpunk would have benefitted greatly from a more Elder Scrolls: Morrowind design influence (think hand placed items and deliberate exploration and enemy levels)
To quote wikipedia: "The term "immersive sim" may also be used to describe the game design philosophy (...) which uses interacting, reactive and consistent game systems to create emergent gameplay and a sense of player agency."
Ability to pick up and manipulate movable objects in my opinion helps to create that emergent gameplay and sense of player agency. It can be used in variety of ways. Distracting enemies is one.
Another example would be stacking crates on top of each other to get to some place. In the first mission in Deus Ex on Liberty Island you could get inside the building through the main entrance or you could stack some metal crates to get to the roof.
Another example, say you want to destroy a military bot but you're out of grenades. No problem, there's an explosive crate in the next room that you can pick up and throw it or place it somewhere and then shoot it with pistol. Warren Spector gives an example how players can solve problems in Deus Ex using explosive barrels. All you need is to set up systems that interact with each other.
According to Warren Spector it was Doug Church who coined the term. They both worked on "System Shock" (I only played the second one). "Bioshock" was more on an fps side, although I recently played "Burial at Sea" and I liked that you could play stealthily. It reminded me of "Dishonored" a little bit. "Prey" is essentially System Shock 3 without Shodan.
In original devs plans - tje game was definitely planned in this immersive way.
On practive - things are not so good. For me term "immersive" in very general - possibilty to feel myself inside created world. So its not about numbers, this is about your personal feelings.
When I sit on old couch in dirt house with Panam in the middle of sandstorm after Soul's saving or cruising on Kusanagi bike through highway with "Never fade away" song on the radio - I fill myself inside.
When almost every building around the city is closed for exploration or I cant play 8 bit games on machines which are stay all over the city - I dont feel myself inside.
So immersivity is here but level of this immersivity is not high enough.
When almost every building around the city is closed for exploration or I cant play 8 bit games on machines which are stay all over the city - I dont feel myself inside.
If you could enter every building and they were all the same copy pasted room inside, that would take you out of the game too. You can't make that much hand made content. Besides nobody can just wander into any house.
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By the way I would be really interested to know if Warren Spector played CP2077 and what he thought about it.
If you could enter every building and they were all the same copy pasted room inside, that would take you out of the game too. You can't make that much hand made content. Besides nobody can just wander into any house.
here is important to find some balance. Most demand places can be available - for example, megabuildings, various shops, clubs, hotels, pacifica stadium, etc.
Besides in such future almost every door should be available for hacking, especially if you play for netrunner. And it is OK for me that in some ordinary buildings interior will be more or less similar.
A reminder to all that everyone's thoughts and opinions are welcome, and everyone's thoughts and opinions will be respected. If you have nothing constructive to say...say nothing at all. If someone is being non-constructive, don't engage. It's a door that swings both ways.
This is incredibly sad as it is exactly my issue with the game.
I had hoped that it would be. But honestly? GTA and Fallout games were more simulation-y. Cyberpubk 2077 in its current state doesn't even properly qualify as a roleplaying game.
The reason for comparisons is also clear: the game invited them by trying to have its own version of elements from well known games.
1) CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION
It's a disaster and feels more like an afterthought, hence also the default first person mode. It impacts enjoyment the most and could be remedied almost trivially easily.
I mean for crying out loud, it's a future where you can send your consciousness into the net and merge with an AI, and download into a new body, and then replace everything but the brain with metal bits. Even unrealistic inhuman beauty should be commonplace in a city where people can de-age themselves 50 years without problems, and relying on your body for income in one way or another is so common.
And for our character? Males can pick between 5 different scruffy, worn, damaged, middle aged skins, most with a "next morning" shadow and the most unappealing headshapes possible. I seriously think all male facial features are worse than basically any you'd meet on the street in the real world. Females also get the choice between medium, average, and mid sized breasts. Apparently tomboyish looking women or people with excessive implants ironically do not exist in this world. The voice is also either a jaded middle aged cynic, or a sultry femme fatale.
Despite you being able to be a chick with a dick or a guy with a female voice, the game essentially operates by making all women elfin beauties who can twirl a guy around their fingers in a heartbeat, and all men rough thugs with jaws like steel and skin like sandpaper.
This unnatural pigeonholing of people is frankly staggering as there is absolutely no reason for it within the universe, the gameplay could be altered in minutes, and limiting player choice like this is hostile. I get that these tropes exist within the cyberpunk genre, but that doesn't mean every character has to be like that. Player choice this is not. And the hairstyles are all very samey and very boring and aren't even interchangeable between sexes. You have characters with their faces ripped off but the most you can do is color your eyes differently. For crying out loud there isn't even a proper mohawk in a game called cyberpunk.
How hard would it have been to make a voice pitch slider? How hard would it have been to make more skin textures? How hard would it have been to make body sliders? How hard would it have been to make a couple actually appealing facial features? How hard would it have been to make actually interesting hairstyles? The Sims 3 came out 13 years ago and had ALL OF THE ABOVE. GTA, which isn't even about roleplaying and initially didn't even feature these things could pull off a better character creation system than this 5 years before Cyberpunk came out. How?
Was the implementation of different dick sizes which we normally don't even get to see, and the implementation of iris textures which are normally too small to see really more important than any of the above?
I consider a game simulationist if i can recreate things from the real world like myself or other people. I consider a game a roleplaying game if i can at least create something whose role i'd find appealing over a long period of time. This game so far has neither. Here's to hoping they'll update it.
2) ITEM/OBJECT VARIETY
A mixed bag: No two buildings look the same and there is a fair amount of variety in lots of other decorative structures too, which is fairly impressive. But anything that is non decorative is a straight up failure.
This concerns literally all the non decor items in the game that aren't weapons. Food items are all dirty paper bags in the gameworld and offer the same bonus, drink items only have variation in their bottles. There is an unbelievable amount of often movable/destructible trash items in the game, but none are for the foods you have and The ones out there don't exist as food. Having a table full of items and only being able to pick up a single one of them is really disheartening. Fallout 3 did all of the above better 12 years before on less than half the budget. Similarly to individual items, whole vendor stalls are uninteractable decor. You can only drink and eat immersively in specific cutscenes, otherwise when you order a drink at a bar you get a bottle and then quickly put it in your backpack and down it straight from there. The quickhacks you can use are like half a dozen, with all of them being incredibly weak. Clothing and weapon mods are a bit more varied but are nigh impossible to find and with many clothes and weapons not even having modslots they can't be used to customize your experience. Most of the clothing consists of regular straight trousers being retextured, T-shirts being retextured, and leather jackets being retextured. Colorful cyberpunk neon lights are missing from basically all of them. Most notably you can see a bit of clothing variation on NPCs with fishnet, torn clothing, latexsuits and things with wires and harnesses, which despite being less than what one could expect is STILL not available to the player.
You also have no variety in the interior of your home as you can't really customize anything about it.
And despite there being lots and lots of mentions of vehicle modding, you can't actually do any of it. And finally while the buildings look very nice from the outside, you barely get as many interiors as decade old games had.
3) LIVELINESS
Now we get to the parts that aren't so trivial that modders could fix it.
Having many people and gorgeous sound design isn't enough to make the world feel alive. If you get an entire market with single conversations needing to be highlighted, because blink and you'll miss it, that isn't lively. If you constantly get NPCs standing around gesticulating heavily to each other or while on the phone or interacting with others and none make a sound in the gleaming neon lights, that just invites associations to simon and garfunkel. This isn't easily remedied without lots more voicelines, and the devs did a good job with what they had.
But there are entire swaths of the game where you're just left out. You cant join gangs.
4) FREEDOM OF OPINION
This would require a DLC sized rewrite of everything, but the story isn't really geared towards player choice. It forces you to have specific motivations and develop specific opinions and come to specific conclusions. Sure there is SOME choice but too often there isn't and even more often the choice doesn't matter a second later. Our origins? Whenever it comes up it has no influence. Our skills? In conversation just coming off as boasting about them. When someone gets shot we might voice our displeasure with this and earn a dismissal from one character, but we can not confront or accuse the one actually at fault not just for the death but the entire situation.
This isn't even about too many branching storylines, since this is about the last time we interact with either character of the two.
We can voice our displeasure at a murderous terrorist and not side with him, but always just ineffectually in a childish manner while the terrorist gets to ask the real mature and hard hitting questions and comes away from each conversation with self respect and dignity unscathed, often leaving the PC stumped.
Fallout NV blatantly forced one towards one side, but it still felt less contrived and forceful than here where you ostensibly have more freedom of choice.
It also wouldn't be so bad if they didn't make whichever side is favored by the story at the time so utterly reprehensible.
It's not really a simulation if the outcome is the same either way and even the overall outcome just A or B.
5) CLARITY AND COMPLEXITY
Finally, this is something that i don't think can be fixed within this installment at all, but would perhaps be key to the game being more simulationist.
It is almost NEVER clear in any situation and in any context what one should focus on. From the impossible to read city map, over the random locations johnny appears in so you don't know where to turn to, over random decorative stuff flashing on screen being barely distinguishable from important details, over the clunky quickhack controls, over the unimmersive network controls, over the important plot details just mentioned between two other important things within a split second and then referenced later, over the inability to determine where you stand with a character, over not knowing what locks you out of what, over characters not revealing their intentions and you having no way to inquire before you have to make a decision based on that, over the difficult to navigate selfie menu, over the simple fact that you constantly get a sense of extreme urgency but the game still entirely expects you to mess around slowly, right up to the one thing i noticed right in the starting area: I think there are four types of THE SAME closed door in the game - scannable and openable with something, scannable but not openable with nothing behind them, scannable but not interactable, not scannable and not interactable basically painted on. And you can determine which it is going to be from just looking at it with the scanner.
It's nigh unbearable.
Conversely actual complexity is lacking. The lack of variety in interactable things is in point 2, but even the things with which you do get to interact don't interact with each other. You might get a better car, but you have no mod that would make you better at driving. You might constantly be at your carry limit, but you can still sprint as much as ever. You don't get gameplay stats tracked visibly like people killed or distance ran, and what is tracked is hidden away in a submenu. Simulation is where you have straightforward systems that function on their own, interact and produce complex and often unexpected results. I find this to be just missing from Cyberpunk 2077.
TL;DR:
Make a good character creation, it's frikkin trivial, and after that get some modders to make more items, and the game is gonna be multiple times as immersive and simulationist as it is now.
here is important to find some balance. Most demand places can be available - for example, megabuildings, various shops, clubs, hotels, pacifica stadium, etc.
Besides in such future almost every door should be available for hacking, especially if you play for netrunner. And it is OK for me that in some ordinary buildings interior will be more or less similar.
The most important thing here is that you should have at least a balanced amount of interiors instead of just the story ones. It's entirely fair to say that many people keep their doors offline or have impenetrable security or whatever, but the idea that you can only enter a single apartment in a megabuilding while you're essentially a thief and an expert in cracking doors and code.... That's nonsense.
As for the rooms being boring: these days you could procedurally generate each room with acceptable results. Since no one's gonna spend much time in there it doesn't have to be high quality and since no one is going to look into all the rooms you avoid both unreasonable savefile bloat, and game data bloat since you don't have to save interiors for a million apartments.
You could even throw in a couple custom made apartments to randomly appear instead if the procedurally generated ones. Like iunno a cult room with candles, a room full of books and magazines, a BDSM dungeon, a room plastered with movie posters, a room with robotics tools and robot debris, a bathhouse like interior, a common dormitory, a completely red room, a hidden broom closet, a netrunning hideout, etc etc.
This is incredibly sad as it is exactly my issue with the game.
I had hoped that it would be. But honestly? GTA and Fallout games were more simulation-y. Cyberpubk 2077 in its current state doesn't even properly qualify as a roleplaying game.
The reason for comparisons is also clear: the game invited them by trying to have its own version of elements from well known games.
1) CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION
It's a disaster and feels more like an afterthought, hence also the default first person mode. It impacts enjoyment the most and could be remedied almost trivially easily.
I mean for crying out loud, it's a future where you can send your consciousness into the net and merge with an AI, and download into a new body, and then replace everything but the brain with metal bits. Even unrealistic inhuman beauty should be commonplace in a city where people can de-age themselves 50 years without problems, and relying on your body for income in one way or another is so common.
And for our character? Males can pick between 5 different scruffy, worn, damaged, middle aged skins, most with a "next morning" shadow and the most unappealing headshapes possible. I seriously think all male facial features are worse than basically any you'd meet on the street in the real world. Females also get the choice between medium, average, and mid sized breasts. Apparently tomboyish looking women or people with excessive implants ironically do not exist in this world. The voice is also either a jaded middle aged cynic, or a sultry femme fatale.
Despite you being able to be a chick with a dick or a guy with a female voice, the game essentially operates by making all women elfin beauties who can twirl a guy around their fingers in a heartbeat, and all men rough thugs with jaws like steel and skin like sandpaper.
This unnatural pigeonholing of people is frankly staggering as there is absolutely no reason for it within the universe, the gameplay could be altered in minutes, and limiting player choice like this is hostile. I get that these tropes exist within the cyberpunk genre, but that doesn't mean every character has to be like that. Player choice this is not. And the hairstyles are all very samey and very boring and aren't even interchangeable between sexes. You have characters with their faces ripped off but the most you can do is color your eyes differently. For crying out loud there isn't even a proper mohawk in a game called cyberpunk.
How hard would it have been to make a voice pitch slider? How hard would it have been to make more skin textures? How hard would it have been to make body sliders? How hard would it have been to make a couple actually appealing facial features? How hard would it have been to make actually interesting hairstyles? The Sims 3 came out 13 years ago and had ALL OF THE ABOVE. GTA, which isn't even about roleplaying and initially didn't even feature these things could pull off a better character creation system than this 5 years before Cyberpunk came out. How?
Was the implementation of different dick sizes which we normally don't even get to see, and the implementation of iris textures which are normally too small to see really more important than any of the above?
I consider a game simulationist if i can recreate things from the real world like myself or other people. I consider a game a roleplaying game if i can at least create something whose role i'd find appealing over a long period of time. This game so far has neither. Here's to hoping they'll update it.
2) ITEM/OBJECT VARIETY
A mixed bag: No two buildings look the same and there is a fair amount of variety in lots of other decorative structures too, which is fairly impressive. But anything that is non decorative is a straight up failure.
This concerns literally all the non decor items in the game that aren't weapons. Food items are all dirty paper bags in the gameworld and offer the same bonus, drink items only have variation in their bottles. There is an unbelievable amount of often movable/destructible trash items in the game, but none are for the foods you have and The ones out there don't exist as food. Having a table full of items and only being able to pick up a single one of them is really disheartening. Fallout 3 did all of the above better 12 years before on less than half the budget. Similarly to individual items, whole vendor stalls are uninteractable decor. You can only drink and eat immersively in specific cutscenes, otherwise when you order a drink at a bar you get a bottle and then quickly put it in your backpack and down it straight from there. The quickhacks you can use are like half a dozen, with all of them being incredibly weak. Clothing and weapon mods are a bit more varied but are nigh impossible to find and with many clothes and weapons not even having modslots they can't be used to customize your experience. Most of the clothing consists of regular straight trousers being retextured, T-shirts being retextured, and leather jackets being retextured. Colorful cyberpunk neon lights are missing from basically all of them. Most notably you can see a bit of clothing variation on NPCs with fishnet, torn clothing, latexsuits and things with wires and harnesses, which despite being less than what one could expect is STILL not available to the player.
You also have no variety in the interior of your home as you can't really customize anything about it.
And despite there being lots and lots of mentions of vehicle modding, you can't actually do any of it. And finally while the buildings look very nice from the outside, you barely get as many interiors as decade old games had.
3) LIVELINESS
Now we get to the parts that aren't so trivial that modders could fix it.
Having many people and gorgeous sound design isn't enough to make the world feel alive. If you get an entire market with single conversations needing to be highlighted, because blink and you'll miss it, that isn't lively. If you constantly get NPCs standing around gesticulating heavily to each other or while on the phone or interacting with others and none make a sound in the gleaming neon lights, that just invites associations to simon and garfunkel. This isn't easily remedied without lots more voicelines, and the devs did a good job with what they had.
But there are entire swaths of the game where you're just left out. You cant join gangs.
4) FREEDOM OF OPINION
This would require a DLC sized rewrite of everything, but the story isn't really geared towards player choice. It forces you to have specific motivations and develop specific opinions and come to specific conclusions. Sure there is SOME choice but too often there isn't and even more often the choice doesn't matter a second later. Our origins? Whenever it comes up it has no influence. Our skills? In conversation just coming off as boasting about them. When someone gets shot we might voice our displeasure with this and earn a dismissal from one character, but we can not confront or accuse the one actually at fault not just for the death but the entire situation.
This isn't even about too many branching storylines, since this is about the last time we interact with either character of the two.
We can voice our displeasure at a murderous terrorist and not side with him, but always just ineffectually in a childish manner while the terrorist gets to ask the real mature and hard hitting questions and comes away from each conversation with self respect and dignity unscathed, often leaving the PC stumped.
Fallout NV blatantly forced one towards one side, but it still felt less contrived and forceful than here where you ostensibly have more freedom of choice.
It also wouldn't be so bad if they didn't make whichever side is favored by the story at the time so utterly reprehensible.
It's not really a simulation if the outcome is the same either way and even the overall outcome just A or B.
5) CLARITY AND COMPLEXITY
Finally, this is something that i don't think can be fixed within this installment at all, but would perhaps be key to the game being more simulationist.
It is almost NEVER clear in any situation and in any context what one should focus on. From the impossible to read city map, over the random locations johnny appears in so you don't know where to turn to, over random decorative stuff flashing on screen being barely distinguishable from important details, over the clunky quickhack controls, over the unimmersive network controls, over the important plot details just mentioned between two other important things within a split second and then referenced later, over the inability to determine where you stand with a character, over not knowing what locks you out of what, over characters not revealing their intentions and you having no way to inquire before you have to make a decision based on that, over the difficult to navigate selfie menu, over the simple fact that you constantly get a sense of extreme urgency but the game still entirely expects you to mess around slowly, right up to the one thing i noticed right in the starting area: I think there are four types of THE SAME closed door in the game - scannable and openable with something, scannable but not openable with nothing behind them, scannable but not interactable, not scannable and not interactable basically painted on. And you can determine which it is going to be from just looking at it with the scanner.
It's nigh unbearable.
Conversely actual complexity is lacking. The lack of variety in interactable things is in point 2, but even the things with which you do get to interact don't interact with each other. You might get a better car, but you have no mod that would make you better at driving. You might constantly be at your carry limit, but you can still sprint as much as ever. You don't get gameplay stats tracked visibly like people killed or distance ran, and what is tracked is hidden away in a submenu. Simulation is where you have straightforward systems that function on their own, interact and produce complex and often unexpected results. I find this to be just missing from Cyberpunk 2077.
TL;DR:
Make a good character creation, it's frikkin trivial, and after that get some modders to make more items, and the game is gonna be multiple times as immersive and simulationist as it is now.
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The most important thing here is that you should have at least a balanced amount of interiors instead of just the story ones. It's entirely fair to say that many people keep their doors offline or have impenetrable security or whatever, but the idea that you can only enter a single apartment in a megabuilding while you're essentially a thief and an expert in cracking doors and code.... That's nonsense.
As for the rooms being boring: these days you could procedurally generate each room with acceptable results. Since no one's gonna spend much time in there it doesn't have to be high quality and since no one is going to look into all the rooms you avoid both unreasonable savefile bloat, and game data bloat since you don't have to save interiors for a million apartments.
You could even throw in a couple custom made apartments to randomly appear instead if the procedurally generated ones. Like iunno a cult room with candles, a room full of books and magazines, a BDSM dungeon, a room plastered with movie posters, a room with robotics tools and robot debris, a bathhouse like interior, a common dormitory, a completely red room, a hidden broom closet, a netrunning hideout, etc etc.
In the whole text, you mention 3 franchises : GTA,Sims and Fallout (I understand Fallout 3 onwards)... none of them are immersive sims, so many of your expectations/complains kind of fall into liking other types of games I think.
An immersive sim "staple" is unbroken 1st person perspective, Warren Spector biggest cirticism of Deus Ex Human Revolution was change of perspective when going into cover mode. Many immersive sims, don´t have a character creator screen at all or much more basic than your average RPG. Weird West might be the exception, being an isometric immersive sim (and there is quite a lot of discussion about it).
2) ITEM/OBJECT VARIETY
A mixed bag: No two buildings look the same and there is a fair amount of variety in lots of other decorative structures too, which is fairly impressive. But anything that is non decorative is a straight up failure.
This concerns literally all the non decor items in the game that aren't weapons. Food items are all dirty paper bags in the gameworld and offer the same bonus, drink items only have variation in their bottles. There is an unbelievable amount of often movable/destructible trash items in the game, but none are for the foods you have and The ones out there don't exist as food. Having a table full of items and only being able to pick up a single one of them is really disheartening.
I don´t remember being able to pick all objects visible in Dishonored for example, many immersive sim games have a very limited amount of "loot" but each object (potentially) serve a purpose for the gameplay.
3) LIVELINESS
Now we get to the parts that aren't so trivial that modders could fix it.
Having many people and gorgeous sound design isn't enough to make the world feel alive. If you get an entire market with single conversations needing to be highlighted, because blink and you'll miss it, that isn't lively. If you constantly get NPCs standing around gesticulating heavily to each other or while on the phone or interacting with others and none make a sound in the gleaming neon lights, that just invites associations to simon and garfunkel. This isn't easily remedied without lots more voicelines, and the devs did a good job with what they had.
But there are entire swaths of the game where you're just left out. You cant join gangs.
Missing conversations is very credible, hightlightning them is not I agree. Joining factions might or might not be a RPG feature is not really compulsory, but I don´t know if any immersive sim has factions at all.
4) FREEDOM OF OPINION
This would require a DLC sized rewrite of everything, but the story isn't really geared towards player choice. It forces you to have specific motivations and develop specific opinions and come to specific conclusions. Sure there is SOME choice but too often there isn't and even more often the choice doesn't matter a second later. Our origins? Whenever it comes up it has no influence. Our skills? In conversation just coming off as boasting about them. When someone gets shot we might voice our displeasure with this and earn a dismissal from one character, but we can not confront or accuse the one actually at fault not just for the death but the entire situation.
This isn't even about too many branching storylines, since this is about the last time we interact with either character of the two.
We can voice our displeasure at a murderous terrorist and not side with him, but always just ineffectually in a childish manner while the terrorist gets to ask the real mature and hard hitting questions and comes away from each conversation with self respect and dignity unscathed, often leaving the PC stumped.
Fallout NV blatantly forced one towards one side, but it still felt less contrived and forceful than here where you ostensibly have more freedom of choice.
It also wouldn't be so bad if they didn't make whichever side is favored by the story at the time so utterly reprehensible.
It's not really a simulation if the outcome is the same either way and even the overall outcome just A or B.
If you are talking about immersive sims, many have little to no freedom in the story itself... the freedom is in how you go from point A to B, this applies also to some RPGs were the story is completely linear and its outcomes and the freedom is in build diversity.
5) CLARITY AND COMPLEXITY
Finally, this is something that i don't think can be fixed within this installment at all, but would perhaps be key to the game being more simulationist.
It is almost NEVER clear in any situation and in any context what one should focus on.
Sorry, but I don´t understand... are you saying that CP2077 is not heavily holding your hand? In a immersive sim in the other hand there's almost no hand holding just an objective given and the player should figure out with the tools/character abilities at their disposal of how to reach that objective.
"Deus Ex: Invisible War" had faction system, but I don't remember it being that great, just like the rest of the game. Its sibling "Thief 3 Deadly Shadows" also had some rudimentary mechanic where different factions wouldn't attack you while roaming the city if you performed certain tasks for them. Completely unnecessary feature if you asked me.
Funny how so many people misunderstand what Immersive Sim means.
The way I see it, outside of the official definition, what Immersive sim IS:
1) a subset of action-RPGs (with few exceptions) that allows for variety of approaches in completing missions, depending on your skills and/or playstyle (stealth vs combat being the most obvious distinction);
2) a game where previously mentioned playstyles are complemented by level design, perks, physical elements as well as AI - all of which works together in order to give player as many options in completing their tasks as possible.
However, what immersive sim IS NOT:
1) any game that makes you feel immersed;
2) any game that includes successful simulations of any sorts.
"Should I try and sneak or go in guns blazing?", "Can I walk around this door or should I just break in?", "Should I find a key or search for an open window?" - Immersive sim questions.
"Does this game emulates city in a believable way?", "Does this game has animation of me sitting at a bar stand when I order a drink?" - not immersive sim questions.
A game like Dishonored can have less fidelity in terms of AI routines and animations than GTA (or GTA with cowboys), however, Dishonored is an immersive sim - and GTA is not. Some people may feel more immersed in Uncharted in comparison to Prey 2017, however, Prey 2017 is an immersive sim - and Uncharted is not.
Honestly I'm not surprised, because me in first, I was also wrong in my first post
In fact, the term "immersive sim" is already quite misleading. All of those who don't think that Cyberpunk is not an immersive sim at all, rather answer to this kind of question : - Is Cyberpunk an immersive game ?
Which is not the same at all and totally subjective. So to this question, everyone have his own preferences, tastes and what a game need to be immersive (first /third person, interactable world,...).
Examples :
- RDR2 (an immersive game, but not an immersive sim)
The world tend to be "realist" and immersive, but players have no choices/liberties (or almost), to complete the objectives.
- Cyberpunk (maybe a less immersive game, but an immersive sim)
The world is probably not that immersive than RDR2, but players have a vaste amount of possibilities to complete the same objectives (the result is generally not really different, but the ways to reach it are).
- Kingdome Come (immersive/realist game and also an immersive sim)
The world tend be be as realist as possible, so really immersive. And players have a total liberty (or almost) to complete the objectives.
I would rather say it's vague. Usually what people mean by immersive is that something is captivating and enjoyable. In that sense everything can be immersive, a simple game like Tetris can make one loose the sense of time and put a person into so called flow state. In fact even the definition of flow on Wikipedia talks about immersion:
(...) mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.
Of course what is enjoyable is subjective so we might end discussion here if we go only with that definition. Immersion in "immersive sims" has to be something more specified. To quote Wikipedia again:
Warren Spector, part of Looking Glass Studios, said that immersive sims create the feeling that "you are there, nothing stands between you and belief that you're in an alternate world".
It's an immersive simulation because you feel like you're actually in a game world, at least that's what we were trying to do. There's as little as possible getting in a way of you feeling like you're there.
One can analyze what he meant by that. Take Super Mario Bros, one of the best and most successful games of all time. It can be very engaging. You can probably play it for hours and forget about the real world.
But does this make you feel like you're really inside the mushroom kingdom? Sure, with enough imagination you can probably convince yourself. Nevertheless it's too abstract. There are floating coins and a scoreboard that constantly reminds you that you're playing a game. The same way pinball machine with Star Wars characters printed on it will not make you feel like you're in a galaxy far, far away. As technology progresses video games can be more realistic and less abstract and symbolic.
Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock 2, Dishonored or Prey were made by different teams but there was a big overlap of talent:
Warren Spector - System Shock, Thief: The Dark Project, Deus Ex (1 & 2)
Harvey Smith - Deus Ex (1 & 2), Thief: Deadly Shadows, Dishonored series
Ken Levine - Thief: The Dark Project, System Shock 2, Bioshock series
Those games create a family in a way and they have certain things in common. The main one is probably first person perspective. And yes, it is there to facilitate the immersion that Spector talks about. You don't look at your character, you are the character.
BTW, no icons floating above heads, no minimap, no markers, no objectives. One thing that is not immersive for sure in Cyberpunk and other modern games is the loud noise of a horn whenever an enemy spots you. In Thief or Deus Ex enemies would utter something along the lines: "Over here! We've got an intruder". Much more elegant solution. Similarly - "What was that? What's that noise" is better than some glowing icon above NPC head like in Sims that indicates the awareness level.
One thing that immediately took me out of the experience in CP2077 was when doing a gig inside a building I saved and reloaded and found out that the look of NPCs is randomly generated on each reload. This is of course done to improve performance in some way, certainly save files are smaller. It is perfectly fine in an open world game set in a city. But at least inside certain areas one would expect some object permanence.
Even worse, some enemies follow a path with multiple nodes, for example in the Grand Imperial Mall. Enemies stop when they reach a node and wait certain amount of time. I just noticed that after reloading they immediately start walking again. In fact when the game is loaded they seem to have moved couple feet already. This could screw you if try to be sneaky. And it breaks the immersion, too.
Some confusion arises from the fact that Deus Ex is the most famous example of an immersive sim. But as Spector says:
It was part immersive simulation, it was part role-playing game, it was part first person shooter and it was part adventure game.
BTW, no icons floating above heads, no minimap, no markers, no objectives. One thing that is not immersive for sure in Cyberpunk and other modern games is the loud noise of a horn whenever an enemy spots you. In Thief or Deus Ex enemies would utter something along the lines: "Over here! We've got an intruder". Much more elegant solution. Similarly - "What was that? What's that noise" is better than some glowing icon above NPC head like in Sims that indicates the awareness level.
I could argue that in Cyberpunk, you're able to disable plenty of "immersion breaking" elements that you listed
Like detection sounds, so only keep their dialogues lines, because all enemies have these kinds of dialogue lines "What's that ?", "I spotted something !" or "I have to go take a look here !".
In your HUD, you are also able to disable almost everything related to enemies, for example :
- Damages (all types above heads, all types), hit indicator, names or threat and damages (also health I believe).
In settings you can also disable minimap, V's health/stamina, ammos,...
The only element that you can't disable, but I'm quite confident it's due to a bug, is the objective marker (whatever if the option is disabled or not, the marker still appear...)
If all of those elements break your "immersion", you can disable them without problem. It's up to players to adjust these settings to "fit" to their preferences
Yep you're right, I just tried, the icon still there.
(The "red" overlay too, but it's due to the kiroshi mod when an enemy (start) detecting you)
Evrything enabled/disabled
After, it's "easy to imagine (for me at least) that in a world where cyber-eyes are common, some sort of overlay which help to identify enemies/threat is possible (unlike in medieval/fantasy world).
I would say that it reminds me this kind of "overlay" :
Actually, i'm of the opinion that you cannot have an immersive sim with a heavy stat driven system like rpgs ... because a "build" is closing paths. You can have some rpgs elements,but they should not define your gameplay options... In the original Deus Ex lockpicking was not preventing to open doors, it was reducing the number of tools you needed to open a door, thats very different to thresholding or skill+dice against difficulty in traditional rpg systems.
Actually, i'm of the opinion that you cannot have an immersive sim with a heavy stat driven system like rpgs ... because a "build" is closing paths. You can have some rpgs elements,but they should not define your gameplay options... In the original Deus Ex lockpicking was not preventing to open doors, it was reducing the number of tools you needed to open a door, thats very different to thresholding or skill+dice against difficulty in traditional rpg systems.
For my understanding, either I'm don't get what immersive sim is (or what it have to be) and I'm still wrong, either KCD can't be considered as an immersive sim, because for me, it have "RPG heavy stats". To take your example, lockpicking is directly linked to your character's skill level (also the case for most of skills, like speaching, pickpocketing, stealth...). But there are always many ways to achieve a same goal (without been explicitely indicated) so that each character can reach it.
Like for example you don't have the lockpiching skill to open a door... No matter, you can discreetly steal the key from the guard at night while he's sleeping, steal the key from him by knocking him out around a dark alley or even try to convince him to open the door for you.
For my understanding, either I'm don't get what immersive sim is (or what it have to be) and I'm still wrong, either KCD can't be considered as an immersive sim, because for me, it have "RPG heavy stats". To take your example, lockpicking is directly linked to your character's skill level (also the case for most of skills, like speaching, pickpocketing, stealth...). But there are always many ways to achieve a same goal (without been explicitely indicated) so that each character can reach it.
Like for example you don't have the lockpiching skill to open a door... No matter, you can discreetly steal the key from the guard at night while he's sleeping, steal the key from him by knocking him out around a dark alley or even try to convince him to open the door for you.
I don't think KCD is considered an immersive sim,but might incorporate some immersive sim elements... just like cp2077 in the Gig design, in story quests it fails a lot.
Many rpgs offer different solutions to a problem since if not you will fall into a build trap and prevent you to continue the game,fallout 1 had a quest with 8 different ways to solve it based on different stats/skills, but depending on your build you could only do 1 or 2. If KCD alternative paths depend on skill level on pickpocketing,persuasion or fight then i think its a rpg.
If I take that from wikipedia (which maybe wrong). It seem to correspond quite well.
An immersive sim (simulation) is a video game genre that emphasizes player choice. Its core, defining trait is the use of simulated systems that respond to a variety of player actions which, combined with a comparatively broad array of player abilities, allow the game to support varied and creative solutions to problems, as well as emergent gameplay beyond what has been explicitly designed by the developer. This definition is not to be confused with game systems which allow player choice in a confined sense or systems which allow players to easily escape consequences of their choices.
For example, there is a door which is locked and I don't have the skill to open it. Well, it up to me to find a way to open it, go around it or find another way to enter (steal the key, kill a dude, convice someone to open it, find a "free pass" somewhere, find another door not locked or a low level one which don't require any skill...). Lot of quests (not alls, indeed) let to players a real liberty on what and how to do. Knowing that generally the quest simply point out the final objective.
In my last playthrough, an optional objective was to reduce the defenses of the enemies before the attack (put poison in the food and burn the arrows). With my character, no way to do it discreetly... I had good armor and good weapons (but not good combat skills...), so I decided to kill everyone patiently one by one (luring them ouside the camp) and complete the objective after, in the empty camp.
Edit : I don't think the fact that a skill blocks a specific path is a problem, because precisely it pushes you to find an alternative path, whatever it is. If you could open the door regardless of your skill, what's the point of racking your brains trying to find another way. Like in Prey with Hacking or Repair "skills" which lock you some paths, but it forces you to find others
