Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Immersion
carryon
Member Posts: 12
What game gave you the best experience when it came to feeling like you were there, where you were so lost in the story and gameplay that you nearly forgot to eat/sleep/see if the sun was still there?
Comments
Nothing. Games don't do that to people based on what the game is. People with no priorities or good sense of reality have that happen. Forget to eat or sleep. Thats just non sense.
Sort answer though is Oblivion, Monster Hunter, and City of Heroes. I knew I wasn't there though
As much as I hate to say it...
Vanilla WoW upon release
fell completely in love with the seamless world. At the time, taking a Griffin flight was awe inspiring, seeing the places you could one day go.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Uh, well... I completed Portal 2 in one go just hours after it was released in my region. Took me about 6 hours I think, but I didn't really lose any sleep nor did I forget to eat... though I was pretty hungry when the game ended.
<childish, provocative and highly speculative banner about your favorite game goes here>
NM. Mis-read the OP. No amount of immersion should make you lose sleep or forget to eat. But it should make you actually care about what is going on in the game world to an extent. If you aren't eating and sleeping, however, I suggest trying to find a life outside of gaming, because your priorities are out of whack.
That's got to be one of my top experiences, as well. There seemed to be context and reason to each quest and to the layout of the game world.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Since more than a few people took my post literally (and upon reflection maybe justifiably so) I should say that I was exagerating.
What I had meant was what game sucked you in and got you excited to be involved in the plot. As you played through couldn't wait to find out more of the storyline and how your character fit in to what was unfolding wholey/partially because of your actions.
I certainly would not want to encourage behavior that could endanger your health and/or irl relationships.
In that case...
I would say Mass Effect 1 & 2
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
The most immersive games I've ever played were Vanilla WoW and Lotro.
Well i think for me it must be MGS4 the story just caught me immensely. I did somewhat have that feeling when doing the DK starting quests in WoW but once i got out of that area it quickly went *poof* again.
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
If we are talking strictly MMO's....EQ1. That is it...sadly.
Although Eve made me feel I was there too. Just not with an avatar.....kinda haha.
This doesn't really happen to me with MMOs. I think it is the controls, interface and general presentation of MMOs that just doesn't immerse me that much. That and other people tend to ruin immersion in my opinion.
Some of the games I got the most immersed in lately, Portal 2 and Arkham Asylum.
All men think they're fascinating. In my case, it's justified
For me it was SWG, and to a lesser extent, EVE.
SWG was the only game where I actually sat on a hillside watching the sunset on several occasions, lol. The gameworld made sense to me, and I found it totally believable, given the setting.
I cannot get immersed in a game which has poor graphics. Somehow it always makes me feel that I'm playing a game, rather than being a part of an alternative reality.
Never forgot to sleep or eat but I felt immersed like reading a good book with Ultima Online and well Vanilla WoW.
What is best at immediately removing completly and unreturnably any immersion for me are cash shops. Just knowing there is one , immediately ruin it
The Baldur's Gate series, Planescape: Torment and to a slightly lesser extent some of the Neverwinter Nights campaigns (lesser because these were considerably shorter than the BG game series or Planescape:Torment).
No MMO has ever delivered the same sense of immersion to me, probably because A) they are at least at present quite a bit more shallow in your interactions with NPCs,
there is too much discontinuity in the storyline, C) the player just really isn't central to what happens and D) its too easy for a player to realize that your presence makes no difference in the world.
I would have to say though that the story build up in WoW's Wrath of the Lich King expansion made that final cut scene after you killed the Lich King a much bigger deal than it otherwise would have been.
Also, the changes made to the vanilla WoW world in Cataclysm were a big step in the right direction. For old time players revisiting those areas again, the world had actually CHANGED, and you were presented with content that was much more story oriented and coherent but still was clearly affected by what you had done in those areas previously. For new players it is going to be a very different experience than what original players went through.
Unfortunately, any sense of time moving on in WoW for old players will go bye bye as soon as you hit the Burning Crusade areas, since they were NOT changed at all really. It is also a bit of a gut punch to realize that it took 6 years for Blizz to try to make any efforts to update their world to give players a sense that the whole world is alive, instead of only the most recent content expansion.
I can't decide between Ultima Online circa the late 90s or Anarchy Online in the early 2000s. Both really sucked me into their worlds; I never really felt like I was playing a video game during my hours logged in.
Doom.
There I am, almost dead to begin with, only a pistol in hand, nervous about going into the next room cause I know what is going to happen. So I do move on anyways, and then, all the sudden doors would slide open and 20 baddies would come pouring into the room. I would jump in my seat and shout "shit!" IRL.
And if I managed to survive...I'd go on to the next room.
edit* never realy felt too immersed in an MMO. I've been in awe of landscape, and how big certain areas were, but that's about all.
It's a proven historical fact that beer saved humankind.
You know immersion in WoW has always been there as much as people want to shout and say it isn't the case.
Unfortunately, over the years Blizzard has made gameplay design decisions that have pushed the immersion factor down drastically. But it is still there.
I have never felt as connected to the game world as an immortal night elf of an equally immortal druidic order as I have in cataclysm flying through the forests of Feralas listening to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w-lfD5Jngg. Or even feeling a twinge of horror at seeing NPCs dead in a destroyed Auberdine.
(and I don't even RP!)
As I said, things like Interface Queue systems, constant, repititive PvE makes the world feel like a hotel lobby, or a series of excel spreadsheets padded with some mumbo-jumbo about dragons. It ultimately feels like a glorified arcade game where players are expendable nickles and dimes.
AoC has great immersion - I think one ought to raise their hats off to FC because given all their instancing, and themepark central storyline, they have managed to build a world and the latter is rare in MMOs in and off themselves.
I haven't played Aion to too high a level but I was amazed at how vast, life-like and character-filled their main city was.
EVE - Wow, but I have never felt so much part of a world as I did in New Eden. Everything - from the UI, the visual atmosphere, the music, the constant chat simply re-inforces the nature of what you are - a capsuleer. In EvE, you're not playing a character - you just are. Amazing. I would love to sub to EVE if I weren't so scared about constant heartache :P
RIFT was good at immersion till one reached Sanctum. After that it began to come horribly apart, and past level 30 it practically shatters.
(Damn, listening to that music makes me want to resub to WoW. I know the true outcome of that decision though. I will resub, log on, curse myself in 10 different languages for wasting $15 and I'll log off :P)
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
I need to take this advice more.
UO long ago did it.
More recently, nothing compared to City of Heroes for me. I truly felt like a hero in that game, fightign criminals, saving poor people getting mugged on the streets, or trying to prevent gangs from blowing up a power plant and thus destroyign a city.
Each heroes looks and powers matched the character concept so well with all the available coustomization, that it made it easy to pretend you really were that hero as you played. I had Cat characters, crazy ones, goodie two shoes, misguided heroes, heroes who were part of nature and were fighting for balance, robot Ai machine heroes, each had their own stories mannerisms and cheesy one liners.
The funny thing as simple as the quest or mission dialouge was presented (it was just boxes of text) it was well written and coherent, that sooner or later I started getting a feeling for the world.
Villian side wasnt as great, though still fun, because they never really gave you truly evil missions, mostly just go kill other villian groups.
Biowares "Neverwinter nights". Not thechnically a MMO but the GM function really made the difference there. Som private servers (128 players) had 10 or so GMs possesing mobs, dropping loots and spawning monsters, and it made grouping personal in a way no MMO ever been close to.
For me that would have been Morrowind. I'd play that endlessly, sometimes 16 hour straight. Fight my way out of an area, make it to town... "Why walk when you can ride?" That was like music to my ears.
Oblivion was sort of close, mostly for storyline. Just that all the fast travel killed the big world feel for me.
Thoose are single player games though.
I think we need to face the facts that immersion generally is lower for MMORPG's.
Trying to bring too much immersion into an MMORPG will fail...but too less...will also fail it for me....
I guess we have different levels for this as well....
Buy Neverwinter Nights 1 here! | Unofficial NWN1 homepage | NWN1 guild on X-Fire
I would add that Cataclysm has even more potential for an immersive experience, but unfortuntely many players have adopted a mechanical, competitive playstyle that doesn't make use of this potential.
Can't really think of any games that I felt immersed in. Certainly not an mmo.
Dont know if it classifies as an mmorpg, but it was for me. Second Life.
Big time Rp'er, could look up after 9 hours and literally jump as i saw it was daylight outside.
Of course, it could take 5 min's per post when typing up a juicy RP, and when you have 8 people or more in that RP, Time goes. Fast.
The Deep Web is sca-ry.