by m_kolibri
These are some of the elements that make up a good immersive sim. Not necessarily elements exclusive to immersive sims.
Showing 1-10 of 24 items
Buttons. Interactable objects. Being able to interact with the environment, even when said interaction isn't necessary for progress. EX. Flushing a toilet. Turning a light switch on and off.
Usually to bypass another environmental challenge or part of the level.
Prey had a nerf gun you could use to shoot buttons. More generally, gimmick or trick weapons that are not used as typical weapons. Another example of hyper specific-use-case weapons would be the typhoon weapon system in Deus Ex Human Revolution, which basically turns Adam Jensen into a bomb that shoots a whorl of pellets around him. Really the only strategy or use is to run into a room full of enemies and detonate the typhoon system. It was also useful on the game's bosses before they did the director's cut and made all the bosses susceptible to some form of stealth takedown or gimmick elimination.
Usually with at least one lock in the game where the code "0451" opens the lock.
Or environmental manipulation of some kind. The environment is a character in immersive sims.
Not exclusive to immersive sims, but being able to use environmental destruction to your advantage is a key element.
See also, Deus Ex. Unraveling a global plot of some kind over the course of the game, or uncovering something hidden just beneath the surface to the world of the story. Or . . . [see next]
A lot of immersive sims have plot twists. System Shock 2, Bioshock, Deus Ex. The plot twist in System Shock 2 felt original and interesting at the time. All the Bioshock games had basically the same plot twist, deployed with varying degrees of success.
Or weapons that can be used to further manipulate the environment and enemies without necessary pulling the trigger of a gun.
Not necessarily a character in the game or the character you play, but if you think of the narratological telling of a game's story through gameplay as a kind of narration--then many immersive sims can be seen as unreliable narrators. They, the narrators, often pull the rug out from under the player using conspiracy and plot twists and subversive characterization, where one character whom you thought you knew becomes someone else entirely or is someone else all along. Bioshock might be the apex of unreliable narrators in games. It is a Russian nesting doll of unreliable narrators. There's the main character or player character, who speaks once at the beginning of the game and then becomes a silent protagonist, hinting at but never quite revealing the extent of his unreliability until certain events unfold. Then there's Andrew Ryan, who is the villain until he is not. Then there's Atlas who slowly, some might say obviously, reveals himself to be the most unreliable of narrators in the game's delivery of its message about free will and choice in relation to human action, in video games or otherwise. Unreliable narrators are often used as a way of making readers in some way psychologically complicit in a text's intended rhetorical effect. But once the twist in characterization that reveals the unreliability is revealed, the magic just wears off and the effect isn't quite what it first seemed or was intended. Famous examples in games include: System Shock 2, Bioshock, Spec Ops The Line, Metal Gear Solid 2 . . .