Immersive Sims

I like these games but they're really not that complicated or difficult. All that choice they give you often makes the game easier since you have the ability to do so many things in a situation

Just bioshock
Prey 2017 and dishonored (1) have their problems but they're pretty solid

I'm gonna do it bros, I'm gonna play Ultima Underworld. I hope I don't get filtered.

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Play some immersive sims.

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It's actually great and highly enjoyable. But dont repeat my mistake - dont make just plane warrior, go with mage or something else.

I picked Bard on a whim but before I really get into it I'm going to read the manual and probably install a mouselook mod.

There is also a way to make music sound better but I'm too retarded to understand it.
gog.com/forum/ultima_series/sound_in_ultima_underworld_is_playing_music
reddit.com/r/Ultima/comments/g87nmj/a_vague_howto_for_roland_mt32_for_underworlds/

It's a fine term. I think the hostility towards it comes in part from some people's tendency to lump in games that don't fit LGS' original definition of the term with those that do. Recently I saw some tier list online which had random stuff like Hitman or MGS3-5 not only included but ranked above most actual examples of this type of game, with the reasoning that you're racist if you think they don't belong, and it made me understand why some people think it's not a real genre/design philosophy.

Because choices and options that aren't blatantly given ib the immediate scare low IQ people

Dishonored 2 is also great. The only “problem” is story, but the gameplay is the absolute best its ever been.

Deathloop was good. Anyone who went into it thinking it would be Mooncrash 2 is retarded though. Gameplay wise, it’s DOTO: This Time Its A Full Game.

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You overestimate normalfags and the average Yea Forumsedditor.

>immersive sims
The correct term is
Advanced
Underworld
Type
Interactivity
S
I
M

Meds. Now.

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Not an immersive sim

highly recommend this
github.com/hankmorgan/UnderworldExporter
It lets you modernize the controls and generally improves everything in the game without changing the original gameplay.

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>Why do they filter so many people, normalfags and Yea Forums alike?
Uhhh cite your sources these games get talked about all the time

Cope. It’s more of an ImSim than Bioshock.

>It’s more of an ImSim than a game that isn't an ImSim
Incredible insight

Regardless, it’s an imsim. Checks all the boxes.

They don't. The old ones are considered classics for a reason.
They became less popular over time mostly because the defining mechanics of the genre became defaults of action adventure games anyway. Progression systems, optional stealth, choose your own playstyle, side objectives for powerups etc. Immersive sims were always just rpg-lite.And every game nowadays is rpg-lite.

>It’s more of an ImSim than a game taht isn't an ImSim
At last I see...

There's no RPG mechanic in Thief

I would think the defining mechanics of an imsim is the way systems interact with each other in a way you'd expect in real life i.e. it's immersive.

Smashing a window makes a sound which can be heard but only by the guard in the next room with an open door, not the one behind 2 walls and closed doors. Or when one person sees you, you have time to stop them radioing in and raising the alarm. Or how you can drop an ice chuchu on the ground and if an enemy attacks it they get frozen. Or how oil on the ground ignites in response to your fire arrow.

But even by that measure, those features are making their way into more and more games in other genres. I guess that's good, the design philosophies of these stellar games bleeding into the wider industry.

>t. Someone who hasn’t played an ImSim for more than a few minutes
Couldn’t be more wrong.

I don’t understand. What’s so immersive about them? What are they simulating?

Thank you user

>What’s so immersive about them?
They let you ask "I wonder if doing X will make Y happen like it would IRL?" and hopefully the answer is Yes. Your creative play is acknowledged and rewarded.

>What are they simulating?
Light and vision (Thief)
Sound propagation (Splinter Cell)
Enemy states (MGS)
Gases (SS13)
Body parts (Rimworld)
Elemental effects (BOTW)
Electronic wiring (Gunpoint)
Narrative continuity (Deus Ex)

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Make sure to read the manual. You'll need the last few pages that has the spell and rune lists on it. Print those out or write it down or put in your phone or whatever. You'll need them if you want to use magic at all, and you will.

Also make sure to reroll your character until you get a decent strength. I'd recommend max-strength of 30 but 28-29 is also pretty good. Basically you can level up all your skills as you go but you can't level up strength which is tied to your carrying weight. If your character has shitty strength then Ultima Underworld becomes a game where you're constantly over-encumbered and you'll be dropping piles of shit left and right and then backtracking to where you've dropped it because you've accidentally dropped what turns out to be a quest critical item 2 hours ago. Other than that issue, which is mostly fixed with a high enough strength, Underworld holds up really fucking well.

Bioshart is not an immersive sim

The term's old as fuck though. You can find interviews with the Looking Glass devs dating back to 1992 where they're calling Ultima Underworld a 'Dungeon Simulation.' Which is where the term comes from.

Here's a piece that keeps being posted around from 1997, when LGS where making Thief, then still just called The Dark Project, when they were calling it 'Immersive Reality.' It's old as fuck, you're just fucking wrong. Don't misunderstand me, people are now using it completely wrong (for instance, Cruelty Squad isn't one, it's a tactical shooter you morons - haven't you dipshits ever played the early Rainbow 6 games?) It just describes the old Looking Glass games (Ultima Underworld, System Shock and Thief) from the 90s and a handful of games from the 2000s that were made by ex-LGS devs shortly after Looking Glass went bankrupt in 2000 (like System Shock 2, Deus Ex and Arx Fatalis). The genre's been dead longer than this site's been on the internet. It's not a new term. You're the real Soulless Consoomer here pal.

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Is Bloodlines an immersive sim?

>HR, Bioshock, Dishonored
>Immersive sims
Wut?

Is Postal 2 an immersive sim?

No, it's a CRPG

Yes

It's too bad such an excellent genre has to be limited to first person shooters with way too much emphasis on stealth and avoiding combat, which is always the best way to tackle everything in the game.
I want one game in the genre that actually focused on combat and doesn't heavily penalize you from doing things that way. And not in first person

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play EYE - game entirely about combat
even stealth here is just a way to approach fight

I'm probably retarded but could MGSV count as an immersive sim?

Nah. The term was used at Looking Glass to refer to they way they programmed/designed their games for emergent, unscripted gameplay possibilities. Like, I dunno, blowing up a locked wooden door with a barrel only for what where supposed to be friendly NPCs inside to now be running around screaming and charging at you because some asshole just blew up their door. And all that was completely unscripted and unplanned by the devs even though the devs had programmed all those systems in the first place.

Bloodlines doesn't really do that. Most of its cool moments are programmed more like a really elaborate choose-your-own-adventure book which was already a thing in RPGs long before Ultima Underworld. The whole breakthrough of Underworld was that you had all this emergent, unplanned shit because they'd programmed the whole thing like it was a flight simulator.

That's not to say Bloodlines is bad by any means, by the way, great fucking game. Just that it doesn't quite fit the criteria. Mind you, most modern games that mouth-breathing dipshits say are immersive sims don't do that either (looking at you Bioshock) so who gives a shit.

Gunpoint and Heat Signature are very inspired by the genre and have a side on and top down perspective respectively. Interesting games to give a go.

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Not a real genre

I'd argue that it at very least gets an honourable mention. I'm not sure if it qualifies as a full imsim, but there are definitely elements.

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Why are people losing their shit over this term? It's just a word for games that share similar design philosophy to games made by Looking Glass and Ion Storm. You can call them DeuxEx-like or SystemShock-like if it makes you seeth less. After all I dont see this board complaining about soulslike and soulsborn - on the contrary you weebs love this shit and pretend like stamina based combat systems, bosses and nonlinear leveldesign were invented by Mitsubishi-san.

Gunpoint is more of a stealth-puzzle game. But HS definetely has a lot of creativity when it comes to solutions.

Immersive Sim is a terrible genre name because it's utterly meaningless and I can't think of any other genre with such a meaningless name
also FROM BEST TO WORST
System Shock 2
DXHR
Deus Ex
Bioshock
Dishonored
Prey
Dishonored 2
DXMD
--not good power gap--
Dishonored DOTO
Bioshock Infinite

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BOTW is not an immersive sim. Emmergent gameplay does not automatically make it an immersive sim, the say way having having RPG elements doesn’t make fallout 4 an ImSim.

user… the only Immersive Sims you listed were Thief and Deus Ex… is this bait?

Dishonored and HR are Immersive Sims. They qualify 100%, if only barely. Bioshock is an ImSim-Lite, if you will.

It kinda is and kinda isn't. Look the genre died completely in the early 2000s and most attempts to bring it back have been... mixed, to say the least.

The problem with MGSV is that it's unfinished. Like obviously the story's unfinished but the game kinda seems to be as well. But it's also kinda hard to tell. Easy example: enemies react to sound and from that they'll investigate the noise or become alerted to your presence or whatever. Unless you noisily crash through a window in which case guards will remain completely unaware. And it's hard to tell if this is an oversight or a deliberate design choice or what because the whole game has this weird, stitched together kinda quality.

Thing is though Thief, one of the original immersive sims which came out in 1998 and pioneered using sound in stealth, had already solved this problem. There's a universal sound system in place in Thief where every single thing is tied to that system and makes a different level of noise depending on all sorts of factors. In fact everything in Thief is tied to some universal system. Pic related is an example of Thief's Stim/Response system. MGSV seems to have programmed like the top example. Immersive Sims tend to operate using the bottom system.

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No, the only thing it has in common with them is being first person. It shares no other qualities.

Stop baiting retard.

I loved the old and new Deus Ex games, but I hated Dishonored and got bored with Bioshock. What the fuck else do I play? Also can't tell from this thread if MGS counts or not, but I played and loved every single one of those.

Deathloop unironically. Prey does this as well. Hell, even the dishonored games do this if you’re not a pussy who thinks you should be considered god’s gift to mankind for killing every fucking man woman and animal you come across.

Shocklike is unironically a better name for the genre
If you have to argue whether games fit in the genre to this degree maybe the genre name is fucking shitty
you retards are like metal fans
In any case it's a shame these games are a dying breed because of how expensive they are to make compared to the returns they get. I couldn't imagine being a developer pitching one of these to a publisher.
"So it costs 10x as much to make as most other types of games, and unless it has once-in-a-decade quality, it will generate at best a meager profit. Ready to invest?"

I didn't much like them until bioshock 1 and deus ex 3
Wish we got prey 2 im still pissed it never got leaked

I dont see you mentioning System Shock and Thief.

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There isn’t a single third person game that’s immersive. It genuinely cannot be an ImSim if it isn’t first person, I don’t know why so many people think otherwise. Even that Charlatan Wonder guy claims its somehow stupid to think an ImSim can’t be third person. How is this a difficult concept to grasp?

How the hell could you hate Dishonored if you liked all of the Deus Ex games? Dishonored is just deus ex but without inventory management.

What makes you think there ever was a game? E3 presentation? Yeah, god thing those are never fabricated.

but nuDE has inventory management

The genre wasn’t made for system shock, nor any ONE game, but a design philosophy. Retards and newfags to the genre keep wanting to claim their favorite games were actually “le intellectual” game this whole time with shit like MGS of BOTW which obviously aren’t ImSims. Literally just faggots refusing to think logically. Don’t blame the genre on those idiots lack of awareness.

nobody wants to move a soda machine to find a vent to crawl through to overhear a conversation with a pin code that lets you skip one combat scenario that takes two seconds if you go the combat route

>immersive sim

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Where did I say it didn’t?

You ever play Thief: Deadly Shadows user?

youtu.be/bF99y6KFCpc

It's not a genre but a design philosophy

See Take your meds.

oops, missed "without"

>Immersive Sim
>ImSim

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Yeah, it baffles me. People are totally fine with Metroidvania, Soulslike or Roguelike/Roguelite shit with all the vague definition that came with such bracket terms, but goddamn do people here lose their minds immediately the moment Immersive Sim is mentioned.

Willing to give Thief a try, I think I have Thief gold saved somewhere. What's the deal with System Shock?
Because playing dishonored felt like boring bullshit, if anything it was the setting and characters I couldn't give any fucks about more than the gameplay itself, which seemed fine.

Yes? It’s a first person game that has a third person option. Go third person and it’s no longer immersive. Simply put. What’s hard about that to grasp? This isn’t some gotcha moment like you planned it would be…

>Shocklike is unironically a better name for the genre
You do know Ultima Underworld existed before System Shock? And it's the more important and influential game, both as a whole and for immersive sims. The fucking name comes from Looking Glass calling it a Dungeon Simulator, because Underworld was an attempt to merge the Dungeon Crawlers of the time (that's real-time, grid-based blobbers like Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder) with the 3D tech of space and flight sims (3D graphics, basic Newtonian physics, affine texture mapping and so on)

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Horrible opinion and horrible list. What a retarded post.

>NOOOO stop saying things that Yea Forums itself didn’t make up!!!!
>stop shortening long names!!!!
I bet you hate when people type a game’s title via its initials.

>Metroidvania
>Implies game is similar to Metroid and Castlevania
>Soulslike
>Implies game is similar to the Dark Souls series
>Roguelike
>Implies game is similar to the classic game Rogue
>Roguelite
>Implies game is similar to the classic game Rogue but with less hardcore gameplay elements
The only vague one here is Roguelite, and even that can be boiled down to "a roguelike with permanent progression systems".
Immersive sim is literally meaningless. The games don't have a monopoly on immersion, and they simulate nothing.
There are seriously vague genre names out there and none of them are as pathetic and shitty as "Immersive Sim".

>HR over Deus Ex
And into the trash it goes.

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I think immersion means more than "I am seeing from the perspective of this character". Counter Strike isn't immersive, but MGS is. There's mechanical immersion and environmental immersion and graphical immersion and even VRs sense of "presence" that's hard to convey unless you've tried it yourself. Immersion is a horribly nebulous term.

>you retards are like metal fans
this kek

Is there any way to make Thief Gold’s controls not absolute dogshit? Also anything about a widescreen mode?

>More influential than fucking System Shock
It's not even funny at this point

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Oh I mostly agree with you, I just wanted to point out that Deadly Shadows did have a 3rd person option. Either way that's not what the immersive in immersive sim is short for. It's short for 'immersive reality' which was the actual term that Looking Glass used to describe its design philosophy. Here's their long-ass manifesto where they explain what it actually means. Short version: real-time 3D emergent gameplay allowing for player agency. It's got little to do with the perspective at all.

If anything the sim bit of immersive sim is actually describing the perspective, since it's short for simulation. Well, duh, but in the case of Looking Glass they were literally referring to flight sims. In the bit at the start where they're describing military simulations they're actually talking about the Chuck Yeager Flight Trainer/Air Combat games which they ripped off the 3D tech of to make Ultima Underworld.

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