No Stupid Questions

define*

[edit: no problem]

I usually hurl insults while cracking the console and entering cheat codes.

Jokes aside, immersive sims have it in the description- they're simulations of a thing, the game rules follow simulated rules, and these rules are designed to allow extreme player choice. Skyrim doesn't really qualify even if it is 'open world'- for example, how players are almost subconsciously pushed into being a stealth archer. (the game rewards you for sneaking in and getting the lay of the land before you enter combat. Picking people off at range is useful, and spells are too noisy for that, where archer lets you not entirely break stealth. Sure you might mop up with some magic or some sword and stuff, but, really, if you're careful, you can clear entire rooms without people finding you.)

Also, puzzles and problems in skyrim lack the freedom of choice that's the hallmark of immersive sims. Compare this to kingdom come deliverance, where if you're careful you can just bullshit your entire way through the game. (speech skills, for example,) More over, the game reacts to what you do, and what you don't do. you're moving through a game world that changes based on how you go about everything, frequently in subtle ways... where it dosn't really change as you progress through it.

i think the main two things that make an immersive sim are open-endedness and mechanical depth. zelda is linear in that there's only one valid outcome, and TES is shallow in that skills are just "press button to action".

some outliers i'd class as imsims are, like... Divinity: Original Sin 1/2 and Hitman.

Usually they have

• multiple approaches
• reactive world and NPCs
• the world is more interactive than decorative

So the game might say "get the laptop from the 2nd floor office". An immersive sim will try to allow as many things as you could imagine doing in real life to achieve this

• talk your way in. Convince them you work there or something
  • maybe forge or steal some ID
  • or hack their network to give yourself creds!
• find a back entrance
• find a back entrance directly to the 2nd story
• just shoot everyone
• sneak in and take people out like a ghost
• sneak in and don't get seen
• set off a fire alarm and go in when people are outside
• do any of the above after hours

Contrast this with a more traditional game like Mass Effect. There's typically going to be like one path, with maybe like one choice. You go in where they want, shoot the baddies, and get the thing.

My personal line in the sand is, "do I feel like the developers wanted me to use the solution that I used?"

In my opinion, developers can design multiple solutions to a problem and it still may not count as an immersive sim. Because the key characteristic of an immersive sim is that there must be sufficiently complex interacting systems and mechanics that you can come up with your own solutions, independent of what the developers intended

I just played through Fallout New Vegas "Dead Money," and it got me thinking about this.

What made it immersive for me was that the constraints were (a) explained within the story line, and (b) effective in making the situation consistent.

In the normal game, you start from nothing and eventually become massively overpowered, which is immersion-breaking because if you can do it, why not all of the NPCs? In Dead Money, you are strapped for resources, pressed for time, and feel the looming fear all the time. The experience is more visceral.

There's never any exact lines. As with every term, especially in gaming, people will mean different things by it and may or may not implicitly assume people agree - except when arguing about it for ever and ever and ever. While nobody changes their mind at any point.

On something like Steam it's a tag, which gives you limited information about the game. Not necessarily based on the literal reading, but what other stuff has/doesn't have the same tag. And that'll be inconsistent across storefronts, reviewers, individual players and all that stuff too.

I just say "no"

As so often in life: there is no line! If you are immersed in the game then it is, really that simple!

"Immersion" itself doesn't have an absolute clear definition, people sometimes mean "feel like a part of it" and sometimes "getting lost in". Both is fine :)

For games specifically it's along the lines of "what does a majority feel"? To give a specific example: Legend of Zelda is often described as an immersive game - and I never saw why, just accepting that for many people it seems to be.