Im not massively into the whole immersion thing in games i tend to be mostly happy with whats released and just get on with it, im quite accepting.

What i do want to know is where do you draw your lines for what does and does not break your immersion?

Like what is it about a particular point that bugs and why some other points dont concern you so much what are the parameters to what you feel is acceptable and what isnt??

Quite intrigued by this!!!

All immersion actually is, is essentially whiting out pretty much everything else. Have you ever played a game for a decently long time and essentially ignored everything else? Then you have been immersed into a game.

Shooting someone in the head two times and it still lives breaks it, that's why I don't play on hard

For me, the fact that in order to play the game the way I want, I have to ignore the fact my child was kidnapped before my very eyes. I wanted to delay the main quests for a long time in order to build my settlement, while developing my scavenging and crafting skills. Of course, in real life I would have scoured the wastes and cities during all 17 hours of my current game time looking for my child. I like the Fallout worlds, but I prefer the Elder Scrolls MO of your character being a nobody at the start whose story you create yourself.

you should not be playing an RPG then, because this is an RPG, and that is what an RPG is. play ANY RPG, and characters take way more hits that what is realistic.

Why shouldn't he play an RPG? The question was what breaks immersion and he's answering it. It doesn't mean he doesn't like the game. After all, immersion is just one factor in a game. There are many others. There are things about 4X strategies or whatever that I don't like and yet I still play them. It's called not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

For me its all the little things. I like to wonder around the game feeling totally in the game. I move in and out of 3rd person view depending on what im doing as I like to see my character moving around the world and how he looks. Sneaking up on something and drawing your rifle off your back as you near. Oh wait, that doesnt happen any more it just appears lol. And CND I miss that too. Seems like everythings a little more arcady this time, easier so to speak. I liked the fact that I needed to repair weapons I used a lot. I dont even get hungry walking around either, really? I love the game dont get me wrong and will sink hundreds of hours into it cos other aspects are also better. I particularly like the Fusion Cell idea with the Heavy Armor and the HUD when your inside it.

because what you guys are talking about is realism, and you cannot ever go into an RPG and expect weapon to be realistic in that way, it is the anti-thesis to what RPGs are and have always been about. In Skyrim, you could hit someone with a warhammer and they are perfectly fine, in real life, if you hit someone with a warhammer with the force that is used in games, they should be on on the ground knocked out and likely on deaths door of not dead in a single hit, but, it being an RPG, that does not happen.

Oh this is a very regular occurrence for me but i would say i'm more engrossed then immersed and it dont need to be an in depth role playing game for this to happen i have lost hours of my life to so many different games.

As for shooting someone in the head more than once, in my opinion this is simply to balance the game and keep it challenging if every enemy was to die with one shot to the head firefights would become repetitive and very easy. Like going up against a deathclaw, popping him once in the head does not distinguish this enemy from any of the others and leaves nothing to "fear".

Got to concede to your finding your son point tho dude your right it makes no sense a father would balls around building house for strangers when his kid was missing....well unless you rkid is a bit of a dike!!

from the star RPG are base on hit point mechanics, if u are a fan of RPG games paper or computer the only way to make a enemy been stronger is giving him more resistance or HP. That mean u can shoot it sometimes 5 times and still he will live.

Same it goes for the story on a rpg game u are part of a "campaign", how u do that campaign is your choice, the whole presentation of F4 is the way they introduce to that campaign. Been playing D&D since i was little and every time i get to a new campaign is always the same they set me into it and then let me free to do whatever i want.

Yes. Didn't like being forced into a domestic situation and was glad when it was over.

He's stinky, he's noisy, he's demanding, he's fussy. Let him rot. j/k

LOL, I really don't care what genre this game is called, rpg, fps, action, strategy, I just want a good game, as Fallout 4 is, and shooting an unprotected human in the head more than once to kill him certainly looks ridiculous

Well there is a lot of things that just break immersion if I dwell on it.

-Carrying 20 weapons and 10 sets of armor at one time.

-Instant build anything - building, weapon upgrade, furniture, etc.

-Getting shot in the face and living ... without even a scar.

-Buildings still standing after 200 years. Eating 200 year old beans. Honestly if FO just took place 20 years after the bombs I'd be ok with that.

-People splattering when shot with a pistol.

-Unlimited storage in assigned storage containers.

-Etc.

Granted a game without some of these would be more difficult. It would be something more like the game ARK which really is a survival game, something FO pretends to be while in reality is just a shooter with a twist.

the NPCs doing literally nothing ruins immersion for me. Skyrim had the same issue, robotic AI that followed a bare bones schedule that sometimes played an animation to make it look like they were doing something, while actually having no impact on the world around them. Oblivion had the best AI in terms of how dynamic it was, for example some NPCs had low responsibility and could decide to steal from other NPCs if they didn't have something but wanted it (i.e, food). Nothing like that happens since they stripped this stuff away in the engine when skyrim was made.

I want a living world with NPCs interacting with others and the environment, and player just happens to be there. I don't want to feel special. I want the world to feel alive and unpredictable because NPCs are free to do things of their own accord & needs.

I hope that once the dev kit is out, modders will be able to expand on this aspect of the game.

LOL Storing a minigun and cryolator into your dog is also in those categories

Playing video-games is also an exercise of imagination, good are the ones who posses this gift.

This is a great point, once you really consider the elements of a game its very difficult to get the immersion people are after and maybe as you say people are looking for something that they just wont find in fallout, your right this is more a tactical FPS with RPG gameplay elements and if you go in with your expectations at the right level then you could maybe get better satisfaction from the game.

i think u point the biggest differences i find between ES and Fallout. On Fallout u always steeping on the foots of someone else (F1 Vault dweller form V13, F2 a Tribal from Arroyo, F3 the vault dweller from 101 who born on River city, F4 a pre-war veteran from 111) on ES u are always a nobody they never tell u who u were before the game star. So on ES u can always choose whatever u want on your pass and it feel better when u choose not to fallow the main quest.

well but those points are from a Survival simulator game, Fallout isnt, is a Action RPG.

I think this is the best answer. And there's a lot to white out in this game.

As others have said, the intro to the TES series allowed for smoother rollplaying opportunties - and still, Arthmoor created one of the great mods for Oblivion/Skyrim: Live Another Life. Start the game the way you want. Hopefully, something similar will be created for Fallout 4.

But what is really immersion breaking for me is the really poor writing. Damon Beres (game critic for the Huffington Post) noted "Fallout 4 is to stupid to be game of the year." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fallout-4-review_5640abd1e4b0411d3071931c). The story line often doesn't make sense at all. But that should come as no surprise, since there so many elements of Fallout 3 didn't make sense. Armor and weapons lying around for 200 years still works? Ammo still works? Food left lying around is still edible? But these elements have nothing on the writing that, at times, seems like it was patched together for effect with no thought to a logical outcome or realistic motivations and consequences.

And, as others have said, we're kind of locked into it.

That said, I think Fallout 4 is fun for what it gives you: a post-apolcalyptic FPS with elements of SimCity built in. As an RPG, I think it fails: as evidenced by the fact that, 38 hours in, I've managed to spend most of my time buidling settlements.

because that is not possible in a normal video game, it goes WAY beyond the realm of what RPGs, and most video games do. You must not be a gamer who plays anything beyond the latest Bethesda game, because the system that is in games like Fallout 4 and skyrim are WAY ahead of most video games in terms of what the AI townspeople do. In most games, the AI literally just stands there and does nothing, and that is the norm for video games in general.

They tried something like that, though a lot more limited, with Oblivion......and it was HATED by everyone because of how stupid it was.

It is something i have never understood about this community, they expect their action RPGs to have stuff that not only is from a COMPLETELY and totally different genre of game, but is something that Bethesda has NEVER hinted at ever adding or even thinking of adding.

New Vegas was done by Obsidian, and even then, that was also less of a "Realism" thing and more of a "I want the game to be MUCH, MUCH harder" thing, not as if you could change the difficulty of the game while doing that.

Immersion is not addiction. Theres an entire category of immersive mods for skyrim

When mods added expanded schedules to skyrim citizens they became for immersive

When the dark elf/dunmer talked to ny dark elf and asked me if i hated her kind. Thats a loss of immersion

Going to be up to modding to make f4 as immersive as modded skyrim which is a shame based on what modders already achieved so you had a blueprint in place

The points you described are realism. It has little to do with immersion, unless part of your gaming experience is walking around asking those questions when you are looking at the buildings. Immersion, for me, is when you feel like you are in the game. It requires several important things, but not limited to:

- high quality graphics

- realistic/natural lighting

- realistic physics system

- atmosphere, credit to level designers

- random events happening in the background, such as NPCs doing their daily routine, your companion chilling out in the area instead of standing there like a tree