I don't know if this is where I should post this. However, there’s a chance and if even just a chance exists of making Skyrim a better game I’ll take it. Of course I know “better” is a matter of taste but please hear me out. I think one of the things that made Morrowind such a great game was that it didn’t feel like a game, so much as a world for you to explore. I don’t want a fully sandbox game, no one does. Some of the greatest aspects of Morrowind and Oblivion were their stories. Still I think that Morrowind succeeded in being immersive whereas Oblivion did not. Two of the biggest flaws in Oblivion I think, were the leveled system of items and the small amount of dialog. Every time I picked up a supposedly powerful artifact and found it was just right for my level the immersion was shattered. Every time I looked for more explanation on a quest but found none the immersion was shattered. I understand paying voice actors is pricy and I understand that to most having to follow directions laid out by quest givers was tedious. Still a magic compass that tells you wherever you need to go is not the answer. Immersion is the emergent property you get when everything in the game feels realistic. Now I don’t mean to say that hurling fire balls at the enemy damages immersion. In the end I suppose it would be more accurate to say Immersion is the result of all the rules of that world being followed in that world. The differences between the game mechanics and the lore cannot be major. The two must fit each other so that they may compliment both. So in Skyrim I hope there isn't another magic compasses, and I hope they bring back spells like Divine Intervention and Levitation. I know they have to make concessions but I feel that the Elder Scrolls Setting is a vibrant and fantastic world and it wouldn't be doing it justice to have bits cut off to fit the game engine.

Still though this is only my opinion, what do you people think immersion is and more importantly, how can we help bring it to Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim

Aren't there enough topics that pit Oblivion and Morrowind against each other?

Will Skyrim be immersive for me? I'm sure it will be, but I had no problem getting immersed in Morrowind and Oblivion, so there you go.

Welcome to the forum ^^ You'll find that a lot of people have the some opinion as you on the topic, and it has indeed been discussed before, but so has everything else, so fret not.

Immersion.

:sigh:

It's a matter of taste and that means that you can never make everybody happy with one solution.

Doesn't take much for me to get immersed in a game. I think "immersion" mechanics should be targeted at the lowest common denominator (people like me) who want the absolute minimal amount. And give options for people who want more.

Immersion is not universal, different people have different interests.


If you start playing the game and blank out of existence for a time without realizing or find your self commenting or pondering events and actions in game. and even more so concerned about what will happen next and your part in it.


You can be considered immersed.

Fair enough. I don't mean to say I didn't like Oblivion, It was a fine game and very fun. I don't think Morrowind and Oblivion need to be pitted against each other but by comparing them I think we can distill the best of both into Skyrim. Next time I'll browse the forum more before posting but I think the original spirit of this post was missed. What do you think Immersion is? What makes it happen? You say you felt immersed in Morrowind and Oblivion, Why?

I felt immersed in Morrowind and Oblivion for different reasons.

I think a big part of it in Morrowind was the music. The main theme playing just inspired a desire to explore. But for both of them, being greeted by NPCs were a big part of it. Walking up to someone and being acknowledged really made me feel like I was recognized in the game-world, even more so when they would identify me by my actions (such as being referred to as the Hero of Kvatch or the Champion of Cyrodiil.) In Morrowind, the lack of identification in that way (NOT being called the Nerevarine) worked for the story, since very few were supposed to know that I was seeking to fulfill the Nerevarine prophecies.

Oblivion also had a lot going on even when I wasn't interacting with anything, and that played a big role in immersion for me as well. People were always walking around shopping or talking or visiting their family and things like that. I wasn't the center of attention; people were living their lives with or without me.

Morrowind had the bonus of being so different and unique compared to the real world. It helped a lot of players, myself included, get involved in the world.

Again, for both of them: literature. A ton of books and letters and all kinds of things detailing both the history of the world and just personal things. I always liked finding a letter on someone's desk detailing some mundane event that had no significance to any quest or history, it was just something that didn't concern you at all but was important to in-game NPCs.

I could go on and on, but I think the point is, it's the little things that really make MW and OB feel like a real alternate universe and a living, breathing world.

You couldn't know that the OB v MW thing is prolly the biggest gripe people round here have ^^ ... any back on topic, personally I feel that immersion comes from an explanantion of stuff around you. Fx. why have they build the city this way, why do the people act like this and stuff like that.. some bagground to stuff that actually makes some level of sense and tha makes you go "oh, wuaw interesting"

Immersion is in our minds, it's not in the game. But the game triggers it (or not) with its inner coherence. Morrowind had a great inner coherence because there was a great effort put into describing the cultural factor of Morrowind and its citizens. The result was charming and homogeneous and not just the sum of some ingredients mixed together.
This is what I expect from Skyrim: powerful sense of culture. My immersion will be triggered by the means of discovery ( exploring the world and being rewarded for doing so) and accomplishment (making choices in developing my character and watching those choices impact on what happens).

I agree with you, for the most part. Oblivion was excellent in that the world it crafted was populated with unique NPC's who lived their lives independently of the player, a move that was in my opinion brilliant. In Morrowind there wasn't that same feeling of recognition. For example when one became the leader of a great house or guild it was hardly recognized whereas in Oblivion you were greeted as such. However the dialog was still not as extensive. There was no "latest rumor" or "little advise" and though I don't know how many people actually read such things (though I admit to) having them as options did create a feeling of extensiveness. A gribe I have with Oblivion (though I still enjoyed it as a game) was that it didn't feel as vast and varied as Morrowind, and without that feeling of vastness the immersion was broken. I can't deny that during Oblivion (the storming of ruined Kvatch for example) I was immersed and invested in the story. However the game just didn't feel like it had as much content. Fewer guilds and quests, so on so forth.

As for the literature and the music I think you're spot.

I was far more immersed in Oblivion than MW. Voice acting, people going about there daily lives were major improvements over people standing and staring 24/7 and interaction with npcs that felt like I was on Wikipedia. The world as a whole was simply far more believable, it felt alive. Walking on the roads and seeing guards fighting off bandits, or going through the woods and seeing wild life attack each other was amazing. In MW things felt so devoid of life, it felt like some bizarro world were everything was frozen and time never moved forward, the day and night came but people were stuck.

I suspect Skyrim will build on Oblivion improvments while also having a handcrafted world like MW for an overall significant leap in immersion. And immersion for me simply getting lost in and believing in the world I am playing.

Agreed, now that I think about it I doubt anyone could have placed it better. One of the greatest factors of Morrowind was the culture and it's effects on game play. Though Oblivion had varying cultures with differences (such as the hardy colovian heart landers or the refined denizens of the imperial city) it didn't have the same veneer of variation. In Morrowind a Telvani wizard with their scheming nature, egotistical mannerism and condescending demenour felt like they could be recognized from a Redoran Retainer easily regardless of the cloths they were wearing. Whether or not the game actually made this possible was less important. The point is that the game managed to have the player associate certain traits to the different cultures and when that happened the culture held up the game world atlarge, thus creating a feeling of cohesiveness resulting in immersion.

immersion is a word which when translated from its native Neckbeard can be roughly defined as "Morrowind was better".

people throw it around to justify hilariously stupid ideas or to whine about graphics, and also throw it around as if the word in itself is some kind of criticism against Oblivion.

some people use it in legitimate ways, for instance when they refer to the state of being immersed in a game (a concept closely linked to verisimilitude, which Bethesda's games (barring Fallout 3 but Fallout's lore and politics are boring) tend to favor heavily), but most people just tend to use it as though it were some sort of QUANTIFIABLE THING that video games possess.

I think if they put great focus on really sticking to the lore and presenting all the contrasting cultures then that will improve immersion a lot for me. I do agree that NPCs having daily routines did help, but I still felt more immersed in Morrowind. They also need to add some political infighting between guilds and political factions or something. Oblivion felt so Good vs. Evil all the time...

Immersion is what ever keeps you immersed in a game. It has nothing to do with realism. What keeps people immersed in a game varies from person to person. Im sure many gamers are immersed in games that aren't realistic at all. Immersion isnt a synonym for realism.

Well, I could be wrong, but I believe immersion is an old, old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era.

Immersion: what is it?
It's when you forget what you are doing. Your coffee gets cold, didn't i have something cooking? etc.

Will Skyrim have it?
Can't see why not.

Cheap answer maybe, but it's immersion to me.

I didn't feel like leveled items broke immersion but as you said that is your opinion and leveled items not affecting my immersion is my opinion. However, Oblivion had more dialogue than Morrowind.

Personally I thought Oblivion was much more immersive than Morrowind. Oblivion had much more quality and in-depth side quests than Morrowind had and the world actually felt real. My perfect immersion is when I'm in a game and from my characters perspective, the world feels real, this is something Oblivion had and Skyrim will most likely have more of. The NPCs in Oblivion felt real, the world definitely felt real. The only thing Oblivion paled in comparison to Morrowind really was the main quest, which is a very small part of the game. My version of immersion is if I imagine my perspective as my character and not as a player playing through the screen and if the world feels real and the NPCs around have personality and react to what I do then it's immersion.

But that's my opinion. I'm not really a fan of Morrowind, it's only third in my list of the most entertaining TES games, with Oblivion in second and Daggerfall in first.

Honestly I was more immersed in morrowind BECAUSE of its magical alien nature. The stuff in the game wasn't real, but it made sense within the world... in oblivion it was like they were trying to make a world that was exactly like old time Britain but infused with magical spells and mythical creatures. In morrowind it was like a living breathing alternate world, there were modes of travel and believable creatures... some of them were too high level for you to fight at times.

That just about sums it all up, thanks guys for contributing and getting your ideas across. Let's all hope Skyrim will be a great game so when it comes out we won't be surprised. cya.

Hehe.

They have the same word in Casualiese which roughly translates to "Te combat is te awesome one one one"

In my native language I used to think I knew the meaning of immersion, these days I'm not so sure. Realism is not required, credibility, will suffice. I think the game world should be consistent, self referencing and that the world should appear interconnected, functional and independent of your character - I should not need to level for the shops to acquire new stock or the bandits who always stand at the top of the hill to buy new clothes.

The word immersion is the worst thing to ever happen to TES. Gosh does it ever get tiring seeing peoples ideas on how to make a video game immersive. The op is a perfect example of why I hate this word: he uses it to describe things he doesnt like in the game. It seems that any time there is something someone doesnt like about TES, it suddenly becomes a question of how immersive it is.

Ive been over this before, and Im not saying immersion is a bad thing. I just wish people would stop generalizing problems with immersion. If you are playing a game and find that something ruins your immersion try reminding yourself that you are playing a video game. IT WILL NEVER BE 100 PERCENT IMMERSIVE, because at that point it is not a video game any longer. Please stop using immersion as a way of describing what you see as flaws.

Immersion is my ultimate immersion killer.

I knew in an instant this post would say Oblivion wasn't immersive.

If its immersive, Ill be fine with it... (IE, Ill be immersed in a game if the only immersable thing in it is mining/ cooking/ etc... And everything else is mindless rampaging...) Which Im not saying skyrim is, Im just saying that I can be immersed pretty easily, it doesnt even take that much, a good bartering system, or house system, or even dungeon system, and Ill be fine...

:celebration:

Not that it means anything but I support this post 100%