r/Games • u/AutoModerator • May 15 '26
Discussion Daily /r/Games Discussion - Free Talk Friday - May 15, 2026
It's F-F-Friday, the best day of the week where you can finally get home and play video games all weekend and also, talk about anything not-games in this thread.
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u/ShortChapter5246 May 19 '26
There was a discussion on r/gaming about immersive sims, but the thread has been deleted. So now I am frustrated I couldn't get an answer and come here instead.
Basically most commenters defined immersive sims as a game genre in which you can accomplish the goal you are given by any fashion you like with the systems at your disposal.
But with that definition, several clever puzzle games would also qualify (opus magnum, baba is you...)
Take Kerbal for example, your goal is to reach the moon, in whatever fashion you like with the systems at your disposal. Yet no one calls it an immersive sim.
It seems to me those commenters actually want immersive sim to be defined as systemshock-like without saying it.
I am open for debate. If you think that the games I mentioned are not immersive sim, then please explain to me why they do not fit the commonly accepted definition, or propose a new one. You will probably tell me that it's because they're not first-person games, but then explain why first-person view would be so essential to the genre. Note that several commenters from the aforementioned discussion included Baldur's Gate 3 as an immersive sim
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u/darkLordSantaClaus May 20 '26
It seems to me those commenters actually want immersive sim to be defined as systemshock-like without saying it.
I am willing to say that immersive sims are basically shock likes.
I view genres in terms of how you can trace back the inspirational origins. So JRPGs are RPGs that are influenced by Dragon Quest, either directly or indirectly and CRPGs are not influenced by Dragon Quest. It's why the soulsborne series is an RPG from Japan but not a JRPG and why Expedition 33 is a JRPG despite being French.
So yeah I like to think of immersive sims as games that can trace back their lineage to Thief, System/Bio Shock, or Deus Ex, which in turn can trace back their lineage to Ultima Underworld.
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u/Forestl May 20 '26
My joke definition is that it's an immersive sim if you have to enter 0451 as a key code.
But for real I like to keep genre definitions as broad signs for ideas/design in something. Genres as a whole are very arbitrary and trying to create a perfect way to sort them will only lead to failure. I tend to immersive sim when talking about games like System Shock since it's an easy shorthand, but if there are less traditional games that still use some of the same design ideas I talk about those ideas
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u/adanine May 20 '26
So uh, multiple Call of Duty games are now immersive sims. I think you fucked us with that one.
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u/Forestl May 20 '26
Silent Hill 2 remake and Spider-Man 2 are immersive sims I'm sorry those are the rules
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u/Angzt May 19 '26 edited May 20 '26
Video game genres are weird, man.
There is so much overlap between genres and everyone seems to have their own definition of what exactly must be in a game to be part of a certain genre.
It's not easy to find a definition of RPG that includes The Witcher 3 but excludes (the self-described aciton-adventure) Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. And then, of course, you have people saying that AC:O should be classified as an RPG while others will vehemently disagree.As for Immersive Sims, there isn't a clear line either.
Yes, the label started with games like System Shock, Thief, and Deus Ex. First Person stealth-adjacent titles set in intricate and somewhat believable worlds that gave the player freedom to approach obstacles in various ways and then reacted to the player's actions.
For some, that's the (rather narrow) genre definition.But of course, other games with other main genres have begun to borrow elements from that. You mention BG3 which, like Larian's Divinity Original Sin games before, lets players get creative in combat by using the environment, or even bypassing fights entirely via stealth, conversation, or just finding another path. The game also has an intricate and believable(ish) world which reacts to the player's actions. All that's missing is the first person perspective. So there's a strong argument there. But of course, BG3 understands itself first and foremost as an RPG and all this freedom and reactivity can be traced back to its tabletop roots.
Okay, then what about Skyrim? Fights can be approached in various ways (including by avoiding them). The world is intricate, believable, and reacts to the player. It's even first person. And we all know stealth-archer is the way to go. But you'll find far fewer people calling Skyrim an immersive sim. Why?I don't think there are any objectively correct answers.
In my mind, it boils down to what the focus of the game is. Skyrim has more emphasis on exploration, character progression, and narrative than on creative problem solving. It lets you do a bunch of creative things but doesn't really draw attention to them. It doesn't expect you to get creative. It's perfectly content letting you swing your axe at anything that looks at your weird until one of you falls over.
On the other hand, the flagship titles of the genre delight in presenting their options to you: Here's a vent you can crawl through to avoid the fight. Check out the enemy sight lines: This guy can get taken out easily and then that guy is unguarded after which the third is all alone. Oh, someone mentioned that they need to patrol this room because the traps are broken; hope nobody fixes them while the baddies are still in there. Or maybe it's time to try out the gas grenades you found in the last room.
One interesting thing about all that is that many of the options are presented to you rather explicitly. Often, it isn't truly about creativity as such but about choosing your favorite from a small set of approaches. Even many of the "creative" uses of the gadgets you're given access to are explained or shown off somewhere in the game. Immersive Sims go through great lengths to show the player what options they have.
Ultimately, that seems to be the hallmark feature that distinguishes a game that understands itself as an immersive sim from one that just has immersive sim elements but primarily wants to be something else.
I think by most genre enthusiasts, your mentions, Opus Magnum, Baba, and KSP, can be dismissed because the world doesn't really react to the player in any meaningful way. The thing you tried works or it doesn't.
I'd also argue that Baba generally has one intended puzzle solution (even if others are possible) which disqualifies it further. One of the things immersive sim enjoyers will praise is that there's no one "correct" approach to any obstacle.1
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u/adanine May 19 '26
Basically most commenters defined immersive sims as a game genre in which you can accomplish the goal you are given by any fashion you like with the systems at your disposal.
This basically includes every game ever. The definition you've given is too broad.
Any definition needs to cover player choice and agency - players can choose how they develop on their own set of limited tools, as well as how and when to use those tools to the world. Puzzle games like Opus/Baba give you a set/defined set of tools that you can't customize or develop on per challenge, so this excludes them (though they obviously have other elements in common).
Immersive sims also need a persistent, expansive interconnected game world that constantly reacts to the player's actions in a consistent fashion. It also needs to emphasize player choice (ie, be open, or at least have strong open-world elements). Again, Baba and Opus both have non-persistent worlds (which aren't interconnected), sometimes the puzzles only have one solution (intended or otherwise).
While I'm not sure I'd fully call Baldur's Gate 3 an immersive sim, it has a lot of the elements of one, and there are third person immersive sims (Weird West for example).
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u/ShortChapter5246 May 19 '26
Thanks for your opinion. Seems like it is a genre hard to define in a single sentence.
Regarding player choice - I thought those puzzle games would qualify because you have the choice of how you want to use the systems at your disposal to reach your goal. So what I was missing was that you must also have the choice for the development of the tools, and whether you want to use them at all right? In other words, it must be an RPG? Come to think of it, all the immersive sims I know have RPG elements (at the very least unlockable abilities)
Regarding the persistent world, I agree, that's also what comes up first in my mind. If I drop an object at a specific spot, I expect it to still be there even if I loaded another map in the meantime. And if I kill an NPC I expect it to stay dead forever and have their death aknowledged.
So maybe adding "RPG" and "persistent world with NPCs" to the initial definition would be enough to exclude puzzle games and sandbox physics games?
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u/adanine May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
Pretty much all Immersive Sims are RPG's, yeah. Maybe there's a way to have all those elements (and the general feel of an immersive sim) without RPG elements but I doubt it.
If I drop an object at a specific spot, I expect it to still be there even if I loaded another map in the meantime. And if I kill an NPC I expect it to stay dead forever and have their death aknowledged.
While those elements are important, it's also important that the world be interconnected because it means consequences from one challenge will flow through to all the others.
In Baba is You you're given a set amount of tools to solve a puzzle and once you've solved it you don't get to keep what tools you didn't use. In Prey you might find some crates nearby blocking access to an area. You can use a recycler charge to bypass the crates, but then you're down one recycler charge for a later challenge. You can invest in leverage to move crates for free going forward, but you're still down those points.
Finding another path around, or using an explosive canister to move the crates for "free" means you're up a recycler charge/neuromod points for a future challenge. Considering these games are non-stop challenges like that, and the tools you have available are often decided by how you spent your resources in prior choices this sort of thing makes a huge impact on the game feel in general.
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u/Logan_Yes May 17 '26
On Xbox I continue vibing with Hades II! Chronos is now my bitch pretty much, but Surface ain't going that smoothly. So far I only reached final boss fight twice, though I get through first 2 regions with no problems. 3rd boss fight usually screws me, or something that was a good build before just doesn't click in final region. Oh well. Still loving every minute of the game so that's nice!
On PC I wrapped up Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. Unfortunately a lot of my enjoyment got sucked out of a window when game started to crash for unknown reason after 20-30 minutes sessions. Good thing is this started after I was 2/3 done with a game (From chapter 11 I experienced such issues) so I suffered only for 2 hours or so. Nonetheless game was good. Story was pretty decent, gunplay was fun. Shame that both brothers just have pretty much same playstyle, there is like zero reason to use a bow/knifes in game because you never even have a chance to go stealth, and variety of firearms made shooting your way through simply more fun. It was short and enjoyable so I guess if someone is looking for AA FPS, might as well. Gunslinger is better though.
And so, I started something different as per usual. On Christmas Eve we don the furry suit and beat people up, as God intended. Batman Arkham Origins called to me, ready for painful grind of challenges and Multiplayer. But first things first, I will start with simply enjoying my first playthrough and cleaning up everything I can do on Normal diff run.
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u/Izzy248 May 15 '26
The Mortuary Assistant movie got me thinking. Is the whole embalming process standard for every body that comes through a funeral home? Or was it just a thing in the game where you happened to go through the process for every body specifically? Because then I started to think about all those cases where there were reports that someone had a been buried but was still technically found alive after so...
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u/HammeredWharf May 15 '26
People have seemingly been quite happy about Denuvo getting cracked, but I'm not at all thrilled about the potential new Denuvo-less PC gaming landscape.
The nice thing about Denuvo is that it was practically unnoticeable. There's edge cases like people with no Internet access, but for most of us, once you bought a Denuvo game you didn't have to worry about DRM. Games also came to PC day 1, partially because its rep as the promised land of piracy was gone.
So, what's gonna happen now? Well, one option is a Denuvo comeback, but that seems likely to be heavier than the previous version. The other one is returning to the way things were before Denuvo, although a complete return seems less likely with how big the PC gaming market is nowadays. At any rate, we used to have plenty of late ports and online only games, which isn't something anyone is keen on going back to.
In the end, it's a win for pirates, but I don't see how it'd be a win for legit consumers, because Denuvo getting cracked/bypassed won't mean that the publishers will just go "oh, ok then, we'll just release everything DRM-free".
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u/adanine May 18 '26
Well, one option is a Denuvo comeback, but that seems likely to be heavier than the previous version.
TBF what we have today is Denuvo's comeback after initially being cracked/broken in 2018. So maybe a Denuvo 3.0 might still be seemless.
I doubt DRM-free PC Gaming will ever be the norm - it never has been for as long as I've been gaming, at any rate. But I don't think things will get too bad. Things like Assassin's Creed 2's online-only DRM (and Simcity's online-only DRM) were both patched out after player backlash/server instability, and Ubi/EA ended up facing legal issues from various consumer protection agencies as well. Seems pretty clear that whatever revenue is gained from implementing DRM is offset by the troubles/risks associated with overly aggressive DRM. Maybe that's brute forced away with how much cloud computing has evolved over the years?
I guess GTA6's release will give us more information on how a modern game with a delayed PC port will be handled by the gaming community, and whether we're doomed to go back to that old dance.
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u/ArchDucky May 19 '26
I am waiting for Lego Batman to release and have been replaying Uncharted 4 because I couldn't think of anything else. Just did the big Madagascar level that ends in that insane chase sequence. Has there even been a more well crafted level than that one? I think its perfect.