Older tech = more immersion?

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I remember being blown away by offerings on the NES, Genesis and early Windows 95 PCs in a way that newer games never quite managed to match, despite them having the power and the resources to pull off many of the things older titles merely hinted at.

This may be because earlier developers knew right from the get-go that they were never going to get their games looking realistic, choosing instead to pack them full of fun mechanics and interesting features, which made for better games and resulted on it feeling absolutely earned when something really did cool and "realistic" on those systems.

But nowadays I'm PLAGUED by a nagging feeling telling me that things look TOO realistic, effectively making me realize that I don't need the games at all -- I could do most of what they offer by just going outside and exploring delerict/abandoned buildings, running around empty fields, and so on.

Maybe if so many games weren't hellbent on taking place on essentially the real world, this wouldn't be a problem. But because they do, it is.

Do you have this feeling too? Can you get more immersed on an 8-bit game or DirectX 5 offering because they hinted at something bigger without outright showing it? Maybe I'm just a hack, but I can't shake off this feeling after revisiting so many great things from the past for my reviews and articles and getting utterly lost in their worlds.

 

[moonbits]

no

 

[Nebulon_Galaxy]

Its because the games have barely any graphical fidelity; that your brain fills in the gaps.

 

[kuroninneko]

Sometimes I think the retro 8bit sprites left room for imagination. Also I was thinking gaming as a whole benefited from gaming magazines. Now we can only get news from the internet which isnt as exciting for whatever reason.

 

[Vexicrypt]

Art direction/style was always more important to me than graphics/teraflops or whatever. The most fun I've had (and still get) is from games that dont look realistic almost at all, because my brain fills the gaps just fine. Also I hate particle effects in modern games, they just distract me so much that I cant pay attention to whats really important. The problem is, some dumb people in fancy suits think thats what gamers want, so games take ages to develop and they look the same because they either use the same engine (UE5, dont get me started on that) or go for the most realistic (boring) art style. But I think this is what getting old feels like and I hate it.

 

[wilddogsdivorce]

i think it kind of goes both ways for me. personally, having done most of the gaming in my life within the bounds of the ps2 catalog, I find that games on platforms older than that can be fantastically engrossing in the way a nice novel can be. but, it can take longer for me to enter the sort of 'flow state' that facilitates that level of enjoyment.

with games on the ps2, you don't necessarily have to do as much picturing and such. and so, the 'flow state' ends up feeling a bit different in a way that some people could perhaps consider less magical.

the two things are two separate moods for me and i very much enjoy both.

 

[moonbits]

I will say that since games were more limited in space/technology, some decided for more immersive/efficient ways to present themselves. Like how Quake's menu is basically you jumping into the gates or how most games don't have tutorials and just expect you to figure it out.

 

[PSVitaForever]

My personal "golden era" has (apart a couple of ps1 titles) ps2, psp, psvita, ds and 3ds games in it; though I've played on Switch in these last three or four years, I always find myself going back to vita and 3ds where I have "titles of the heart". Though I would be curious to try some titles on more modern consoles, I think I understand what you mean, Waffles.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

For me, the "golden standard" for what I was trying to get at is something like Strife or Half-Life.

Things COULD look like a burned down town hall or a research lab, but you knew they weren't, causing them to be more fun to wander in and interact with. But then I got to the PS3/4 era and things were automatically a "coffee shop" or "an office building", which made them mundane to the point of hurting my enjoyability of them.

 

[Segadude113]

How old we talking? DOS?

 

[moonbits]

How old we talking? DOS?

would be quite amusing to see someone argue that a dos game is more immersive than amnesia the dark descent

 

[zacharinolongpants]

I think it's a game design thing. Games are designed to extract as many hours as possible from a person with game loops designed for people of all degrees of gaming experience. This definitely isn't always the case. But I find myself disassociating a lot with a lot of newer games because they just drop you into a big map and there's nothing actually thoughtful about the content until you get to a random cool cutscene.

I think the newer Resident Evils and Pentiment are examples of newer games that really make an effort to pull you in with how you interact with its gameplay and pacing. They ask you to be present for everything and don't waste your time.

 

[qw90700]

The significant change is old games via their distinct visual styles made you feel like it's about "another world/reality" therefore it made you enter the reality of the game by comprehending it in its own context.

Now they make graphics dull realistic visuals that are devoid of appealing visuals or any visual art whatsoever. It kinda feels like "real life" and because of it can't get into the game at all especially because realistic graphics -> seem like real life but it doesn't have what makes real life real life due to unrealistic video game logic which makes immersion broken. Good job making graphics realistic, but can't pass beyond the corridor just because a chair is in my way. If it had happened in a NES game you would be like "oh well it's game logic" but when it happens in realistic-looking games it's like "graphics are realistic but not the gameplay!!!" lol.

In the end if realistic graphics had to be used then the whole game has to be realistic, otherwise graphics don't fit to the game's theme. For example playing Breath of the Fire 4 and seeing cartoonish graphics, it fits because the game is like a fairy tale so realistic graphics wouldn't fit into the game for immersion, but a horror game having realistic graphics fits it well.

However graphics are one thing, even HUD design matters. Nowadays HUDs are like no different from a program. No style, visual art and whatnot whatsoever. If everything in the game doesn't fit well to its theme it's hard to maintain immersion.

It's also a matter of stubbornly wrong usage of either realistic graphics or anime graphics. For example realistic graphics would fit into CODE VEIN when anime visuals drags down the seriousness of the game while some anime games trying to have too realistic graphics makes them look too bad. In the end still to this day industry has no care about "art of video game development" and this mentality deteriorates into just trying to sell whatever is realistic just because it's popular.

Technical-wise why an old game seem to be "better" in intended old hardware matters from resolution to screen type. For example Sega Genesis games looks better on CRT TV while on 4K monitors it would look like shit. For old 3D games their FOV was designed for older monitors with lower resolution and particular aspect ratios so yet again even an adjusted FOV for your 4K monitor wouldn't prevent the game look weird. And then naturally playing GBA games on giant screens is just a WTF moment lol.

 

[Clippy]

I'd say it's because you were a kid back then. Even the Sun shines differently when you aren't weighed down by copious amounts of cynicism stemming from life experience.

On the other hand there is some truth to the hypothesis that games have stagnated a bit but even then it's because going from 10 million polygons to 15 million just isn't as immediately impressive as going from 500 to 8000. Bigger number, yes, but much smaller scale.

 

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

sweet spot for me is 2003-2009 3D games, nowadays there's too much details head can't keep up also too much processing and blurriness

 

[Segadude113]

sweet spot for me is 2003-2009 3D games, nowadays there's too much details head can't keep up also too much processing and blurriness

For me it's 1996-2006 for 3D stuff. :D

 

[DAME NINGEN]

Immersion? No, saturation.

 

[secreto7]

The thing about the 'realistic graphics' arms race, and dull graphics and use of same assets and engines, is probably just a business collateral damage to the art direction of games.

 

[_Lorenzo_]

I share Clippy’s point of view: here, it’s really a matter of personal feelings and nostalgia for those of us who grew up with those old 3rd, 4th, and 5th-generation games (and arcade games, of course!).
As kids, our imagination made up for those graphical or gameplay shortcomings (also because back then, so many titles looked very similar to one another, especially before the arrival of the PS1 and the like...).
It would be interesting, though, to know what a kid today thinks about our old games, their mechanics, and everything else. In all likelihood, someone has already done this experiment, either here on RGT or elsewhere.
As for me, it’s very hard to say anything on the topic of this thread, precisely because—apart from three recent releases from very famous series—I haven’t played anything new.

 

[Grumpy_Old_Man]

As much as I hate Microsoft, I think this phrase resumes my thoughts on this: "Where do you want to go today?" an open question, that leaves the reader to ponder their answer...
To much handholding, no space to fail, for trial an error and creativity.
Overly realistic graphics in my book almost always end up feeling uncanny, like a human size doll in dark room.

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

Yes and no? While limitations of hardware might make your brain work overtime to fill in the blanks of what life might be after you hit the power button I think a lot of it also comes from game design. I mainly played the latest hardware as soon as PS2 came out so I got to see an evolution from Dark Cloud to FFXII.

On these extremes is Dark Cloud less emissive thanks to limitation of it's hardware while FFXII is at the height? Not necessarily, if you played Dark Cloud you'll find the town rebuilding mechanic about 2 hours into play and find yourself placing the town to your liking until you find people that belong to each building then you get to hear where the house should be placed to their liking and you get rewarded both in gifts after restoring/moving their place among that they also provide dialogue about their lives or to Toan directly. Final Fantasy XII is the final jewel in crown of the PS2's library best and with only a ingle disc crams not just different continents and towns to explore but also hundreds of NPCs that don't influence your progression except build on other NPCs or story interactions as you progress. For me immersion has always been what else it there beyond combat and cutscenes that tells me there's a world before I played and after I stopped.

It's also why point and click works so well with me and maintains a timeless appeal of having an art style than realistic graphics that would get outdated with time. Though if they do I think the best and worst idea would to put an actual time period listing in modern titles to help maintain that immersion to set expectations of technology and political expectations of the time.

 

[Cardboardtubeknight Cardboardtubeknight]

Not just games I solemnly believe that around 2005 was when we were at a perfect balance. You didn't need to know too much, but still some effort was required.