Tears of the Kingdom's new thing is actually pretty old

Tears of the kingdom is an immersive sim only in gameplay. It's still amazing, but i feel that the only thing holding it back from being a true imsim is not having a story that dynamically reacts to what the player does.

I watched this video right when it came out, and have since been bingeing my way through all the games used as examples in this video. ImSims are my favorite type of game now. Thanks for making this video.

I still hate the term immersive sim, systemic or multifaceted game would be better

Zelda isn’t an immersive sim but it’s cool to see elements taken

I never saw a better explanation to why I didn't like red dead 2

My favorite time dming, I let my players have an achronoplan to nuke antartica with. I had no idea what an acronoplan was or that it was nuclear capable but that's why it pays to pay attention kids. Anyways the point is you should let your players nuke antartica.

Huh...and which game did it in 2000? Deus Ex or Thief?
It felt like an ad for Zelda. But I got your idea. Games have been scripted experiences since a long time and I never understood why eating the candy in candy crush is not possible. I tried to make some games which allow players to achieve their goals the way they want. Sadly, I am not able to create big products as the one you talked about most

Pathfinder mentioned. LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOO!

well written and executed, loved this video thoroughly

>"Unlearn some of your completionist tendencies"
>me 100%-ing every immersive sim 😬

There's no fucking way our DM would allow us to one shot a boss knoking over a pillar 😭

originally, morrowind had those same options, and then they made oblivion, and took out all that freedom, because Todd wanted the players to play the game he intended, not the way you wanted.

Ohhhh you bait. Didn't give it a view. Try harder

"Under the influence of amphetamines, he has built his players a scale model of a subterranean thief's lair" superb.

Pretty low quality for Polygon. What is this?

I still remember when I first tried the BOTW Demo at a little pop up thing in a Mall when it was first coming out, on the great plateau, you see a camp of bokoblins with a tree beside them with a beehive, one arrow later and that was that. I instantly knew the game was something different after that.

totk makes what i consider a pretty fatal mistake in that it creates several dominant strategies that incentivize complacency as a result. thief, dishonored, prey, and dude sex all rely on a various levels of resource scarcity and alternate failure states to prod you towards considering new solutions when the old ones run out of gas----you're not going to use grenades to open doors when you still have lockpicks. totk has no such limitations, especially not once you get autobuild. the ultrahand + recall + ascension trick is totally free, easy to execute, and precludes more interesting, expensive solutions. the same goes for rocket shields and hoverbikes. these options are cheaper, faster, and simpler than most of the intended, more engaging solutions. why would i build a monobike when a hoverbike is vastly superior for traversing literally everywhere? why would i make a spring platform when i can just glue a rocket to my shield and save on zonaite? why would i create a scaffold when i can just hold a crate above my head and teleport through it?

i shouldn't have to overcomplicate 85% of puzzles to feel challenged; the game should just give me challenging puzzles. nerf autobuild so you need to contribute the components. don't give me literally the exact devices i need to solve every puzzle (this ruined the "spirit temple" for me). make me contribute my own devices to build solutions. when it comes to shrines, give me a budget of assorted devices and have me choose which combination i think will solve the puzzle.

I'll feel immersed when I can repair my damaged weapons, explore under the water, pitch a tent to wait out the rain, and shrines don't feel like a parade of gas station bathrooms filled with dollar store 'puzzles'. Until then BotW and TotK will always just be "The Legend of Zelda: Gary's Mod" to me.

What an intro.

At almost 30 now I am only just realizing that the majority of my most prized memories with games were from Immersive sims, I never really understood the difference between Immersive and RPG and generally went with "I prefer RPGs" when talking to friends about gaming. But now I come to think of it, it was always immersive sims.
Psy-Op's Mindgate Conspiracy (when Control came out, even though it's a 3rd person action game, the physics manipulation took me back to when I was 8 playing this for the first time)
GTA San Andrea's (kinda)
Deus Ex and the OG Hitman games were the only decent games my 2006 laptop could handle, so Deus Ex got like 20+ playthroughs, same with all Hitman games.
The Bioshock series
Mercenaries (sandbox mostly like GTA)
The Dishonored series
When I finally got around to PREY it became one of my all time cherished gaming experiences.
The Half Life series
The Elder Scrolls series
The Splinter Cell series (mainly Chao Theory)
The Metal Gear series


Gosh looking back at what I grew up playing I really need to be more grateful I was able to have those experiences honestly.

"the side path keeps going" me entering the Horned Statue's cave and coming out 3 hours later with an entire new set of armour

The immersive sim experience is getting that tuba guy who was stuck in the hole out by attaching a metal plate and two carefully-placed hot-air balloons with campfires lit simultaneously with a perfectly-timed bullet-time fire-arrow shower ... and then realising you could have just lifted him out with Ultrahand

Interesting but for me the approach is really different. Traditionnal immersive sims want heavily, like table top RPG, to tell you a story. Yours is really just to fill the blanks. Zelda tries the opposite. He creates a systemic world where to live your stories and in the blanks puts some naration that wil give more power to your stories.

Your my fav dude from Polygon

hard to take you serious after that rant called "article" about skullgirls censorship complains. What you do isn't gaming journalism.

Seeing people who love Tears of the Kingdom and it's dynamic systems so much softens the blow of it being such a big disappointment for me, personally. I wish I could have the kind of fun that they're having lol.

cannot BELIEVE that Prey (2017) has Prop Hunt-style object possessing

The best way to describe these Zelda games is FREEDOM

In a way, TOTK scratched that itch that I thought Cyberpunk 2077 would. Funny how things turned out.

Who cares about polygon post bdg

MAINE SHOUTOUT WE WIN!!!

I prefer immersive goat sims. (jk)

I just wish that they didnt give us all the tools right away and let us find them for ourselves. You can still have non linear game design while slowly introducing new elements that open up the world more and more giving you more options

That's why I say games barely evolved in interactivity since the early 00s, games are prettier but everything is dead. Just get a non-gamer to play a modern game and see the light leaving their eyes when you tell them, no you can't break that window/door and go through to progress, because there's nothing behind it it's just set dressing.

Getting such good Jethro Tull vibes from the music.

So, apparently, I haven't actually played TotK. I went through the whole story, including that jaw-droppingly awesome fight against Ganondorf, I did a lot of the shrines, explored a decent bit of the depths, etc., but judging by this footage here, I have not played TotK.

Finally someone seen that!

This makes me want to give DeusEx and System Shock another try. I’m definitely going to replay dishonored and Prey now that I’ve had such enjoyment with TotK

Neat!

Metal Gear Solid 5 seems to fit the description accurately

This vid lead me to the discovery that Patrick is a fellow UMaine alumni and New Media major! Go black bears!

Oof, calling TOTK an immersive sim almost hurts. Emerging gameplay? Absolutely! Complex and believable world full of interesting stories and lore? Not so much. To me it's a simulation based playground; a big toy box that excels in fun gameplay, but doesn't even try to be immersive.

Prey 2017 deserves a sequel

Good video

EXCELLENT explanation. I've watched a few videos explaining the Im Sim genre, but this one really clicked. BOTW's systems were already impressive, and TOTK's are just bonkers. And here I was thinking I'd never played an Im Sim - might have to try Prey or Dishonored next.

I really miss games like OG Deus Ex. For whatever reason, all later immersive sims were basically stealth games. Deus Ex really let you do anything. I played as a freaking gun blazing hacker and it was awesome. The later games were a complete let down to me. Openly fighting wasn't really an option....

This makes me wonder why Skyrim (or for that matter, most Bethesda games) aren't lumped into "immersive sim."

All credit to the founders of immersive sims, but TotK actually delivered on the promise of many immersive sims. The same way BoTW delivered on open world games that had existed before, but basically focused on killing innocent people