What breaks your immersion?

Started by Blondbraid, Fri 25/08/2017 22:34:32

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Blondbraid

Quote from: Stupot+ on Wed 06/09/2017 00:43:58
@Blondbraid. I think devs would be happy to consider your complaints. Animating long hair must be a ball-ache, so any excuse not to have to do it would be welcome.
That's true, and most video game characters actually do have practical haircuts, but you'd think real-life actresses would also prefer doing action scenes without getting hair caught in their eyes.

Quote from: Andail on Wed 06/09/2017 07:54:23
To expand on my own rant:
Typically in popular culture, bows are considered the weapon of choice for the lean, agile types, and predominantly women. In reality, a bow of the kind used in medieval warfaring could have a draw weight of 150 pounds and upwards, and drawing them looks like this:
https://youtu.be/33LNnyqiQcs?t=120
... meaning, you pretty much draw and immediately release while rupturing your spleen or something. Back then, you wouldn't have any weight-reducing pulley/cam system, and also you didn't have the razor-blade heads seen on modern arrows, that can kill much easier.

I think the scriptwriter originally wrote a lengthy scene where Ygritte points a gun against Jon, but then someone mentioned that they don't have guns in medieval fantasy settings,
so instead they just switched the gun for a bow, because they are basically the same thing amirite? (roll)

I actually saw a pretty good video on what sort of weapons would be suited for smaller and thinner persons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSy9GLi2H44
Most movies show women and elves use bows as you mentioned, while in reality polearms and two-handed swords would be a much better way for a small person to compensate for their size. I think halberds are sadly underappreciated weapons in movies and video games, only the evil guards at the villain's castle are allowed to use them. I don't know how true it is, but I once read an analysis that claimed that the reason fiction portrays swords and bows as heroic weapons and halberds and crossbows as the go-to weapons for evil medieval henchmen is that swords and bows were the weapons of the nobility, and knights spent years learning to use them, while crossbows could be used by anyone with a little training, mostly low-born and peasants. The halberd was a weapon that allowed foot people to effectively fight riders on horseback, making it a weapon often used against knights and cavalry.

While I'm at this train of thought, as a non-native English speaker I find it interesting that words like chivalrous and noble are describing good traits, while the word villain originally meant farmhand, which tells a lot on how medieval writers saw the world and society.

One thing that bothers me with fantasy is the over-reliance on blood ties, nearly all fantasy heroes are secretly of royal blood or the heir of someone important. In some cases it's almost ridiculous how many of the characters in a story are secretly a princess, a lost king, the last member of a noble line etcetera. It's actually hard for me to come up with a fantasy story where the protagonist isn't secretly a crown prince! (ok, Frodo and Sam isn't royalty but pretty much everyone else who travels with them is.)


Hobo

In fantasy settings, where you have magic and creatures that defy all sorts of laws of physics and biology, stuff like hair styles, cold resistance and proper weapon usage seem like really trivial things to me. By the way, nords in Skyrim have a Resist Frost trait, that's 50% frost resistance :)

Anyway, I have a hard time taking any fantasy or supernatural setting very seriously, they're always going to be a little bit silly and ridiculous and that's fine. Immersion is a good thing, but it's not really that important to me, things can still be interesting and entertaining even when I'm not fully submerged into them.

What usually puts me off is blatant inconsistency, either in visual style, writing, logic etc.

Creamy

#42
QuoteAnyway, I have a hard time taking any fantasy or supernatural setting very seriously, they're always going to be a little bit silly and ridiculous and that's fine.
That's a case where Rule of Cool applies 8-)

Another gimmick specific to adventure games : when a non-playable character reacts to a monologue of the hero. Like all 4th wall breaking jokes, it can be funny but works against immersion. Even if the lips of our hero are moving every time he has an idea or describes something, players assume that he's not actually talking. People don't wander around speaking aloud. Monologues are just a way for the author to communicate thoughts.
 

Mandle

Quote from: Creamy on Wed 06/09/2017 14:12:01
Another gimmick specific to adventure games : when a non-playable character reacts to a monologue of the hero.

Urgh! I wince whenever that "joke" is used in a game. It's been done to death, and should be left to rest in peace.

dactylopus

One thing that breaks my immersion is something that happens in martial arts combat.

Whenever a character connects on a really good hit, the other character always does a flip or a spin on their way to the ground.  Other non-martial-arts fights in the same work will not feature this.  It's as if karate kicks always have a little English to them.

Andail

Quote from: Hobo on Wed 06/09/2017 12:12:58
In fantasy settings, where you have magic and creatures that defy all sorts of laws of physics and biology, stuff like hair styles, cold resistance and proper weapon usage seem like really trivial things to me. By the way, nords in Skyrim have a Resist Frost trait, that's 50% frost resistance :)

Anyway, I have a hard time taking any fantasy or supernatural setting very seriously, they're always going to be a little bit silly and ridiculous and that's fine. Immersion is a good thing, but it's not really that important to me, things can still be interesting and entertaining even when I'm not fully submerged into them.

What usually puts me off is blatant inconsistency, either in visual style, writing, logic etc.

Well, there's this thing called internal logic. If magic or dragons exist that's fine with me; I'm aware of the contract you sign when watching/reading Fantasy. However, someone falling into a near-frozen lake in the middle of the winter with no heat source around... if that person doesn't show signs of instant hypothermia I'm not *feeling* that scene. There's no immersion.

Oh and I think both Blondebraid's and my own rants were originally about depictions of the middle ages, not necessarily fantasy, although, granted, a GoT scene was used as an example in my case.


Danvzare

Quote from: Creamy on Wed 06/09/2017 14:12:01
People don't wander around speaking aloud. Monologues are just a way for the author to communicate thoughts.
Quote from: Mandle on Thu 07/09/2017 02:20:28
Urgh! I wince whenever that "joke" is used in a game. It's been done to death, and should be left to rest in peace.
But what if you're playing as someone who would wander around speaking aloud?
Wouldn't it make sense to point out how everyone sees that character as a weirdo?

While the joke has been done to death, I don't think the joke has been done to death within a single game. So what if everyone constantly notices your character talking to themselves? Perhaps even having some people responding to you, thinking that you're talking to them?

A new take on an old joke perhaps? :-\

Crimson Wizard

#47
Quote from: Creamy on Wed 06/09/2017 14:12:01
Another gimmick specific to adventure games : when a non-playable character reacts to a monologue of the hero. Like all 4th wall breaking jokes, it can be funny but works against immersion. Even if the lips of our hero are moving every time he has an idea or describes something, players assume that he's not actually talking. People don't wander around speaking aloud. Monologues are just a way for the author to communicate thoughts.

I just remembered there is an NPC reacting to main character's monologue in the very beginning of Barn Runner 1, made for parody effect, which works very well introducing the wacky hero of the series :).

Ali

I don't know why people get upset at protagonists talking aloud to themselves or the player - it was good enough for Shakespeare. For a naturalistic game, an internal monologue is a much better idea. But I can't see why you'd be irritated by a Guybrush Threepwood soliloquy.

Mandle

Quote from: Ali on Thu 07/09/2017 13:20:21
I don't know why people get upset at protagonists talking aloud to themselves or the player - it was good enough for Shakespeare. For a naturalistic game, an internal monologue is a much better idea. But I can't see why you'd be irritated by a Guybrush Threepwood soliloquy.

I think it was NPCs reacting to hearing the soliloquy that was the point, not the character talking to the player. I actually love the character talking to me. Makes him or her seem more like a buddy. A "we're in this together" kinda relationship.

Creamy

#50
QuoteBut what if you're playing as someone who would wander around speaking aloud?
Wouldn't it make sense to point out how everyone sees that character as a weirdo?

While the joke has been done to death, I don't think the joke has been done to death within a single game. So what if everyone constantly notices your character talking to themselves? Perhaps even having some people responding to you, thinking that you're talking to them?

A new take on an old joke perhaps? :-\
The Bum has a talking sock, but people usually don't seem to hear it. A game where no thought goes unnoticed, that could be funny.

QuoteI think it was NPCs reacting to hearing the soliloquy that was the point, not the character talking to the player. I actually love the character talking to me. Makes him or her seem more like a buddy. A "we're in this together" kinda relationship.
Exactly. I love an aside by Guybrush Threepwood, George Stobbart or Nelly Cootalot.
 

Blondbraid

One other thing which breaks my immersion is when you see someone die, and the camera cuts to their tombstone standing just outside their estate. Instead of being sad I just can't help but think about all the bureaucracy and paperwork their loved ones have to go through to get a permit to bury someone outside of a graveyard or dedicated crypt.

Not to mention that for hundreds of years, being buried in soil that wan't blessed by the church was considered a horrible fate among Christians, (criminals were often punished after their death by not being allowed to be buried in a cemetery), so this is extra weird when you see this in movies set in a historical period. But it's not just in Christianity, nearly all cultures that aren't nomads have special burial grounds so that you have all dead relatives gathered in one place to bring flowers and offerings and so forth. Then there is the fact that if you bury a body in the wrong place you risk having it polluting the groundwater, so there are many practical reasons that you can't just bury a dead loved one wherever you want. (Both my parents work in the archaeological field, so they've pointed this out to me a few times.)


Cassiebsg

There are those who believe that life here began out there...

Blondbraid

One thing that greatly bothers me in movies (and quite a few video games too) is when female action heroes go into battle wearing high heels, and not just in a scenes where say, they were surprised and caught wearing civilian clothes, but the story clearly shows that they were expecting to get into a fight and had every opportunity to ditch the heels, yet they run around in the stupidest shoes they could find. No sane person in real life would ever chose to wear high heels in any situation where they would have to run or climb rough terrain, yet we still keep seeing female agents, assassins and policewomen and other supposedly experienced and professional women run around in high heels on the screen.

This why this is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rKHc5rCno8
I want to do exactly what Jack does whenever I see characters supposed to be action heroes run around in high heels! (nod)
We see plenty of action heroines rip their dresses in order to fight, why not remove their high heels while they're at it?


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