So we’re past the mid-point of Future week now, and it’s time to move onto immersion and gameplay. With more powerful consoles and more experience with the current generation obviously comes improvements and innovations in gameplay, but what I really crave for is improved immersion in a game. For my money there’s only one game that’s made real in roads in this area, but that’s for later on.
So what do I mean by immersion? I’m not talking about improving the graphical fidelity, or making the sound design better in some intangible way, those kind of come as a given as games progress. I’m talking about making the game world feel like it’s a real world. Not like it’s the real world, that’d be incredibly dull, but making the game feel like it’s a real place, somewhere that you can really transplant yourself into.
So how can you improve how real a game feels? For me it’s the way a game reacts to the player. I want games that learn from the way we play, that look at us and analyse us to work out the best strategies to beat us. I want to play GTA and have the streets become more sparsely populated with pedestrians as the news of my spree killing spreads. I want to have the enemy’s army deploy additional resources as my squad progresses towards our goal and for that to open up other holes in their defences. I don’t just want the computer to react but I want it to anticipate what I’m going to do as well.
So what’s the game that’s really made in-roads here? Well oddly enough it’s not on either of the powerhouse consoles, it’s on a game that was primarily developed for the Wii with PSP and PS2 ports. I’m talking about Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. This is a game that starts off by having you fill in a questionnaire to get a psychological profile on what kind of things are going to work best against you, and then observes you persistently throughout the rest of the game. I know a lot of this sounds like developer speak, but it’s the only game I’ve heard the Giant Bomb crew describe as having them waking up screaming. This kind of learning and adaptation to a specific player is what I really want in my games.
With my views on the topic out of the way, it’s clearly time to throw open the floodgates. What kind of new gameplay mechanics would you like to see? Would you like to see games learning more from you and adapting to you? Do you want to feel more involved in a games world or do you like to feel a little separate?
NOTE: This is a pre-written discussion, I may not be around to comment due to consuming vast amounts of pizza and playing games. Sorry guys.