Immersion. Or sometimes known as spatial presence by the more qualified is often defined as existing when “media contents are perceived as ‘real’ in the sense that media users experience a sensation of being spatially located in the mediated environment.” It is one of the holy trinity of a video gaming experience along with emergent gameplay, and a video game being FUN.
–Immersion in Video Games
P.S. Spoilers from The Last Of Us 2 follow
Different video games have tried different things to make their games as immersive as possible. Games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect let the players decide the critical aspects of the game’s narrative, so that the player feels their decisions are affecting a dynamic world.
Games like Halo, have a masked protagonist, so that you could put yourself behind that helmet and have your own thoughts about what was happening around you. Others like Ghost Recon Breakpoint, provide immersive modes, with minimal HUD (Heads Up Display), visual and audio cues, to make the experience as realistic and close to real life as possible.
Even CDPR, will be opting for a First Person View for their next game Cyberpunk 2077 because they feel that’s more immersive than a third person narrative.
Red Dead Redemption 2 probably takes it too far. Every little thing that a game could cut short has been given its due time in the game. Not only does your character respond to the day/light cycle, but it also responds to food and drink. Fast travel is extremely limited and reminiscent of train travel, and the game lets you setup camp and enjoy the sunset and the sunrise with a cup of coffee that you made yourself in a tent that you put up. Yeah!!
Then how does The Last Of Us 2, a game which has a rigid narrative, characters with voices and personalities, a noticeable HUD, and is 3rd person throughout get my vote as the most immersive game of the year?
It’s actually very simple. In fact, its thanks to a itsy-bitsy section in The Last Of Us 2. You see in the middle of the game, you are tasked to move from one building to another across a broken and rickety construction crane as Abby. It’s high up in the air, amidst cloud cover actually, but there isn’t anything unique about this passage in the game at first glance.
Indeed I have done the same in multiple games before it. Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and most recently Spiderman Miles Morales. Then why does this particular bit stand out?
The first part of the puzzle is Character Creation.
Abby’s fear of height is alluded to multiple times before this section. In fact, even during this particular section, every time Abby goes up a floor, her fear becomes more pronounced. At long-range vistas, where players normally stop to take in the view, Abby mentions how being so high up makes her feel uncomfortable, at times where she doesn’t her companion, comments about it guessing at her state of mind. By the time you reach that make shift bridge, Abby’s vertigo has been deeply entrenched in the player’s mind.
This is the critical difference in my mind. I should mention that I suffer from a bit of Vertigo myself. But never did I feel uncomfortable when I was jumping from cliff to cliff as Nathan Drake. Never did I feel dizzy when I was cat-walking a ledge as Lara Croft. I didn’t feel afraid, because they were not afraid. Sure there was risk, but it was thrilling to them, and consequently to me. They were there to do that kind of stuff, Abby wasn’t. This is what gave that particular section so much weight.
The Second Part. The authenticity of the experience.
I have already mentioned that the traversal takes place in cloud cover. The sound effect of the construction crane creaking under the high altitude winds. Just the visual of not able to see where the crane leads when you first mount it. And then the way that triangular mesh twists around while you make your way across it makes it feel like a challenge.
But that’s not all. You hear Abby’s shallow and yet deep breaths as she makes her way across it. Lev shouts word of encouragement which feels thin considering it comes from a person who just made his way across in seconds. You feel jealous and angry at the same time, and I like to believe you hear that in Abby’s response too.
Cherry on the cake however are Abby’s animation. Remember when as a kid you were walking on a wall, and suddenly you looked down. Do you remember going down on all four, limbs on either side, balanced on your stomach as you crawled across? Well that’s exactly what Abby does. At first sign of the bridge swaying, Abby is down on stomach, balancing neigh teethering high in the Seattle sky. And it just isn’t a token animation, it happens multiple times as Abby makes through that ordeal.
It’s so line with a person trying to overcome their fear, that it’s almost scary. Abby has the courage to get up and take a couple of steps, but she is also scared shitless as soon as she is reminded of what she is doing. I could feel my grip tightening on the controller, and I could feel myself hands sweating and I could feel my throat dry up. If this isn’t immersion then I don’t know what is.
Naughty Dog are not in the business of creating video games. They are in the business of creating Magnum-opuses.
In May 2010, Toby Gard, the video game designer responsible for creating Lara Croft, wrote an interesting feature for Gamasutra in which he said,
Everyone stores simplified constructions of reality in their mind; schemata that codify the critical features of the world around us. We use our schemata to recognize and interpret everything we experience […] When we are creating worlds in games, immersion is only possible for the player if we can convince the players that the space is authentic (whether stylized or not.) If the critical features on screen don’t match up with the critical features of the player’s schemata, then he or she will not be fooled by it.
The Last Of Us 2 understands that and then uses it to its advantage. The world that they create, and the experience that they tailor is so authentic that you feel connected to Ellie, Joel, Abby, Jesse and even Dina. This is why you feel the White Hot Rage in Ellie when she witnesses Joel die. This is the reason why you could feel Ellie’s irritation at Dina being pregnant while she is in the middle of her revenge tour. This is also the reason, why you start feeling sorry for everything Abby has gone through by the end of the game.
Naughty Dog are not in the business of creating video games. They are in the business of creating Magnum-opuses. Right now, as we look back at the year 2020, and try to wonder what made The Last Of Us 2 special, maybe don’t think how happy or angry or satisfied it made you feel. But how immersed they made us feel.
Think about that for a second.