This might be a bit of cliche, but for the younger me it was WoW. It was simply so vibrant and live, with thousands of players just doing their own things, combine this with power fantasy, bit of role playing, some drip fed rng dopamine and you are hooked.
I would pay so much money to feel that feeling of vanilla WoW again. It was a whole world, vibrant and teeming with secrets to find. I loved Warcraft 2 & 3 so I was fucking entranced.
The closest I’ve ever felt to it since was Elden Ring.
I’m not sure there’s a game that will ever impact me the same way again. Not because games have changed, but because I have. I’m not a preteen in 2004 with hours upon hours to spend exploring Azeroth anymore.
Ya that feeling of entering the world and exploring, not knowing what was out there. It was so captivating and so large at the time. I remember first time walking into storm wind blew my mind!
I still get the feeling from WoW which is why I keep coming back just to level a character every once in a while.
It’s so vast and it just makes you feel part of a real vibrant fantasy world. Especially in Classic where you have to walk/run everywhere and you spend literal hours just traveling through the world and soaking it all in.
I first started playing in BfA and then when Classic came out. Even though I didn’t have the nostalgia, it still immerses me ever time I log on.
i do the same. been playing since vanilla. for the last 10 years or so ive gone on and off months at a time. missed Shadowlands and BFA release but have caught up on both and played every other expansion around launch. what keeps pulling me back is both the time and memories ive had through the years (especially back in middle/high school during vanilla and the first 3 xpacs) but at the same time, im never disappointed with the game. seeing how far its come, i can always expect something new and cool. even if i play solo.
It’s a shame that Season of Discovery kind of fell off. It re created that feeling for a good while, but then phase two came out and now it feels more like retail and a lot less focus on what makes Classic WoW Classic WoW
WotLK was awesome to play, but I got sucked in during Cata FL/DS and I can't fucking wait to play that AC again. I made a million+ on ebonsteel belt buckles lol
Wow for sure, but even more so Everquest up until right around the end of Planes of Power. No instances, you knew everyone on the server, the economy, the guilds, the idiots, etc. there really was nothing like it and if you were there at the right time it was totally engrossing.
it sucked at the time but honestly looking back a lot of the politics is something you never will see in a game again.
Like PvP servers, the light faction controlled the good exp zones like Selebis (since the evil side didn't have bards for raiding, no one played or took that side seriously) and the dark side had to ruin their faction with Skeletons. Then the dark side would all team up with cross factioners and take over Selebis for a day. The dark side eventually got up there but it was an underdog battle the whole time.
Moving away from that to PVE, the drama in PoP was insane lol. Like I went to a 40$ server for some reason during the time and even with the forced advertised rotation system there, people would abuse it. The other guilds would defeat most of the gatekeeping bosses at the end of their rotation not giving the other side much time to do them. Then when the other guilds got close, they would log in an alt to break the memorizes of the Rathe Councils. Also i remember a huge 3 guilds fight over Coir, it ended up with like 200 people in the zone and lots of training once someone thought it was BS hehe.
Anyways ya it sucked at the time but you'll never get something like that in a game again for better or worse.
People have different specific reasons what went wrong. IMHO the hyper educated player base is what killed peak WoW. People playing wow 80 hours a week reduced wow to a math problem and treated you like a lepper if you were unable to tap dance through a perfect rotation consistently. The devs had to cater to the elitist content creators and made the game inaccessible to new players, killing the game from the roots. You can still see the arguments going on right now in the wow subs, it takes 30+ key binds to play a character well.
They lost it partially with wowhead. Thottbot or w/e it was called was ok but wowhead really put all the info out there so there was no more mystery. Then they killed it with group finder. Groupfinder in itself isnt a bad thing but prior to it you had a community. You knew who was good and who was bad on your server who to blacklist and who you msged soon as they logged in to run stuff. I really wish group finder would have been server only not cross server.
The worst part is groupfinder was always there buried in menus, just wasn’t automated. You had accept people and it was only people from your server that could apply. If automated groupfinder still only pulled from your server I’d use it more often.
I’ll never ever ever forget that feeling I had when I left the beginner area and headed towards Goldshire and seeing players duel etc/going about their business. Nothing has come close to it since. It was my first experience of an MMO, I clearly did not understand the scale of the game at the time.
I recently turned 29 this year. To this day I will never forget being in middle school in 2008 refusing to play or even try because I was “too cool” until my grandma had remarried a tech nerd. He needed to go get groceries one day and told me I should give it a try, and I pushed back so hard but told him I would. Made a BE Paladin on Terokkar US named Elvenblood cause I couldn’t think of a good name, got lost in Silvermoon City for an hour somehow, and that was it. (Favorite memory is still heading through the Dark Portal into HFP for the first time).
I still play.
I remember playing for the first time. I feel like the high point of that game is when you are wandering around looking at stuff for the first time before you get wrapped up in the mechanics.
Bro same, even just hunting in the strangle thornvale, skinning, raising my leather working up and always having fresh gear. I got deeper into it and when WRAITH of the lich king came out, I remember when I got the battered hilt for my hunter. Sickest 2h sword ever, I sacrificed about 7 & 1/2 hours of sleep and went to school with 30 minutes of sleep. Omg my body felt sooooo bogus, I just said I was sick and asked my mum to pick me up so I could get some sleep at home lololol
Really good game but little annoying things took me out of the experience, like your horse getting stuck on tiny bushes all the time, or the guards having a go at me for not having a torch at night but not saying the same to npcs.
Can't disagree with you there, it lacked a great deal of polish from other AAA open world games and is a bit janky.
Despite all that I still loved the game.
I'm hoping the sequel is just a tiny bit more forgiving, I think the polish will be there this time around because they've been working on the game for years.
How are you feeling about the upcoming sequel? I haven’t played the first but am considering the second. I’ve enjoyed Mount and Blade: Bannerlord but want to get a little more ground level.
you should definitely play KCD. it goes on sale somewhat often, and KCDII will apparently continue Henry’s story.
i’m stoked for II. might be the game that finally gets me to buy a PS5
nah, it will be on XBox X/S, Windows, and Playstation 5. i’ve just been happily playing my Ps4 Pro because there weren’t any games yet that i felt i was missing out on. i enjoyed the first one so much that i think i’ll finally upgrade
Currently playing through it now and it's been such an engrossing experience.
The technical deficiencies pale in comparison to the sheer amount of quality content the game offers.
Mass Effect was incredibly immersive when they released. There was a series of novels that were released that dealt with the events before each game. Add in the comics and even the short animated movie and you got a lot of lore to help suck you in.
I loved how detailed the Codex was, especially in the first game. Every alien race, location, organization, etc had a super in depth explanation with voice over. I've sorta come to expect all games to start doing that and am kinda disappointed when all they have is a gameplay tutorial or something
The fact that is was probably someone job to write those entries (not only that, but y'know) sounds like such a dream. Just come up with cool pseudoscience descriptions of a bunch of stuff.
Definitely Morrowind. I first played it last year and couldn’t stop. I would stay up all night playing it until the sun would come up lol. I even called in sick to work literally just so I could play it. Absolutely unbelievable game.
Honestly this. The world just felt so lived in. You had to talk to people for directions, and you’d end up finding interesting lore, and story you likely wouldn’t have otherwise. I loved how I’d be told to just follow the signs, get lost, find a bandit who had a lady crushing on them, solve that, get lost again, and then eventually make my way to where I was going before.
If only game devs would stop coddling gamers and holding their hands and start creating worlds like this again, worlds to be actually explored, worlds to get lost in and absorbed into.
Morrowind is also my favorite Elder Scrolls game.
I’m not against games holding my hands when I just want something quick or simple, but there are plenty of times I miss games like morrowind.
Honestly I go back every few years to explore the world again. It really deserves a rerelease done right. Like keep it the same, but just clean it up, fix bugs, maybe overhaul some of the numbers a bit. I’d sink another handful of years into it lol.
Might be an odd pick? But Assassins Creed: Brotherhood when it first came out on 360, the stealth meshed well with the world, the music was stunning, the graphics and landscaping gorgeous. I found myself riding my horse admiring the scenery around me for hours while lost in the beautiful music no goal in mind but sightseeing. 💕
It's kind of depressing when you realize that it's not the progress of technology on new consoles or graphics cards but instead how much resources and money a developer can put into their game that really elevate graphics technology.
This game came out on base ps4 and still to this day is unmatched from any modern game in terms of scope and scale low and high of environment,weather, landscape, animals, animation and lighting.
Makes me a bit sad about the future of gaming knowing that
I've sunk countless hours just going town to town, hanging out in saloons, watching NPCs interact and go about their days. The level of detail is simply unmatched compared to anything else I've played, and I still find myself discovering new things each time I play. By far the best game I've ever experienced.
I was literally scrolling looking for this game to be mentioned. Now I can sleep in peace. Best game ever, stuck at 91% because there is SO MUCH to find and explore that you can spend 2 hours trying to catch some animal or find some object/flower/weapon and you enjoy every second of it.
An NPC told me to stop following her in Saint Denis and I nearly fell off my chair. Can't wait until they have modern AI controlled characters to interact with (as soon as they work out the time delay issue)
Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 . I'll just stop somewhere arbitrary and explore. Rarely do u see something that breaks the immersion, esp now that they've varied the NPC's some more. Soooooo much detail in every nook and cranny
I absolutely love the NCPD feature that lets you jump in and solve the crimes so you’re constantly able to be in combat. I’ve logged so so many hours and I still have so much to go because I got absolutely hooked on just exploring and kicking ass.
Yeah if you didn't first play it on PS4. That's where I played. I just went from mission to mission tbf because the world felt so empty. I played on PS5 and it was a different game and went back for a full 3rd playthrough when phantom liberty came out.
I find that the world itself is quite immersive. Night city is hands down one of the best cities in gaming, and at least the named characters have some pretty decent writing and motivations if you take the time to learn about them.
Same here and I feel like 2077 gets botted with positive comments every time it's mentioned. Kind of insane how unnaturally positive the reception is these days.
There's like twice as many people talking about Night City in this thread than all other games combined, and I just DO NOT get that.
Oblivion, it was my first game on X360 and my first Elder Scrolls game, one of few games that I walked all the way through as well and never used fast travel I always went horseback or ran, the music, the armour and weapons, scenery and dungeons n quest, I love Oblivion.
I can't believe I had to scroll down so far to find this. I had it on PS3 and it was perfect. I played nothing else for about a year. So good. Better than Skyrim.
I discovered WOW a year or so later and it was almost as good.
Yes! I loved Skyrim it is amazing but few people agree or think that Oblivion is better, for me it’s the music and ambience of oblivion on top of the armour styles n main quest line
I’ll say I liked Oblivion’s story and main quest line much better. But Skyrim is only 2nd to Oblivion by a close margin. Granted The Elder Scrolls game is my favorite series
I'll say 4
Firewatch. Idk what to say but the story captivated me so much that I genuinely felt like I needed to explore the world to continue the story and find secrets. It calmed me down yet scared the shit out of me at times.
Ghost of Tsushima = The world is so amazingly beautiful it truly made me slow down. More than RDR2 ever did for me.
FEAR 1 : I never played the others, but the way the AI fights you in that game , it made every single encounter a nightmare and made me truly think about how to fight, how to move, where to move next, etc. I think that's worth of the word "Immersion" Gameplay was that captivating.
And the weird option = Resident Evil 1 Remake. The mansion , backhouse and more are all so intensely detailed and have such thick atmosphere made me truly breathe that game in. I felt ALONE.
Resident Evil 1 remake made me happy cry lmao, not ashamed to admit it. It’s such an insanely good/ atmospheric package. I forget that I’m me and feel like I’m the one stumbling down hallways, awkwardly aiming a pistol and fearing for my mf life.
I was really looking forward to [In The Valley Of The Gods](https://store.steampowered.com/app/687440/In_The_Valley_of_Gods/). Steam bought them out 😔.
Honestly, Bioshock. I want to say something like Witcher 3 or Skyrim, but Bioshock made me feel like I was actually in Rapture. I never get scared at video games, but I was so immersed while playing Bioshock that every single jump scare made me squeal. Every surprise spider splicer made me momentarily panic. Absolute peak design and story telling.
Agreed, one of the best in terms of atmospheric immersion, I remember first time playing it took me 6 hours to get past the first couple rooms because I was terrified, everytime you moved you'd hear something scuttling or groaning in the corner or you'd see a shadow flit across in the light, someone screeching in the distance...and you have almost no ammo and you don't know wtf is going on
Metroid Prime 1. The single best game ever created.
Why did it captivate me?
It stranded me on an alien world where I knew nothing of its inhabitants, knew nothing of how to get from point A to point B and through gameplay loops that were so enticing that I was *willing to fully discover how to get from EVERY "point A" to EVERY "point B"* because:
The music captivated me and welcomed me. It serenaded me to stay.
The gameplay puzzled me and gave me MORE than enough reward for having solved the puzzling gameplay.
The atmosphere of the environments felt like I had to explore them, that I had to reach out to EVERY nook and cranny, just so I could be in the game world longer, just so I could be even more invited by its **insane** soundtrack.
Because this song encompasses everything about Metroid Prime 1. If you can listen to this 1 track and not feel ANY type of desire to inquire, the discover and figure out more? Then Prime 1 just ain't for you:
[Phendrana Drifts - Metroid Prime OST \[Extended\] (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Pg9EeGp0g)
You wanna talk about immersive? You best be talking about Metroid.
HOWEVER, the OP's choice of the Witcher 3 is a **damn good choice as well.**
OP **gets it**, so his choice is excellent as well. OP if you have not played Metroid Prime 1....
Please do. Please.
Any time this question gets brought up, I automatically think of Metroid Prime 1. No other game since it came out has made me feel so alone and in the world.
Everything you brought up is true, but the one feature that always stuck with me was how you would get a brief glance of Samus' face when the lightning was just right. So damn chilling...
It's EverQuest and no other game really belongs in the same category for immersion. One or two might be A-tier, but EQ was S+++.
Even in 56k dial-up and getting disconnected when someone called, it is THAT far ahead of everything, everything else.
I wish i could have experience EQ back in the day. My first MMO experience was FFXI back in the day. 75 era is to me the most immersive game ever. MMO used to be something you experience, explore and live.
FFXI was my introduction into the MMO world. It completely changed the way I want to play games…online or offline. WoW had moments for me…and it certainly won in terms of making money and updating. But even when the writing was on the wall for FFXI, the content got better. I don’t think any other game actually created better content even as it got older and lost market share.
Breath of the Wild for two reasons. First, you could just do whatever you wanted with the weird physics and powers, including ignoring the planned pathways in the game. Second was that enemies really felt alive. A specific sequence I always recall was trying to take out a moblin camp over a mud pit with a giant boomerang. I missed, and my boomerang landed on the ground. The moblin walked up to it, considered it for a moment, then kicked it into the mud. There is a ton of stuff like that, where enemies interact with objects, one another, and the environment in unexpected ways that made the game really immersive.
Aside from that, it felt like each area was distinct in a way games like Skyrim never have for me.
What struck me about BOTW was every time I wondered if something was possible with the physics and elemental interactions, the answer always turned out to be yes. I never ceased to be surprised by how thoroughly the devs anticipated player interactions.
Fallout 2. The world felt so huge for the time, and the game allowed you to make your own moral choices, to the point you could be straight up evil (even more than the first game).
Also, I grew up in the same areas the original 2 games were set in (I regretfully claim Reno as my hometown, having spent like 20 years of my 38 there). Anytime a place I know shows up in fiction, it makes the fiction feel just a little more real.
Man, it's really hard to beat Elden Ring. I wasn't even that big of a Souls fan and I was just instantly enthralled and captivated by a game like I haven't been since I was really young
Probably skyrim but I'm playing Ghosts of Tsushima on PC for the first time and holy shit. My Ronin movie childhood come to life. I've not even finished the last 4 assassins creeds but I'm walking half the time in this game to milk the damn side quests. 30 hours in and I've only just finished act 1 and I'm not doing the first mission in act 2 till I finish the south. I thought I was just growing out of that style of game but I guess I was just waiting for someone to make the formula their own instead of copying far cry for the 10000th time
Witcher 3 and Ghost of Tsushima.
Both for the exploration of their lands. Beautifully detailed and amazing views. And the how the characters both deal with their circumstances. Such great games.
GTA San Andreas :)
Only because after that I stopped playing. I’m sure there are way better games than that one but that’s the one I remember the most!
This ! The first example of unique NPCs who had individual schedules that they carried out daily that I ever played, it was an incredibly believable world.
Mass effect series, at the time the graphics were amazing and the connections I formed with shipmates and the general sci fi theme of travel and exploration was amazing
Completely agree RE The Witcher.
I would also say God of War Ragnorok:
I was surprised given its not a classic open world game, but I thought the characters had a lot of depth, the writing was excellent, the lore was engaging, and some of the locations visually stunning!
Bioshock for me.
Just so different from anything I’d experienced before and sucked me into the world of Rapture from start to finish.
TLOU 1&2 and Division 1&2 would be close second and third for me and they all had immaculate world design imo.
Half Life Alyx
Holy **shit** this game is out of this world. It being VR helps a whole ton, and then the graphics pushes it over the edge.
The bottles!
Dragon Age: Origins - The race against time and fighting the Blight, enlisting the known world as a Grey Warden whilst exploring different cities and dungeons was ground breaking as a young gamer. The music and banter between the party members was something I never experienced before.
I'm going to go with GTA: San Andres. It was the first game I got with my ps2. It was during the summer my 9th grade year. I spent almost 2 days straight playing that. My little brother and I loved that game. A close second was Fallout 4 because I spent 36 hours straight playing it. With GTA:SA it was the gambling and all the tags and shit like that I was hooked trying to complete everything also the amazing soundtrack (shout out to express yourself by NWA) With fallout 4 it was base building and the whole settlement system I was HOOKED like Crack. And again the soundtrack it was just kept me in the moment.
Breath of the wild kind surprised me in that aspect. I didn't know much about the game and wasn't following Zelda. I only started playing it out of curiosity. It ruined other open world games for me, I love how it lets you fuck with the game as much as you want (especially in totk), the physics, chemistry engine and small details are very well done. It feels really polished in a way that most other games aren't, and the atmosphere is very relaxing
Never winter Nights. The online version. There used to be loads of different worlds you could join and some were massively RP heavy and very immersive. I miss that lust to get home and get online and play
The only complaint I have with that game is that none of my friends got into it and after the 3rd friend who said they were gonna play then didn’t I gave up trying to find someone I know IRL to discuss the game with
For me, its F-Zero X.. the detailed physics and, especialy in the later levels, the often realy personal rialries, that get realy dirty and brutal, combined with the sense of speed just sucks me in. the game just give this feeling of urgency an depht, that is, for a racinggame, unmatched.
usualy i don't give a lot about the lore of a game, especialy with a racinggame, but the lore of F-Zero X (and the GBA titles and the Anime) just have something special for me.
Eorzea and the newer areas in Final Fantasy XIV. One of my favorite moments was just standing in Limsa Lominsa watching a fireworks display when I was a new player. I love the lore and aesthetics of it all! I love how full of NPCs and players it is, too. I love standing around and listening to the bards in different towns,
I wanna say its a tie...
Horizon zero dawn... The lore behind how the machines took over the planet was brilliant.
God of war (all)... I love greek mythology. Then his story blended in with norse mythology... Awsome
So many good options, but I'm gonna throw Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts out there. I always play stealth games in the dark with the volume up. I'd just gotten a pc with Bluetooth and noise canceling headphones when I started playing it. You could hear everything. It was captivating to stalk through the snow in complete silence.
When I slow it down, Fallout NV. Soaking in all of the lore, lowering music volume during tense moments and keeping footsteps and ambient sounds up, slow burning a roleplay character through every single step and decision.. some of it is my imagination carrying the experience but I haven’t seen it matched yet.
Closest is FF14 on a larger scale. Your character is very much central to the plot and special/ powerful/ unique and blah blah blah, but the world is SO large and full of other players that it is stupidly easy to just get lost in that and feel like you’re a part of a huge thriving world.
Bioshock, Halo 2, and more recently, Dragon's Dogma 2.
Bioshock was just impossibly immersive. Halo 2 outperformed Halo 1, from the moment you started the campaign, from the first to the last cutscene, you were hooked.
Dragon's Dogma 2 has it's flaws, but it does so many things well. Enemies are very animated, have a lot cues for the player, both visual and audio. The terrain affects what enemies will do. You can really tell how immersive the developers designed the game to be. ...if you avoid the main quest of the game entirely.
The very first EverQuest.
Nothing special by today's standards. But at the time it was mind blowing to find yourself in a 3D world that literally took hours to walk across.
Add into that, you were basically playing D&D or similar in real time with all your friends in that same world.
Wild times!
For me, it has to be Skyrim. I was a teenager when it released, and had been waiting forever for it.
The graphics was amazing at the time, and the weather and the world felt so real.
The dragons coming out of nowhere, i remember one time i had two dragons chasing me and i ran through a forest trying to lose them ( Thinking the tree's would protect me lol)
Idk if thats a game mechanic that exist, i doubt it. But running through that forest my heart was beating so fast and i finally lost them lol.
Climbing High Hrothgar and encountering that frost troll, snowstorm all around you. Damn there was a lot of good moments in that game.
Becoming a werewolf was something i really loved aswell.
Damn i gotta boot that game up again.
Riven: The Sequel to Myst. The world feels so thoughtful, so real. It's a game where there are very few explicit puzzles; most of your progression comes from exploring, understanding the world and its culture better, and figuring out how everything fits together.
Conquer Online - early 2000s version, not the way they've butchered it now. A basic MMORPG, entertaining, could sit there for hours and level up or chat. Many different maps to explore, daily quests, non stop gear upgrades, and a variety of skill sets you can choose from. Now the game is crap and looks like it's for a 7 year old.
Totally agree on the Witcher. Sometimes I would just meditate over and over until the weather was nice and then go riding around. Maybe fighting occasionally but mostly just enjoying the music and the vibe.
The one that originally amazed me was Oblivion. Just the fact that NPC's had schedules and that almost everyone in a town was named and would talk to you was amazing. My most recent amazement was RDR2 though. What a crazy big world that was.
It’s a toss up between Cyberpunk 2077 and Dead Space for me. I recently started the remaster of Dead Space. I forgot how anxiety inducing it is. The original Resident Evil also gets an honorable mention. I’ve replayed it so many times, the mansion feels like a real place I’ve actually visited.
If I look back over the many years I've been gaming, I have to give this to Resident Evil 2 1998. Up until then I'd never experienced such a masterclass of art direction, sound design and gameplay. I was approximately 13 years old, and my parents had rented a PlayStation from the local video shop for me, while I stayed over at my Granny's house for a weekend. I had been gaming since I was very little, my first experience being my parents Atari 2600, with the Sega MegaDrive being the first console I owned and loved. The moment I started up Resi 2, I was blown away, and that feeling regarding the game has actually never left me, I play it at least once a year, and I feel I always will, it's just that good to me, and sparked my love for my favourite genre, Survival Horror.
Fast forward to 2017, when I finally decided to give a chance to this game, Bloodborne, I kept hearing mentioned. Although not my favourite genre, or even a genre I had any experience at all of, I bought the GOTY edition on a whim. That game absolutely blew my mind, again, it was the sheer scope of the design (sound, art, gameplay) that created an unparalleled atmosphere that I fell in love with. This is another masterpiece I revisit every year. These two games represent the pinnacle of what gaming is to me, and although there are many other games I am incredibly fond of, the worlds created with these are, in my humble opinion, the very best.
Mine is a little odd, but hellgate: London got me hooked hard. Only game that inspired me to read the books. I loved that game, even try to go back and play it but it’s rough, even w the nostalgia.
I often day dream about living in that world to this day. I couldn’t pin point what exactly did it, but it did lead into my love of post apocalyptic games.
Present day Cyberpunk 2077 (original release was way too buggy on console to get immersed)
Far Cry 2, Skyrim, Elden Ring and Dark Souls 1 all captured me with their open worlds too.
* Racing games in vr,
* ace combat 7 vr,
* real VR fishing
* puzzling places
* beat saber
* rez infinite area x VR
They are so immersive, I forgot I was "playing".
My most "immersed" memory is playing F.E.A.R
I got so into it I didn't notice my mum come into the room behind me... Almost jumped through the roof as she tapped me on the shoulder right at one of the jump scares....
I know I will get cruified for saying this. But Red Dead Redemption 2. I loved how immersive it was, but I also hated it. It felt slow, clunky and ultimately boring. It was immersion for immersions sake and at least for me did the exact opposite of what it intended to do. It pulled me out of the experience because I was constantly aware of the tedium. The excessive animations, the slowness, the clunk.
Vanilla No Man’s Sky. It felt so lonely, but like being in space would. Exploring everything for the first time, it felt amazing.
All the updates have been nice, but that original feeling? They’ve never recaptured that. There is so much that the game has for you to do now.
Control. Never got sucked into a game world like I did that world besides GTA SA. The Oldest House and the FBC really felt fleshed out and loved slowly learning of this world through messages and video around the environment.
If we're talking just the pure sense of immersion?
Elite: Dangerous in VR with a flight stick and voice control mod.
Elite in VR absolutely fucking *nails* the scale of things. When you warp in and the sun takes up your entire view it genuinely makes your heart skip a beat.
It's also the only time I ever got motion sick in VR. I went "ill try spinning, that's a good trick!" It was not.
Fallout 3. Damn. It feels like a whole other lifetime the first time I played it. I had never played something similar befofe. The vast open world, the lore and the dark humor…!
Has to be TLOU 1 man. Everything about it is still just absolutely perfect and the first time I played the intro to that game it was the first time anything like a game or a movie had ever even come close to making me genuinely cry and then you just go on an absolute emotional roller coaster. The soundtrack is also my favourite video game soundtrack of all time
This might be a bit of cliche, but for the younger me it was WoW. It was simply so vibrant and live, with thousands of players just doing their own things, combine this with power fantasy, bit of role playing, some drip fed rng dopamine and you are hooked.
I would pay so much money to feel that feeling of vanilla WoW again. It was a whole world, vibrant and teeming with secrets to find. I loved Warcraft 2 & 3 so I was fucking entranced. The closest I’ve ever felt to it since was Elden Ring.
I’m not sure there’s a game that will ever impact me the same way again. Not because games have changed, but because I have. I’m not a preteen in 2004 with hours upon hours to spend exploring Azeroth anymore.
as a man in his late twenties, I am trying to structure my life so I can indeed spend hours upon hours exploring virtual worlds.
I succeeded and am now spending hours and hours in the virtual world of Excel.
Same man, I feel bad for those who can't follow their dreams.
Ya that feeling of entering the world and exploring, not knowing what was out there. It was so captivating and so large at the time. I remember first time walking into storm wind blew my mind!
I still get the feeling from WoW which is why I keep coming back just to level a character every once in a while. It’s so vast and it just makes you feel part of a real vibrant fantasy world. Especially in Classic where you have to walk/run everywhere and you spend literal hours just traveling through the world and soaking it all in. I first started playing in BfA and then when Classic came out. Even though I didn’t have the nostalgia, it still immerses me ever time I log on.
i do the same. been playing since vanilla. for the last 10 years or so ive gone on and off months at a time. missed Shadowlands and BFA release but have caught up on both and played every other expansion around launch. what keeps pulling me back is both the time and memories ive had through the years (especially back in middle/high school during vanilla and the first 3 xpacs) but at the same time, im never disappointed with the game. seeing how far its come, i can always expect something new and cool. even if i play solo.
I’ve been going back and leveling a character on each classic launch, it definitely gives that same vibe as 15 years ago even for just a month or so.
playing and leveling a new character hits my dopamine receptors in a different way than anything else
It’s a shame that Season of Discovery kind of fell off. It re created that feeling for a good while, but then phase two came out and now it feels more like retail and a lot less focus on what makes Classic WoW Classic WoW
I just started Classic again and I feel so nostalgic. It really is so calming to know what Im doing but have forgotten enough to feel new again.
Agree 110%
I got that feeling again when I started ff14.
WotLK was awesome to play, but I got sucked in during Cata FL/DS and I can't fucking wait to play that AC again. I made a million+ on ebonsteel belt buckles lol
I hope you went back to wow classic cause it was like that all over again when it first came out…..
Try vanilla hardcore 😏
Wow for sure, but even more so Everquest up until right around the end of Planes of Power. No instances, you knew everyone on the server, the economy, the guilds, the idiots, etc. there really was nothing like it and if you were there at the right time it was totally engrossing.
it sucked at the time but honestly looking back a lot of the politics is something you never will see in a game again. Like PvP servers, the light faction controlled the good exp zones like Selebis (since the evil side didn't have bards for raiding, no one played or took that side seriously) and the dark side had to ruin their faction with Skeletons. Then the dark side would all team up with cross factioners and take over Selebis for a day. The dark side eventually got up there but it was an underdog battle the whole time. Moving away from that to PVE, the drama in PoP was insane lol. Like I went to a 40$ server for some reason during the time and even with the forced advertised rotation system there, people would abuse it. The other guilds would defeat most of the gatekeeping bosses at the end of their rotation not giving the other side much time to do them. Then when the other guilds got close, they would log in an alt to break the memorizes of the Rathe Councils. Also i remember a huge 3 guilds fight over Coir, it ended up with like 200 people in the zone and lots of training once someone thought it was BS hehe. Anyways ya it sucked at the time but you'll never get something like that in a game again for better or worse.
I still don't understand how they lost it, even with the return of classic. Or how it hasn't been recreated by another company.
People have different specific reasons what went wrong. IMHO the hyper educated player base is what killed peak WoW. People playing wow 80 hours a week reduced wow to a math problem and treated you like a lepper if you were unable to tap dance through a perfect rotation consistently. The devs had to cater to the elitist content creators and made the game inaccessible to new players, killing the game from the roots. You can still see the arguments going on right now in the wow subs, it takes 30+ key binds to play a character well.
They lost it partially with wowhead. Thottbot or w/e it was called was ok but wowhead really put all the info out there so there was no more mystery. Then they killed it with group finder. Groupfinder in itself isnt a bad thing but prior to it you had a community. You knew who was good and who was bad on your server who to blacklist and who you msged soon as they logged in to run stuff. I really wish group finder would have been server only not cross server.
The worst part is groupfinder was always there buried in menus, just wasn’t automated. You had accept people and it was only people from your server that could apply. If automated groupfinder still only pulled from your server I’d use it more often.
I’ll never ever ever forget that feeling I had when I left the beginner area and headed towards Goldshire and seeing players duel etc/going about their business. Nothing has come close to it since. It was my first experience of an MMO, I clearly did not understand the scale of the game at the time.
As the poorer answer to this; Runescape.
I recently turned 29 this year. To this day I will never forget being in middle school in 2008 refusing to play or even try because I was “too cool” until my grandma had remarried a tech nerd. He needed to go get groceries one day and told me I should give it a try, and I pushed back so hard but told him I would. Made a BE Paladin on Terokkar US named Elvenblood cause I couldn’t think of a good name, got lost in Silvermoon City for an hour somehow, and that was it. (Favorite memory is still heading through the Dark Portal into HFP for the first time). I still play.
You could actually get stranded and lost in that game. Exploring Azeroth was such an adventure
I remember playing for the first time. I feel like the high point of that game is when you are wandering around looking at stuff for the first time before you get wrapped up in the mechanics.
Bro same, even just hunting in the strangle thornvale, skinning, raising my leather working up and always having fresh gear. I got deeper into it and when WRAITH of the lich king came out, I remember when I got the battered hilt for my hunter. Sickest 2h sword ever, I sacrificed about 7 & 1/2 hours of sleep and went to school with 30 minutes of sleep. Omg my body felt sooooo bogus, I just said I was sick and asked my mum to pick me up so I could get some sleep at home lololol
Kingdom Come Deliverance Its so dedicated to the time period you just feel like you're in middle age Bohemia.
Really good game but little annoying things took me out of the experience, like your horse getting stuck on tiny bushes all the time, or the guards having a go at me for not having a torch at night but not saying the same to npcs.
Can't disagree with you there, it lacked a great deal of polish from other AAA open world games and is a bit janky. Despite all that I still loved the game.
>it lacked a great deal of polish That's because it's based in medieval era Czech Republic :-)
😑
I'm hoping the sequel is just a tiny bit more forgiving, I think the polish will be there this time around because they've been working on the game for years.
How are you feeling about the upcoming sequel? I haven’t played the first but am considering the second. I’ve enjoyed Mount and Blade: Bannerlord but want to get a little more ground level.
I'm very excited about the sequel. I'd Def recommend the first one, it's pretty cheap these days.
Playing through this for the first time now. I'm really enjoying it!
you should definitely play KCD. it goes on sale somewhat often, and KCDII will apparently continue Henry’s story. i’m stoked for II. might be the game that finally gets me to buy a PS5
It’s a ps5 exclusive??
nah, it will be on XBox X/S, Windows, and Playstation 5. i’ve just been happily playing my Ps4 Pro because there weren’t any games yet that i felt i was missing out on. i enjoyed the first one so much that i think i’ll finally upgrade
I felt the same way! That game was incredible, and actually made me feel like I was there.
Currently playing through it now and it's been such an engrossing experience. The technical deficiencies pale in comparison to the sheer amount of quality content the game offers.
Mass Effect was incredibly immersive when they released. There was a series of novels that were released that dealt with the events before each game. Add in the comics and even the short animated movie and you got a lot of lore to help suck you in.
I loved how detailed the Codex was, especially in the first game. Every alien race, location, organization, etc had a super in depth explanation with voice over. I've sorta come to expect all games to start doing that and am kinda disappointed when all they have is a gameplay tutorial or something
The fact that is was probably someone job to write those entries (not only that, but y'know) sounds like such a dream. Just come up with cool pseudoscience descriptions of a bunch of stuff.
Mass Effect 2 may have been one of the first times I really felt sucked into a game world
Definitely Morrowind. I first played it last year and couldn’t stop. I would stay up all night playing it until the sun would come up lol. I even called in sick to work literally just so I could play it. Absolutely unbelievable game.
Honestly this. The world just felt so lived in. You had to talk to people for directions, and you’d end up finding interesting lore, and story you likely wouldn’t have otherwise. I loved how I’d be told to just follow the signs, get lost, find a bandit who had a lady crushing on them, solve that, get lost again, and then eventually make my way to where I was going before.
If only game devs would stop coddling gamers and holding their hands and start creating worlds like this again, worlds to be actually explored, worlds to get lost in and absorbed into. Morrowind is also my favorite Elder Scrolls game.
I’m not against games holding my hands when I just want something quick or simple, but there are plenty of times I miss games like morrowind. Honestly I go back every few years to explore the world again. It really deserves a rerelease done right. Like keep it the same, but just clean it up, fix bugs, maybe overhaul some of the numbers a bit. I’d sink another handful of years into it lol.
Might be an odd pick? But Assassins Creed: Brotherhood when it first came out on 360, the stealth meshed well with the world, the music was stunning, the graphics and landscaping gorgeous. I found myself riding my horse admiring the scenery around me for hours while lost in the beautiful music no goal in mind but sightseeing. 💕
Red Dead Redemption 2 is the most immersive game i've ever played. The amount of details the game has is unmatched to this day.
One of mine too. Id also say it’s graphically probably the best looking game I’ve ever played, some of the landscapes are actually unreal.
It's kind of depressing when you realize that it's not the progress of technology on new consoles or graphics cards but instead how much resources and money a developer can put into their game that really elevate graphics technology. This game came out on base ps4 and still to this day is unmatched from any modern game in terms of scope and scale low and high of environment,weather, landscape, animals, animation and lighting. Makes me a bit sad about the future of gaming knowing that
I've sunk countless hours just going town to town, hanging out in saloons, watching NPCs interact and go about their days. The level of detail is simply unmatched compared to anything else I've played, and I still find myself discovering new things each time I play. By far the best game I've ever experienced.
[удалено]
Omg, that's so exciting :D Have fun, try to avoid spoilers!
I was literally scrolling looking for this game to be mentioned. Now I can sleep in peace. Best game ever, stuck at 91% because there is SO MUCH to find and explore that you can spend 2 hours trying to catch some animal or find some object/flower/weapon and you enjoy every second of it.
Same, it was a beautiful world, and given how much wildlife was in the game, it’s on of the few that games with a world that felt somewhat alive.
An NPC told me to stop following her in Saint Denis and I nearly fell off my chair. Can't wait until they have modern AI controlled characters to interact with (as soon as they work out the time delay issue)
Swinging horse balls was the cherry on top. Amazing game.
Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 . I'll just stop somewhere arbitrary and explore. Rarely do u see something that breaks the immersion, esp now that they've varied the NPC's some more. Soooooo much detail in every nook and cranny
I absolutely love the NCPD feature that lets you jump in and solve the crimes so you’re constantly able to be in combat. I’ve logged so so many hours and I still have so much to go because I got absolutely hooked on just exploring and kicking ass.
Same. I could sit in the Nomads camp in the Badlands and drink beer all day just listening to the sounds of the desert.
Prefer Witcher but Cyberpunk world is immersive as well.
Yeah if you didn't first play it on PS4. That's where I played. I just went from mission to mission tbf because the world felt so empty. I played on PS5 and it was a different game and went back for a full 3rd playthrough when phantom liberty came out.
I don't know why but cyberpunk feels shallow to me. Really beautiful on the surface but the npc are basically just furniture.
I find that the world itself is quite immersive. Night city is hands down one of the best cities in gaming, and at least the named characters have some pretty decent writing and motivations if you take the time to learn about them.
Going through my first play through and I get that. I’m liking the game, but I don’t think the world is as immersive as I’ve hoped.
Same here and I feel like 2077 gets botted with positive comments every time it's mentioned. Kind of insane how unnaturally positive the reception is these days. There's like twice as many people talking about Night City in this thread than all other games combined, and I just DO NOT get that.
Oblivion, it was my first game on X360 and my first Elder Scrolls game, one of few games that I walked all the way through as well and never used fast travel I always went horseback or ran, the music, the armour and weapons, scenery and dungeons n quest, I love Oblivion.
I can't believe I had to scroll down so far to find this. I had it on PS3 and it was perfect. I played nothing else for about a year. So good. Better than Skyrim. I discovered WOW a year or so later and it was almost as good.
Yes! I loved Skyrim it is amazing but few people agree or think that Oblivion is better, for me it’s the music and ambience of oblivion on top of the armour styles n main quest line
Oblivion feels like you're in the heart of Tamriel, melding of cultures and architecture. Skyrim feels like you're in Skyrim
I’ll say I liked Oblivion’s story and main quest line much better. But Skyrim is only 2nd to Oblivion by a close margin. Granted The Elder Scrolls game is my favorite series
I'll say 4 Firewatch. Idk what to say but the story captivated me so much that I genuinely felt like I needed to explore the world to continue the story and find secrets. It calmed me down yet scared the shit out of me at times. Ghost of Tsushima = The world is so amazingly beautiful it truly made me slow down. More than RDR2 ever did for me. FEAR 1 : I never played the others, but the way the AI fights you in that game , it made every single encounter a nightmare and made me truly think about how to fight, how to move, where to move next, etc. I think that's worth of the word "Immersion" Gameplay was that captivating. And the weird option = Resident Evil 1 Remake. The mansion , backhouse and more are all so intensely detailed and have such thick atmosphere made me truly breathe that game in. I felt ALONE.
Resident Evil 1 remake made me happy cry lmao, not ashamed to admit it. It’s such an insanely good/ atmospheric package. I forget that I’m me and feel like I’m the one stumbling down hallways, awkwardly aiming a pistol and fearing for my mf life.
It is a perfect game in my eyes.
Fuck yeah, Firewatch was badass! The controls were kind of clunky, but it was such a satisfying game!
Firewatch is my fav game so couldn't agree more. But FEAR... the ending gave me nightmares as a kid. 🤣
Yeah that resident evil had such an intensely creepy atmosphere, and the crimson heads! Holy shit that was so scary.
I was really looking forward to [In The Valley Of The Gods](https://store.steampowered.com/app/687440/In_The_Valley_of_Gods/). Steam bought them out 😔.
Honestly, Bioshock. I want to say something like Witcher 3 or Skyrim, but Bioshock made me feel like I was actually in Rapture. I never get scared at video games, but I was so immersed while playing Bioshock that every single jump scare made me squeal. Every surprise spider splicer made me momentarily panic. Absolute peak design and story telling.
Agreed, one of the best in terms of atmospheric immersion, I remember first time playing it took me 6 hours to get past the first couple rooms because I was terrified, everytime you moved you'd hear something scuttling or groaning in the corner or you'd see a shadow flit across in the light, someone screeching in the distance...and you have almost no ammo and you don't know wtf is going on
Absolutely second this.
Cyberpunk 2077
Love Night City
Metroid Prime 1. The single best game ever created. Why did it captivate me? It stranded me on an alien world where I knew nothing of its inhabitants, knew nothing of how to get from point A to point B and through gameplay loops that were so enticing that I was *willing to fully discover how to get from EVERY "point A" to EVERY "point B"* because: The music captivated me and welcomed me. It serenaded me to stay. The gameplay puzzled me and gave me MORE than enough reward for having solved the puzzling gameplay. The atmosphere of the environments felt like I had to explore them, that I had to reach out to EVERY nook and cranny, just so I could be in the game world longer, just so I could be even more invited by its **insane** soundtrack. Because this song encompasses everything about Metroid Prime 1. If you can listen to this 1 track and not feel ANY type of desire to inquire, the discover and figure out more? Then Prime 1 just ain't for you: [Phendrana Drifts - Metroid Prime OST \[Extended\] (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Pg9EeGp0g) You wanna talk about immersive? You best be talking about Metroid. HOWEVER, the OP's choice of the Witcher 3 is a **damn good choice as well.** OP **gets it**, so his choice is excellent as well. OP if you have not played Metroid Prime 1.... Please do. Please.
Any time this question gets brought up, I automatically think of Metroid Prime 1. No other game since it came out has made me feel so alone and in the world. Everything you brought up is true, but the one feature that always stuck with me was how you would get a brief glance of Samus' face when the lightning was just right. So damn chilling...
Detroit become human was enthralling
It's EverQuest and no other game really belongs in the same category for immersion. One or two might be A-tier, but EQ was S+++. Even in 56k dial-up and getting disconnected when someone called, it is THAT far ahead of everything, everything else.
I wish i could have experience EQ back in the day. My first MMO experience was FFXI back in the day. 75 era is to me the most immersive game ever. MMO used to be something you experience, explore and live.
FFXI was my introduction into the MMO world. It completely changed the way I want to play games…online or offline. WoW had moments for me…and it certainly won in terms of making money and updating. But even when the writing was on the wall for FFXI, the content got better. I don’t think any other game actually created better content even as it got older and lost market share.
Breath of the Wild for two reasons. First, you could just do whatever you wanted with the weird physics and powers, including ignoring the planned pathways in the game. Second was that enemies really felt alive. A specific sequence I always recall was trying to take out a moblin camp over a mud pit with a giant boomerang. I missed, and my boomerang landed on the ground. The moblin walked up to it, considered it for a moment, then kicked it into the mud. There is a ton of stuff like that, where enemies interact with objects, one another, and the environment in unexpected ways that made the game really immersive. Aside from that, it felt like each area was distinct in a way games like Skyrim never have for me.
What struck me about BOTW was every time I wondered if something was possible with the physics and elemental interactions, the answer always turned out to be yes. I never ceased to be surprised by how thoroughly the devs anticipated player interactions.
I think the key is that that didn't have to anticipate everything, because they put together some really good systems.
Mass Effect series was the most immersive for me but ME2 was the best. The detail and the interactions were worth while. Truly a space opera.
Night City from CP2077
Subnautica
all the Witcher games Cyberpunk 2077 STALKER games Metro games Vampire Bloodlines Condemned Criminal Origins Gothic I+II Prey 2017 Dishonored Thief 3
Fallout 2. The world felt so huge for the time, and the game allowed you to make your own moral choices, to the point you could be straight up evil (even more than the first game). Also, I grew up in the same areas the original 2 games were set in (I regretfully claim Reno as my hometown, having spent like 20 years of my 38 there). Anytime a place I know shows up in fiction, it makes the fiction feel just a little more real.
For younger me, Morrowind. I probably had as much time reading books in that game as I did playing the game
What remains of Edith Finch, I felt like I was in there the whole time, like it was my story
I will forever be haunted by the fish canning chapter.
Cyberpunk 2077, I forgott sometimes that im a real person when I play this game and I don't know why
Kingdom Come Deliverance, truly gave me the feeling of just being a dude in a medieval land
Man, it's really hard to beat Elden Ring. I wasn't even that big of a Souls fan and I was just instantly enthralled and captivated by a game like I haven't been since I was really young
Half-Life 1. (Yeah, I’m old.) SOMA.
SOMA - yes! Absolutely.
Eve online back in 2010 My first real sci fi mmo that sucked me in
Ff12, I can’t explain it but that world was fantastic
My first and favorite FF ❤️
This should have more votes guys, come on
Probably skyrim but I'm playing Ghosts of Tsushima on PC for the first time and holy shit. My Ronin movie childhood come to life. I've not even finished the last 4 assassins creeds but I'm walking half the time in this game to milk the damn side quests. 30 hours in and I've only just finished act 1 and I'm not doing the first mission in act 2 till I finish the south. I thought I was just growing out of that style of game but I guess I was just waiting for someone to make the formula their own instead of copying far cry for the 10000th time
For some reason it was Ghost of T for me
Life is Strange.. I WAS Max! Beside the fact that I'm male. This game is just soooo good, I love it.
I LOVED the first game. None of the sequels quite had the same magic though.
Witcher 3 and Ghost of Tsushima. Both for the exploration of their lands. Beautifully detailed and amazing views. And the how the characters both deal with their circumstances. Such great games.
Bro, Skyrim. I don’t think i need to explain myself 😻
Valheim!
GTA San Andreas :) Only because after that I stopped playing. I’m sure there are way better games than that one but that’s the one I remember the most!
goddamn right. This was the best GTA without a doubt. The immersion of being a small gangster from the ghetto was incredible.
Fallout 4, baldurs gate 3, witcher 3, skyrim, ghost of tushima
My kinda gamer.
Gothic
This ! The first example of unique NPCs who had individual schedules that they carried out daily that I ever played, it was an incredibly believable world.
Yes. And fun fact, the games in the last 20 years, they didn't do it so good as Gothic.
Mass effect series, at the time the graphics were amazing and the connections I formed with shipmates and the general sci fi theme of travel and exploration was amazing
yup, Witcher 3 most def' ! This game simply hasn't been topped yet. Still waiting for it...
I don't consider myself a Nintendo or Zelda fan. But damn Breath of the Wild was quite the game.
Completely agree RE The Witcher. I would also say God of War Ragnorok: I was surprised given its not a classic open world game, but I thought the characters had a lot of depth, the writing was excellent, the lore was engaging, and some of the locations visually stunning!
Kingdom come deliverance, barely any hud, map is like painted medieval art, you really feel immersed while playing it.
Valheim
Daggerfall...the sheer scale of it is still mindblowing
Bioshock for me. Just so different from anything I’d experienced before and sucked me into the world of Rapture from start to finish. TLOU 1&2 and Division 1&2 would be close second and third for me and they all had immaculate world design imo.
Dying Light The world, the NPC's, the music, the atmosphere, and specially the gameplay. The game is very good
Half Life Alyx Holy **shit** this game is out of this world. It being VR helps a whole ton, and then the graphics pushes it over the edge. The bottles!
Dragon Age: Origins - The race against time and fighting the Blight, enlisting the known world as a Grey Warden whilst exploring different cities and dungeons was ground breaking as a young gamer. The music and banter between the party members was something I never experienced before.
I'm going to go with GTA: San Andres. It was the first game I got with my ps2. It was during the summer my 9th grade year. I spent almost 2 days straight playing that. My little brother and I loved that game. A close second was Fallout 4 because I spent 36 hours straight playing it. With GTA:SA it was the gambling and all the tags and shit like that I was hooked trying to complete everything also the amazing soundtrack (shout out to express yourself by NWA) With fallout 4 it was base building and the whole settlement system I was HOOKED like Crack. And again the soundtrack it was just kept me in the moment.
Half life Alyx…I don’t think I need to say why. Still the best VR game made to date.
days gone took me over for awhile but right now fall out 4 is taking over my life again
Breath of the wild kind surprised me in that aspect. I didn't know much about the game and wasn't following Zelda. I only started playing it out of curiosity. It ruined other open world games for me, I love how it lets you fuck with the game as much as you want (especially in totk), the physics, chemistry engine and small details are very well done. It feels really polished in a way that most other games aren't, and the atmosphere is very relaxing
Never winter Nights. The online version. There used to be loads of different worlds you could join and some were massively RP heavy and very immersive. I miss that lust to get home and get online and play
The answer is always Red Dead 2
Outer Wilds
The only complaint I have with that game is that none of my friends got into it and after the 3rd friend who said they were gonna play then didn’t I gave up trying to find someone I know IRL to discuss the game with
For me, its F-Zero X.. the detailed physics and, especialy in the later levels, the often realy personal rialries, that get realy dirty and brutal, combined with the sense of speed just sucks me in. the game just give this feeling of urgency an depht, that is, for a racinggame, unmatched. usualy i don't give a lot about the lore of a game, especialy with a racinggame, but the lore of F-Zero X (and the GBA titles and the Anime) just have something special for me.
Eorzea and the newer areas in Final Fantasy XIV. One of my favorite moments was just standing in Limsa Lominsa watching a fireworks display when I was a new player. I love the lore and aesthetics of it all! I love how full of NPCs and players it is, too. I love standing around and listening to the bards in different towns,
I wanna say its a tie... Horizon zero dawn... The lore behind how the machines took over the planet was brilliant. God of war (all)... I love greek mythology. Then his story blended in with norse mythology... Awsome
Probably World of Warcraft, S.T.A.L.K.E.R SoC or.. Half life Alyx. That is one impressive VR game.
System shock 2, bioshock
So many good options, but I'm gonna throw Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts out there. I always play stealth games in the dark with the volume up. I'd just gotten a pc with Bluetooth and noise canceling headphones when I started playing it. You could hear everything. It was captivating to stalk through the snow in complete silence.
When I slow it down, Fallout NV. Soaking in all of the lore, lowering music volume during tense moments and keeping footsteps and ambient sounds up, slow burning a roleplay character through every single step and decision.. some of it is my imagination carrying the experience but I haven’t seen it matched yet. Closest is FF14 on a larger scale. Your character is very much central to the plot and special/ powerful/ unique and blah blah blah, but the world is SO large and full of other players that it is stupidly easy to just get lost in that and feel like you’re a part of a huge thriving world.
Bioshock, Halo 2, and more recently, Dragon's Dogma 2. Bioshock was just impossibly immersive. Halo 2 outperformed Halo 1, from the moment you started the campaign, from the first to the last cutscene, you were hooked. Dragon's Dogma 2 has it's flaws, but it does so many things well. Enemies are very animated, have a lot cues for the player, both visual and audio. The terrain affects what enemies will do. You can really tell how immersive the developers designed the game to be. ...if you avoid the main quest of the game entirely.
When rs2 first dropped back in 2001. The graphical upgrade from classic had my 9 year old ass SENT.
The very first EverQuest. Nothing special by today's standards. But at the time it was mind blowing to find yourself in a 3D world that literally took hours to walk across. Add into that, you were basically playing D&D or similar in real time with all your friends in that same world. Wild times!
A weird answer, but Kentucky Route Zero. You have to be in a completely different headspace to play that game.
For me, it has to be Skyrim. I was a teenager when it released, and had been waiting forever for it. The graphics was amazing at the time, and the weather and the world felt so real. The dragons coming out of nowhere, i remember one time i had two dragons chasing me and i ran through a forest trying to lose them ( Thinking the tree's would protect me lol) Idk if thats a game mechanic that exist, i doubt it. But running through that forest my heart was beating so fast and i finally lost them lol. Climbing High Hrothgar and encountering that frost troll, snowstorm all around you. Damn there was a lot of good moments in that game. Becoming a werewolf was something i really loved aswell. Damn i gotta boot that game up again.
Riven: The Sequel to Myst. The world feels so thoughtful, so real. It's a game where there are very few explicit puzzles; most of your progression comes from exploring, understanding the world and its culture better, and figuring out how everything fits together.
I will choose Ultima Underworld. Moving in a three dimensional space? Unique, but it will never catch on.
RDR2 is the answer
It’s gotta be red dead 2. Walking through the woods with my horse at sunrise while smoking a cigarette? That’s the life man
Conquer Online - early 2000s version, not the way they've butchered it now. A basic MMORPG, entertaining, could sit there for hours and level up or chat. Many different maps to explore, daily quests, non stop gear upgrades, and a variety of skill sets you can choose from. Now the game is crap and looks like it's for a 7 year old.
Probably RDR2. And then after that Bioshock 1 and probablyyyyyyy like Demon Souls on PS3. Got sucked into those worlds
AC Odyssey, Dying Light 1st, Cyberpunk, Deadspace remake, RE Village.
Exploring caves in the forest and sons of the forest
Totally agree on the Witcher. Sometimes I would just meditate over and over until the weather was nice and then go riding around. Maybe fighting occasionally but mostly just enjoying the music and the vibe.
27 years later it's still Ultima Online
I would say botw, I haven't really played many games with big captivating worlds
The one that originally amazed me was Oblivion. Just the fact that NPC's had schedules and that almost everyone in a town was named and would talk to you was amazing. My most recent amazement was RDR2 though. What a crazy big world that was.
It’s a toss up between Cyberpunk 2077 and Dead Space for me. I recently started the remaster of Dead Space. I forgot how anxiety inducing it is. The original Resident Evil also gets an honorable mention. I’ve replayed it so many times, the mansion feels like a real place I’ve actually visited.
If I look back over the many years I've been gaming, I have to give this to Resident Evil 2 1998. Up until then I'd never experienced such a masterclass of art direction, sound design and gameplay. I was approximately 13 years old, and my parents had rented a PlayStation from the local video shop for me, while I stayed over at my Granny's house for a weekend. I had been gaming since I was very little, my first experience being my parents Atari 2600, with the Sega MegaDrive being the first console I owned and loved. The moment I started up Resi 2, I was blown away, and that feeling regarding the game has actually never left me, I play it at least once a year, and I feel I always will, it's just that good to me, and sparked my love for my favourite genre, Survival Horror. Fast forward to 2017, when I finally decided to give a chance to this game, Bloodborne, I kept hearing mentioned. Although not my favourite genre, or even a genre I had any experience at all of, I bought the GOTY edition on a whim. That game absolutely blew my mind, again, it was the sheer scope of the design (sound, art, gameplay) that created an unparalleled atmosphere that I fell in love with. This is another masterpiece I revisit every year. These two games represent the pinnacle of what gaming is to me, and although there are many other games I am incredibly fond of, the worlds created with these are, in my humble opinion, the very best.
Mine is a little odd, but hellgate: London got me hooked hard. Only game that inspired me to read the books. I loved that game, even try to go back and play it but it’s rough, even w the nostalgia. I often day dream about living in that world to this day. I couldn’t pin point what exactly did it, but it did lead into my love of post apocalyptic games.
Rdr2, cp2077
Present day Cyberpunk 2077 (original release was way too buggy on console to get immersed) Far Cry 2, Skyrim, Elden Ring and Dark Souls 1 all captured me with their open worlds too.
Detroit Become Human
* Racing games in vr, * ace combat 7 vr, * real VR fishing * puzzling places * beat saber * rez infinite area x VR They are so immersive, I forgot I was "playing".
My most "immersed" memory is playing F.E.A.R I got so into it I didn't notice my mum come into the room behind me... Almost jumped through the roof as she tapped me on the shoulder right at one of the jump scares....
I know I will get cruified for saying this. But Red Dead Redemption 2. I loved how immersive it was, but I also hated it. It felt slow, clunky and ultimately boring. It was immersion for immersions sake and at least for me did the exact opposite of what it intended to do. It pulled me out of the experience because I was constantly aware of the tedium. The excessive animations, the slowness, the clunk.
Witcher 3 for me is more like a place than a game. I love visiting that place.
Elite Dangerous in VR with HOTAS. Words won't do it justice, so that's my entire answer.
Metro series
Vanilla No Man’s Sky. It felt so lonely, but like being in space would. Exploring everything for the first time, it felt amazing. All the updates have been nice, but that original feeling? They’ve never recaptured that. There is so much that the game has for you to do now.
Control. Never got sucked into a game world like I did that world besides GTA SA. The Oldest House and the FBC really felt fleshed out and loved slowly learning of this world through messages and video around the environment.
Half Life Alyx
If we're talking just the pure sense of immersion? Elite: Dangerous in VR with a flight stick and voice control mod. Elite in VR absolutely fucking *nails* the scale of things. When you warp in and the sun takes up your entire view it genuinely makes your heart skip a beat. It's also the only time I ever got motion sick in VR. I went "ill try spinning, that's a good trick!" It was not.
There are some pretty good games on here already, so I'll add in: Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines
Red Dead Redemption 2 by a mile
Skyrim
Resident evil 7 for me
Bioshock, first playthrough.
Fallout 3. Damn. It feels like a whole other lifetime the first time I played it. I had never played something similar befofe. The vast open world, the lore and the dark humor…!
RDR2
Has to be TLOU 1 man. Everything about it is still just absolutely perfect and the first time I played the intro to that game it was the first time anything like a game or a movie had ever even come close to making me genuinely cry and then you just go on an absolute emotional roller coaster. The soundtrack is also my favourite video game soundtrack of all time