we are two bros making content about retro video games and rpgs and other cool stuff. the toonami vibes are strong here, or so we’ve been told. hope our videos can transport you back to a little place in time where you're just chillin' on the couch with no care in the world watching something dope. thanks for being here, you're awesome
I love limitations on world presentation and exploration. If the game is fully open and photorealistic, then you know exactly what you will get. Artstyle and genre can help a bit, not every forest or mountain will look the same, but in general you know what reality looks like and exploring every nook and cranny of this open space becomes boring as you've seen it 100 times already on the way there. Heck you can probably see everything from here, no need to walk over. The limitations of old games instead hold limitless potential. You get screen transitions, you get abstracted pixel or low poly art, everything you see has the potential of receiving a much more detailed presentation if you examine it close enough. That last screen you have not been to in this region... you have NO idea what hides there, you can not see it before it loads. That one cliff ledge that looks like something is hidden there... it might be nothing at all, but you will wonder forever. That one screen that looked nice but did absolutely nothing... It might just be eye candy, but you will think about it while the credits roll, and attempt to unlock its secret. If every pickup in a room is highlighted with floating icons, you don't look at the room, you just go in, press the button and leave. But if you have to go into every corner to check if the game changes the viewing angle or pops open some unique interaction menu, you really observe your environment. Limitation isn't just about imagination, it's very practically affects how you engage with the game, how you behave and play. If you know you don't have the full picture yet, then you put more effort into exploring this leads to getting more out of finding something, even tiny things.
Great topic to discuss! For me, imagination has always been a necessary component for my enjoyment. A game needs to leave me enough “dream room,” to engage my mind. Old games were great at this, but modern games with minimalist design aspects (i.e. Dark Souls) leave tons of room for the player to dream as well. 🎉
That Breath of Fire 4 opening had me in a chokehold. I always thought that I could find everything that was shown. I went back to those plains so many times. I wish they made a BOF3 or 4 anime
the voice overs too. only a few ps1 game have that. it was a treat. and BP eat food. they sell em at the bakery. and chees and milk and the bar too. imo it gives more emersion. money: grind, creeps respawn or transition back and forth. normal for old prgs nd new. this was a treat to watch tho. pls review games and their mechanics with respects to their time line\era, the norms and revolutionary stuff during those times. just overall how they "do things" back in the day. your takes are a little too modern and unfair to compare. imo
I remember playing Dragon Warrior II for the first time when it was a brand new game on the NES and thinking, "Wow! There are tables, chairs, and beds in the houses now!" But I'd never assumed that the houses in the previous game were empty; I'd just used my imagination to fill in the details. I'm not suggesting we should go back to that, but it was an entirely different experience, and I'm glad I was there for it as a kid.
Post 5th gen also shifted away from more static cameras and i felt these games were worse for it. Like FF7 Remake/Rebirth doesnt sit as well with me with a fully scaled world with player camera control. While FF7 you had visual setpieces that the creators controlled the image you see, and every screen was a well thought out painting. Remake/Rebirth scaled everything 1:10 and the camera is always pulled in so you never get the same pulled out view of the “painting” of a scene. I felt it was way less of an interesting game to look at than the originals despite the huge leap in realistic graphics.
I disagree with the title of this video. "Imagination vs Immersion" implies that those two things are separate and that you can't have one without the other. If anything, those two elements go hand in hand. You can't genuinely immerse a player if you can't tickle the immaginative parts of his or her brain. If you can't immerse someone through that, imo, the "immersion" is likely superficial at best.
Coming back to watch this I realize so many people had a problem with Wind Waker's art style, not the fact that it was cel-shaded. I know loads of people who love JSR but are indifferent or don't like Wind Waker.
Awesome video! I agree with a lot of your points, and thinking about it older games had more to them because of the "imagination" aspect. In older games we got more unique stories and better fleshed out characters because game devs had to use different means to hook people and "immerse" them. Comparing FF7 to 15, each character in 7 had a home town and a backstory, families to go to, a place they "belonged" to. Now it's all just glossed over or not even mentioned because there has to be a big flashy cutscene to show you the invading imperial army floating above you (doing a whole lot of nothing by the way).
Fantastic video on a great subject. To this day, I still think Metroid Prime is the most immersive game I’ve ever played. It completely absorbed me. I ten to find immersive sims well, immersive. Deus Ex Mankind Divided and Prey are among the most recent. Too bad it’s a gente with a very small output because the games don’t sell a ton.
I first really noticed this effect graphically when I replayed Sunsoft's Batman on NES. The backgrounds are mostly just black, with patches of color representing dimly lit bricks or whatever. Your mind fills in the blanks and makes it one of my favorite games visually
If only the boss people making decisions werent so stupid. Xenogears would have brought joy to a lot of people and possibly be a super successful series on par with final fantasy. Xenosaga was also good, but as usual the sheep who couldnt let go of the trend of the previous game made a bad name for it.
Honestly I think it comes down to art direction and game design itself. It's funny you mentioned Star Ocean when talking about getting to screw around in towns cause the first thing I thought of when you said that was Zelda BotW and TotK. You can flout realism and cutting edge graphics all you want, but the moment you take away player agency you're... well, taking them out of the game itself. That's why I think I got way more mileage out of games like the aforementioned Zelda titles and the Xenoblade series than RDR2.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is partially what made me go back to playing those late 90s and early to mid 00s games. It's a great and beautiful game, and you really get out what you put into it. But, there is something to be said of simplicity. I was playing Portal 2 with my son and the engagement of having every room be a puzzle was fun. But, there is repetition in simplicity. Then I want to go back and do my chores for the day before riding into Valentine and partaking in the saloon and seeing what happens...
Honestly the more real the less immersed i get. Its janky to hit an almost life like dragon or person and my blade doesnt cause its body to bend or jerk on impact.
Thank you for articulating this idea. I've always had a similar thought. Around the PS1-PS2 era they were able to put in just enough detail to suggest fantastic worlds but where restricted enough by the hardware that they never rose to the scope of modern open-world type experiences that often feel somewhat thin despite their richness. It's been a while since there's been a game that gives me as much pleasure to hang out in as El Nido from Chrono Cross, the world from Legend of Dragoon, or Spira from FFX
This is one of the reasons why i like games from the dreamcast, or the psp. They hit the nail where the graphics can look really nice, while still leaving enough to the imagination to fill in. Opening a drawer inside Ryo's house in shenmue and seeing a jpeg of spoons shows their ambition and how they had to deal with limitations, it's really charming.
I think about this all the time! As a kid, playing snes games, I’d look out upon the mountains and cities and wonder which cheat code might allow me to explore those areas… I still remember how mind-blowing it was to be able to explore the inside of buildings in GTA 3. Gaming has come a long way graphically, but in many cases, the emphasis on music and storytelling has suffered. Probably why I’m drawn to games like Chained Echoes.
Btw! VR has been the tech that reignited my passion, wonder and excitement for gaming the past 8 years. My favorite feeling and nr:1 immersion go-to these days is a heavily modded Skyrim VR. I'm THERE! It. Is. Insane.
I can really relate to pretty much everything in this video! Great topic. I love your videos but there's lots of content so I hadn't really reflected on the fact that youtube hasn't suggested your videos (which they always used to) to me for 3 months(!). I see now that I have a handful of vids to catch up on and I'll pause "Zelda's Quest" on this one because I want to see that story unfold chronologically. The lesson for me, however, is crystal clear: Set that bell to "all". Cheers, bros
Man those PS1 pre-rendered RPG backgrounds are still some of my favorite art in all of gaming. Maybe it’s just nostalgia talking but they’re still beautiful. Also imagination was huge growing up. I was knee deep into Gen 1 Pokémon and so were all of my friends in 98/99. The crazy myths, lore, and fan theories were just amazing. I put probably 100 hours in looking for “Pikablu” around the truck by the SS Anne. The internet was still the Wild West and there were all kinds of rumors out there. They were somewhat believable too since Pokémon already had missingno and the level 100+ rare candy glitch. Good times
I would love to go back to an age of imagination in gaming. I do love the balance the 5th & 6th gen hits where depending on the mood you can lean more into one than the other, but as always my dude - great video and great topic. I’m curious- have you ever dropped a game due to either the immersion not going deep enough/ going too far? I can’t finish RDR2 because at some point the immersion ruins it for me and I just want to play something else in my limited gaming time. It actually drove me to start playing more racing and fighting games over the past 2 years since I wanted something more action focused for quick gaming sessions. Been loving MK1 lately and this topic made me reflect on how much even fighting games have evolved over the years.
This is a cool topic. It’s like reading a book or watching the movie counterpart. In a book I build the characters looks and voices, in a movie it’s someone else’s interpretations.
The amount of time I spent daydreaming about some little detail on the world map that was just a flourish was crazy. Staring at the maps of legend of mana in the cities was so fun. Walking around on the world maps of final fantasy, breath of fire and chrono trigger especially made me create all sorts of imaginary places that existed in the world we couldn't go to.
This is a great take on how graphics should be done. I think games today are focused to much on high end graphics without using more immersion, I think this is why games today are losing there popularity
Video idea: Forests in RPGs. There's some really beautiful forest settings in Japanese games, often with great accompanying music. FFX's Macalania Woods comes to mind.
RDR2 is not that immersive. I drop it because of it. You can't what you want with npcs, you can't have a relationship with a girl, you can't even sit in a banch or chair (unless it is a bar to drink the scripted beer). Skyrim yes, is a immersive game!
