This post reminds me a bit of some games, which would normally be called "immersive sims". One of their biggest draws is how they let you interact with the environment in such a variety of ways. A blocked-off entrance isn't a set scripted objective or a tool for the developers to get you to go elsewhere - it's an opportunity for the player to find a creative solution.
Blow up the barrier. Pick a lock. Break a window. Reach through an opening to press a button to open another door. Enter from vents or sewers. Alert an NPC so they open another entrance to check it out. Shut off the power elsewhere. Etc.
It's so much fun to have all those options with how you interact with the environment, instead of it just being static and 1-dimensional.
The "Clockwork Mansion" level of Dishonored II is could be seen as almost a deconstruction of this concept, making you infiltrate and explore a mansion where the walls and floors move and rooms turn into other rooms by means of intricate machinery – turning the very architecture of the house into a puzzle you have to solve. Inevitably, of course, you find your way "behind the scenes", into the access corridors behind the walls and underneath the floors, revealing the complex mechanisms responsible for the transformations. It's a level design masterpiece, and honestly it's a bit crazy that they really went and made everything physically and mechanically plausible.
I enjoyed the new Cyberpunk game, but one thing that did bother me was its lack of "Nakatomi spaces." Most of the city doors are locked and don't lead anywhere, and while the city itself is fun to roam around in, it all feels very on rails and with basically no way to "hack" the local infrastructure and environment – which I would consider almost a fundamental quality of cyberpunk literature.
I think those mostly comes down to resources. Real rooms make more sense to spend time on. Procedural generation could help with some of this. But you still have to spend resources on assets to fill these spaces.
Not a traditional urban-realism example, but my favorite flexible sim is the new Zelda game, Tears of the Kingdom. Right during the tutorial you're given powers to:
- Telekinetically lift, rotate, and glue together anything that is not alive or nailed down.
- Summon and activate small mechanisms (fans, self-spinning wheels, flamethrowers, hydrants, etc).
- Phase vertically through any ceiling, as long as it's not too far away. This includes mountains, floating platforms, and large enemies.
- Reverse the last ~30 seconds of any object's motion. A falling boulder flies back up, a floating plank goes against the current, a spinning wheel changes direction.
Then you get to apply these powers for transport, combat, and puzzles. And somehow it just works.
I found myself frequently wondering what is the canonical solution to a puzzle, because it sure as hell isn't what I just did. It's a brilliant game.
Not just that but I think half the fun that I had in the prior game, Breath of the Wild, was finding creative ways to navigate using the paraglider together with the amazing climbing mechanic. Climbing a nearby height, letting go, paragliding over an obstacle, etc. And then Tears of the Kingdom cranked that to 11 plus added all the new toys you mentioned.
In many ways, I'm reminded of the Portal games where just figuring out how to creatively move the player character from A to B is a big part of the game loop.
One of my favorites in the previous game, Breath of the Wild, was a ball-in-maze puzzle you're presumably supposed to solve by guiding the ball through the maze with motion controls and have it fall out the exit into a cup; but it is possible to instead use the maze essentially as a paddle and bat the ball into the cup instead.
Excellent point and I think there is a deeper connection here:
I believe a big part of the success of Die Hard is that McClane is such a strong hero. One of the ways the movie viscerally demonstrates his individualist heroism is how we constantly subverts the architecture of Nakatomi Plaza. While most of us would be awed by the expensive and heft of a luxurious skyscraper and feel obligated to follow its rules, McClane gives zero fucks and bends the skyscraper's physical substance to his will.
Likewise, videogames where the world is a pile of static geometry that you can only navigate in ways the game designers decided to allow feel decidedly disempowering. You're essentially a rat in their maze where your only option is to find the cheese in the way they've chosen.
Immersive simulation-like games with emergent gameplay are empowering because they offer an open-ended space to explore with greater agency and creativity. It feels like it is your game and the NPCs are just playing in it.
I first thought of Monaco, a heist game in which one character, The Mole, can dig through walls.
I then thought of Broforce, a retro side-scrolling shooter, where almost all the terrain is destructible, and so if you don't fancy climbing the enemy's walls, or navigating some subterranean passages, you can usually just blast your way straight through. Indeed, there are some levels which i can only complete by digging a tunnel under the entire map, avoiding both the enemies on the surface, and the constant aerial bombardment which is raining down on it.
Not OP, but I do in the form of the original Deus Ex (not to be confused with it's sequels, which are pale imitations with the veneer of being in the same universe).
This particular clip is what convinced me to get into the game (potential spoiler) [0].
You're right, actually. When I first played through MD I did it very linearly, only later did I realize that it was far more open than I originally expected (Because Human Revolution was pretty limited in comparison).
My point for it being a shallow imitation should be reserved only for the plot and themes of the original game, which are far more subversive and interesting than the ones in MD or HR. But I do agree, gameplay wise Mankind Divided is very well done and does fit the Nakatomi Space paradigm.
I wouldn't play with something like that for a first playthrough though. Just play vanilla for a first time around. Deus Ex lends itself well to replayability so I'd get it modded at that point.
The article very much reminded me of Rainbow Six Siege whose defining feature is probably the destructible environment. You can shoot or blow a path through walls floors and ceilings to reach the hostages / bad guys you need to get to. It very much changes the dynamics during play because almost nowhere is safe. To balance things, defenders have the ability to erect a limited number of metal barriers but the end result is that every game feels different and creativity is very much rewarded.
The new Hitman games are the best recent example in that category, IMO. Sadly the final goal still ends up being killing people.
There are few games that fall truly in that genre, which is a shame as (to me at least) it’s the video game genre that is most interesting from an “interactive medium” pov.
Arkane games (Dishonored, Deathloop) have some segments that get close, but at their core the games still have a few privileged paths (and are about killing people).
One fun indie game that uses a voxel engine effectively for open ended gameplay is Teardown (and it’s not about killing people!). The maps are quite small though. It’ll be exciting in a decade or so when we can run such engines at much higher dimensions.
There aren't a lot of them these days. Hitman probably the only one still going strong.
I would recommend Streets of Rogue from the indie sphere. It doesn't have vents you can crawl through but you can poison the ventilation system, bribe the police, hack security robots, hire people as bodyguard or to cause a ruckus. Surprisng amount of options for a top down roguelike.
I've just vouched your comment. Not sure why it was removed, because you're right, games that are primarily immersive sims aren't being made as much by AAA studios now. Some mechanics are integrated into open world games to varying degrees (you could argue that BotW/TotK take so much inspiration from them that they might count, but to many people a replayable mission-based format is an essential part that is missing in them). There are some indies in this space but they're rare since the concept is difficult to develop around in the first place, given how you have to account for so many different edge cases and routes that the player can take.
Immersive sims have always been something of a niche genre, because they tend to have a negative difficulty curve: the player is very weak and lacks powers at the start, but becomes more resilient and more capable as the game goes on, often at a much sharper curve the game's difficulty. The result is that new players tend to be turned off and give up relatively quickly.
Right but you could, and it didn't really penalize you for it compared to later games, whereas my recollection of 3 is that you get near instagibbed by everything, so it forced a stealth gameplay loop
Blow up the barrier. Pick a lock. Break a window. Reach through an opening to press a button to open another door. Enter from vents or sewers. Alert an NPC so they open another entrance to check it out. Shut off the power elsewhere. Etc.
It's so much fun to have all those options with how you interact with the environment, instead of it just being static and 1-dimensional.