When it comes to videogames, it is very common for the settings, stories, and gameplay to take us “out of our reality”, so to speak, and immerse players in a different world, at least for a short period of time. Games share this trait with other mediums, but thanks to the interactivity of games, it can often be more engaging to some, to truly take control of a character in a different world. Having ways to allow players to further immerse themselves aids in this, making immersion potentially a game's greatest asset.
However, immersion is a fine balancing act – it is important to keep the player from breaking their willing suspension of disbelief, since if things get too ridiculous or too annoying, it can often take players out of the game and back in their living room. They're no longer “in the game”, they're just playing it. At times, adhering too strongly to immersing the player in the world can actually accomplish just that, which is why glossing over certain aspects of things can be helpful for a game's design. While it's an interesting idea to have a world with many different currencies, it would be decidedly less interesting to make the player manage all of their cash themselves.
The discrepancy between immersion and convenience most often occurs in adventure and RPG games, where creating a solid setting is an important part of the design, but it can occur anywhere where the game is any more complicated than a control pad and a couple buttons.
The Ultima series provides a lot of examples of both of these situations, with times where the game values its own universe over giving players an easier time, and times where the game makes it easier for players to play while sacrificing some immersion.
In Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny, the series largely hit its stride with its lore and world-building, and made some changes to the land of Britannia, the setting for most of the series, to reflect this. Places were more detailed, with furniture and items, and you could find signs on the roads telling you which way said roads would take you. However, all of these road signs (along with some items and other things) were written in Britannia's runic script instead of in plain English.
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This sign says "Beware the Deep Forest". It's also worth noting that there are special runes just for "th", "ee", "ng", "ea", and "st". How intuitive.
This means that any time a player wishes to read a sign or check certain things, they will have to open up the game's manual and translate the runic script manually. This is great when it comes to making the land feel different and foreign, but the issue comes from, of course, the inconvenience of it all. For players who have never played Warriors of Destiny before, they will have to keep the manual, as well as a pad of paper and pencil, within reaching distance because of how ubiquitous the language is to the world.
At the start, this can be a very immersive moment; it accomplishes exactly what it was supposed to do in the first place, and since the runic script is ultimately just a letter substitution cipher, it isn't terribly difficult to translate. But the game is a very long, very open-ended RPG, and the choice to use the runic script ultimately caves in on itself the longer a player plays the game. Figuring out what the signs say in the first couple hours of the game aids the immersion, but after a while, it can become very tedious. This issue could be alleviated if a player is able to internalize the runic script so that they can translate it by sight alone, but that often requires frequent reading of the runes, and signs are not that close together.
Ultima Underworld also included the runes, and its execution was far more effective as well. The runes are just as ubiquitous as the signs in Warriors of Destiny, but the way they were implemented is the key difference.
Underworld uses a system of magic spells that involves using a combination of rune stones to spell out the incantation. For example, one of the earliest spells a magically-inclined player can cast is In Lor, a Light spell. This requires both an I runestone and an L runestone, and right-clicking on the runes allows you to quickly check which they are. Since the rune bag also lists the runes off in alphabetical order, it's very easy to memorize each stone.
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They still look different, being runes and all, but it's much easier to deal with them since you can see what they mean in the game itself!
The major reason this works better is simply because of how much faster it all is, not to mention the fact that Underworld's spells will be in use far, far more often than someone will ever look at signs in Warriors of Destiny. If a player constantly uses certain spells, the runes will become internalized that much quicker. Commonly switching between the Light spell and the Create Food spell means having to go to the rune bag and switching the equipped stones out, and thus both combinations will firmly become entrenched in a player's memory. This also lessens the amount of time spent in the game's documentation – all of Underworld's spells were listed off on a flashcard that was easy to grab and check over. The usage of the runes helps involve the player in the Ultima atmosphere, and are also convenient to use and memorize: the game manages to have it both ways.
Bringing Ultima IX: Ascension into this may be unfair, as Ascension is riddled with numerous, numerous problems, but it does provide a great example of how sacrificing immersion to make things convenient for the player doesn't always pay off. This particular point is brought up time and again when deriding Ascension, and it is no less obvious when compared to the previous games in the series.
Ultima games run in a loose, yet linear, timeline, and the player character is the same in all of the games from IV onward. Since the games can be played in any order, it was imperative for the designers to add ways to explain the important aspects of the world to Ultima newcomers, while simultaneously treating the older fans with respect in terms of their knowledge.
Ascension, however, doesn't, and the way Britannia is explained to players, both new and old, is extremely unfitting and immersion-breaking. The introductory sequence states outright that the player character has visited and helped save Britannia many times, and thus even if the player themselves doesn't know about the world, the in-game character clearly does. This is an immediate assumption due to the way the dialogue is worded.
Unfortunately, the way the explanations are handled treats the player's character as if he is a complete greenhorn – his speech when asking about things makes it seem like he has completely forgotten everything about Britannia. This is briefly poked fun at by a character who can't believe that the player has forgotten about a holy relic recovered at the very end of Ultima IV, and asking basic, almost childish questions such as what paladins are and how to get to villages visited in previous games shatters any possibility of immersion that Ascension could have attempted. Being able to ask anyone to explain things is convenient, but destroys its immersion in the process.
With all this said, here are some things to keep in mind when it comes to striking a balance between an immersive atmosphere and making things less of a hassle for players:
However, immersion is a fine balancing act – it is important to keep the player from breaking their willing suspension of disbelief, since if things get too ridiculous or too annoying, it can often take players out of the game and back in their living room. They're no longer “in the game”, they're just playing it. At times, adhering too strongly to immersing the player in the world can actually accomplish just that, which is why glossing over certain aspects of things can be helpful for a game's design. While it's an interesting idea to have a world with many different currencies, it would be decidedly less interesting to make the player manage all of their cash themselves.
The discrepancy between immersion and convenience most often occurs in adventure and RPG games, where creating a solid setting is an important part of the design, but it can occur anywhere where the game is any more complicated than a control pad and a couple buttons.
The Ultima series provides a lot of examples of both of these situations, with times where the game values its own universe over giving players an easier time, and times where the game makes it easier for players to play while sacrificing some immersion.
In Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny, the series largely hit its stride with its lore and world-building, and made some changes to the land of Britannia, the setting for most of the series, to reflect this. Places were more detailed, with furniture and items, and you could find signs on the roads telling you which way said roads would take you. However, all of these road signs (along with some items and other things) were written in Britannia's runic script instead of in plain English.
This sign says "Beware the Deep Forest". It's also worth noting that there are special runes just for "th", "ee", "ng", "ea", and "st". How intuitive.
This means that any time a player wishes to read a sign or check certain things, they will have to open up the game's manual and translate the runic script manually. This is great when it comes to making the land feel different and foreign, but the issue comes from, of course, the inconvenience of it all. For players who have never played Warriors of Destiny before, they will have to keep the manual, as well as a pad of paper and pencil, within reaching distance because of how ubiquitous the language is to the world.
At the start, this can be a very immersive moment; it accomplishes exactly what it was supposed to do in the first place, and since the runic script is ultimately just a letter substitution cipher, it isn't terribly difficult to translate. But the game is a very long, very open-ended RPG, and the choice to use the runic script ultimately caves in on itself the longer a player plays the game. Figuring out what the signs say in the first couple hours of the game aids the immersion, but after a while, it can become very tedious. This issue could be alleviated if a player is able to internalize the runic script so that they can translate it by sight alone, but that often requires frequent reading of the runes, and signs are not that close together.
Ultima Underworld also included the runes, and its execution was far more effective as well. The runes are just as ubiquitous as the signs in Warriors of Destiny, but the way they were implemented is the key difference.
Underworld uses a system of magic spells that involves using a combination of rune stones to spell out the incantation. For example, one of the earliest spells a magically-inclined player can cast is In Lor, a Light spell. This requires both an I runestone and an L runestone, and right-clicking on the runes allows you to quickly check which they are. Since the rune bag also lists the runes off in alphabetical order, it's very easy to memorize each stone.
They still look different, being runes and all, but it's much easier to deal with them since you can see what they mean in the game itself!
The major reason this works better is simply because of how much faster it all is, not to mention the fact that Underworld's spells will be in use far, far more often than someone will ever look at signs in Warriors of Destiny. If a player constantly uses certain spells, the runes will become internalized that much quicker. Commonly switching between the Light spell and the Create Food spell means having to go to the rune bag and switching the equipped stones out, and thus both combinations will firmly become entrenched in a player's memory. This also lessens the amount of time spent in the game's documentation – all of Underworld's spells were listed off on a flashcard that was easy to grab and check over. The usage of the runes helps involve the player in the Ultima atmosphere, and are also convenient to use and memorize: the game manages to have it both ways.
Bringing Ultima IX: Ascension into this may be unfair, as Ascension is riddled with numerous, numerous problems, but it does provide a great example of how sacrificing immersion to make things convenient for the player doesn't always pay off. This particular point is brought up time and again when deriding Ascension, and it is no less obvious when compared to the previous games in the series.
Ultima games run in a loose, yet linear, timeline, and the player character is the same in all of the games from IV onward. Since the games can be played in any order, it was imperative for the designers to add ways to explain the important aspects of the world to Ultima newcomers, while simultaneously treating the older fans with respect in terms of their knowledge.
Ascension, however, doesn't, and the way Britannia is explained to players, both new and old, is extremely unfitting and immersion-breaking. The introductory sequence states outright that the player character has visited and helped save Britannia many times, and thus even if the player themselves doesn't know about the world, the in-game character clearly does. This is an immediate assumption due to the way the dialogue is worded.
Unfortunately, the way the explanations are handled treats the player's character as if he is a complete greenhorn – his speech when asking about things makes it seem like he has completely forgotten everything about Britannia. This is briefly poked fun at by a character who can't believe that the player has forgotten about a holy relic recovered at the very end of Ultima IV, and asking basic, almost childish questions such as what paladins are and how to get to villages visited in previous games shatters any possibility of immersion that Ascension could have attempted. Being able to ask anyone to explain things is convenient, but destroys its immersion in the process.
With all this said, here are some things to keep in mind when it comes to striking a balance between an immersive atmosphere and making things less of a hassle for players:
- When it comes to introducing the game to a player, take both the character and the player into account. Does the player's character have a history in the world, or are they someone who, say, fell into a magic portal and has no idea where they are? Alternatively, make both routes available for the player to choose, so they can roleplay their character as they see fit.
- If you want to give a setting a unique language, keep in mind how deeply you want it to affect the gameplay itself. A game can have a fictitious language in terms of its universe, but when it comes to dialogue, it can still be shown in a way the player can read it.
- Try and find ways to combine both a convenient design and an immersive atmosphere with one fell swoop. If you want to make a town seem wild and lawless, make it so that the player can be pickpocketed by NPCs. Of course, don't go too far with this either – if a character pickpockets an important item, make sure that it's possible for the player to get the item back.