Role Playing Immersive Sims

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1 John Wanamaker Games-UT The Evolution of Immersive Narrative In-Depth Analysis 11/19/17 Role Playing Immersive Sims One of the only concrete definitions of the immersive sim genre, is described by Mark Brown in his video, The Comeback of the Immersive Sim, as a game that fulfills five criteria. Those criteria are, agency, systems, emergence, consistency, and reactivity, but another possibly important criteria to add to this list would be roles. 1 Many early immersive sims are simulations of specific roles for the player to explore, for example, in System Shock the player plays the role of a cybernetic man on a space station whose goal is to destroy the evil AI SHODAN, and everything in the game is utilized to simulate the feeling of being in that role. It would make sense that this be part of the requirements for defining a game as an immersive sim, after all System Shock and other Looking Glass games are arguably the basis of the genre, but Arkane Studio s newest immersive sim, Prey, challenges that idea and provides an interesting commentary on the genre while being faithful to the first System Shock. Prey was developed by the Austin branch of Arkane Studios and was directed by Raphael Colantonio. Prey was initially pitched as a prequel to the events of System Shock, but instead the team decided to ditch the System Shock storyline but keep the design ethos. As a result, the game 1 Brown, Mark The Comeback of the Immersive Sim

2 was designed to emphasize emergent gameplay solutions to problems, and have a very immersive world for the player to interact with. 23 Prey, features an AI named January with the voice and personality of the player s character, Morgan Yu. This AI tells the player to blow up the space station in order to stop the evil alien creature called the typhon from escaping and taking over the world. Later in the game the player comes across another AI with Morgan Yu s voice and personality named December. The new AI tells the player to leave using an escape pod and not blow up the space station. After finding the escape pod key you find that January has killed December because that version of your personality wasn t the, correct one. The player also comes across a group of survivors who want to escape the space station and go back to Earth, this makes the player question if their objective is a just cause or a needless sacrifice. After exploring the medical area, the player finds audio logs that show that Morgan Yu has been losing his/her memories and as a result has been changing their outlook on whether or not to blow up the space station or not. The player is, at this point, forced to not play a predetermined role and instead forge their own. This is narrative player agency. Prey s narrative actively defies the narrative structure of previous immersive sim games and makes an almost direct commentary about the relationship of player agency and roles in the genre. The idea that an immersive sim must be a simulation of a specific role is challenged in this game through its story and gameplay. This lack of a role doesn t make Prey any less of an immersive sim, in fact it enhances it and fleshes out the player agency seen so often in other games of the same type. This commentary is furthered by the obvious references to the Looking 2 Schreier, Jason Old Leaked Design Documents Show What Prey Could Have Been 3 Pereira, Chris Prey Dev Explains Why It s Named After an Unrelated Series

3 Glass legacy in the computer system called, Looking Glass, which at times you need to break with your wrench. The gameplay of Prey also contributes to this commentary through its RPG structure. Similar to Dishonored, Prey, features an upgrading system that allows the player to expand their options. Throughout Prey the player can pick up items called Neuromods which allows the player to upgrade certain skills such as gun wielding, hacking, repairing, and even unlock new typhon related powers. System Shock simply gives the player a set of tools without the option of any sort of additional upgrades. This goes back to the idea that System Shock and games like Thief: Deadly Shadows are specific simulations of certain roles. Prey, on the other hand, allows the player to pick what tools they want to use but doesn t bar them from using certain items. This small divide is not a new thing and is seen in the difference between Doug Church s ideology and Warren Spector s ideology behind creating an immersive sim. Games like Deus Ex and Thief have obvious mechanical differences and provide different experiences for players, but they fall under the same definition. Prey s combination of its role-less narrative, it s references to System Shock and the Looking Glass legacy, and RPG inspired mechanics is a commentary on the divide between role inspired gameplay and letting the player have agency over how they want to play. Because of this self-aware design Prey strives to be an evolution of the 30-year-old design philosophy. The developers at Arkane Studios founded themselves on being the torch bearer for the design philosophy of the immersive sim. Their goal was to develop games that perfected the game design of the early immersive sims and in the process, make them commercially viable.

4 The addition of the RPG mechanics wasn t an appeal to RPG fans to get money, it was a conscious design decision to make the games better. The developers understood that players love agency and they decided to add to idea of player agency in an immersive sim, by allowing the player to truly forge their own path. The addition of narrative player agency doesn t detract from the definition of an immersive sim, in fact it adds to it, and creates a new dimension of possible choices. Prey is not only doing this successfully and also acknowledges it through the gameplay and narrative. Prey redefines the idea of an immersive sim and allows for games that don t have fixed roles to be included. Prey argues that there isn t a perfect game that embodies the purest form of the philosophy and as such it furthers the conversation about the design philosophy. Ideas don t die they only mutate, and for the immersive sim ideology to continue, it needed to mutate.

5 Works Cited Brown, Mark. The Comeback of the Immersive Sim Game Maker's Toolkit. YouTube, YouTube, 18 Aug. 2016, Pereira, Chris. Prey Dev Explains Why It's Named After an Unrelated Series. GameSpot, Gamespot, 8 Aug. 2016, Schreier, Jason. Old Leaked Design Documents Show What Prey Could've Been. Kotaku, Kotaku.com, 17 May 2017, kotaku.com/old-leaked-design-documents-show-what-prey-couldvebeen

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