What breaks your immersion?

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Stupid plot holes will also do it for me. They don't ruin my immersion, I can get it back, but they do break it.

 

[Cthulhu]

Stupid plot holes will also do it for me. They don't ruin my immersion, I can get it back, but they do break it.

This is why I couldn't appreciate Elysium, I mean if there really is a medical device that just heals all the things for free within seconds, why the fark is it reserved to spaceship elites. Actually I didn't like neither Elysium or Chappie, come to think of it, meaning Blomkamp made only one good movie imo (and I haven't watched that new short film yet)

 

[Clement Rage]

In video games, we have been the sole hero winning an entire war and single-handedly killing hundreds for decades. Why was this suddenly an issue in Uncharted?

That's kinda how I felt about Dirge.

Lith, that's actually really interesting. Are miniguns necessarily 50 cal?

 

[JechtShotMK9]

I'm not super hard to please, but there are some things I just can't suspend my disbelief for. And you guys will probably roll your eyes at me for how winded this is gonna be.

Example: in most action heavy films, one of the Fast and Furious films immediately comes to mind, someone (usually the protagonist) is holding a fucking mini gun, and it cuts to a shot of a bunch of shells flying, usually .50 cal (when it real life it's probably firing blanks or .22s), but we're under the assumption that some large caliber shit in flying around.



First of all, this is physically impossible. I've actually gotten into arguments with people in college about this. .50 cal rounds are hyuge. They are almost 6 inches long. If a sniper fired a single round even 2-3 feet away from your body, you are still very likely going to die from the wounds you'll sustain of just the sheer force of this round going past you.

The .50 cal machine guns are on tripods for because of sheer recoil. There's no way you could hold that thing and not be blown off your ass while it fires 600+ rounds per minute (and also because you have to use both of your thumbs to depress the trigger but meh). But the studio wants me to believe that Dwayne Johnson can. I know he's The Rock but come on. It's just not gonna happen.

So yeah, other than me being particular about shit like that, it's not really hard to break immersion for me. Also I don't go into most films expecting realism anyway, so that's a part of it.

Speaking of TFATF, I forget which one it was, and I can't be arsed to look it up, but the one that came out a few years ago where they spend the end driving down that infinite airstrip at a bajillion miles an hour really took me out of the movie. They were in France, right? That airstrip must have circumnavigated the entire country.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I'm not super hard to please, but there are some things I just can't suspend my disbelief for. And you guys will probably roll your eyes at me for how winded this is gonna be.

Example: in most action heavy films, one of the Fast and Furious films immediately comes to mind, someone (usually the protagonist) is holding a fucking mini gun, and it cuts to a shot of a bunch of shells flying, usually .50 cal (when it real life it's probably firing blanks or .22s), but we're under the assumption that some large caliber shit in flying around.



First of all, this is physically impossible. I've actually gotten into arguments with people in college about this. .50 cal rounds are hyuge. They are almost 6 inches long. If a sniper fired a single round even 2-3 feet away from your body, you are still very likely going to die from the wounds you'll sustain of just the sheer force of this round going past you.

The .50 cal machine guns are on tripods for because of sheer recoil. There's no way you could hold that thing and not be blown off your ass while it fires 600+ rounds per minute (and also because you have to use both of your thumbs to depress the trigger but meh). But the studio wants me to believe that Dwayne Johnson can. I know he's The Rock but come on. It's just not gonna happen.

So yeah, other than me being particular about shit like that, it's not really hard to break immersion for me. Also I don't go into most films expecting realism anyway, so that's a part of it.

Hollywood always bends the truth to make for a better story, more excitement, more drama. This is why doctors don't watch hospital dramas, lawyers don't watch legal dramas, cops don't watch cop shows, and I don't watch shows set in schools. They can't immerse themselves in a fake version of their actual reality.

 

[lithiumkatana17]

I'm not super hard to please, but there are some things I just can't suspend my disbelief for. And you guys will probably roll your eyes at me for how winded this is gonna be.

Example: in most action heavy films, one of the Fast and Furious films immediately comes to mind, someone (usually the protagonist) is holding a fucking mini gun, and it cuts to a shot of a bunch of shells flying, usually .50 cal (when it real life it's probably firing blanks or .22s), but we're under the assumption that some large caliber shit in flying around.



First of all, this is physically impossible. I've actually gotten into arguments with people in college about this. .50 cal rounds are hyuge. They are almost 6 inches long. If a sniper fired a single round even 2-3 feet away from your body, you are still very likely going to die from the wounds you'll sustain of just the sheer force of this round going past you.

The .50 cal machine guns are on tripods for because of sheer recoil. There's no way you could hold that thing and not be blown off your ass while it fires 600+ rounds per minute (and also because you have to use both of your thumbs to depress the trigger but meh). But the studio wants me to believe that Dwayne Johnson can. I know he's The Rock but come on. It's just not gonna happen.

So yeah, other than me being particular about shit like that, it's not really hard to break immersion for me. Also I don't go into most films expecting realism anyway, so that's a part of it.

Hollywood always bends the truth to make for a better story, more excitement, more drama. This is why doctors don't watch hospital dramas, lawyers don't watch legal dramas, cops don't watch cop shows, and I don't watch shows set in schools. They can't immerse themselves in a fake version of their actual reality.

My reality would be a military/war movie, which the Fast and Furious movies definitely are not. They just used flashy shit.

 

[Flare]

I just thought of something else that breaks my immersion. Unlike Lic, I don't really mind if I see some real world product ads or whatever popping up in background places, like in Kingsglaive for example (where I really didn't notice the ads while watching the film, I was more engrossed with the characters).
However my immersion is instantly broken when something is mentioned that rather deliberately breaks the fourth wall and references real world things/events/whatever.

Sometimes for comedic purposes, I don't mind it when mediums break the fourth wall rarely, like in a manga where the character says something to the reader, etc. But I dislike it when things are added in that deliberately reference real world things in some way; it takes me out of the story and makes me feel like it was added just because. One example,

Spoiler: in FF XV's chapter 13 addition,

I haven't played through it myself yet because I'm just not into XV anymore atm. But I hear that in the addition, Ignis mentions 'Fake News' in his dialogue. Most people knows what that's a deliberate reference of. When I hear stuff like that added into a game or whatever, it just instantly takes me out of the game. I suddenly feel like I'm being subjected to an actors opinion or someone else's, because there's absolutely no reason a phrase like that would be used nowadays in media without referencing that oft-used phrase that's thrown around daily online irl.

I don't mind subtle product ad placements in games. I really don't. I do mind dialogue from characters or something similar that suddenly reference real world things in some way. Especially when it delves into referencing politics. Probably because I see it every day irl, I really don't want to have my game characters from a fantasy world now talking about it too.

 

[Ite]

Fake News isn't a new phenomenon, or a meme. It's as early as sin.

 

[Geostigma]

RE: Last of Us.

It kind of broke my immersion that they actually thought the Fire flies could cure anything.


I mean just logistically lets talk brass freaking tacks (Tax?) here.
Let's ignore whether or not they could even make a cure. Let's just assume they could. It doesn't even matter.

How are they going to mass produce it in a meaningful manner and amount of time in the post apocalypse?
Even ignoring the amount of time it would have taken them to make a cure, mass producing vaccines today IRL takes freaking forever.

Let's just assume they some how do have the facilities to pull this off.

Who the hell is going to believe the freaking Fire Flies, the organization that half the population think are terrorists, when they come around touting they have a "cure".

Even if they somehow managed to make and mass produce the cure they weren't going to be able to circulate it.

I like to think it was a red herring through in through and they juxtapose Joel and Ellies journey against it for drama, but over all it just was not going to happen lol.

 

[ForceStealer]

^tacks

 

[Fangu]

But in realistic games like Uncharted and The Last of Us? Something just feels...off. Very, very off. In fact it makes my skin crawl if I think about it for more than a few seconds.

It's not just the eeriness of how indifferent Nathan Drake is to the number of people that he's killed along the way, albeit in self-defense. But the fact that these main characters are one-man-armies able to plow through hordes and hordes of enemies feels like an unrealistic contrast compared to the relative realism of the presentation.

I appreciate this observation because this was me the first time playing shooters. I started playing them late. I can't remember which was the first I ever tried, but Uncharted 3 was the first shooter I fully played through. The thing is, once I got through that iffy feeling of 'shooting people like this doesn't feel right', I started enjoying it for the gameplay experience. It's not people, it's just moving pixels on a screen, and shooting them even becomes a nice way to take out your anger on something after a while.

The thing about the Uncharted series for me though, is that everything about them is utterly ridiculous. The climbing, the insane puzzles, the shootouts. They should be wrong for me to play in every single way, they're both unrealistic and kind of offensive. They're built on this outdated Imperialistic Brits (or Spanish or Portuguese ore w/e) digging up treasure in their conquered lands bringing it to a 'British museum' because you found it, you own it.* I'm not saying all games should be politically correct, but I like how the world is moving forward, how the great museums are giving stuff back to the places they took shit from et cetera.

* Of course, Drake's view is different because he has his own agenda chasing stuff. But it's still the Western treasure hunter trope.

Then there's the foreigner goons, poor things, they're probably just hired help looking for some coin and you end up shooting them in cold blood just to be able to continue your personal quest.

So Uncharted should be breaking my immersion in every way, but still it doesn't, because it manages to set up a world that, ridiculous as it is, still sucks me into it through engaging gameplay and well rounded characters. I even like the dialogue, cheesy as it is at times.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if the game offers me just enough to cover my eyes in the angle needed to not get freakishly annoyed, I can still live in that universe and be perfectly fine. But I need to be able to accept the premises. I find that what helps a lot with this is if the story presents me with good, well rounded female characters. I'd never be able to forgive the flaws of Uncharted if there was no Elena, or Chloe, or even whatshername British evil face. Badly written female characters is my biggest immersion breaker, along with a set of various tropes I just can't stomach. (She's Doing Something Heroic To Prove She's Tough, Superhero Girlfriend, God Did It etc being some of them.)

Same with Horizon: Zero Dawn. Some of the dialogue (or should I say monologue) is so badly written it makes me laugh. The story we've heard a million times before, and the main character, even for trying not to, is lined with female protagonist tropes. But I'm willing to overlook all of that because 1) she is a female protagonist after all, it's her story and her clawing her way up the ladder*, 2) a universe that, even for being somewhat ridiculous, does have a certain appeal (especially due to amazing visuals), and 3) most importantly, great gameplay.

* Should I need to expand on this: Most main protagonists aren't female. Most female characters in games and movies are someone's wife/ mother/ sister/ etc, and while that's not a bad thing (to portray different kinds of roles for women), the "this is my story and it's not just my story as support" is always nice to see in a female character. It's not that I can't identify with a male character, but I identify even more with a female one.


tl;dr if the story/ game has enough good shit going for it, I'm willing to accept whatever would throw me off about it.

 

[Roger]

The idea that the first functional artificial conciousness will be housed in a fuctional humonoid construct and vice versa. We are either gonna have true Turing test proof AIs first OR we are gonna have robots that can walk and talk first. These completely different technologies aren't gonna be perfected in the same project, by the same people. Please lay out your fictional universe accordingly.

 

[Clement Rage]

But in realistic games like Uncharted and The Last of Us? Something just feels...off. Very, very off. In fact it makes my skin crawl if I think about it for more than a few seconds.

It's not just the eeriness of how indifferent Nathan Drake is to the number of people that he's killed along the way, albeit in self-defense. But the fact that these main characters are one-man-armies able to plow through hordes and hordes of enemies feels like an unrealistic contrast compared to the relative realism of the presentation.

I appreciate this observation because this was me the first time playing shooters. I started playing them late. I can't remember which was the first I ever tried, but Uncharted 3 was the first shooter I fully played through. The thing is, once I got through that iffy feeling of 'shooting people like this doesn't feel right', I started enjoying it for the gameplay experience. It's not people, it's just moving pixels on a screen, and shooting them even becomes a nice way to take out your anger on something after a while.

The thing about the Uncharted series for me though, is that everything about them is utterly ridiculous. The climbing, the insane puzzles, the shootouts. They should be wrong for me to play in every single way, they're both unrealistic and kind of offensive. They're built on this outdated Imperialistic Brits (or Spanish or Portuguese ore w/e) digging up treasure in their conquered lands bringing it to a 'British museum' because you found it, you own it.* I'm not saying all games should be politically correct, but I like how the world is moving forward, how the great museums are giving stuff back to the places they took shit from et cetera.

* Of course, Drake's view is different because he has his own agenda chasing stuff. But it's still the Western treasure hunter trope.

Then there's the foreigner goons, poor things, they're probably just hired help looking for some coin and you end up shooting them in cold blood just to be able to continue your personal quest.

So Uncharted should be breaking my immersion in every way, but still it doesn't, because it manages to set up a world that, ridiculous as it is, still sucks me into it through engaging gameplay and well rounded characters. I even like the dialogue, cheesy as it is at times.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if the game offers me just enough to cover my eyes in the angle needed to not get freakishly annoyed, I can still live in that universe and be perfectly fine. But I need to be able to accept the premises. I find that what helps a lot with this is if the story presents me with good, well rounded female characters. I'd never be able to forgive the flaws of Uncharted if there was no Elena, or Chloe, or even whatshername British evil face. Badly written female characters is my biggest immersion breaker, along with a set of various tropes I just can't stomach. (She's Doing Something Heroic To Prove She's Tough, Superhero Girlfriend, God Did It etc being some of them.)

Same with Horizon: Zero Dawn. Some of the dialogue (or should I say monologue) is so badly written it makes me laugh. The story we've heard a million times before, and the main character, even for trying not to, is lined with female protagonist tropes. But I'm willing to overlook all of that because 1) she is a female protagonist after all, it's her story and her clawing her way up the ladder*, 2) a universe that, even for being somewhat ridiculous, does have a certain appeal (especially due to amazing visuals), and 3) most importantly, great gameplay.

* Should I need to expand on this: Most main protagonists aren't female. Most female characters in games and movies are someone's wife/ mother/ sister/ etc, and while that's not a bad thing (to portray different kinds of roles for women), the "this is my story and it's not just my story as support" is always nice to see in a female character. It's not that I can't identify with a male character, but I identify even more with a female one.


tl;dr if the story/ game has enough good shit going for it, I'm willing to accept whatever would throw me off about it.

My high water mark for this is women among the random henchpeople. So far, very, very few games hit it.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Fake News isn't a new phenomenon, or a meme. It's as early as sin.

It may not be a meme per se, and it may have always been a thing, but as a term bordering on proper noun status in English and warranting its own Wikipedia page (only just created in January of this year), "Fake News" has only been around for a very short period.

It is also no accident that it was being discussed in the national (and international) spotlight so much right at the time the Chapter 13, Verse 2 DLC was released. It didn't end up in the English localization of the DLC by obliviousness.

For that matter, the Japanese text of what Gladiolus said there certainly didn't reference anything that would immediately lend itself to the English localization's take: "Fake News" -- as it's rendered in Japanese when referring specifically to the term we associate with the current political landscape -- is "フェイク・ニュース." That's literally just the English words "fake" and "news" rendered in Japanese syllabary. What Gladio said here was 有意義な情報はこんくらいか ("Is there any useful information?"), as you can see at 29:30 in this video.

Quite the far cry from "All the rest is probably just fake news" (0:52 in this video). (Note: Consequently, Ignis's response differs a great deal from his original line as well. "Assuming all of what we heard is true" was originally おかげでだいぶ状況が掴めた, or "Thanks to that, I grasp the state of affairs considerably").

Another reason we know the reference to fake news is a reference to the current political climate is the similar use of "alternative facts" a short time earlier in the DLC. "Alternative facts" -- as it's rendered in Japanese when referring specifically to the Trump-era term gifted us courtesy of Kellyanne Conway -- is "代替的事実." Ignis doesn't use this term in Japanese, though.

As seen at 26:55 in the same video from before, Iggy says

とういう話もあるだけだ
だが 今はとれを考えるより——

("That's the story that has been told.
However, thinking about it now ...")

Again, pretty different from what the localization went with: "It may be like moths to a flame—or it may be one of the empire's 'alternative facts'" (0:29 in this video).

In my mind, there's no doubt of the intended references at work here. That being said, I'm not personally bothered by them either.

(For good measure for anyone interested: Chapter 13, Verse 2 wasn't called this in Japanese either. It was just グラディオラスルート -- "Gladiolus Route.")

 

[Hisako]

Example: in most action heavy films, one of the Fast and Furious films immediately comes to mind, someone (usually the protagonist) is holding a fucking mini gun, and it cuts to a shot of a bunch of shells flying, usually .50 cal (when it real life it's probably firing blanks or .22s), but we're under the assumption that some large caliber shit in flying around.



First of all, this is physically impossible. I've actually gotten into arguments with people in college about this. .50 cal rounds are hyuge. They are almost 6 inches long. If a sniper fired a single round even 2-3 feet away from your body, you are still very likely going to die from the wounds you'll sustain of just the sheer force of this round going past you.

In fairness, the 'handheld' miniguns you see in film are 7.62x51mm miniguns. They're obviously stupid heavy, but they can be carried and fired by a single person who's beefcake enough to handle it. There's a video floating around of James Cameron (ie. the dude who liked the handheld minigun so much he included it in multiple films) using it. imfdb.org has plenty of details on how they rigged it up to work.

The main kicker is, of course, that the minigun is an electric-powered weapon and requires an external source - and said power source is usually lead by a cable trailing along the ground of the set, hidden from the camera. The fire rate is also greatly reduced, which is more practical from both a handling and aesthetic standpoint.

Otherwise, barring those caveats, it's a fully-functional weapon!

 

[Clement Rage]

RE: Last of Us.

It kind of broke my immersion that they actually thought the Fire flies could cure anything.


I mean just logistically lets talk brass freaking tacks (Tax?) here.
Let's ignore whether or not they could even make a cure. Let's just assume they could. It doesn't even matter.

How are they going to mass produce it in a meaningful manner and amount of time in the post apocalypse?
Even ignoring the amount of time it would have taken them to make a cure, mass producing vaccines today IRL takes freaking forever.

Let's just assume they some how do have the facilities to pull this off.

Who the hell is going to believe the freaking Fire Flies, the organization that half the population think are terrorists, when they come around touting they have a "cure".

Even if they somehow managed to make and mass produce the cure they weren't going to be able to circulate it.

I like to think it was a red herring through in through and they juxtapose Joel and Ellies journey against it for drama, but over all it just was not going to happen lol.

Give it to their own people and let the rest of America rot? Did have different problems, though.

Spoiler

Why did they skip straight to brain scooping? You have one sample, at least try biopsies and stuff first. Brain scooping is months or years down the line, and a last resort, because if it doesn't work, that's game over.

Also, if you are going to skip straight to brain scooping, don't tell Joel until afterwards. Marlene, you know who he is, you know he got Ellie across half of America where you lost half your crew making the same trip... don't leave him with one guard! You have people with guns, because, they show up five minutes later. That whole ending seemed a lot like forced drama.

I still did enjoy the game, but I had a fair few reservations as well.