Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Please let me be immersed

Rag, I feel as though you're mostly showing here that you just... don't really immerse in video game worlds. At least, it reads as though you simply don't; it reads as though you have an academic understanding of the concept and what it is supposedly about, but one that has been built up as a collection of known rules – as though you do not have any actual qualic understanding of the experience of it. That is the impression that I get, when I read your responses here; I'm not seeking to insult, belittle or offend – rather, I'm telling you how it looks, from my perspective and as a personal impression, reading your answers... and if it's accurate, then, well, that explains your stance here a great deal, and why you're saying what you are, the way that you are.

But, if it is true, you may also need to entertain the idea that you just do not appear to be equipped with the faculties to understand and grapple with this problem, and no amount of explaining to others why it's not a problem for you will have any impact on the discussion except, seemingly, to derail it and frustrate people, because you don't seem to be equipped to understand why it is a problem for them.

You say that you're aware of what it means to be immersed in the game world – because you played the game, but you don't seem to grasp that those two things aren't synonymous. You fall back on repeating that it looks to you as though people are just saying 'immersion' as an argument against things they don't like, whatever they are, even though several folks have taken pains to explain why certain specific things are problems for immersion in space. You ask how and why certain things break immersion, but when it's explained to you, you ignore that, or don't obtain it in some way, or rationalise it in an abstract and out-of-context manner, and then just revert to making the 'you just don't like it' accusation again... Yes; we don't like it – that's a given and automatic part of this entire conversation. We don't like these things because they create immersion dissonance that, with the frequency and magnitude it occurs, completely breaks all suggestion of proper immersion in the game world.

You're asking for an answer that you don't seem capable of comprehending when it's given, because it reads as though your experience is intrinsically different, it's also the only experience you know – and within that scope there simply is no problem. The result is that you legitimately and honestly (without malice) don't understand and can't comprehend what the problem is and why others are having it, because you tangibly do not have that element of the experience to begin with, and maybe never have.

It's as though... It's as though you asked a musician to give you an example of their music, and they do, but when they finish playing, you say to them “But I've seen that before – you made the strings vibrate in a whole bunch of pretty ways, and that's great, I loved it... but I don't get why you're saying that the person screaming at the top of their lungs over there is problematic for experiencing your music; I can see the strings vibrating perfectly fine even if they are, and I don't even have to watch them screaming like that in order to watch you make the strings vibrate! I love your music, it's great, and I watch it all the time; those other people just hate the person that's screaming.” - And to you that makes sense, because that's what music IS to you, and what you believe it to be for others as well.

That is how your responses seem, Rag – and again, this is just my reading of it, and the impression I get reading your responses – I mean no offence or insult in that; if it is the case, it's certainly not your fault or deliberate on your part.

We could take the badger example:

It doesn't matter whether I use the ability to burrow into the hanging cage (to, say, get the cool loot on the dead skeleton there): I don't – but I see that it is possible, and I cannot choose not to see that it is possible. I cannot choose to avoid seeing that this is possible before the game shows me that it is; after that I know that it is, and I'm reminded that it is every time I wish to use the ability. Beyond that, further still, enemies with access to the ability will most definitely abuse it against me and wave it in my face in impossible ways... and every time it comes up, that's another note of dissonance working against me simply existing in a believable space.

And it seems... unless I am mistaken (and I may be; I hope that I am), that you will not understand why this is a problem, and why this is bad for experiencing the world space as a real world with internal consistency. You cannot explain qualia to a person; you cannot convey a quale to a person who does not possess the faculty to experience it – you cannot even convey a quale to someone with the faculty to experience it if they have never done so themselves. Trying is the very definition of an exercise in frustration for both parties. This is, to a certain extent, what I feel like we may be seeing here.

The immersion you described for yourself was two layers of external knowledge and decision-making; it was two layers of facts and the decisions based upon them; it was not, in any way, a description of the experience of immersion in space... which, I say with apology (and the hope that I'm way off base and wrong about), your responses make it appear as though you do not, actually experience... no matter how many emoticons you fill your posts with. And again, I'm sorry if any of this comes across as hurtful; I don't intend for it to.