Let me paraphrase your statement and ask: Would ANY RPG gamer in the late 90s say "Who needs full VO and cinematics?" I assure you that most people that played BI games at that time would love to hear and see more. One of the reason why BG or Torment were so beloved in my country was a stellar localization by VAs. Imagining games that would have more cinematic flair was common then. If Bioware had a technical possibility of delivering more VO and cinematics in BG they certainly would. Look at their later games.
Still I've seen people on this forum express an opinion that cinematics are pointless in BG3 and a waste. I personally couldn't disagree more.
I agree with you but wasn't it because the old games were mostly immersive on most point (or at least they don't have too many "immersion breaking" things) that players "would have killed" to have cinematics ?
Could a game with "beautifull graphics and dialogs" and many other immersion breaking things be considered as "immersive" ?
Everyone has its own preferences of course but I'm mostly sure different games requires different things to really be immersive.
Immersion in a CRPG is not the same as in a survival game or in a strategy game. Isn't "the sims" an immersive life simulation despite its awefull graphics ?
I guess we could agree to say that cRPG, besides the gameplay (obvious part of a "game"), are mostly foccused on the characters, the story and the world.
But is a world in which time and NPCs are completely frozen immersive ?
Is a world in which distance are "compressed" immersive ?
Is a world in which cows can climb ladder immersive ?
Is a story in which an army cannot find something that's right next to them (and not really hidden) immersive ?
It's just a few exemple but in my opinion it's not and that's my biggest dissapointment with BG3.
"Immersion" is only defined by other elements rather than being a goal that itself defines other elements.
I fully agree with mrplanescapist when he said that people tend to confuse immersion and realism even if both have strong links in some genre (i.e survival games).
He's totally right and that's maybe why a lot of developers often favour "beautiful graphics" rather than "immersion" itself.
But imo it's because modern games like TW were immersive on top of being beautifull that they have become legendary games.
