A Day/Night cycle in games that pioneered it wasn't simply a feature to consider, naturally.
It was games that, as the title of the thread suggests, aimed for a world simulation. As such, time passing belongs to the general idea. Ultima VII for instance is at least as much of a single-player RPG as it is a world simulation. That said, often even in games where time passing doesn't impact much, I tend to enjoy it. Even in BG1, where they even had specific music for nighttime... wandering the plains when it's dark outside and a thunderstorm hits is different to doing the same on a sunny day. Video games are audiovisual experiences, after all.
Does every game NEED this though? This not. Honestly getting the impression though what Larian /Vincke like about games such as Ultima 7 isn't the full-on world simulation as such, with people "living" their daily lives. Just a portion of it, such as the way you can interact with any object/NPC. And on that front, the more they go "Immersive Sim-Like", the better. People classing this as "cheesing the game" be damned. They don't have a clue anyway.
"The fact that you can do things in so many different ways, it's a big mess of systems, of storytelling. Because on the other side of that, you have games that are very funnelled, very controlled, very safe. You arrive into a place, the doors close around you, boss fight. I can't stand that, because I'm the guy who prefers to come in, and they haven't seen me yet."
Colantonio cites Baldur's Gate 3 as a major step forward in this regard; while that is distinctly an RPG rather than an immersive sim, he says the game "shares a lot of the same values" and has opened many players' eyes to the notion that any given situation may have multiple solutions based on their playstyle and abilities unique to their characters.People appreciate all the choices that they had, they notice all the consequences, or they notice all the permutations of things that can happen. They appreciate that they can cheat the game through the systems by doing some weird stuff that was not planned by the designers. Those are amazing realisations from a gamer standpoint.https://www.gamesindustry.biz/why-raphael-colantonios-next-game-is-and-isnt-like-dishonored
