Thoughts on A:AMFP

[Kreekakon]

What about inventory/stat management/interface like in the Dead Space series, or Metro series? Do you think that would be better?

[Tesseract]

You can, but that's not what Amnesia TDD or MFP shows. They show something completely different; Far Cry 2 does it realistically, in a manner which preserves immersion, but the Amnesia games do not. That's the point. The note reading mechanic in the Amnesia games is no more realistic or less immersion breaking than the inventory mechanic.

I still fail to see how note reading in AMFP breaks immersion, you're reading bits of information about the story as you progress and the ambient sounds are still playing as you read the notes; the game is still running while you're reading your journal or random note. Again, when it comes to realism it's more realistic to read a note than it is to bring up your own inventory menu.

I agree, but the game does provide seamless information on your health (movement rate, blurred vision), and sanity (insanity effects), without breaking immersion, and I agree with the other poster who said the inventory screen is at least akin to looking in a rucksack.

I do agree with the point you make here, personally I didn't find going into an inventory screen an immersion barrier, all I'm doing is going over Bluel0bsters point that it's more realistic to be able to read a note than it is to bring up an inventory menu. An inventory menu is indeed akin to looking into a rucksack, though if we're talking realism I think you'd be in trouble if you found your own heart and brain in a rucksack telling you how you're coping with some of the traumatising events in the game.

[pinkribbonscars]

The Machine is probably the coolest place I've ever explored in a game, it actually felt like a giant machine. The artists did an amazing job with it. The design, all the animated mechanics, so awesome. And the brass color palette was gorgeous.

[sailornaruto39]

"I still fail to see how note reading in AMFP breaks immersion"


The OP mentioned that the inventory broke immersion because of how it pauses the game, notes take u a whole screen and PAUSE the game as well, so by that logic they both should be immersion breaking.


But I find neither immersion breaking because that would just be nit picking (it's call suspension of disbelieve) if an invetory breaks you immersion, you're looking WAY too into it.

[Tesseract]

"I still fail to see how note reading in AMFP breaks immersion"


The OP mentioned that the inventory broke immersion because of how it pauses the game, notes take u a whole screen and PAUSE the game as well, so by that logic they both should be immersion breaking.


But I find neither immersion breaking because that would just be nit picking (it's call suspension of disbelieve) if an invetory breaks you immersion, you're looking WAY too into it.

In my post above I stated that the game is not paused during the time you read a note, you can still hear the ambient sounds around you and there's always something making questionable noises. I also shared the feeling that looking in the inventory doesn't break immersion for me, in AMFP I quite enjoyed the change though. As for the note being the main focal point, is a note in real life not the main focal point when you're trying to read it? You concentrate on the note and everything you're not focused on is blurred out. Again, the way the note is brought up is not what we're talking about, we're discussing realism and reading a note is something we that can actually do.

[sailornaruto39]

"you can still hear the ambient sounds around you"


But if a monster is chasing you would it suddenly interrupt you? Sounds still plays during inventories.

So what does the continuation of the sounds have to do with immersion?

[Nospheratu]

So, i've aquired & played through AAMFP 2 days ago and after reading through a couple of threads i figured i'd share my 2 cents on the whole "immersion" thing you guys are discussing in this thread.

I'll (sadly) have to take the side of the ones who were more dissapointed than happy with the game. While the enviroment and the music & sounds were certainly gorgeous and well worth the investment, i found the overall expirience somewhat lacking for different reasons.

One of those was just this immersion factor; personally i find it rather interesting how most of you are arguing about weather having an inventory in a game breaks immersion or not - those who argue that it breaks immersion, please explain to me, how not being able to pick up an ordinary sack or broom from the floor does not break immersion? This was one of the things that bothered me the most - along with the hundreds of intricately locked cupboards and doors - as it constantly reminded me that i'm actually in a heavily scripted and predetermined enviroment, unlike in TDD where i could move most stuff around freely and locked doors & cupboard at least didn't have a visual que so that you could tell they're useless from a mile away.

Warning - some spoilers ahead!

The other thing was the too obvious puzzles; i was constantly thinking stuff like "how could someone build such a gigantic and intricate machine with dozens of built-in fail-safes and then fail to weld three very important pipes to the machine so they can't be removed by accident?" Not to mention the conveniantly placed canisters of compound X - over a huge turbine, right next to the only part where there wasn't any security fence present. What kind of engineer would come up with a primordial nuclear reactor and an emergency steam removal fail-safe device and then overlook such a trivial no-brainer? Sadly, stuff like this totally broke the immersion for me.

Last but not least, the very predictable plot "twists". Even before i installed the game - actually when i've read the plot description on the website - i was about 90% sure that a) the kids were already dead, b) their father aka the guy we're playing killed them and thus is a bad and despicable person, c) the machine would at some point actually kill people and d) the enemies would be some kind of mutant pigs. I'm sure most of the people who played through the original Amnesia thought the same thing about Oswald Mandus right of the bat; also most people who saw a couple of horror movies would figure out about the children being dead at the first "ethereal" call from them - right when you exit the very first room in the game. Most would have probably come to the same conclusion at the point when one of them dissappears in a small blood explosion - which is about 15 - 20 minutes before the developers tell us (surprise, surprise) what most of us suspected all along. The only thing i wasn't totally sure about was the reason behind killing them, but since there is a huge machine involved - and the machine in TDD was powered with the life-force (Vitae) of humans - it was only a minor jump to figure out why they were killed.

While it was a nice touch to "humanize" the pigmen, it didn't really hold much meaning for me since i knew from the first notes about "imbecils having their teeth removed and bones reset" that they were once human and thus their behaviour in the den didn't strike me as odd at all.

Well, enough ranting for now; hopefully this won't come over as too harsh for the players who genuinly enjoyed playing AMFP - i'm simply sharing my thouht and feelings about the game. I'll add some more thoughts in other threads when i have the time.

[Kreekakon]

@Nospheratu: I would believe many of the things you were upset about will differ from people to people depending on how much suspension of disbelief they put into the game.

[jd1802]

those who argue that it breaks immersion, please explain to me, how not being able to pick up an ordinary sack or broom from the floor does not break immersion? This was one of the things that bothered me the most - along with the hundreds of intricately locked cupboards and doors - as it constantly reminded me that i'm actually in a heavily scripted and predetermined enviroment, unlike in TDD where i could move most stuff around freely and locked doors & cupboard at least didn't have a visual que so that you could tell they're useless from a mile away.

Ill have to completely agree with this. At the beginning I thought that this was going to be only in the mansion cause maybe Mandus was hiding a lot of things from their kids and ok that would be logical but then I got to the church and the doors were also locked there THAT was when immersion totally broke for me. Cause I knew I was in a game that just tried to make a clear and only path for me :L I think that was a bad choice as removing interactivity with objects. Also finding notes every 5 minutes, even notes that didnt make any sense and were in a completely illogical place, that broke the immersion to me. In TDD most of the notes were in the place they belonged. I think Daniel journal sometimes was in some weird places where you think like ''how did this get here?'' but most of the time they didnt. I was wondering the whole time how did Mandus journal end up in the sewers or how those recordings of The Proffesor and him ended up in some church and all that. It was kinda off the story and broke immersion to me.