To many players, full immersion andhyper-realismare super important for their gaming experience. The graphics have to be top-notch, the UI has to be grounded, the movement has to have weight, the acting has to be Oscar-worthy, and even the colour scheme in the game has to be appropriately muted to reflect reality.
However, that doesn’t guarantee that a game is good. It just means that itlooksandsoundsgood – but there are games that are still fantastic without prioritising realism.
10 Most Realistic Open World Games
These games will fully immerse you into their worlds.
I recently started playing the firstRed Dead Redemptiongame for the first time – properly, anyway. When I played as a kid, I just ran around killing people. This time around, it’s been a night and day difference between this game andRed Dead Redemption 2.
I’ve learned that the original Red Dead Redemption is a masterclass in a stylised video game, and it’s something I wish more games did rather than focusing on being as “realistic” as possible. In fact, games that focus on style end up being leagues better than games that focus on realism.
Stylized Games Have a Distinct Soul
Remaining Vivid in Memories
It’s hard to find a game that prioritises style over being realistic, as more often than not, any stylisation is muted to appear more lifelike – just look at what developers have done for games likeDetroit: Become HumanandAssassin’s Creed. For games like these, the style is just an aesthetic, not an actual component of the mechanics or worldbuilding, making any stylisation feel more gimmicky than anything else.
Persona 5andJourneyare a couple shining examples of how style is incorporated into every aspect of a game. Most other game developers continue to hammer home “realism, realism, realism” to the point that it ends up being counterproductive.
The quest for complete immersion becomes counterproductive…
As much as I loved Red Dead Redemption 2, for example, the immersive gameplay was ridiculously sluggish. It was painfully difficult for me to learn how to play (especially when I took breaks, then came back after playing other games, and had to relearn the controls), and it ended up being so slow, it no longer felt as real. The quest for complete immersion becomes counterproductive in this sense.
Stylised games, however, are distinctly remembered because of their unique approach to immersion. Keeping with the RDR example for a moment, the first Red Dead game was meant to feel like you’re playing anAmerican Westernfilm, and it captures that vibe perfectly because of how the game is designed and how it plays.
Everything is focused on trying to make the player feel like they’re Clint Eastwood himself, with mechanics likeDead Eyemaking you the fastest shooter in the Wild West. Plus, it’s written with the same tropes and dialogue of these films, rather than opting for a more grounded, realistically written dialogue like in the sequel.
Sure, graphics were considered, but they clearly weren’t the top priority when you compare it to the UI and even the sound design. You’re in a Western first, and a video game second – and it worked perfectly in the game’s favour.
10 Best Open World Stealth Games
Explore the world from the shadows.
As a result, Red Dead Redemption ended up developing a distinct soul on its own, completely separate from the sequel in presentation. It’s gotten to where players instinctively conjure up this style in their head when they even hear the game, and that should display how prominent style actually is to players.
Obviously, RDR isn’t the only game that emphasises this stylisation, as mentioned earlier. When players think of Journey, they imagine lush sand reflecting golden light. They imagine how each jump felt like flying, and the goosebumps they felt when they heard Apotheosis for the first time. There isn’t anything realistic about the game other than elements of nature in the setting, but that’s more than enough to keep players hooked because it’s about thejourney.
…time is more favourable to stylised games, since the uncanny valley doesn’t really exist in a game where realism isn’t the top priority.
Immersion is as much of a journey as gameplay mechanics themselves, and it’s a hard road to travel on, especially since we know exactly what to expect. We know what’s real: what looks real, what sounds real, what feels real – and what isn’t. Because, very simply, we live in the real world, we have a direct comparison to what can break that immersion, unlike with stylised games.
Players tend to look back on hyper-realistic games with a critiquing lens, especially as graphics continue to evolve, and former games start to fall into the uncanny valley. You aren’t as likely to get that creepy effect with a game that tries to be stylised rather than realistic. In fact, time is more favourable to stylised games, since the uncanny valley doesn’t really exist in a game where realism isn’t the top priority.
Ultimately, games don’t have to be ultra-realistic to be wholly immersive, and these examples are blatant proof of that.
It Doesn’t Have to Be Ultra-Realistic
It Just Has to Be Relatable
10 Best Semi-Open World Games
For players who want to explore, but not be overwhelmed by a world larger than the story.
Let’s take a step back from video games for a second and take a lesson from animation. Hayao Miyazaki, the founder ofStudio Ghibli, had written a book detailing essentials he learned from his career in animation, titled Starting Point.
In Starting Point, Miyazaki says something that every single writer, animator, and storyteller should take to heart. It’s a lesson that serves as the foundation ofkeeping a story grounded, but also being stylistic.
“Anime may depict fictional worlds, but I nonetheless believe that at its core it must have a certain realism,”Miyazaki wrote.“Even if the world depicted is a lie, the trick is to make it seem as real as possible. Stated another way, the animator must fabricate a lie that seems so real viewers will think the world depicted might possibly exist.”
It doesn’t have to be real, it just has tofeelreal, which is so much easier than painstakingly adding each individual skin cell to a character model.The world just has to be alive, grounded in emotions that we feel every single day – which stylised games can capture with ease. Life in these games isn’t captured through graphics, but by the worldbuilding and gameplay itself.
10 Video Games With Rich Ecosystems
Our world is vibrant and full of life, and the ecosystems in these video games rival that richness.
Let’s look at another visually striking example:Okami, taking place in a fictionalised version ofFeudal Japan. While I’ve been to Japan and learned its history to know roughly what I should expect, none of us, obviously, were alive in the Sengoku Period. Okami could be horrifically inaccurate, but it doesn’t feel that way to us, especially as we progress throughout the story.
So long as the story and characters are relatable and feel as real as those around us, the graphics end up not mattering at all.
The characters and story are essential for conveying that realism without dumping the entire budget into graphics. There’s no better example of this thanUndertale, with one of the richest casts of characters I’ve ever seen in gaming and a story of equal depth to follow. The art was made with MS Paint for goodness’ sake, and it still became one of the most influential games of the 2010s. It didn’t matter, because everyone loved the characters and story first, the gameplay second, then, finally, the graphics.
The mechanics need to work well with the plot and characters, which Undertale does wonderfully. The general gameplay loop is the option to approach the game as a Pacifist or take a Genocide route, which completely changes the world as you’re playing. The Genocide Run is the most striking, as monsters are cowering in fear of you, despised by several characters while you walk through a desolate world of your own hand.
That single-handedly felt more realistic than any Call of Duty game, and the art had nothing to do with that. So long as the story and characters are relatable and feel as real as those around us,the graphics end up not mattering at all.
We Need More Games with Style
A Breath of Fresh Air From Realism
10 Open World Games With No Combat
Sometimes, all players want is to explore without fighting. These games offer that exact experience.
It’s unfortunate that most of the games released today that prioritise style are almost alwaysindie games, slipping under the radar and not getting the love they deserve. They’re often overshadowed by the AAA Giant of Hyper-Realism, and that’s honestly just depressing – especially if you think about all the cool ideas in these AAA games that were potentially scrapped for the sake of that hyper-realism giant.
We need more games that really focus on being unique, distinct, and following their own style, rather than following the growing trend of “real = immersion.” A game can still be perfectly immersive without pushing developers to the edge trying to get the graphics just right during crunch time.
We’re in an era of gaming full of remakes, remasters, re-releases, and other redos under a new name. Originality is being strangled from media, and I do believe hyper-realism is a minor culprit in that – how many stories haven’t been told since they weren’t “realistic enough”? Games that focus on style hit you right in the emotions rather than in the logic side of your brain – and that’s why we play video games, is it not? To feel emotions, to engage in stories, to immerse yourself in a new world.
These games end up being a breath of fresh air for fans and newcomers alike, allowing players to fully lose themselves in the world and what it all entails. Of course, we can ask and ask all we want, but it’s ultimately up to developers and their vision at the end of the day.
I just wish that vision wasn’t exclusive to realism.
10 Reasons Why Red Dead Redemption Is Better Than GTA
Rockstar’s greatest franchise isn’t their best-selling.
Red Dead Redemption
WHERE TO PLAY
The year is 1911, and the railroad is bringing civilization to the American Old West. Retired outlaw John Marston gets forced back into a life of crime to hunt down his old gang, in an open-world epic spanning both sides of the US-Mexico border.
