Open-ended discussion on creation and design

[Adrianis]

A game can only include things such as loneliness if it can fully immerse you. As you can consider loneliness as a parameter of reduced immersion since it does not relate directly to the real world.

That said loneliness and the absense of friendly NPCs or any advanced Artificial Intelligence(AI) at all was the biggest fault of amnesia. If Amnesia couldn't do it, custom stories will very doubtfully be good by using that parameter of development.

The feeling of loneliness can be implemented without leaving the player alone at all. A few encounters with some form of AI will immerse the player to a deeper level, thus allowing things that would reduce immersion to be implemented and it's advantages to be used.

I disagree with this line, "consider loneliness as a parameter of reduced immersion since it does not relate directly to the real world". On the contrary, loneliness is very real, and is probably an emotion we can relate to far more easily than pure terror.

Interaction with some form of AI can immerse the player more, if interaction with something seemingly intelligent is the depth of immersion your trying to aim for. At the same time, I agree that you can achieve that feeling of loneliness with having other characters or AI, but there the aspect of loneliness will come from the contrast of having others around you, then not having them around you. The flip side of that is, that if you do try to include AI, but fail to make them convincing, that can break the immersion completely if thats your focus.

I'm not going to try to include AI, this is not the right engine for it. Other engines are built with intelligent AI in mind, such as seen in recent Bethesda games. When you see the seams of how that is built, however, the illusion is broken. By not including AI at all, you dont need to worry about getting that effect right, instead you have to focus on completely different elements to try and immerse the player, and you have to think about how those elements can be broken. Many games these days try to get that effect right as a means of immersing players, trying something different is my goal.

Did you find that once you figure out how the enemies work in Amnesia, the paths they follow and the mechanics of how they look for you, where they won't look etc, after you work that out they become far less terrifying, just a series of commands to be avoided? I never got to that point with Amnesia, but I did with Penumbra.