Thoughts on A:AMFP

[pagan]

So any horror game(or game for that matter) that has a pausing inventory is immersion breaking? Then what about reading notes? Since they do the EXACT same thing. I'm a bit confused at how they broke immersion any way.

Really now? Think about what the word "immersion" means: a state of being deeply engaged or involved; absorption. "Breaking immersion" refers to breaking this state of engagement, bringing to reality the fact that you are in fact sitting in front of a screen. To avoid this, the solution is to make things in games feel as realistic as possible. That's why sound design and game flow are essential to immersion. An inventory screen breaks immersion because the real-world counterpart is, well, digging into your pockets. Inventory screens are a relatively broken but effective way to translate a real world action onto the screen. The developers themselves talked about inventory and immersion (iirc).

I understand what they wanted to achieve with removing gameplay, but in my opinion they failed horribly. I felt the first Amnesia was much more immersive, engaging experience because i felt i'm part of it's world. I could interact with it, i could explore it, i could affect to it. In pigs i was just a passive observer with no influence to the world at all. I was severely limited to go in a strict path, and i was allowed to read notes and more or less that's it. The way i could proceed in the path was often very illogical (why would a valve in a machinery room open the bathroom door or move a fence in the garden? In the original Amnesia more or less everything worked in a well thought out and logical manner). I felt these are much more immersion breaking than an inventory. Also, while the puzzles in the original Amnesia were always very easy to solve, they gave the feeling i had to put some effort to proceed further, and made the pacing much better. In pigs that was missing entirely.

Because of the immersion-breaking design decisions, while i appreciated the story, i didn't feel any impact at all. I though it would work much better in a short novel form. The same is true for the horror aspect. After the first half hour i never felt fear or that i was in danger, because i felt as a distant, detached observer.

Additionally, had it been a DLC, people would be way more pissed off than they are now, given the removal of mechanics. Could you imagine if "Justine" had taken away the lantern, inventory, etc., etc.? I don't think people would have taken too kindly to that.

Ehm, Justine didn't have lantern, and the inventory usage was minimal, and nobody complained about them, because the developers still managed to create an engaging gameplay. Chinese Room didn't.