The amount of time I spent daydreaming about some little detail on the world map that was just a flourish was crazy. Staring at the maps of legend of mana in the cities was so fun. Walking around on the world maps of final fantasy, breath of fire and chrono trigger especially made me create all sorts of imaginary places that existed in the world we couldn't go to.

RDR2 is epic. Only game I love more is FF VI.

This is a great take on how graphics should be done. I think games today are focused to much on high end graphics without using more immersion, I think this is why games today are losing there popularity

Video idea: Forests in RPGs. There's some really beautiful forest settings in Japanese games, often with great accompanying music. FFX's Macalania Woods comes to mind.

I think the best genre to talk about this are horror games. If you see perfectly what you have infront of you it's not as scary.

My favorite rpg squaresoft is ff 9, chrono cross and xenogears

Right outta the gate, I was not expecting to see Ronnie Coleman in this video😂.

oh no the cell shading video was great, sad to hear it's more on the flopping side

RDR2 is not that immersive. I drop it because of it. You can't what you want with npcs, you can't have a relationship with a girl, you can't even sit in a banch or chair (unless it is a bar to drink the scripted beer). Skyrim yes, is a immersive game!

You are soooo right bro 😳

Awesome video! Man even looking at just the thumbnail of that phantasy star picture (and the picture in the bottom part, not sure which game 😅) really made me think. The imagination the games invoked really were a force! I almost think it’s more powerful really but they’re both good. Ff7 remake looks so cool (I haven’t played it, despite being the biggest ff7 fan around, because I don’t have a PlayStation.) so if done right it looks like they can really make it work

What's the last game shown in the "Immersion" part? The one with the green-haired girl.

I would love to explore Ivalice to my hearts content in Final Fantasy XII with no story and no enemies in sight. No loading zones between parts of the environments. I would love to explore Corneria in Star Fox Zero and see all the beautiful waterfalls, but it's a fighting on rails game and is only available for Wii U, which I do not have because I could not afford a Wii U at the time. And I wish I had the first Nintendo Wii, but now I have a Nintendo Switch. I would like to see Square Enix remake the City of Esthar so I can explore the beautiful city in all its glory without having to go through the story of Final Fantasy VIII. I would love to explore the outside of New Jerusalem in The Talos Principle II. And of course, be able to travel between puzzles and New Jerusalem. I would love to explore New Jerusalem during the night. Of course, I can explore New Atlantis in Starfield, but that meant that I had to go through the story so I can dismiss the companion and explore in my own leisure. I would love to explore Atlassian in Final Fantasy XV without having other party members surrounding Noctis and speak their brother troupes. I guess most people don't mind brother troupes, but that's just me. I prefer to explore alone and take a break from having all 3 party members tagging along. The town of Vale in Golden Sun and the Apojii Island in Golden Sun II is awesome, but it would be nice if it's all in 3D. One game that I enjoyed exploring and relaxing is Larapool in Quest 64. What other breathtaking games are out there that are not meant to be explored but is only for combat, puzzles, or both? Of course, there are walking simulator games, but in my opinion, far too many walking simulator games are far too apocolyptic for my liking. Too dystopian. Maybe that's because I'm an utopian kind of guy.

realism actually bores me, give me stylized abstraction

Another banger. Thank you

Great video guys, always looking forward to them!!

Love your music choices

Imagination: Fire Emblem IV Genealogy of the Holy War (Very dark, with some of the darker acts referenced to) Immersion: Shining in the Holy Ark (I love how enemies appear around the corner, zombies dig themselves out of graves, etc)

Great video. Really been craving a Renaissance of 5-6th gen games with modern flourishes. Lo-hi graphics

Love the channel great video RDR 2 is the goat tho

"What are we fighting for!!!"

Awesome video, you covered just about everything I could think of about the topic. I see it as immersion is what happens when your mind is tricked into believing in a world that isn't real, and imagination is the gap that is bridged in your mind to make that happen. The manuals, the concept art, the more detailed character portraits, and anything that adds detail is there to stir the imagination, filling in the details that aren't there. I recently started playing Daggerfall for the first time and it's crazy immersive despite the dated graphics and gameplay. A lot of the time I find it more difficult to stay immersed in a game that's more realistic because you don't use your imagination as much. If you're not using your imagination and the game does something that's contrary to reality, immersion is lost.

My favorite use of imagination bakc then was the player's home in Legend of Mana. There's just so much stuff and small corners in each room that I start to wonder what everything is and where would I put certain stuff of mine if truely lived here. It's so dense, yet cozy all around. I loved it! Also, I've been meaning to say this for a while now, but I think your channel intro is the only channel intro I love to watch each time. The music, the visuals, and even the quotes said over it make it beautiful to watch.

Wait, when exactly in gaming did this idea come about that all this details, realism, moviefying games etc equals "immersion"? Because by that logic, every single game in the 3rd and 4th gen had zero immersion. Which is ironic considering those games kept players glued to the screen and offered more escapism than these so-called "immersive" modern tech demos. What exactly does this term "immersion" mean?

I think a game that does this balance between immersion and imagination pretty well is Morrowind (Elder Scrolls 3). I think that was mostly because of the time at which it came out. Started the game felt like full immersion; you were literally a nobody who could barely run and swing a sword. However, there’s still a bit of imagination required to fill out the world game is in. The game mechanics also allows you to break physics and become a living God. It was a fun time all around.

Gaming Broductions back in action I appreciate your work your greatness continues we’re on the road to 100K

Hey, best I can tell, your Intro song "the light is your guide.." is a Johnny hacknslash song (according to shazaam) but the dubbed talking on top doesn't match up with the clip I found elsewhere... So What song is it? I LOVE your intro. I listen to it a few times every episode.

Haven't even watched the video yet but the Phantasy Star IV screenshot in the thumbnail is something that always stuck with me ever since i saw it all those years ago. The feeling of the endless unknown expanse it evoked I feel was almost never realized greater than in that game, even now far in the future where it should be able to be realized even more...

Even though we kind of got an idea what Terra, Locke, Celes, Sabin etc. looked like in Final Fantasy 6 based off of Amano's art (and their 3d renders in the Ps1 version CGI cutscenes and in Dissidia) I still have my own fan fiction sort of design in my mind that I am worried that if Square were to remake FF6, that it would totally ruin my memories of who they were and what they looked like I have plenty other examples with character and world design where I like how they were originally portrayed, and I dont want some modern Unreal Engine 5 adaptation of characters based on a couple sprites or a single pre rendered background. They will just end up 3d modeling objects and areas that weren't in the original in order to pad out the time spent in an area and justify the money being spent, until it reminds me nothing of the original

I'm glad your videos are slowly getting more and more views. I love seeing your carefully selected clips of retro games. Channels like your really inspire me to finish off my old SNES/Saturn/PS1, ETA collections, just to see all the unique art style and I 100% agree with you about promotional renders (Super Mario RPG takes the cake for me). Keep it up, just seeing that 3s clip of Mischief Makers makes me want to play that game now, and I remember being fully uninterested in the 90's for that specific game.

This was such a thoughtful video. My imagination is certainly sparked!

Like always, love the aesthetic of your video

I had this friend who scoffed at the notion of playing anything 2D or a jrpg with first-person perspective like a Dragon Quest. So many wonderful experiences that jackass missed out on, and all out of snobbery. I can immerse myself in anything if I can find something in it to get invested in, from a game older than I am like Phantasy Star I to any modern game of today. I feel sorry for anyone who dismisses older, retro games out of graphical fidelity snobbery. It's asinine, really. I don't speak to that person anymore (not for this reason), and I don't miss them.

I watched the beginning of the video and remembered a funny thing. In my country in the 80s-90s there were almost no licensed games. We bought pirated copies on game cartridges, floppy disks, and then CDs. And they did not come with colorful manuals. Moreover, pirates cut out music, videos and everything "heavy" from such games so that more games could fit on one cartridge or disk. On top of that, most of us had money problems and couldn't afford actual game consoles or powerful PCs, settling for something that was 10 years behind the trends. And when you bought such a hacked game at the city bazaar, where pirates traded - you prayed all the way home that it was the same game that you read about in your favorite game magazine, and that it worked and did not crash. And here I finally come to the main point - those game magazines in our environment worked in the same way you described the influence of game manuals on your childhood imagination. We couldn't afford many of the actual games of the time, so we reread the same reviews over and over again, and our imagination drew practical other worlds. This was aided by very small screenshots printed in poor quality. And often the screenshots were made out to be shots from CG movies, which made our brains explode even more. And our journalists embellished these pictures with incredibly juicy text descriptions. It was fucking magic😊

thank you so much for this video, I really couldn't explain way I didn't resonate with some more popular games and this helped a lot

Another great video. Personally, i believe immersion works best when you're trying to tell a more realistic story. When we're talking about fantasy, anything goes for me.

Etrian Odyssey excels at both sides of the coin. Your party members only have static portraits, so it's up to you to fill out their personalities and backstories with your imagination. That goes for dungeon events, too, which are simply described to you in text; you get to figure out how your party members feel about what just went down. On the other hand, filling out the dungeon map by hand really immerses you and gets you feeling like you're the one exploring the dungeon personally, even without realistic or proportional graphics.

Funnily enough I recently had a conversation about exactly this with my partner. I tried to explain to him why I enjoy playing Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 over things like BG3, Dragon Age, what have you. I am a lot more invested in games that let me fill in the gaps with my own imagination, it gives me more of a sense of "ownership" over the story and the characters, rather than just consuming the fully fleshed out / voice acted / animated in extreme detail / flawlessly executed content that newer games provide.

TBF, Squall was the best looking dude at the dance, on a CRT TV.

Genuinely love this channel

i had a rough week and i needed these chill vibes so bad, thank you

Always enjoy your videos bro. They take me into a happier place where I can avoid the hell of life on earth for a while.

I'm glad i still have some of my old ps1 rpg's i got as a kid🙏

I like doing a bit of both. Imagination can be quite good, while also I enjoy immersing myself in game worlds

After replaying Saga Frontier, I want pre-rendered backgrounds back. And sprites.

"Just make the game fun." That is easily the best way to immerse yourself in the world of the game.

Such an interesting idea that I never realized before. The limitations back then definitely brewed our imagination a lot. Going back and playing older games now gives me that same feeling. Especially with things like graphics during an in game cutscene (like the Phantasy Star IV example). I definitely enjoy the imagination side of things.

I wish all games had the cel shaded look. Loved this video

Great video

I totally agree. All for imagination, it's easy to immerse yourself in any game despite the graphics. RDR2 was way too tedious and killed the fun