Do I go straight for the objective, or do I explore the entire map?
Yes, I know, it's an awful existential problem. But I'm trying to manage.
Needlessly as it may be, let me explore the problem further: I believe both Dishonored games can be called an Immersive sim, with a focus on stealth. Which means most levels are open enough to give the player many avenues of approach, but with clear objectives that in their most simplified involve going from one place to the other, dealing with the enemies along the way, who can be killed, knocked out or simply ignored.
The problem is: if we got direct for the objectives, which would be the most "in character" thing to do, we would miss out a lot of content. Which can be in form of lore pieces, hidden objectives, characters or other. And I don't want that, I want to explore the game fully. So situations like this will come up: in the first level of Dishonored 2 I was being hunted down by the city guard and needed to escape asap (or am I confusing it with the fire game?), but when I got just 5 meters from freedom, I turned back and fought a bunch of guards that I had successfully avoided because I wanted to see what was inside a particular house (which turned out to be a meaningful NPC).
Deus Ex: Human Revolution positeively punishes you for playing the game as a game. I believe many here might be aware that in the first mission if you take too long exploring the hostages will be killed. Alien Isolation is another game that I could mention. In short, I feel like in these games with have sort of two pulls: one that asks you to explore eveything, while other that says to you the most sensible thing is to complete the mission. Searching for ID Tags with the Alien was after you wasn't a smart decision for Ripley!
This feels very different in a game like System Shock 2 or Prey which I felt exploration made much more sense. And this has nothing to do with quality, but is simply a result of the different types of immersive sim they are.
Surely I'm not alone is this.
Yes, I know, it's an awful existential problem. But I'm trying to manage.
Needlessly as it may be, let me explore the problem further: I believe both Dishonored games can be called an Immersive sim, with a focus on stealth. Which means most levels are open enough to give the player many avenues of approach, but with clear objectives that in their most simplified involve going from one place to the other, dealing with the enemies along the way, who can be killed, knocked out or simply ignored.
The problem is: if we got direct for the objectives, which would be the most "in character" thing to do, we would miss out a lot of content. Which can be in form of lore pieces, hidden objectives, characters or other. And I don't want that, I want to explore the game fully. So situations like this will come up: in the first level of Dishonored 2 I was being hunted down by the city guard and needed to escape asap (or am I confusing it with the fire game?), but when I got just 5 meters from freedom, I turned back and fought a bunch of guards that I had successfully avoided because I wanted to see what was inside a particular house (which turned out to be a meaningful NPC).
Deus Ex: Human Revolution positeively punishes you for playing the game as a game. I believe many here might be aware that in the first mission if you take too long exploring the hostages will be killed. Alien Isolation is another game that I could mention. In short, I feel like in these games with have sort of two pulls: one that asks you to explore eveything, while other that says to you the most sensible thing is to complete the mission. Searching for ID Tags with the Alien was after you wasn't a smart decision for Ripley!
This feels very different in a game like System Shock 2 or Prey which I felt exploration made much more sense. And this has nothing to do with quality, but is simply a result of the different types of immersive sim they are.
Surely I'm not alone is this.
