I find my brain extremely happy when a game provides ample opportunity to make connections, like in Dwarf Fortress, where I watch an event unfold, which can stir my creativity and imagination like nothing else. Writing a story out of it is extremely smooth and easy compared to other sandbox games.
I also find myself in love with immersive sims like Desu Ex and Thief, where level design and exploration take a front seat, every map is like a big playground with verticality and branching paths, where you find secrets and lore hidden around every corner in an atmospheric world.
What is immersion to you?
I didn’t realise you were an Anomaly enjoyer! I love that game too, between the mood and the atmosphere, the hunger/thirst/sleep system along with the FDDA animations and of course Alife I think Anomaly is one of the most immersive games for me.
I’ve actually been working on a mod lately that uses AI to produce dynamic dialogue for NPCs in Anomaly, which leads to even more immersion.
Yeah, old stalker here, I stopped playing just before GAMMA came out. Still biding my time to return to the zone someday, still waiting for GSC to fix the second game. Meanwhile, I will miss my hunting trips at Darkscape until a blowout starts when I am in the middle of nowhere and crap my pants.
The mod sounds nice, sounds like it will give more flavour to companions, will Hip get more dialogue? xD
Well, that’s the nice thing about using AI for this, she can have unlimited dialogue - as can anyone else in the game. You can talk to anyone and have full conversations with them, and they have a working memory too. Your companions have unique personalities and unique random backstories and even some character development.
Well, I guess Hip is a named character so she will have a fixed, lore-accurate backstory.