3 Years of Service
I find the "immersive sim" label to be somewhat confused. I know what kind of games people mean when they say it, but if you think about it, it can be applied to a vast number of games that fall way outside of it. Is Half-Life 2 an immersive sim, because you can solve a number of problems by messing around with the physics engine, even where the designers didn't anticipate it? Are any games with physics engines part of the genre, really? After all, you can solve things through manipulating the environment and it's based on the rules of physics, not the programmer specifically designing every solution. It's very clearly emergent gameplay, which seems to be the core trait people always bring up. At that point the label becomes a joke of course.
As for Skyrim, there is the one thing that kind of falls into the category: Putting buckets on people to obscure their vision, so they cannot catch you thieving around. That's extremely silly in its specifics, but very much the kind of thing people play "immersive sims" for. That outside the box thinking and approaching problems in unusual ways. It's the only thing Skyrim has that really goes in that direction though.
As for Skyrim, there is the one thing that kind of falls into the category: Putting buckets on people to obscure their vision, so they cannot catch you thieving around. That's extremely silly in its specifics, but very much the kind of thing people play "immersive sims" for. That outside the box thinking and approaching problems in unusual ways. It's the only thing Skyrim has that really goes in that direction though.
