Typically, the thing that sets ImmSims apart is that they have a number of interlocking systems that allow the player to solve objectives in different ways.
Stealth, Speech, and Shooting are the usual suspects, with hacking, gunplay and conversation trees well represented in the genre.
But generally, it’s a philosophy about designing for extreme player agency.
On one end you have something like, say, Tetris. As the player, you can direct blocks, but you can’t stop them from falling. The game gives the player little autonomy to direct. Blocks arrive and the player places them (or doesn’t) until the game ends.
On the other, you have something like Dishonored, where you can choose to kill everyone or no one. You can choose to accept and make use of the magical powers available to you - or reject them all and fight with only human strength and your own wits. The world itself then reacts to these choices and the flow of the game changes accordingly.
I think Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 can arguably be called an ImmSim thanks to its insane level of player reactivity.
Basically, if your choices as a player can actually alter the game world and your path through the story, thanks to the emergent interactions of interrelated systems… It’s probably an ImmSim.
The part that makes it confusing is that all of that also applies to a stiffer open-world western RPG like Fallout or Elder Scrolls. Nobody’s calling Skyrim (or more recently Starfield) an immersive sim. Half-Life often gets included and that game is completely linear and your three interaction choices for combat are “shoot with gun (including wacky woohoo gravity gun)”, “whack with crowbar”, or “sneak/run past”.
Is Elden Ring an immersive sim?
Honestly, the defining thing that modern “immersive sims” have that “rpg shooters” don’t is usually just “physics gun”. Gravity gun from HL, goo gun from prey, telekinesis in Dishonored. Sure it lets you “use the environment” instead of just shooting the zombie with a bullet, but you’re often just using the environment as a bullet.
It’s kind of a nebulous definition, but typically they’re games in which you have a variety of options and systems to complete objectives. So things like Deus Ex where you can stealth, fight or hack your way through the plot. Usually the games will have a robust amount of physics or interaction with various objects so there’s always a variety of things to do in a level.
You can argue half life, but Deus Ex and Thief are the quintessential "immersive sim" forbearers (along with system shock 2). When they say sim, they mean the game reacts to play action in ways that aren't predetermined or scripted. The idea is they value player agency and their impact in the game world over pre-set events
It’s not a super descriptive term for sure, but I have no idea what it would be called otherwise. It’s similar to things like Metroidvanias or Soulslikes in that it’s a very specific niche without a clear delineation of what it is, but fans will know it when they see it
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