The 3 Pillars of Immersive Games Pt. 3: Aesthetics
Pillar 2 in our framework deals with how games look, sound, and feel — and there are many ways to succeed in this category.
When I first started planning out the framework for whatever this is, the name of this second pillar was “Visuals.” I quickly realized this was a far too narrow way to look at all the elements that make up the look, sound, and feel of a video game, all of which are critically important for creating an immersive experience. In fact, each of these three points represents a key part of a game’s “aesthetics,” so let’s use that as a guide to discuss what a game must succeed at in order to deliver a fully formed aesthetic presentation.
Visuals
As a wise person once opined1, video games are the only form of art or media that (should) get objectively better as time goes on and technology improves. In addition to the experience gained and lessons learned from successful (and not-so-successful) games of yesteryear, improved hardware allows for games that look, perform, and play exponentially better than their predecessors. That’s why, in the same way a Victorian child would perish if they consumed 1 (one) Takis Blue Heat chip, a Sega Dreamcast would collapse in on itself if you tried to boot up Red Dead Redemption 2 on it.
While graphics are becoming closer to resembling real life courtesy of the processing power of current-generation consoles and gaming computers (and improved tools available for developers), this accounts for only one part (albeit a very big part) of what makes the visuals that contribute to a game’s overall successful, compelling, and immersive aesthetic.
As gamemakers like Nintendo have known since the beginning of recorded gaming history (and people started talking about on Discord like two years ago), an inspired art direction is just as important as having state-of-the-art graphics.2 Games like Super Mario Odyssey3 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom prove that creativity and artistry can overcome the technical limitations of running on a much less powerful system than their competitors. I’d argue these titles compare favorably to the likes of a game that has objectively better graphics but a worse (or at least less clearly defined) art direction (certain Assassin's Creed games come to mind, looking visually impressive but also bland in their adherence to historical accuracy).
Think of it this way: A game with crystal-clear graphics but murky art direction will make a game’s visuals feel hollow and soulless. On the other hand, a game can utilize an archaic art style (e.g., pixel sprites) with very clear and creative art direction to produce visuals that are, at least, charming. The key is that these retro graphics must work in tandem with the other elements of the game (the other aspects of aesthetics and the two other Pillars) to create a cohesive experience that serves as an homage to retro gaming, and evokes a thorough sense of nostalgia. If done well, this aesthetic genre can score major points in the scope of the framework we’re discussing here — after all, nostalgia is a powerful tool in the pursuit of immersion.4
There are plenty of other elements of visuals in games we’ll discuss in this work, as all of them contribute to making an immersive experience: environments, cities and villages, character and creature designs, lip syncing to dialogue5 …
Sounds
A few years ago, I learned the word “diegetic” while listening to the podcast How Did This Get Made?6, and have been kind of obsessed with it ever since. If you’re not familiar with the term, diegetic refers to a song or sound in a piece of media that is actually being played in the world of the story (i.e., the characters can hear it). This can be used to great effect in film and television, but there’s even more applications for it in games as players can organically come across beautiful (or haunting or funny) musical moments in exploration.
Music plays a monumental part in the aesthetic of The Last of Us (both the games and the HBO show), but I’m going to talk about that at length in what will likely be the last chapter of this project, so won’t waste all my good stuff on it here. Instead, I’ll have you consider the different ways music is used in Bethesda’s Fallout, and specifically New Vegas. There’s diegetic music that plays over your Pip-Boy and sets the cowboy-western mood amidst the nuclear wasteland of the Mojave Desert, but there are also moments of non-diegetic instrumental scoring, often used to punctuate and give added weight to key story moments.
Diegetic audio extends beyond just musical queues — clever developers will sometimes use in-game sound effects to affect the dynamics of gameplay. For instance, in one of the first games I’ll discuss in this work, It Takes Two, there’s a “stealth” level where you have to keep quiet while navigating an underground den of giant, sleeping moles, which is covered in these red, crunchy leaves. If you screw up and accidentally step on one of the leaves, they let out a sharp crackling sound (akin to stepping on a stick while walking through a forest in a horror movie), which wakes the moles and results in your immediate demise. This Foley-effect audio immerses you in the game because you know the stakes of what making noise here means, and the crunch of the leaves instantly shoots up your heart rate.
Whether or not audio is diegetic, choosing and creating sounds — particularly music — that is both appropriate for the task, setting, and mood at hand is critical for creating an immersive experience. I know I’m not the first person to say this, but video game scores account for some of the best original modern orchestral arrangements you can find — and it makes sense why studios invest so much in this arena. Just about any game (and particularly ones with big, open worlds) is going to have a core loop in which you’re either walking around and exploring the world, or doing some sort of repetitive task. Having an interesting, engaging, and down-right catchy score can make these hour-eating loops feel less like a slog and can instead put the player into an immersive flow state.
I’ve recently started utilizing this theory on video game music in my daily life. I’ve long listened to instrumental music while working (or studying, a million years ago), but recently have caught onto the trend of listening to video game soundtracks as background music, rather than classical arrangements or instrumental covers of pop songs. In particular, the albums for Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (the two entries in the series that have you spend the most time walking around big, open maps) provide the perfect balance of aural intrigue and soothing melodies to make time fly while completing otherwise monotonous tasks.
Feel
Like many other people who talk about video games for a living (or I guess are trying to do that, in my case) I use “feel” to describe a lot of different things in gaming. I think of “feel” as a catch-all term that defines anything that affects a players’ experience with a game that isn’t directly related to the audio-visual presentation, or gameplay or storytelling. “Feel” relies on and affects all of these things, so there’s quite a bit of cross-over with other areas, but there are many aspects of games that clearly belong in this category.
When trying to define “feel,” there’s the very obvious answer of haptics, or how the controller vibrates and reacts to make the player feel what their character is feeling. With the latest and greatest generation of controllers, such as the PS5’s DualSense, players experience haptics beyond just variable levels of vibration when their characters receive or deliver big hits — you can feel the pitter-patter of raindrops, or the impact of your foot (or your horse’s hooves) on the ground as you move. I also love when the triggers on your DualSense controller provide resistance when the moment calls for it (e.g., drawing a bow, firing a gun, pushing open a heavy door). All of these little details bring the player even more into the game, as they engage more senses than just sight and hearing, creating an even more immersive experience.7
In crossing over with gameplay, the physics of a game’s world have a lot to do with creating its overall aesthetics. A series like Just Cause will make the character and objects in the world feel almost weightless as you soar around whatever island you’re blowing to smithereens as quickly as possible. On the other hand, a game like The Last of Us makes playable characters feel almost heavy, with their feet firmly planted on the ground, to provide a grounded, true-to-life experience appropriate for the survival genre. I’ll always gravitate toward games in this latter category over the former, as it’s easier to get immersed in a game that feels more realistic.
Video game physics don’t always have to be static, either. The most often seen example of this is weather, conditions, and environments affecting how a character moves. While your character might be unobstructed running around on pavement or in grass, thick sand or snow may slow their movement, while ice or an oil spill may cause them to slide. These dynamic physics (especially when done in creative and never-before-seen ways) can create unique gaming moments that stand out in players’ minds.
Storytelling has a ton of overlap with this “feel” category, so much so that I kept going back and forth on where “lore” fit into this framework (aesthetics or storytelling). The answer, at least the one I decided on, is that it’s kind of both.
Lore absolutely contributes to making a world feel more whole (and, therefore, immersive), which would seem to make it fall under this aesthetics Pillar we’re currently talking about. However, in trying to differentiate “lore” and “world-building,” I came across a blog post from British sci-fi and fantasy writer Simon K Jones that made me rethink this. In it, Jones talks about how he researches and establishes lore for the purposes of telling whatever story he’s writing, but tries not to get too in the weeds with details, for fear of the plot bogging down or writing himself into a corner:
As with any form of research, especially prior to working on the manuscript itself, the trick is in knowing how much to do. My focus is on lore which affects or is required for the plot to function. Some of it I work out in advance and the rest is explored as it is required. It’d be very easy to get lost in the woods and write far more detail than necessary, and never get round to writing the actual book.
As I considered Jones’ process, I determined that, given their choose-your-own-adventure nature, video games tend to contain much more (and perhaps deeper) lore than other forms of media. But, whether it’s tied to the main plot, or is given to us as a way to better understand and connect with a game’s world or characters, any instance (or at least any good instance) of true lore in games is in service to the story (or at least a story). But, because this section is already starting to dip into a discussion on plot, we’ll dive deeper into lore (among other things) as we move onto our final Pillar …
Click here to continue reading The Three Pillars of Immersive Games
Only using this lead in because I actually can’t remember where I first heard this. :-)
To a point. I don’t want to let The Pokémon Company off the hook so easily.
I do have some complaints about the incohesive aesthetics between different worlds in this game, but I’ll cover that in another project.
I’ll talk about a game that sets the standard for this new wave of nostalgic gaming, Sea of Stars, in a later chapter.
Sorry to bash Assassin's Creed again, but the lip syncing in Odyssey was bad enough to bring down the experience as a whole.
Paul Scheer, June Dianne Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas. If you like movies (and particularly breaking down bad ones), it’s an absolute must-listen.
Sony apparently filed a patent in 2023 for technology that would allow you to smell the game you’re playing (via aroma containers you apparently would attach to your controller). Might be a classic case of the R&D team spending too much time asking if they could and not if they should.