Immersion - Underwhelming low effort? (static NPCs, passing trough NPCs etc.)

[....]

While i like the general concept, the soundtrack etc. the game has huge issues that are ruining immersion - many of those problems would have been fixable rather easily so why does it feel so low effort?

World:
- world in general is great feels exactly like harry potter - BUT
-- most of it feels like a movie set - static NPCs that dont move at all, pass trough NPCs that dont react to the player at all - there is no possibility of interaction - this seriously damages immersion

- the different hosues look nice - but they are dead aswell - there is almost no interaction almost no movement of NPCs - what happens to NPC at night? Sorry but this is just immersion breaking for no reason - there are tons of systems from other games im pretty sure one can simply copy/buy those systems - be it something simple as NPCs moving in a certain area or just NPCs reacting to the player when he runs into them to NPCs at least having some sort of random dialogue interaction

NPCs:
- Most NPCs dont react to the player at all - many dont even move and the player can simply pass trough most of them - immersion breaking ...
- some of the Companion NPCs are simply boring
-- Natsai for example - its a shallow Mary Sue NPC in my opinion - there is no depth, no real interresting story, exaggeratedly friendly - she doesnt feel like a real character - that wouldnt be that bad but it also feels as if the game is trying to force interaction with her (Characters need flaws to not feel artificial - why was the character made in such a way - especially if it is meant to be one of the more important NPCs?)

Also a general question - why do most characters have almost stereotypical accents according to their nationality when in reality most people that grow up in a different country simply speak like anyone else - feels a bit weird and arent these the typical prejudices?


This game isnt bad - but many aspects of it feel like a game from 20 years ago and i dont understand why those flaws even exist - especially since fixing them isnt much work and systems have been made for lots of games.

I think the game isnt bad but its not great either and it feels as if a lot of its potential has been wasted for no reason - especially when it comes to the open world and immersion ...
I mean seriously if one ignores the FPS drop at the first time going into the big dining room the atmosphere is great - but it goes downwards pretty fast fater that and looking at the general game design i wonder if the open world was a mistake because it seems to be not much more than an afterthought to me.

[....]

TL:DR:
While the world in general looks nice and the music etc. creates a lot of immersion everything is destroyd by the shallow interaction between Characters, the static NPCs, phase trough NPCs the the lack of interaction between the Player and the World/NPCs. And many of these things could have been fixed easily with systems used in most other open world RPG for a decade ...

[Dreadstone]

Your profile is private, so, I can't tell how far along you've played. To answer some questions and "observations"

1) NPCs that you have interacted with (usually a quest) do have new dialogue. Personally I'd find it annoying if every NPC greeted me. (That'd also be odd)

2) Natsi is well...Natsi. I'm on Team Poppy. (I also don't get the hype over Sebastian. He's prototypical Slytherin imo)

3) Your statement regarding accents needs refining. Either you want folks to speak differently, or you don't. FYI, people who learned English overseas often speak more grammatically correct than native speakers.

4) What game from 20 years ago does this game remind you of, and why?

5) You can: collect pets (and breed them), do quests, do trials, fly through balloons, explore, fight, and a myriad of other activities outside of Hogwarts. What part of the "open world" was a mistake and why?

[sno0ks]

Yes. It's their first real game and you can tell they were a bit stretched. The game needed another full year of optimization/polish. All of these problems are explained by the fact that the developer is simply not that experienced doing a big game like this. They were a shovelware company before this. They can be commended for a lot of what they did, but the game is janky as ♥♥♥♥. The artists did such a better job than the actual game designers.

[....]

Originally posted by Dreadstone:

Your profile is private, so, I can't tell how far along you've played. To answer some questions and "observations"

1) NPCs that you have interacted with (usually a quest) do have new dialogue. Personally I'd find it annoying if every NPC greeted me. (That'd also be odd)

2) Natsi is well...Natsi. I'm on Team Poppy. (I also don't get the hype over Sebastian. He's prototypical Slytherin imo)

3) Your statement regarding accents needs refining. Either you want folks to speak differently, or you don't. FYI, people who learned English overseas often speak more grammatically correct than native speakers.

4) What game from 20 years ago does this game remind you of, and why?

5) You can: collect pets (and breed them), do quests, do trials, fly through balloons, explore, fight, and a myriad of other activities outside of Hogwarts. What part of the "open world" was a mistake and why?

1) I know that - and yes not every NPC should greet - but they should at least react if you crash into them or if you press a button to interact - yes its a small thing but it makse the world feel way less like a movie set with cardboard stand ups.

2) Well but that at least gives him lots of flaws and makes him somewhat more interresting.

3) For example in older movies there were stereotypical ways different nationalities would pronounce words etc. - in reality 99% dont speak like that - at least not if they have learned another languange for a longer time or at a younger age and i think its rather weird that lots of NPCs seem to have those steretypical pronounciantions.

4) That was just a hyperbole - in regards to the static NPCs that either dont move at all - move just very little or even have the player simply run trough them. In my opinion even GTA San Andreas had more interaction with random NPCs and that game is from 2004 ...

5) Yes but those are the typical copy paste quests in every single open world but it doesnt feel like the main game profits from the open world - meaning the NPCs have no real routines - the world doesnt feel alive it feels like running arround on a movie set where 99% of the people dont move at all.

So by mistake i mean that i wonder if the immersion would have been better if those scenes were more pre-made - with smaller maps and chapters instead of an open world - since they seem to lack the open world mechanics required to make the world feel alive (NPCs interacting and moving arround in the open world besides a few NPCs running on the street)

[Zoommeeting]

Originally posted by sno0ks:

Yes. It's their first real game and you can tell they were a bit stretched. The game needed another full year of optimization/polish. All of these problems are explained by the fact that the developer is simply not that experienced doing a big game like this. They were a shovelware company before this. They can be commended for a lot of what they did, but the game is janky as ♥♥♥♥. The artists did such a better job than the actual game designers.

Interesting. How did a shovel-ware company managed to get their hands on such a big IP ?

[アゼム]

Yes, the world is a static playground. Very unreactionary. Like I said elsewhere, it's a 10/10 early 2000's game with modern graphics

[Cat]

This being the developers first big game kind of shows, most games don't really aim for immersion either so this kind of set dressing is par for the course for most open world games, it's a bit of a shame they didn't do more with the school aspect itself, as it stands it's mostly just another place to explore but you don't really *feel* like a student there, just someone who happens to live there (and even that is a stretch), far as open world outings go this game hits all the checkboxes for what makes it one, I'd even argue it's slightly above average in that regard but ultimately it's just another AAA style open world game.

Expectations is important, so I guess going into this expecting another AAA open world style game set mine pretty low, the HP setting does help set it apart, but only barely, the magic so to speak just isn't there to set it apart from the rest of the games that came before it.

[AzzUK]

Even small things like being able to advance time via your bed in the commons room would be nice.

[Scheneighnay]

Originally posted by ....:

TL:DR:
While the world in general looks nice and the music etc. creates a lot of immersion everything is destroyd by the shallow interaction between Characters, the static NPCs, phase trough NPCs the the lack of interaction between the Player and the World/NPCs. And many of these things could have been fixed easily with systems used in most other open world RPG for a decade ...

I'll agree with that despite liking the world a lot.

The atmosphere is phenomenal, NPCs could be better.

[....]

Originally posted by AzzUK:

Even small things like being able to advance time via your bed in the commons room would be nice.

I wouldnt even call those things small - in reality immersion isnt created by one big thing but by many small things - small interactions that will create immersion as a whole.

For example - a dining room with ultra realistic graphics, NPC graphics and music will create a lot of immersion - but all of that will be instantly gone once there is no interaction with the World, no Interaction with NPCs and nobody is moving.

A game with way more outdated graphics with NPCs reacting to the player interacting with the player and a room with lots of things the player can interact with be it physics (running into a desk having things drop on the floor etc.) or scripted interaction will be way more immersive. Little things like beeing able to sit down, NPCs that the player crashes into reacting with movement and voice, beeing able to say hello to a random NPC, having a character react to a fireplace by a hand warming animation etc. - thats what makes all the difference - and i am pretty sure a lot of these things can be recycled from older games - animations etc.

Maybe thats the next step in gaming industry - dedicated studios that dont make games but simply sell interactive elements. With AI-Voice one can probably make a lot of random interactions that can be used in almost any game without much work. There also is no point in every single game creating everything again over and over.

[Mr. Nobody]

100% agree. The amount of immersion breaking things in this game is crazy.

I am still very early in the game, so I'm not sure if this is the same all the way through but a lot of the early side quests are stupid from an in-game perspective also.

"Hey man, someone called me a bad name, can you risk your entire life tracking down this random extremely dangerous leaf so I can take all the credit and feel better about myself? I won't actually pay you back or anything but I'll say thanks twice"

Obviously, from a game perspective you get XP and sometimes gear as a reward, but from an immersion perspective I would literally turn down 90% of the sidequests I've gotten so far in the game. Why would I risk my life diving into the black lake for some random person I've never met when they straight up tell me they aren't going to give me anything for it?

[null]

I think this game opens really strong (first 5 hours was a 10/10 experience for me) as it had me exploring the mansion and focusing on the little gems in the environment. Then gradually rolls off to like 5/10 as the open world had me me to carry hundreds of boxes to cave entrances, or doing hundreds of identical Merlin trials, at which point I had to choice but to look at the details and notice flaws.

They did the classical open world thing and padded their playtime. Mass-producing open world content comes at a cost: quality of said content. They sprinkled so many of those activities in the world, they couldn't make even 10% of them feel different. It took like 2 hours to learn all solutions to Merlin trials and it took probably 20 more hours to finish them all. Same goes for hamlets. I liked Hogsmeade, but smaller villages are basically the same village, with nothing other than vendor to offer.

[theaaronone]

I agree that the NPC's are often quite flat... and I certainly wouldn't want them all greeting me as I run by shouting 'revelio' but having them go to class, sleep in the beds in their own dorm, etc. would go a long way towards that sort of thing. Same for townspeople & shopkeepers, giving them a basic schedule instead of just disappearing or being permanently open for business at all times would add some life.

I would compare it to RDR2; there were way more NPCs there, and for the most part, they all at least felt pretty dynamic. Shops closed, people went home, visited the tavern, played poker, I couldn't necessarily interact with them, apart from 'greet' or 'insult' - but that was fine, I didn't need to. It was a background thing that gave a lot of depth to the world, whether you actively noticed it or not.

I don't think I'd categorize Natsi as a Mary Sue, she's not all powerful and perfect, though she may be a self insert from one of the developers, I don't know, but I think more than likely it was so they could bring up another school that hasn't been in any of the books or movies. Regarding their accents, It's implied if not said outright that Natsi and her mother had only been there a short time, so they both would speak English through their own country's accent. I suppose you could argue that since both actresses are themselves English, it's technically stereotypical, but I think it's splitting hairs. No one complains when Johnny Depp affects an English accent... though I don't think anyone actually knows what his actual voice even sounds like anymore. Probably not even him.

I do agree beyond that, there's not much there for a lot of the side characters you actually do get to interact with, which is unfortunate, as it does make things feel a little empty on the character side of things. Fortunately there's plenty else to do to keep you occupied. Sebastion is perhaps an exception, as he does have a bit more going on than most of the others.

One other thing not mentioned here that I think would help is a few contextual animations when you use the "wait" feature.. only played right when the screen fades back in... nothing to draw anything out, totally cancelable via any button press for those that don't care or are otherwise in a hurry :

If you wait within your dorm, when the screen fades back in the MC is getting out of bed.

If you wait in the common room, or in the hallways of the castle, the MC reading a book, or is wrapping up an implied conversation (head nods & gestures only, no actual dialogue) with a few other students who are doing similar as they walk away or just a random (non-attack) spell.

Wait out in the open world, have the MC vanishing a small camp.

Nothing grand - a few of these animations already exist, we see them playing on some of the NPC's throughout the school/world... Just something to imply that our character isn't an insomniac zombie that just blankly stares at nothing for hours, waiting for the sun to rise or set.



Whether a limitation of time, money, or the capability of the studio; this is afterall, I believe, their first title... I'd say the overwhelming success of it, despite its various technical flaws and some odd choices, has shown they can probably do quite a bit more if they ever do a sequel. They'll likely be given a lot more to work with in terms of time and money, not to mention takeaway experience from this... and while I don't love *everything* about this game, and obviously it's way too early for sequel talk, I think they've earned the opportunity to expand and improve what they've got here beyond whatever DLC they've planned.

[....]

What i almost forgot - what also screams low quality to me is for example the first time you meet Fig in his office. And the first night seriously how can anyone playtest something like this and not say "wow thats crap wtf where you thinking"?

If i remember correctly:
You fast travel back into your room - its empty as always obviously everyone is glued to the floor of the house-room again - obviously noboday will interact with you at all. Then you move to the office of FIg - when he isnt there you will lay down on the floor and sleep - then suddenly he appears when you wake up - pretending there wasnt someone sleeping on his floor and you pretend as if you just ran into his office out of breath from sleeping?

Its as if they had some of the best visual artists but nobody for gameplay/immersion or common sense in general ...


Also im not that far in the game yet - but please tell me they will actually use one of the main points of this game - beeing a student in hogwarts way more? As of now it mostly feels like a random house and not like beeing a student in a school.

I like the setting, i even like the combat and i like the graphics in general but to be honest if this wasnt Harry Potter i would probably rate everything besides graphics and the setting and combat pretty low.



I also dont understand the chests - so i am constantly robbing people to get chests and bags of gold - even casually walking in their house while they watch me taking their stuff? Oh hello sir - nice store - wait a second im going to steal your stuff and sell it to you 10 seconds later.



I really dont understand why modern AAA Open World utterly fails at creating a world and immersion - do they simply not care at all? I mean seriously things like sleeping on the floor is not somethieng you can miss - its something you dont give a damn about? The same applys to empty dormrooms and glued NPCs thats not something you miss and its not something hard to change i doubt that one cant simply copy paste random animations etc. from other games or buy them. Why can i run trough most NPCs? Or is there a hidden story and actually all of the people in Hogwarts are dead and ghosts or just holograms and im the only person alive?

Or do people seriously enjoy those open world grind copy paste quests that feel like checking off your shopping list - over and over and over again in each game.

[....]

Seriously just found this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hahSZw6CEbU

So a modder added more immersion in a few days then the DEVs in years of development - isnt that pretty embarassing?


Not sure if thats even released yet and the menu looks weird - but those little details would have made the game better already - and obviously those changes werent a lot of work since there wasnt much time between release and this ...