'Most' immersing game

[Vicsun]

Because I know we are all obsessed with the superlative form of adjectives in thread titles, I now give you a thread discussing the superlative form of the adjective 'immersing' in relation to games.
im•merse
tr.v. im•mersed, im•mers•ing, im•mers•es
1. To engage wholly or deeply; absorb: scholars who immerse themselves in their subjects.

So, which was the game you found to engage you the deepest, and absorb you, rendering reality a boring concept you would hate to return to?

For me, my first choice would be one that is shared by a lot of people on these boards, but sadly by not by enough people world-wide. Let me introduce you to Planescape: Torment. Torment of the mind, torment of the body, torment of the soul; if you listen carefully you can even hear the earth resonating. I can think of no other game offering a story as complex or moving as the one told in Torment. I can think of a good number of novels offering stories that look bleak and clichéd in comparison.

For my second choice I will offer two games. Sanitarium and I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. Maybe it was due to the fact that I first played them when I was quite young (point of reference: I am 16 now, and I played them around the time they came out), but both of those games have made an impression at least and an impact at most.
IHNMAIMS (what a mouthful...) was dark, grim, perhaps even sick – but not dumb. I liked that. It was frowned upon by reviewers, but I liked it. And that's what counts in the end, right? The story might be one of the darkest and most disturbing ones in its field. During the Cold War, three supercomputers are created by the Superpowers to increase the efficiency of the thankless task of genocide. And they, of course, merge and become self-aware, exterminating all life in the process. The new consciousness calls itself AM (as in, 'I think therefore I am'). Nothing new so far, but here's the catch - it didn't kill everyone. It saved five souls and dragged them into the depths of Earth to torment 'till the end of time. Gorrister, who drove his wife to commit suicide, Benny who while in the army performed coldhearted acts of cruelty, Ellen who is hysterical, especially about the color yellow, Nimdock who’s a sadist and Ted, who's paranoid are all forced into their own personal nightmares. I leave you there as to not spoil anything. Let’s move on.
Very much a contrast to the previous game, Sanitarium was loved by reviewers. And with good reason. It starts off with a brief movie featuring a car crash. Next thing you know your head is swathed in bandages, and you are in an asylum surrounded by babbling lunatics bashing their heads bloody against the wall. A journey through your own madness; this game was brilliant. It’s the sort of psychedelic adventure that leaves you staring into the dark screen after it’s all over, wondering if it was all real. It was simply brilliant.

It is now your turn to share what game you felt to be the most immersing. And please, do elaborate on why as opposed to just saying what

[Xandax]

I think I'll have to pull out an oldie here - a game called Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire. from good ole Origin.
I was very impressed by the masses of options one had availble to the player, and when considering it is somewhat old being from 1990

The options one had for interaction with the gameworld has me still drooling to this day. For instance one could remove flax from plants, and weave it into cloth. Then it could be cut to shreads with a knife. These cloth strips could then be used for bandages or be dripped in a tar pit and wrapped around a branch (which you naturally got from trees) which made a torch, or you could use them as fuses for home made bombs.
These bombs where made by you collecting clay, then taking clay to a furnace you could make pots. Then you needed to collect sulphur from sulphur pools and burn branches for charcoal, collect nitrate and then combined it all in a mortar and preston: gunpowder - and then you could make bombs. I remember one big dinosaure you had to kill it by exploding bombs near a big rock and move the rock out over the cliff.
You could also find a fire extingisher at one point, and while it lasted you could use it to cool lava so you could walk across the lava streams.
You could collect food from various plants and fish for it. Or you could kill animals and collect meat from them.

And much much much more.

Danged I miss games of this scale and level of interaction ... it almost makes me sad when I think of the games out today and compare it to such games as this. Especially when this is 14 years ago.

[Robnark]

vagrant story

it's a silly name, the plot is, well, somewhat baffling, and the combat system ain't good. but I love it.

the gameplay is fairly typical action RPG, exploring, collecting keys to open new areas, bosses and mini-bosses, all fairly standard. but the thing is, it's beautiful. a large section at the start is set in cellars and underground passages, but you slowly head upwards, sometimes seeing tiny barred windows in the ceiling with dust swirling in front, sometimes a crack (and bear in mind that the action is isometric. you only see a lot of this in first-person view mode). and you eventually emerge into the overgrown streets of a ruined city with rivers running down fissures in the broken streets. instead of (some very good, atmospheric) music, most of the areas have sound effects - shuffling and distant animal sounds in the cellars, birdsong and running water in the city, and so on.

the enemies fit very well with their surroundings. soldiers wander the streets with uncanny naturalism. corpses rose from the ground to attack you. and, well, so many other things.

it's certainly not the best game ever, and the gameplay is a bit less than the sum of its parts, but despite being old and lacking in the sort of graphical tricknology you get these days, it is stunningly presented. there are areas so beautiful that I have a hard time thinking of anything that looks - and sounds - better (a fight with a greater fire elemental outlined in the light of the sunset streaming through a cracked cathedral wall springs to mind). it's simply the most complete, well-realised environment ever, in my opinion.

[Opalescence]

... *sigh* well as everyone knows I'm a rabid Myst series fan, so my obvious answer would be Riven. If that doesn't count (and it really shouldn't), my answer would be PS:T. PS:T is great on so many levels, isn't it? Barring that? I'd probably say Baldur's Gate II (not ToB, because I really didn't get into the atmosphere too much on ToB).

[Yeltsu]

DAY OF THE TENTACLE!!!!

it rox, well, actually, it doesen't. But who needs to know eh?

But I'll probably have to go for BG II SoA or Final Fantasy VII or X

[Nightmare]

Another vote for PS:T.

[Monolith]

Oh, yes, Sanitarium! A great game! I played it until I reached the circus-level. I have an unsurmountable aversion to circus, clowns and anything associated with it ( my personal nightmare), thus I wans't able to finish the game - which was a great pity because it was - like Vicsun said - simply brilliant....

[Coot]

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss. It was the first 'serious' pc game I ever laid eyes on; before that I only saw Pacman and variations of Space Invaders.
The Stygian Abyss was a fun, scary, cohesive and imaginitive world. Even though I love One Must Fall 2097, Thief, PS:T and the BG-series, no game has ever grabbed like The Stygian Abyss did.

[Skuld]

Thief and PS:T are my pics. BG is up there too. Thief is really the first PC game that ever wowed me. I was overwhelmed at how realistic a game could be. It made the game so much harder, they at the same time so much more fun to play. PS:T is just took RPGs and said it's not all about who's got the best gear, it's about the story and that made me get into it more so than any other RPG I'd ever played.

[The Z]

PS:T as well. System Shock 2 and Deus Ex get honourable mentions (both of which are derived from Thief).

[Tower_Master]

I'd say BG:II...I just couldn't stop playing. (However, I haven't played PS:T, but I intend too).

[Greywulf]

Games I've played:
Baldur's Gate series, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale series, Neverwinter Nights series, Morrowind series, Gothic 1 and 2, Arcanum, Sacred, Pool of Radiance, Temple of Elemental Evil, and Doom 3.

I've gotta admit - there isn't a single one of these that I didn't play obsessively - fully immersed in the game, the story, and my character (even if I didn't get to customize my character much or at all in some).

But in terms of feeling like I was totally "sucked in" to another world:

First there was Morrowind - the first person thing made me nervous at first, but then I began to marvel at the changing skies, and I could spend a lifetime exploring an enormous game world.

After Morrowind (not in terms of rank, but in terms of my playing chronology) was Gothic 2. Holy crap! Every bit as powerful as morrowind, but the world was more traditional fantasy RPG - less alien than Morrowind - more D&D-ish - which I liked - but also smaller. These two games really wrap you up and pull you in.

I was a little jaded after this, and the Diablo-style RPGs where you look down on your character seemed diminished. I played Sacred and enjoyed amassing the most powerful weapons, completing every quest, and exploring as much of the world as I could (the perfectionist/power-gamer if you will), but it couldn't compare to the Gothic and Morrowind games (a hard act to follow).

Then, in a stunning move, unheralded in my years of gaming, I bought a FPS game (first person shooter)... Doom 3.

Ladies and germs, it is worth the money. No side quests, no romances, no joinable NPCs, no enormous gaming world, but you wanna talk about immersion?

I jumped in my seat dozens of times, marvelled at the graphics, the sounds, and the development of the story - it was a-m-a-z-i-n-g. It was like a movie, but I was in it. Think Event Horizon meets Alien meets Hellraiser meets (insert any cool zombie-movie title here).

No, I'm not going to convert from RPG to FPS, but I have to say Doom 3 was 20-some-odd hours of the most immersive gaming since Morrowind and Gothic. And in a way, I liked that it was short - from the 150-200 hours of gaming in BG and BG2 to the utter enormity of Morrowind, it was nice to move through a gorgeous and terrifying world, killing things, and then be done.

Now if only we could get the D&D 3.5 ruleset implemented in a game style like MW/Gothic with some of the horror of Doom 3 (dungeons and dragons should be scary after all, shouldn't they?)...

Eagerly awaiting: Gothic 3, Dragon Age, and Elderscrolls 4

Oh, but I would be remiss if I did not say:
1. PST will always be one of the most original and brilliant games of its kind - ever
2. The BG and IWD series will never be matched in terms of revolutionizing CRPGs
3. NWN really did an amazing job of combining great graphics and the 3.0 D&D rules into the best CRPG since the aforementioned series
4. Despite the games being lambasted by critics, I thoroughly enjoyed both Pool of Radiance and the Temple of Elemental Evil (foreunners for the 3.0 and 3.5 D&D rulesets, with great turn-based combat)