Big thanks to KZfaq for taking five hours to upload this 15 minute video today. And also for keeping it private after I made it public for at least six refreshes. Love ya, ya big piece o' fucking shit.

I never once felt like Witcher 3 was less magical or fun as an experience because I couldn't watch Geralt run his hands over a dead bandit while looting.

Criticizing RDR2, Breath of the Wild, and Shenmue in the same video? This is gonna be great.

"it's unrealistic to go to sleep at any time of day" [Laughs in crippling depression]

Realism and immersion aren't the same! I agree with this video!

Makes me think of that writing tip Yahtzee mentioned once: "Is this the most interesting part of your protagonist's life, and if not, why aren't you showing us that?"

Fun fact: you can enjoy a game immensely, but still be annoyed by things about the game. I love this game, but yeah, the little inconviences it presents are annoying. I still enjoy the game. I love the original Metal Gear Solid, but I hate the gun controls. I still enjoy the game. I love Jak 2, but it's checkpoint systems, and ammo carrying over after death mechanics can fuck off. I still enjoy the game. It's okay to call out faults. Otherwise things won't improve.

“One of the worst games ever, Shenmue.” And with just 7 words, Jim Sterling destroyed an entire universe.

"This ancient blade was used by..." *snap*

in the words of George R.R. Martins, "A writer cannot do too much research... though sometimes it is a mistake to try and cram too much of what you learned into your novel. Research gives you a foundation to build on, but in the end it's only the story that matters." which can be applied to this by replacing novel with game and story with ease

In the Witcher books, Geralt only carried 1 of his swords at a time. CDPR new it would be stupid to make you go back for the right sword every combat encounter, so they just made it so Geralt carries both swords at the same time. Its one of the few times they dont stay loyal to the books, and most times they do divert it was for the sake of gameplay.

If companies didn't waste their time making games as "realistic as possible", they wouldn't be so expensive to make. I feel that if a game at least looks presentable regardless of realism, they could spend more time on the things that need to be worked out. Nintendo games aren't normally realistic, but they look good enough to make you think that there was effort put into it.

Attention to detail and obsession with detail is the perfect way to describe this problem, nice one Jim

Wow, props for carrying that note so well. You've got a powerful voice, nice!

Started to get worried this would be "the" Monday.

At least Link doesn't suffer from Malaria.....

"Holy Grail Fog" - best description of AAA game scene.

My problem with the attention to detail in games is I think it actually hurts immersion rather than enhances it. As games get more "realistic" it becomes more apparent just how unrealistic they really are. Because the game can never actually be like real life, the closer it gets to real life the more apparent it becomes that is not real.

Actual Swords: Lose there edge and Blunt resulting in a loss of cutting power. Only liable to break if poorly constructed or through intent. Relatively straight forward to care for, and still a heavy piece of metal. BOTW swords: Imbued with powerful enchantments able to cut through metals beyond that settings current understanding. Explode into fragments after 30 swings. Can not be repaired.

I fully agree. RDR 2 is so complex, that it gets in the way of it's own game.

Man I was getting scared Jim was gonna miss his first monday

This reminded me of an artistic principle actually known as "conservation of detail". It's present in really any creative media (writing, animation, illustration, movies, games...) and the premise is pretty much the same as what Jim discussed. For many of these mediums, not conserving detail means breaking the pace of the piece of question. It can be mentally exhausting and boring to read pages and pages and pages of extremely detailed purple prose that contributes nothing to the narrative. In movies, having [nearly] everything at max fidelity and just too much stuff happening in the frames can make it really hard to make sense of what you're seeing. (I'm looking at you Michael Bay.) And Level Of Detail in visual art can also help in the composition of it - it's frequently used selectively to get the viewer to look at the most detailed features of the image and not some random background elements that aren't the "point" of the piece. (Especially pieces with a subject in them, not simply environments.)

well what you'd expect jim, weapons in botw are made from nintendo labo

Will GTA6 force you to re-fuel your car? We can only dream

OUR HORSE BALLS SHRINK AND GROW DEPENDING ON THE WEATHER!!! I feel bad for people who had to look at horse nuts for the year it probably took to make that happen.

0:46 Jim Sterling missed his calling as an opera singer...dang...

I sometimes think back to a rather rare conversation I had with a person who worked at a game studio. This was a rarity because there's no reason I should run into such a person, much less at a bbq at my high school friend's house, while we're still in high school. None the less, there was this older fellow there somehow or other connected enough to my friend's extensive family that he wound up there. This was during the era of the N64 and original Playstation. I had just been playing a game called "Beetle Adventure Racing" which was a ridiculous racing game that was an absolute blast to play, and this came up because this fellow was involved in creating a Gran Turismo competitor. Or maybe it _was_ Gran Turismo, it's been a while and I wasn't very familiar with that series at the time. But I was telling this guy that one of the things I liked about Beetle Adventure Racing (B.A.R. for short) was that it was focused on being a fun game. There were hidden shortcuts that required you to do certain things during the race to open them up, or to find the right jumps or hit a nitro at the right time and fly through a volcano or dodge a T-rex or locate a flying saucer. And this fellow proceeded to "educate" me on why simulation racing games were far superior and blah, blah, blah. I kept asking him "but is it fun?" and his answers would almost always come around to technical specs and "realism" as though these answered the question or perhaps proved that fun didn't matter. I think the reason why I don't remember what game specifically he was associated with could also be attributed to me mentally writing him off as just dangerously out of touch. However, the sim-racing games prevailed to the detriment of fun racing games. Back on Wii there there was Excite Truck and it's sequel Excite Bots (I think that's what it was called) that were both in the spirit of FUN being more important than realism and realistic details. Sometime later the game Blur would come out that would attempt to _blur_ the line between focusing on fun and focusing on realism. While it wound up being more popular than the other games I mentioned, it was not more fun, but more of an inbetween. Pretty fun but it held itself back a lot in the name of maintaining some sense of realism (no rushing through volcanoes or giant black-light-illuminated pumpkin patches). And these days racing games have largely become irrelevant. There's that small dedicated audience for those simulation-racing games. And you get the one and only alternative in Mario Kart. But that's really it. Creativity in that genre has largely died due to an obsession with realism over fun. What makes the distinction between fun and realism in a game like RDR2 (and similar games) is that you do want some degree of immersion. You're taking on the role of a cowboy and there can be fun in embracing that fantasy. But that's just it, it's a fantasy. Not a documentary. And it should not be a chore. At some point you need someone on these teams to be the guy who asks the question "but is that fun?" Just because you _can_ add a ton of granular detail and layers upon layers of restrictions to better simulate reality... doesn't make it fun, doesn't make it better. In fact, I think a lot of pencil and paper RPGs have figured out that fewer details, less granularity, allows for a far better overall experience. Cover all the pertinent details, paint the general picture, but let someone's imagination take care of some of the finer, less relevant details.

Somewhat related to the thesis of this video: your examination and montage of some older games with the problem of detail obsession just reminds me of why I care so little regarding graphical fidelity, because in a few years it's all gonna look like lego people anyways. I distinctly remember Heavy Rain being lauded at the time for its "pristine visuals", but side-by-side it only looks a little better than goldurn Shenmue. At a certain point it just doesn't add anything to a game, and in fact can make it harder to play due to things like financial or hardware restrictions.

If weapon durability in games worked "realistically" then every time you used, say, a sword, it would degrade slightly, getting a little more chipped, or bluntented, or warped, perhaps losing a tiny bit of its effectiveness (we're talking 100% to 99.7% from a swordfight here) and eventually, after dozens of prolonged fights, several hours of play time, your character would have to spend a few minutes with some sandpaper and a whetstone getting all the little chips out. There's a name for a sword that breaks the fifth time you swing it: A shitty sword. Yes, it'd be realistic for a clay-tempered forged katana to shatter if you smacked a rock with it but that's not what the damn thing is for. Weapons are designed to last a long time and many fights.

Don't worry Jim about not having a Halloween episode, the triple AAAAA game industry and it's greed/stupidity is the scariest thing you could cover.

I mean, some people actually enjoy games that simulate minutiae to the point of near-parody, but on the other hand, those sorts of games are usually niche games for very good reasons. I mean, in Shenmue, after you beat the game, you get the option to replay the game *using the actual weather patterns from that region in 1987* (the year in which the game is set). This was a HIDDEN feature. A REWARD. And let's not even get into Maxis, where games like SimEarth had such complex simulations that the official guidebooks were literally as thick as middle school textbooks.

In the first RDR I learned to park my horse on freshly killed animals, because doing so would skip the skinning animation. I loved the animations, but only for the first few dozen times. After that it became incredibly tedious. I fear it's the same for RDR2. Yes, it is beautiful and great and fun and all that. For the first few times or maybe even for the first dozen hours. But there comes a point where becomes a chore for me, and it actually takes me out of the game rather than immersing me. I've got limited spare time. I don't like it getting wasted by tedium. Especially since I know I am the kind of person who checks and loots everything.

Realism =/= Immersion

The only time horse shrinkage should be in any game is for a horse mating game or a horse appraising game. In no other context is horse shrinkage in a game needed.

I appreciate this video. Your criticisms of Red Dead 2 are very valid, and I can understand the realism pissing some players off. I've wanted a hyper-realistic Western since I was a kid, and RDR2 gives me that.

"Kojima has entered the chat"

I really must say, I hope they patch in an option to do away with whistle distance. It literally cost me what I think is a multi-part Stranger interaction (the down-on-her-luck woman who keeps having her horse de jour die on her (literally) halfway through her trips). I'd just finished a main mission, my horse was halfway across the map (and so might've been on another continent for all the good it could do me), and while I could get the woman out from under her second dead horse and offer to escort her home, she dismissed me before I could get reach Rainier (my horse) so I could actually get her where she needed to go. Even with her obviously sprained, maybe broken leg, she wasn't going to wait around for me to finally get my horse. Which I got a good two minutes later because I was only halfway there when I ran into the lady, and no other riders had come along with horses I could shoot them off and steal. So I had to sprint cross-country until Rainier could finally hear me whistling. The dedication to realism made me fail a side mission. If I could've just called Rainier to me (like any other game with horses in it), I would've been able to do that side mission. But I couldn't, through no fault of my own. That's when you've gone too far. When the mechanics can force you to fail the content of the game itself, through no fault of your own.

I can't complain about the fluff in RDR2, as a man who installed a mod to give me hypothermia in Skyrim~ Even so, I know that, while some things help immerse some players into the game, those same things can turn off other players and bore them to tears. My proposal for the devs: why not add more options? Just as you can skip cutscenes in most games nowadays, why not let you skip character animations that take more than a couple of seconds and don't require player input? Seems like the same sort of thing to me. Just press a button, cut to black, the task is done. A game could also tie survival elements (hunger meters, horse care, etc) to a difficulty option at the start of the game, like Fallout but more streamlined. Options are always good.

I thought the halloween episode is the comments section after you criticized Red Dead Two

I think Rockstar's particular brand of obsession with detail, especially with regards to how it manifests in RDR2, is now being referred to as "Rockstar jank".

Not gonna lie, I dig the methodical, at time downright glacial pace of RDR2. That said, it's something that usually has no place in a game made for Average Joe and Jane, who have a work/study schedule and/or family to deal with.

You know, maybe there's room for two game modes in this type of experience - call them 'Simulation' and 'Game' modes. Simulation - Skip skinning cutscenes; horse insta-warp; no need to bathe; whatever. Game - Remove all the stuff which annoys people who don't want those mechanics. Personally I enjoy the former, but I totally understand why many don't. I'm not a developer, and I don't know how much extra work it would be to include two different types of mechanics as an option, but given this keeps coming up as a criticism of open world games, I think this would be welcomed in the same way people are happy to have multiple mini-map options.

I think a lot of the divide on this issue comes from how much time people have to play games. If I was still a teen i'd love to sink a whole weekend into something this detailed and rich but with only a couple of hours a day to play anything (i'm sure even less for some people) Jim's right; "It's not respecting the players time".

That part about botw climbing really hit home for me. Your character can climb any angled surface but if it gets the slightest bit wet have fun falling all the fucking way down to square one.

The director of Zelda said that the weapon durability mechanic is there to ensure people that exploration is rewarded. I don't particularly agree with his choice, but I understand what it means. If your weapon is going to take one minute to break, you are always going to enjoy picking up a weapon in a chest that you find. For me, it would be better if they did the Skyward round, and you had materials to improve different types of weapon, but you only had to find one boomerang and you could use it until the end of the game. Imagine if you could swap weapons for materials, and keep only one of each that you liked. Zelda's combat would be brilliant and not a waste of weapons Everytime. Lately when I play the game I only fight when my master sword is active.

Honestly, i think the Monster Hunter games have the best kind of weapon degradation mechanic. Not realistic in the sense that it comes as close to mirroring real life as possible, and not fiction-y to the point of absurdity. It has a nice middle ground that works well and compliments its own gameplay. Quite nice, it is.

Far Cry 2 had realistic weapon degradation too. The only time it became an issue was when I grabbed some random bandit's machine gun, it was dirty and horrid, and within about two magazines it started jamming. Tossed it right quick for something else.

Catching up on older, missed episodes, and boy howdy does this one ring like a gong for me. When I was playing Breath of the Wild, the two biggest gripes I had were the fucking durability woes and the rain. While the latter makes for some good jokes at its expense (like Paper Mario recently did), it also makes the game pretty fucking unenjoyable at times. I frequently got into arguments with a friend who felt that the weapon durability was a good mechanic, and I've seen people defend it cause "it makes you try out new weapons". Like, given the sheer number of weapons that are fundamentally indistinguishable from each other beyond looks, it's pretty safe to say that's load of horse testicles. In a game that seems to want you to play however you feel like, making you go through gear like it's made of papier-mâché, seems pretty damned counter to the intended experience. Also, yes, Shenmue's timing system is one of those things that, like RD2, feels as though it's there to drag out the experience rather than actually enhance the game.

Honestly all this could have been fixed with a toggle. Do you want to see the same tired skinning animation that impressed you the first dozen times but never again after that, or do you just want to get on with your life and do other shit. I don't know why they doubled down on this sort of stuff for RDR2. RDR1 had nice and quick animations for these things and even then it got TEDIOUS after awhile. There's a reason most games these days have cut these sort of time wasters out entirely, unless they're a multiplayer survival game or a horror game - where the waiting is an added risk that adds to the gameplay loop rather than detracting.

Annoying realistic mechanics are best left to mods XD

I don't know about this one.. There's room in the world for different games with different goals. And if, instead of asking 'is it funny', you ask 'does this help you get lost in the world', the design decisions make complete sense. It might not be a game for everyone, but if you want to waste away a weekend lost in another world, it's a masterpiece.

There's enough games out there that focus entirely on game play, I think it's nice to have one with a high production value that goes into very immersive detail like this.

This discussion of obession with detail reminds me of the Shampoo sidequest in Baten Kaitos Origins, if I recall. For those seeking 100% completion, this involved your character ordering some shampoo from someone, who said it will deliver it within two weeks. That's not a timeskip of two weeks. You literally have to keep the game running for two entire weeks. 322 hours. And the item itself is pretty much a useless trinket.

Fog may not be funny, but that shitty remaster of Silent Hill was worse off for not having it.

The Witcher 3 strikes a good balance between intricate mechanics and user-friendliness. It consequently also controls better on every front compared to Red Dead Redemption 2. Now I like Red Dead 2, it's the first Rockstar game I've genuinely liked (so far) since Bully, but it controls more like an action-RPG than an actual action-RPG. Friendly gestures turn into acts of agression simply by forgetting to hold a shoulder button, and the shooting, which most if not all third-person shooters (even the open-world ones) have managed to make at least decent since the end of the PS2 days, still rely on auto-aim due to free aiming feeling like you're turning a crane.

Came back to this game a year later because of death stranding

'RDR2 is so realistic' -proceeds to kill fifty people in five minutes. Just like in history!

Instead of breaking the weapon, they could make it blunt. That way the player has more time to strategise and execute a plan.

and then you have Bethesda in the other side of the spectrum, who to this day can't make a human move like a human or jump like a human in Elder Scrolls or Fallout games

4:07 You also forgot you need the right type of ammo.

I think somebody got tired of waiting to wait.

Honestly, those details are part of what add fun to the game for me. It gives an immersion to games for me that keep me playing games longer and feeling more invested in the world. I like having to eat and keep my weight up, I like having to wash myself because people treat you differently if you don't take care of yourself, I like real time horse travel and whistle distance since it adds a sense of bond with my horse wanting to keep it around me constantly and not just leave it sitting places unattended to, and I think it's safe to say that I thoroughly enjoy the hunting and skinning mechanics since I spent 5 straight this morning just hunting. It definitely comes down to preference and patience, as a game reviewer who plays games quickly regularly it's safe to say it probably effects the kinds of experiences you look for in games and don't want something that needs the kind of time that those mechanics require

Witcher 3 had the heavy, realistic movements for Geralt at launch and people took issue with it. In response to the complaints, they released a patch that added a new movement option that smoothed out the controls and made the animations less realistic, and made it a toggle so players could use whichever they preferred. The majority of remasters/re-releases of classic survival horror games that used 3D tank controls include options that let you toggle on the smoother 2D control style. These are things that developers can do, it just takes them being willing to do it.

Just regarding those "luxurious animations," those likely weren't the cause for Crunch-Times. Often, those types of animations are probably made early or in the middle of development, and are often commissioned or contracted from experience animators not working in-house, especially for complex and realistic animations of this variety. Just something to keep in mind.

That creepy laughing baby pumpkin toy is more horrifying than any Halloween special you or anyone else can make.

Finally, Monday can truly begin.

I see where you're coming from and maybe it's just me but I appreciate and enjoy that kind of shit

As a Zelda fan I had to pause and laugh my heart off at the weapon and rain criticisms of BOTW. Cause they are too true. Game is still great though.

RDR2: Chore Simulator

I don't think Red Dead `s attention to detail makes it less of a good game . If anything its a great game because all those little details makes the immersion that much better . The world feels real .

To be fair to Detroit Become Human, the screenshots you showed looked like they could be deliberately be tedious so you empathize with the enslaved character you're playing who is forced to do these menial tasks.

If your going full realistic why not make a wound system? Still able to keep running around after taking several shots doesn’t seem very realistic to me. Oh online multiplayer, that’s why.

I am not going to point out a particular brittle metall but what I am going to point out is that the weapons breaking in BotW wasn't about realism but encouraging players to try out all of the weaponry. Did get really tedious towards the end I admit.

The First game I remember with a problem with "realism" was Pokemon. When they came up with that game with a locked day/night cycle based upon your gameboy clock and it changed how the game played. That was a real problem if you wanted to catch some day or night only pokemon. Never mind walking around the entire game with it being night 100% of the time because you played after dinner got old fast.

Never thought I would hear critics complain about additional detail lol

Weapons degradation is more of an annoyance than anything else, especially if it means that a weapon you actually really enjoy using is irreparably damaged and you then just have to go looking for another one. Doesn't add anything apart from tedium. Wait timers are also a fucking tedium and serves nothing more in a one player game than to split up content. I couldn't agree more with this video.

Got in here so early KZfaq thought it was still privated.

If it's not fun, why bother.

One mans chores is another mans pleasure.

Realism, done well and appropriately, can be an incredibly powerful and engaging tool. For instance, calling for help and having to desperately hold-out while you wait for the proverbial cavalry to arrive can be an intense experience. Alternatively, your backup could be made to arrive on-command to create a certain power-trip for the player. Both are valid approaches when used appropriately, and I would praise both. At the same time, I don't necessarily think a game needs to be so compact that there's never a second wasted. Convenience is important, but I'd consider it nonessential insofar as the game isn't prohibitively lacking in it. There's a line between what's annoying and what's a pain in the ass, and I'd have to play a game for myself to see where it is with a number of titles. Others, like Breath of the Wild, well, just looking at it tells me enough. But RDR2 I'm a little more skeptical; after all, playing games is kinda Jim's job, whereas it's just a hobby for me. I imagine dead time for animations would be far more irksome for someone who needs to get content out. Not saying he's wrong, just that he might have time concerns that the average consumer wouldn't; but honestly the reverse could also be true. Would need to see it for myself, I think. Imo frivolous detail is not necessarily a problem, but that also doesn't mean it necessarily isn't one, either. Depends on the detail, depends on the game.

I dunno, I feel like the dallying around and pointless detail really makes red dead 2 for me and personally I'm kinda glad the pace is so slow. It feels like a subdued western movie, not grand theft horse, and it's a nice change of pace.

I’m looking forward to Jim doing a video about an edition of the new Devil May Cry game that I heard is around over $8000. $8000?! Are you kidding me?!

i did not like the horse whistling mechanic in BOTW until i got the ancient gear for it which let me call it no matter where the horse was. even across the whole map.

I don't agree with Jim over RDR 2. The details in hunting actually make the game more fun... to me. It makes my hunt feel special unlike Ass Greed where an animal is just a lousy press of a button. That is the point of the hunting mechanics, that's why it is RDR's hunting mechanics and not simply a copy-paste of Ass Greed. The gun swapping and dress changing mechanics are what the combat systems are designed around. The slow pace... I love it, it makes the world feel more lived in. I'd been waiting for a game like it, it is the point of the game. Disregarding that fact is like saying Crysis went way too far with it's graphics where that is actually the point of it's existence, no wonder why Crysis 2 is shit. As for the horse balls, I'll find something.

"Twigs and bubble gum" I'm gonna have to remember that

I love hunting and skinning! It feels more simulationish, and I thoroughly enjoy sims. I enjoy euro truck driver, that's like literally playing a game that's also a boring job, yet it's amazingly fun.

Holy crap how big are your lungs!?

"Is Hyrule made of Oil and Soap?" When it comes to Skyward Sword... you bet!

Having a whole animation for looting is so annoying. After a giant shootout where I have this intense moment of gameplay, I then have to stop my adrenaline rush and loiter around the battlefield for 5 minutes picking up 20 different corpses

I said the same stuff about Breath of the Wild's rain mechanics being an example of horrible game design. I love BotW, but the rain is awful, you can't do one of the primary modes of transportation in that game: climbing; so it stops your forward progress for no reason. Now you get to wait 5 minutes before you get to have fun again. The only areas where rain was any good in that game were enclosed spaces designed around the rain which is about 2% or so of the game. Yet people are defending rain by saying that it's more realistic that you would slip on rocks that you are trying to climb on and therefore rain is a good mechanic. I don't care if it's realistic because whenever it rains it forces me to wait 5 tedious minutes to continue playing. And whenever people defend the rain in the game they conveniently forget how unrealistic it is for steel swords to shatter after being used a dozen or so times, or that there is a magic rune that can control metallic objects or freeze time for specific objects.

I'm personally someone that LOVES the hunting in RDR2, I hated the hunting in Far Cry and AC,it was super easy, tedious and not special at all. While RDR2 I actually feel like I have to strategize and stalk my animal for a great reward, its intense and exciting for me.

Hmmm, not sure if I agree with this take. I like the fact that there are games that aren't afraid to inconvenience the player for the sake of commitment to the developer's vision.

Can't believe there is shrinking balls but no horse dangus. You call that immersion?

I can't wait for RDR 3 where every few hours in game you'll have to stop and wait for your horse to take a pee

Idk man, I'm enjoying the hell out of the attention to detail and realism.

But the real question is: "Are the horse balls funny?" ...and yeah, they kind of are.

Jim give rockstar a break the 100hr crunch was optional......just like microtransactions... And special editions And deluxe editions And super deluxe editions And collector's editions And super deluxe collector's edition And super deluxe collector's edition without the game And the super detailed not sure if it's made out of real dead animal skin even though poaching is bad and #savetheanimals jacket edition. My fingers hurt😂🤣

"This video requires payment to watch"... wtf?!

I also enjoy when you get the perfect shot on the perfect animal and then for reasons i can't seem to find the quality of the pelt is either good or poor. Edit: you can't carry all your guns but your bag can contain everything you pick up. Let's not forget that your horse can carry all the guns 5 hats and outfits camping gear all the large masks you bought.... Yep

I like the looting animations because it’s more immersive and you feel more connected to the world. Where as a game like AC you just magically wave your hand and things just vacuum up.