Splinter Cell: Conviction & Dead Space - Immersion

As I said of Bioshock, games can utilize different tools to immerse the gamer into the world of the game. Further examples can be found in Splinter Cell: Conviction and Dead Space.

Dead Space and Splinter Cell Conviction each immerse the gamer in the world by tweeking the rules of gaming. Traditionally gamers are accustomed to third-person shooters (TPSs) featuring healthbars on screen as part of the heads-up-display (HUD). In Dead Space, a survival-horror game released in 2008, the usual health bar is transformed by having a more intuitive and integrated display of your health.

Your character, Isaac, is a mechanic on a spacecraft. As part of his job, he dons a full space suit that features a segmented blue meter along his spine. This meter can be assumed to have some sort of connection to Isaac's nervous system, and is used to inform the player of their current health. The blue bar fills or empties as health is lost or gained. An additional meter on Isaac's back keeps track of his ability to use his telekinetic powers. See this in action in the video below. The video is actually a vidoc (video documentary) about the art of the game and the game desginers' inspirations.



Splinter Cell Conviction is a brand new game that came out this year on April 13th, it is the fifth installment of the series. Previous games in the series informed the player of their objective through audio from other characters and displayed the objective in text boxes on the screen. Conviction puts the player in the head of Sam. In the new game, Sam's objective are projected onto the world.

The objectives are to be read as Sam's thoughts and motvies being displayed in the world. Instead of a text box jarring us out of the game's world, Sam's thoughts become the player's thoughts as they are seamlessly integrated into the environement. The video below is of the game's demo that is available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The demo teaches the players the controls of the game in this demo through the projection of objectives.




Both of these games communicate information to the player while not pulling them out of them game. I suspect this tactic of creating immersion will continue to advance as games continue to evolve new ways to immerse the player into the game's world.