I'm talking obeyed the traffic lights, paused for sleep, only carried a sword and dagger or whatever else fits in the world and setting. Not just my Shepard wouldn't do that.
I would love to read what you did and how you got immersed.
I'm also curious, for those that are able to RP, if you also did make belief as a kid. I'm asking because I really never could and now as much as I want to cannot RP in any game. I'll admit to being envious for those that can spend so much time in Skyrim or actually self-insert with a silent protagonist.
EDIT: Thanks for the replies from everyone so far. Will read them when I get a chance. One roleplay I like is the out of game but still in game roleplay. Example being this gameplay trailer from The Division (Yes Super Best Friends I was the person that liked this). One day I hope to will find one for Sea of Thieves (Either out of or in game) that doesn't make me cringe.
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I once wore my shirt half untucked while playing Uncharted, does that count?
Every Skyrim playthrough. I have only played stealth archer once.
Ghost of Tsushima was the only time I ever full committed, didn’t even do it on purpose. Just found myself doing what I felt Jin would do in the world and making sure my outfit matched how I thought he would be feeling/the setting.
I even changed up my plan of attack based on what point of the story I was at and based on how much of the Samurai code I felt was still influencing him.
I must’ve changed my outfit like 1000000 times over the course of my playthrough. Great game.
I used to do this allll the time with previous GTA games, and even the original Driver game from years ago. I was never allowed to listen to the games with volume because of the language, so I’d make up my own stories. I had an older brother with older friends so that’s why I had access to such games as an 8 y/o haha
I’ve only done that in GTA when bored (at which point I’ll follow laws or legitimately just enjoy doing taxi missions.
Detroit : Become Human
In my mind Connor was attached to being the most pragmatic android, Markus was a true revolutionist and Kara tried to protect the little girl at all cost.
Also : Disco Elysium and The Talos Principle 2.
One time I played Fallout 4 as a cowardly brainiac who didn’t want to leave Sanctuary. You have to reload this one basement over and over until it generates a Crystal Decanter. Then you can use the crystal to create a radio beacon, which will bring traders to your town. From there it’s just your tolerance for tedium. I can’t remember how long it lasted but I wanna say I got like 8 or 10 lvls before I got bored and ventured out into the wastes.
This is not something I ever really did on my own as a gamer (39m, gaming hard since age 5) but I’ve started doing it now that my daughter is old enough to watch me play. For example, currently playing Star Wars Outlaws and it is very important to her that I walk (not run) through city crowds, stop to eat at the city food stalls whenever I’m there, and frequently stop to pet Nix, the cute little sidekick character. She was the same way watching Skyrim, she always wanted me to go home and rest, check on my family, etc. I like it! It adds to the immersion.
Neverwinter Nights (forever ago)
We made our own modules and everything. The most fun I ever had playing D&D without paper & dice 👍
My kids and I sometimes rp like that in Totally Reliable Delivery Service.
I know ive done short bits where I follow the road laws or try to be normal etc but I cant think of any dedicated runs or doin it for real lengths of time since this old Minecraft RP server my friends and I played on over a decade ago.
I don’t remember what my character or role was, but as a group we owned a roadside inn just outside the human kingdom capital.
One time the city guards blew up a wall with tnt and rushed in for a drug raid…. they got the wrong inn. Also killed our wolf. And refused to fix the wall. That’s how we met the King though, and shit went on from there.
Stray.
Pushing off *all* the items off the tables, scratching *all* the rugs and furniture, making *everyone* stumble over me when running.
Just like a real cat.
Most times I play an RPG.
I’m not obeying traffic lights and I can’t see why my character would there, either.
I role-played as the average gamer and gave up on Elden Ring after an hour
I always make time to go to the Afterlife and have a drink before a major mission in Cyberpunk. Just gotta do it.
Skyrim. Often with mods to enforce it, or at least to enforce it *better*.
Playing an Imperial-aligned soldier? While on missions I must switch into Imperial armor, even if I have better armor, and unless specifically ordered to infiltrate I cannot enter any Stormcloak-owned cities without running a risk (dice roll) of being recognized and caught (a.k.a. I console-command myself a hold bounty and turn myself in to the guards).
All the time. It’s what keeps me invested in old games. I have some pretty extensively modded installs of Skyrim and Fallout 4. For Skyrim I play 6 different characters that all behave differently and follow different questlines. I typically walk everywhere or use carriages only to fast travel, and I deliberately lower my carry weight as to be more selective with what I take with me when looting a dungeon. Same with Fallout 4. I enjoy playing a survivalist with many little safehouses strewn about the wasteland and I love just exploring and collecting decorations and supplies for my shelters. I also avoid fast travel in Fallout as I find it makes survival more interesting with random encounters.
In Cyberpunk I quite enjoy putting in music and walking/driving around NC in a realistic manner and just taking in the atmosphere. I’m also a photographer IRL so I like to practice my craft virtually in the photo mode.
Ace Combat 7 i will RP different styles, Like my favorite one when i RPd South African airforce, played the game with our Gripen E, though we use the Gripen C, game only has the Gripen E. Next i should play a CAS, maybe a Russian SU based plane, mainly to the speed can help with later missions where the A-10’s cannon won’t be much use due to longer engagement ranges.
Current game is Nioh 2 where i’m a full fledged Samurai with a ninja mask, So Katana with the occasional Tonfa use but that’s rare
Skyrim, I played a non-violent merchant. Never attacked enemies, never fast traveled, made all my money by gathering plants, crafting items and potions, and selling them to other merchants. Had a companion and a dog to take the heat if need be.
It was fun for several hours but got old after a while and really wasn’t much of a challenge (or thematically appropriate) once I had companions.
I roleplay in Dungeons and Dragons a couple of times a week.
This is the main way I game.
I, a 35 year old man, have been really channeling my inner Lara Croft lately. I manually light my torch at the cave entrance, and walk slowly and cautiously, drawing my pistol and extinguishing my torch when I hear voices further inside. I try to limit running to combat or jogging down an easy hill.
Some of my favorites have been TLOU, Ghost of Tsushima, Returnal, and Metal Gear Solid 5.
Love me some imagination gaming.
Red Dead Redemption 2.
Easy to do as it’s basically a cowboy simulator and, by nature of the gameplay and design, kind of forces you to slow down and play the role of a cowboy.
Recently cyberpunk got me there with V and panam.
World of Warcraft
I used to enjoy writing so I would play my undead mage as a side hero when our guild wasn’t raiding and I had nothing to do. I would hang around Tanaris as a lowly traveler just looking to get by. I even had a theme song I would play when I was wondering through the sands aimlessly – CCR Lodi. Was going to make a YouTube video montage of my travels in Tanaris but never got around to it. Probably stuck with this narrative for about 2 years before the server got shut down : private server Wowscape (Peyton the owner got done by blizzard)
Kingdom come deliverance.. I sucked in that game when I first started playing but I like being sneaky. I got great at picking locks, I then would sneak into every house in a village and suffocate/stab the owner in their sleep and steal all their belongings. Put it all in my storage box at my camp for a while in game (week or so) then sell it. That meant I had all the best gear and lots of money, once I had good weapons and armor I could do missions.
I was basically role-playing as a serial killer
Final Fantasy XIV. I was AFK, then a Lalafel walked up to me, selling drugs. Who had an accomplice. Then started to sell more. I told them I left my oven off, then dashed out of there.
Rdr 2
Actually walking to a bar and drink to celebrate.
Walking my horse around town instead of running
Taking the train instead of fast travelling
Rdr2 is the very few game i deliberately WALK to my destination because how chill the game is.
Baldurs gate 3, I have a mod for demon wings so my character is a succubus that kills all the male characters and only keeps the female ones
I like to make characters for pretty much every RPG I play. My most recent Skyrim character was a basic Nord adventurer who only used a sword, and I had a whole adventuring party thanks to mods.
In Cyberpunk, I play V differently depending on the life path and build that I choose.
I decided to make myself in Starfield, and I’ve been having fun thinking about how I would react if I became a universe-hopping demigod.
Dragon Age Origins. Played as a dalish/nomad elf. Even tho there were better weapons n equipment available I only used gear linked to dalish
I once got really, *really* high off of some special brownies, and started obeying every traffic law in GTA V.
I was *in* the game. I wasn’t playing anymore, it felt as if I was *actually* driving around in Los Santos. Hell, I was even panicking slightly when I didn’t stop for a red light, and I spotted a police car next to me. When they obviously didn’t do anything, I started getting paranoid they were tailing me somehow. I was legitimately worried about going to jail.
Of course, that was also the moment my GF dropped by, to introduce me to a life-long friend of hers. Said friend’s first impression of me will always be “stoned out of his gourd, freaking out about some video game cops not arresting him for running a fake red light”.
I have never done any devoted role playing. However, there are small things I always do in games to get into the spirit, you could say.
Any game with a sleep system, I make my character sleep appropriately. Night to morning. Early sleeper early riser. Late night, I’ll decide if I let them sleep in or not. I never just sleep at like 3pm or something., and I never just make them sleep days upon days to trigger something.
Similarily, I respect waiting systems. If someone wants to meet at 8pm and it’s 11am, I am not just going to use the wait system and make my character stand there for 9 hours. I will go do things. Shop. Explore. Level skills. Do another quest in the time.
If the game allows it, I will make the save picture photogenic for my save file each time I end a session. I don’t just save staring at my bed or with the camera panned absolutely nowhere.
I’ve spent hours before RPing as a trucker in GTAV director mode. Pick the crustiest looking trucker npc I can and make cluckin bell deliveries from paleto bay throughout San Andreas. Eventually the spawns get goofy and when I can’t find CnB trailers anymore, I turn into a freelance trucker hauling anything I can attach to my semi. If it’s a shipping container I go to the port. If it’s a vehicle hauler I’ll go to either the port or one of the auto yards and Log trucks go to the lumber mill. After each couple trips I go back to my home base in either sandy shores or near grove street and wait a few in game hours while I deal with irl stuff like dinner or laundry.
I try to adhere to the laws at least once in every GTA playthrough. It always ends with me in a high-speed chase with the military due to a misunderstanding with an elderly lady that wants me dead.
i’m currently doing another cp2077 playthrough and i always get pretty into the roleplaying aspect of it. everything from V’s clothes and cyberware, her combat style, and even the car she drives is deliberately picked to fit her and how i think she’d move through the world. i also enjoy utilizing her apartments/safehouses, and i even have a mod that expands the text messages she gets so it feels even more like she actually exists in the lives of the people she meets in NC.
i also get really into it in divinity and baldur’s gate 3; larian are masters at delivering great roleplaying opportunities.
I doubt anyone has even gone that far. The most I’ve RP is in Cyberpunk where I set rules to my character, respected the background story, chose the build from the start and even though there would’ve been dozen better ones, didn’t change it. Also lived with the consequences. Save scumming is for losers.
Another ones are Baldur’s Gate 3 and Disco Elysium, but they are basically made for RP and a lot of rules and such you’d set for yourself in games are integrated in to the game.
My most recent Skyrim playthrough. I made an Orc that specialised in heavy weapons and armour. I would spec into heavy armour, two-handed weapons, one-handed weapons, smithing, enchanting and block, and avoid specing into speech, magic, archery, light armour, sneak, lockpicking or pickpocketing. He was a massive, combat heavy fighter and didn’t like using magic, sneaking around or avoid fighting with fancy words. He liked to smith and dabble in enchanting. It was fun being a straightforward fighting class with no fluff in using magic (Except using Shouts).
Been thinking of doing another class, but will need to research classes and character specs before I commit.
Lmao, when I was 19ish, my cousin was in HS, and my other cous, his sister was in middle school or smthing the three of us would take turns wrecking up VIce CIty, except the girl only ever wanted to drive… PROPERLY. We had to institure a time limit for her because she’d never die.
What I did in GTA IV when I wanted a hit of action packed cinematics outside the plot/missions was I’d pretend I had been hired to assassinate a crooked cop. I’d ride around in a boring looking car until I saw a cop car. Speed up along side them, drift my car in front of them to stop them, bail out of my car and light up the cops in the car with an assault rifle, jump in the car and evade the cops in the high speed pursuit.
Anway, almost never obey traffic signals but I always love RPing in games. In Skyrim/CyberPunk I try to sleep every night. Actually I got the camp mod in Skyrim just to do that because I didn’t like that I couldn’t make it back home from my adventures every night, and beds/sleeping bags were never around when I needed them.
Skyrim was my escape back when I was struggling in minimum wage slavery and couch surfing. I remember once I aced a bunch of bandits at their camp. Don’t remember where it was, but they just had a little outdoor camp with a fire and some lean tos on the side of a mountain, and down the slope from there was an absolutely gorgeous ice blue river of the coolest cleanest water you’d ever had in your life if you could ever take a drink, full of fish to eat, and the view just kept going over a valley and more snow peaked mountains on the other side. Green grass everywhere butterflies. I was so depressed at the time. I never wanted to do anything more in my life that crawl through my laptop screen into that world and spend the rest of my life in that camp, never working a day in my life again, never owing anyone a dime or a moment of my time again, never even seeing money again, never waking up to the sound of an alarm clock at any time and damn sure never before sunrise again, only to morning light and birds singing. Eating fish out of that river for every meal until I drop fuckin dead. To be clear, I fuckin’ hate fish.
Still want to.
Anyway! My favorite genere is probably GTAs. I never obey traffic laws much but I always wish they had a WAY more sophisticated system for tracking police/suspicion against the player character. The hard part about doing crime isn’t ANY of the doing the actual crime. It’s the getting away with it. There’s just something so immersion breaking about driving my registered automobile from the garage of my apartment… to do the drive by… and then straight back to my apartment. Times 1000 if in the middle of a police high speed persuit, I run in my house that I just lead them back to, hit save, and they all get amnesia and wander off?
So dumb.
Half the game should be cheesing shit to not get caught.
I envision a “Heat System” that actually tracks heat on the player character, and every gun they use, and every car they use, every residence they use, business, storage locker etc. Basically the more people you kill with the same gun the worse it is if you get caught with that gun, up to maybe even Game Over. If there were “witnesses” to a high profile crime your character commited while driving a particular car, then the police would have an APB out on that car, basicall the star is attached to the car and any time you take it out you’re going to get into a pursuit at the first cop car you pass, until you drastically change the appearance of the car. You might have different cars registered to your character, businesses that are fronts but appear legit, and unregistered “operational” vehicles you would use for your criming so they wouldn’t trace back to your character’s identity and just get them arrested, Game Over. Obviously the worst thing you could ever do is run to any of your homes or businesses while in the middle of a polcie pursuit. Game Over.
Anway. Obviously they don’t have this heat systems so I just role play that they do.
carrion
You play as a monster trying to escape a laboratory. I got way into the role of being the monster. Instead of just barreling through when i could, I went full horror movie. Waiting in the vents above and picking off the people 1 by 1 never being seen. Hiding in the water then slowly emerging behind the npc when they would turn around. Taking over the body of an npc, then jumping from body to body when I couldn’t be seen just recreating “The Thing.” I could have just eaten or ignored many enemies but was just in the monster head space. Recommend it for a spooky game night.
LA Noir