RPG is a term that doesn’t really signify much these days in the world of gaming. You know what an RPG is likely to be, but the term itself absolutely wouldn’t describe that. While RPGs can tell incredible stories or offer fun turn-based combat, they are rarely actually role-playing games where you find yourself deep in the world and able to forge your own adventure.
But, some games decide to actually lean into that, creating immersive experiences that pull you into these worlds and make you a part of them. While they may not be RPGs as we know them, these are certainly games meant for role playing and losing yourself to the experiences they offer. Whether through outstanding atmosphere, player choice, or more creative means, here are the most immersive games.
10/10 The Witcher 3
Perhaps one of the most famous fantasy RPGs of the modern day, The Witcher setting offers a sprawling fantasy world with so much to see and do within it, with the Witcher 3 being the largest and most polished to date. The game sees you once again taking control of Geralt, now sent on a mission to find his daughter and save her from the ghostly Wild Hunt.
What makes the Witcher 3 a world you can get lost in is just how much there is to do and how rich it all is. The Witcher isn’t like other RPGs that will give plain old fetch quests with minimal flavor — even the tiniest favors have a story to them, and this makes everything in the game feel so alive. This isn’t even mentioning the mechanics of preparing different equipment for monsters and other realism mechanics that make you step into Geralt’s shoes as a Witcher.
9/10 Mass Effect
Mass Effect is perhaps one of the most influential games of all time, being one of the first to offer a world that would react so heavily to player choice and dialogue, something that so many games now try to emulate. Mass Effect sees the player take control of Commander Shepard as travel the galaxy and attempt to fight against an alien race known as the Reapers.
What makes Mass Effect so immersive and excellent isn’t just that it offers the player choices, but it’s that these choices allow exploration of a finely written world that reacts realistically to your choices; characters grow through the story and remember how you’ve treated them. These elements make this world feel bigger and more lived in. It’s a perfect balance for a sci-fi masterpiece like Mass Effect.
8/10 FTL: Faster Than Light
FTL certainly isn’t immersive in the traditional way, utilizing a top-down tactical view of everything and letting the player act almost like a god with pauses and all the gamey mechanics right in their face. How are you supposed to get into the shoes of your crew like that? Well, FTL offers a different type of immersion. The game sees you taking control of the crew of a spaceship, tasked with delivering intel to the Federation in a losing war, and braving dangerous space.
While you won’t ever feel like you’re in the world, the world will end up feeling real. FTL has this strange effect where despite having no personality written in, people end up making their own stories with their crew and journey, assigning each one personality based on the tiniest of events, which leads to heartbreak should they meet a grisly fate. It’s a strange experience, but it certainly makes memorable and emotional stories through each run.
7/10 The Life And Suffering Of Sir Brante
One of the key pieces in making a player become immersed in a world is to make it feel like it can be affected by them and their choices. It can prove hard to make a game with true consequences due to costs and the nature of gameplay sequences needing to happen. But, The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante cuts away the fat and extra bits, leaving only a story to get lost in and truly be a part of.
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante sees you follow the titular Sir Brante through his entire life in a strange fantasy world. You’ll make choices along the way that decide Brante’s future and who he will become. This is where the true immersion comes; rather than having just small nods to your choices, the choices you make will lead to entirely different stories, and you’ll feel the consequences for decisions hours into the game. If you want a game that lets you actually make a difference in a fictional world, Sir Brante offers that in spades.
6/10 Citizen Sleeper
Not every game needs a sprawling epic world in order to immerse the player; there are plenty of ways to pull the player in, and utilizing that interactivity is one of the most effective. Citizen Sleeper nails this. Citizen Sleeper is an RPG that sees you as a strange robotic being on the run from your makers and slowly breaking down, desperately trying to survive aboard a run-down space station called The Eye.
This isn’t a game that pulls you in through the story — although it certainly helps that it has a finely crafted world full of layered characters — but rather, it conveys everything through its gameplay. Citizen Sleeper gives you a series of dice each day that you must use to scrounge what you can, taking heavy risks at times. Through this simple gameplay loop, it manages to put you into the shoes of your Sleeper, desperately working with unreliable energy and trying to survive day-to-day in spite of it.
5/10 Fallout: New Vegas
The Fallout series is one that made sure to lean into the role playing side of RPGs with the first two games, and although that got traded away for more accessible gameplay, New Vegas acts as a combination of both styles and shines brightest for it. Fallout: New Vegas sees you take control of a courier in the Mojave Wasteland who has been robbed and shot in the head. You journey across the desert to get revenge and eventually decide the fate of New Vegas.
Much like other immersive RPGs, New Vegas offers the player many choices in how to handle the conflicts they run into — whether it be through speech, gunfire, savagery, or stealth. While that is good, the main thing that allows it to be so immersive is the world building. There are so many details to find within New Vegas’s complex conflicts, so many different points of view to grapple with, and so many little stories that the Mojave truly feels complicated and real.
4/10 Kenshi
While most people like to think of escapism when talking about game immersion, that’s not always the case. Games can offer the full range of emotions and tones; immersion simply means getting lost in that. And when it comes to being lost in negative emotions, no game pulls this off better than Kenshi. Kenshi sees you dropped into a strange wasteland world full of various factions, races, and people trying to survive, and you are nothing more than another one of them.
What makes Kenshi so immersive is just how brutal it is both in story and gameplay. Kenshi doesn’t offer some grand goal to the player, instead asking them to simply survive in a world that is out to get them — an endless wasteland full of warlords and danger. The gameplay reflects this as you are no stronger than anyone around you, and the game makes sure you know that, making every task a struggle you have to overcome. It’s not a pleasant experience, but it’s incredibly immersive and captivating.
3/10 Deus Ex
As one of the originators of the immersive sim genre, Deus Ex earns its place among the best. Deus Ex sees you taking control of a technologically advanced cyborg agent tasked with taking down hostile threats to the world through whatever means necessary. Through your adventure, you’ll learn more about this strange future and become part of a massive conspiracy.
The game creates its immersion through player choice, allowing for players to create their own character and tackle scenarios how they want. While other games have gone all-in on this style, even most modern games don’t do it as well as Deus Ex. Deus Ex reacts to nearly every choice you can make and gives consequences that feel real. This, combined with an unprecedented level of freedom, makes this game feel like a living breathing world you’re simply a part of.
2/10 Disco Elysium
Disco Elysium manages to get you to embrace your suspension of disbelief and simply feel for the world and story without second throughts. A fairly traditional RPG, Disco Elysium sees you taking control of an amnesiac cop who is trying to both figure out who he is and who killed the body hanging in a nearby tree.
Disco Elysium is strange in terms of immersion, as you always have a set character with a set backstory and (mostly) set traits. Even so, it gives you an interesting form of role play; rather than decide who this cop is, you get to decide who he becomes. You decide how he copes with the problems he faces — and whether he faces those problems at all. Through the mechanics, you get to feel every struggle of the path you choose, making for a powerful experience.
1/10 OneShot
Most games try to immerse the player by fine-tuning their world building and offering dynamic consequences to ease the player into the role of their protagonist. OneShot takes a different approach, instead bringing the player themselves to the game and making them part of the story. OneShot is an RPG Maker game seeing you trying to guide a young child named Niko back home. They’ve been transported to a strange dying world, carrying the sun that can save that world, even as the world fights against you.
And when it says “you,” it means you. Not you as some character, but you as the person playing the game. Niko will talk to you directly, and the game will even mess around with your computer itself. The game shatters the fourth wall right from the beginning, and this allows for a deeper connection between the character and the game — especially Niko, who is easy to grow attached to since they’re calling out to you, trying to connect with you as a person. This offers such a unique level of immersion, it leaves OneShot standing tall about the rest.
