realism
Realism is about expectations, not reality. RDR2 is considered an incredibly realistic game, despite the fact that the main character can skin a rabbit in a couple of seconds. GOT (before it jumped the shark) was considered realistic, despite it having dragons.
If we are told that a world has dragons, we suspend our disbelief about the dragons specifically and go on considering the show realistic. If a character in that show inexplicably teleports somewhere, we consider that unrealistic because we never expected anyone in the world to have that ability. If a character suddenly kills their best friend, despite talking for ages about how much they love them, we consider that unrealistic because it defies our expectations of how people behave around friends.
This is crucial to understand for game design, because many designers throw in mechanics for the sake of realism, even when they detract from the game experience. As long as players can reasonably suspend disbelief, it is fine if a game is not realistic.
Overwatch exists in a cartoonish world with different physics than us. The developers could have put fall damage into the game, but decided that it didn’t actually add anything, and removed it. Arthur from RDR2 should not be allowed to hold his breath underwater indefinitely, since Arthur seems like a normal human being. Madeline from Celeste can reasonably hold her breath underwater since it has been repeatedly shown that the physics of her world are totally different from ours and that honestly the whole video game might be a metaphor anyways.
#todo spiderman
