Skyrim isn't what most players would think of as an immersive sim, nor is Baldur's Gate 3 - but Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio disagrees, and he makes quite a convincing case.
Speaking in an interview with PC Gamer, Colantonio details what he considers to qualify as an "immersive sim" - and his definition is more broad than most. When asked why the genre doesn't have a Call of Duty-esque smash hit to boast, the Arkane veteran behind iconic gems like Dishonored and Prey simply says it does - and points to Skyrim as an example. "If you really think about it, Bethesda games - or Obsidian games - are very, very immersive sim."
Colantonio continues, explaining his stance. "The overlap between first-person RPG and immersive sim, it's very blurry. I would say they are less physical than Arkane games, and they're more on the stats, but at the end of the day, they totally rely on simulation. Doing things such as fooling a merchant by putting a bucket on its head is definitely an immersive same thing, right?" As someone familiar with such shenanigans in Skyrim, I'd agree.
There's certainly a point to be made about Bethesda's use of simulation - and Colantonio makes it. "We always make immersive sims. We've always done them, and we always will. But now, when it comes to the general, you can make an action immersive sim, or you can make an RPG immersive sim. I don't want to speak for Bethesda, but I would be surprised if they say, 'Oh, not at all.' Their games rely heavily on simulations."
Bethesda's beloved RPGs aren't the only ones featuring imsim qualities, though - Colantonio asserts that Larian Studios' own banger, Baldur's Gate 3, is "definitely as at least immersive sim-adjacent." That is, "if being turn-based still makes sense for an immersive sim. You can definitely see where they were going with that." Upon considering the fact that players have beat the RPG as four cats and run the entire game as a wheel of cheese, this checks out.
Colantonio concludes by expressing how open-ended the definition of "immersive sim" really is: "We could discuss forever, what is an immersive sim or not? To me, an immersive sim is real-time, [to] some people an immersive sim is in first-person. So it's like, where do you draw the line? And that's why I think, from a marketing standpoint, it's a lot of wasted bullets."
