If there’s one thing gamers enjoy in their video games- no matter what platform they prefer to play on or what kind of games they like better than others- its attention to detail. Sure, we all love a good story, solid game design, and incredible visuals go a long way toward making the experience that much more special, but seeing tiny little details in the background that don’t necessarily do much to enhance the gameplay in any way but actually contribute significantly toward making the game richer and more immersive is great. It just goes to show that a lot of the times, developers actually go out of their way to put an incredible amount of work into the development of these video games, even on tiny details that may not, at first glance, seem all that significant.
In this list, we’ve compiled what we feel are fifteen such details in video games that help make the experience much more immersive and engaging. Obviously, due to the massive scope of the topic, there’s a lot we will have missed, so tell us about any such details you may have spotted in any games you’ve played in the comments section below!
Melting Ice Cubes in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Hideo Kojima always puts an insane amount of work into his games. In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, if players decide to shoot at bottles and ice cube jars for no reasons (as gamers often do), you can see the ice cubes scattering all around the environment, and if you pay attention and keep looking at them, you can actually see them melting.
Weapons Representation in Metroid Prime
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Ah, Metroid Prime. As if you weren’t already awesome enough to begin with. In this Retro-developed Gamecube masterpiece, different weapons that can be equipped are displayed on the visor, the in-game HUD, through hand gestures, meaning that Samus Aran equips them using these different hand gestures. However, what not many people notice is the fact that Samus Aran actually uses these different hand gestures- right down to the movements of her fingers- while equipping different weapons. This can be seen while X-Ray vision is equipped in-game.
Snow Accumulation on Car Windows in The Division
The Division is, despite the much maligned downgrade it received pre-launch, a great looking game, and it is chock full of tiny details throughout its open world. For instance, during snowstorms, snow actually accumulates very realistically on car windows and windshields, and if you bang into the cars, you can actually see all that gathered powdered snow fall away into the wind. It’s one of the many tiny little details in the game, and also one of the best.
Sandbags React Realistically to Gunshots in Uncharted 4
Uncharted 4 is brimming with tiny little details, a lot of which probably go unnoticed during first playthroughs. One such detail is how sandbags react to gunshots. When players take cover behind sandbags in Uncharted 4 and get shot at, you can actually see the bags reacting very realistically like sponges to the impact with incredible, fluid animations.
Rain in DriveClub
The weather effects in PS4 title DriveClub are absolutely bonkers. When it rains in the game, you can see the water droplets hitting your windshield and being wiped away by the car’s wiper blades, and even reacting realistically to wind and the speed you’re driving at. Granted, that doesn’t do much to make the game better in any way, but the incredible attention to detail should not go unappreciated.
The Joker Hallucinations in Batman: Arkham Knight
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The Dark Knight being tormented by hallucinations of the deceased Joker are a major theme in Arkham Knight, but did you know that these hallucinations go far, far beyond their role in the main story itself? Throughout the game in Gotham’s open world, players can see Joker’s face popping up in hallucinations throughout the environment, often popping up in such clever little ways that you may not even notice them at first glance.
Flip-Flops Actually Flip-Flop in Grand Theft Auto V
Players in GTA 5 can customize the three main protagonists to play whatever they like, but the flip-flops definitely sit at the top of the pile, at least in terms of footwear? Why? Because the flip-flops in GTA 5 are actually true to their name- they flip and flop! There’s tones of similar tiny details in the game, but this one has to be one of the tiniest, and as a result, also one of the most amusing.
The Painting in Dishonored
