I have a theory about why some games give players that magical feeling of infinite possibilities, and what causes players to lose that feeling over time. I think it has to do with learning a game's visual language.
When you first start playing a game, or just look at the trailers and concept art, the visuals might promise you tons of possibilities that the gameplay doesn't actually support. But as you play the game, you learn to pay attention to only those entities on the screen that are relevant to the gameplay, and filter out those that are just scenery. When your brain realizes that the beautiful mountains in the backdrop are just a painting and you'll never be able to go there, you no longer react to them emotionally.
That theory suggests several ways to improve immersion in games. You could make a conscious attempt to mix up the game's visual language until the very end, like in the old adventure games, where anything on the screen could eventually become relevant in surprising ways. You could make the graphics simpler, to avoid suggesting possibilities that are not supported by the gameplay. Or you could pay attention to which possibilities are suggested by the graphics of your game. If the mountains in the background are so beautiful that the player wants to go there - let them!
Yes, that's a great point. It's like Cypher in the Matrix: "All I see now is hallway, backdrop, arena..." And the more games you play, the quicker you're able to condense them down to their bare essentials.
When you first start playing a game, or just look at the trailers and concept art, the visuals might promise you tons of possibilities that the gameplay doesn't actually support. But as you play the game, you learn to pay attention to only those entities on the screen that are relevant to the gameplay, and filter out those that are just scenery. When your brain realizes that the beautiful mountains in the backdrop are just a painting and you'll never be able to go there, you no longer react to them emotionally.
That theory suggests several ways to improve immersion in games. You could make a conscious attempt to mix up the game's visual language until the very end, like in the old adventure games, where anything on the screen could eventually become relevant in surprising ways. You could make the graphics simpler, to avoid suggesting possibilities that are not supported by the gameplay. Or you could pay attention to which possibilities are suggested by the graphics of your game. If the mountains in the background are so beautiful that the player wants to go there - let them!