Disregarding the believability of game worlds, stories, and mechanics, fans are always pining for further advances in gaming technology that will make them more realistic. There are a slew of articles readily available that focus on visuals and just how close the industry is getting to photorealistic graphics. While the look of a game goes a very long way to immersing players and blurring the line between fantasy and reality, there is so much more to it than detailed textures and near-human character models. LA Noire caused a wave across the gaming community when it took it to the next step with unbelievably advanced character models that crossed the uncanny valley and interacted in a way that made them feel genuinely human. However, while the boundaries of graphical prowess are forever being pushed, there are some limitations that just cannot be breached. Most likely, it is because of the following reasons that video games can never be 100% realistic.
8. Interactive Environments
With open world games being ubiquitous, gamers have become accustomed to exploring expansive and extremely detailed environments. But there are always limits to them. Even in the biggest worlds, there are always immersion-breaking boundaries that stop a player from going beyond a certain point. Often this takes the form of an unscalable mountain or an invisible wall. For a game to boast an entirely 100% explorable world, it would need to be prepared for players to break down these physical barriers. It doesn't even have to be in sandbox games either. Take a game like Red Faction. It broke several moulds by introducing GeoMod technology that allowed the player to bust down walls and bridges and find alternative routes. While the technology has moved on since, no game has been able to truly put the player in ultimate control by allowing them to break free from restrictive game environments to explore an almost endless world. Imagine an FPS where you can completely destroy the wall of a facility and escape into another part of the game that wasn't intended for story purposes, yet is still alive and detailed and just as germane to the environment. The idea just seems too grandiose to even consider.
