The series within XR Design examines specific examples of excellent XR designs. I’m watching the game today Synapses Explore the concept of embodiment and why it is important for VR games.
Editor’s Note: It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since the film first came out, but insights are as relevant in 2025 as ever. Return to the front page to continue discussions about embodying as an important design concept for engaging VR content.
Find the complete video below or continue reading the adopted text version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy0d6bvnmqe
Definition of embodiment
Welcome to another episode of Inside XR Design. I’ll talk today Synapse (2023)PSVR 2 exclusive game from developer NDREAMS. However, specifically, I intend to look at the game through the lens of a concept called an embodiment.
So, what the hell is embodied, and why are you talking about it rather than talking about all the cool shooting, explosions and smart designs in the game? Well, that would help us understand why Specific design decisions Synapses It’s very effective. So just stick to me here.
Etymization is the term I use to describe my sense of existence. It exists physically Within the VR experience. Like you actually Standing in the world around you.
And now your A reasonable response is, “But why are you not already using the word immersion for that?”
Well, colloquially, I do, but I want to make an important distinction between “immersion” and “embodimentalization.”
For the purposes of our discussion, “immersion” is when something has your perfect thing Note. We all agree that films can be immersive, right? When a story or action is so engrossed, it is not even something other than theatre at the moment. but I even have the most immersive movie you’ve ever seen You thought you were Physically In the movie? Certainly not.
And that is where “concrete” comes. Because of the specificity, I define immersion as being present Note. On the other hand, embodiedness is about your physical presence and how it relates to the world around you.
So I think it’s important to recognize that all VR games are immersed in for free. By literally taking over your vision and listening to your hearing, in most cases they automatically pay your full attention. Immerse yourself in the seconds you place it on your headset.
However, some VR games are one step ahead of us. Not only do they have our attention, they also make us feel like our whole body has been transported to a virtual world. If you reach out and touch, just as you actually feel things in the game.
Understood, so Be careful about immersion and Essence is the feeling that you are actually there.
For clarity, the embodiment is not binary. It’s the spectrum. Some VR games have been slightly embodied, while others have been very embodied. But what makes the difference?
That’s exactly what we want to talk about Synapses.
Covers you can feel
A look Synapses It may seem like a fairly common VR shooter, but there are some really intentional design decisions that will encourage strong embodiedness. The first thing I would like to talk about is the cover system.
All VR Shooters There’s a cover. You can walk behind the wall and it blocks the shot for you. But beyond that, the walls are not physically related to the actual body. It’s just a stationary object.
However, synapses can interact with the walls and other covers, whether they are grabbed by their hands and either out of their body or cover them. This really feels natural and is perfect for gameplay.
And as you move yourself physically in relation to the wall, just move back and forth with your thumb and the wall will start to feel more realistic. Specifically, when used as an anchor for grabbing and moving by a wall, it feels more realistic as it unconsciously becomes part of the proprioceptive model.
Understanding proprioception
Let’s take a second here to explain proprioception, as it is a lot of terminology when we talk about tricking our bodies and talking as we think we are somewhere else.
The clearest example I have ever seen of proprioception is this clip. Listen, I didn’t expect you to show me a cat clip in this series, but I’m here. Watch your cat approach the table carefully… without really thinking about it, it moves your ears effortlessly so that it doesn’t get in the way at the right time.
This is proprioception in the workplace. It is a model of your body and where it relates to what’s around you. To know exactly when and where your cat moves his ears to avoid them without looking at the table, he must have some innate sense of the space occupying the ears and how it relates to the space occupying the table.
For cover system Synapsesyou intuitively understand that “grab this wall and move your hand to the right will move my body to the left.”
So it’s not just “what you see”, but the wall becomes something More than that. You can directly engage with them to influence your body position, so they will relate to you in a more meaningful way to you. In doing so, your mind will begin to pay more attention to the walls associated with your body. They start to feel more realistic. And, even more, your own body begins to feel more present in the simulation… you feel more “embodied.”
Mugout
Synaptic walls can actually be used for more than just covering. You can also use them to push magazines into weapons.
Retreat from the realization for a moment – this is a very cool design detail. With the internal XR design #4, I spent a lot of time on realistic weapon models Half Life: Alix (2020). but Synapses Since it’s a run-and-gun game, the developers took a completely different approach and arrived at a fast-paced but attractive reload system.
Instead of messing up stock and chambering, the magazine in this game just pops out and floats there. To reload, return it to your weapon. It may seem stupid, but it works in the sci-fi context of the game, recreating the complexity while maintaining much of the fun and game flow that comes with it.
And now we can see how we see this pair beautifully Comes with a cover system for the cover game.
The game’s cover system requires one hand to use. So how can I reload? Pushing the magazine against the wall and reloading the gun is the perfect solution to allow players to use both systems at the same time.
But what do you guess? This isn’t just It’s a really clever design. It’s another way you can get involved with the wall as if it were actually right in front of you. you You need to know If your arm is close enough to the wall, use it to reload. Again, the brain begins to incorporate walls and their proximity into proprioceptive models. You’ll start I really feel the space Between your body and the wall.
So both of these can be used to hide or put out using the wall, and the wall can be used to push the magazine into the gun – make the wall It feels more realistic Because you interact with them in a meaningful way, close to them.
And there is this. When the world around you starts to feel more realistic, you can actually Standing in it. That’s a realization. Remember: The virtual world is always “immersive.” Because they inevitably pay our full attention. But the embodiment goes beyond what we see. feel.
And when it comes to reaching out and touching the world… Synapse takes things to a whole new level with its incredible telekinesis system.
