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Fun Club I love when video game worlds feel real and immersive, but one thing that always takes me out of that immersion is when there are no bathrooms.

Derachi

Derachi

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Important preface: I don’t want to see anyone using the bathroom. That’s not what this is about.

Pretty much all living creatures on earth have to get rid of bodily waste. That’s just a fact. When I see a video game location, like someone’s house, or an office, and it’s lovingly realized and laid out to be a believable place, I love it. I love when locations in video games feel real. HOWEVER if there’s no bathrooms, I’m sorry but it’s not going to work for me. It just isn’t.

Like, look at most Zelda games. Architecturally, the houses in Zelda games are all lovingly laid out. There might be a little kitchen, a table, a sleeping area. They tend to feel very “lived-in.” Except there’s barely any bathrooms! Completely takes me out of the immersion.

The reverse is also true: If I see a video game location that makes sure to include a bathroom, I’m like “now THIS could be a real place.” Love it. Makes the characters feel more human and less “puppets in a puppet show.”

Am I the only one? I can’t be, right?
 
Derachi said:
Important preface: I don’t want to see anyone using the bathroom. That’s not what this is about.
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I generally ignore the lack of bathrooms because games that go out of their way to include them rarely have anything in them or do anything interesting. Sometimes, there’s a health item or random enemy. No More Heroes used them as save rooms.

Other things take me out of the game like background items that are out of place or poorly proportioned. For example, in Resident Evil 6, there were these donuts that were like way too big.
 
Metroid-Other-M-metroid-34568292-853-480.jpg
 
Astral Chain had a bathroom in it's main hub area. Was a nice touch and it was used in a sidequest.

And there's of course the one in Deus Ex, but mentioning Deus Ex on this feels like it's cheating.
 
Realistically the beautiful endless springwater of Hyrule Castle's cascades would be overflowing with swill when the castle is in full swing. Considering how big it actually is relative to the country, at full capacity it probably made for the largest settlement on the continent with or without Castle Town, and all that waste is going straight into the moat or waterfalls.
 
iirc, the OG Resident Evil 2 had no bathrooms whatsoever. The remake rectified this to an extent... by giving the huge-ass police station just one men's room and one women's room, lol.
 
I know this is a joke post and I shouldn't take it too seriously, but there's an obvious, well-known reason why most developers omit bathrooms even in otherwise "realistic" game worlds: bathrooms were already perfected in The Sims and nobody wants to risk a comparison they cannot possibly live up to
 
Persona 5 Royal made many upgrades to the original P5, and one of them was making the bathroom more useful.

In the original P5, Joker would go into one, think to himself "maybe I can use my time study, read, etc", then leave.

In Persona 5 Royal, going into the bathroom also gives you an update on how close you are to improving social stats, which could better inform you on how you should spend your time.
 
I like Fallout 3/NV for this, where office buildings or motels have bathrooms, often with radioactive water in them!

Didn’t Goldeneye also do this? I dimly remember a lot of toilet gunplay for some reason :)

Bonus points for any rpg with an extensive sewer system serving as as a maze dungeon under a fairly clean, nice fantasy town, but not even rudimentary toilets or any actual method of waste disposal.
 
I always assumed the sheds behind most of the houses in Hateno were bathrooms but Totk showed that they were sheds. I am curious tho now where people pee and poo in Hyrule. That said while I know this is a joke post of sorts but I largely agree, I enjoy when houses and places feel fleshed out, it's why I always design houses in like Happy Home Paradise/New Horizons as having all the amenities.
 
I always imagined that these fictional characters don’t rid themselves of waste so that would explain it.

Well, until one of them makes a joke or some off handed comment about taking a shit, and then i’m like… “Oh.”
 
This is why Hitman stays winning. Pretty much every level needs a bathroom that NPCs can run to and throw up in after you slip them some rat poison
 
Also Metal Gear Solid is the best game of all time because you can kill soldiers while they're using a urinal
 
Oracle of Ages has a toilet that's part of the trade quest, but it only exists in the past. Presumably between the past and the present people evolved beyond the need to poop.
 
Hiding out and changing clothes in bathrooms is your way to lose the police in Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, which means bathrooms and porta potties are sprinkled throughout the maps. In a weird way, it helps ground the wacky future world.

I wouldn't say it takes me out of a game when there isn't any bathrooms, but it is details like that that help a game feel more real I guess, at least when it's modern times. I won't really lose sleep over the lack of toilets in BotW/TotK (even if there were some in Skyward Sword and Majora's Mask but shhhh)
 
They put bathrooms into Casinopolis in Sonic Adventure where you can have Sonic take a shower while Tails just stares.

SA1_CasinopolisShower.PNG


No toilets, though. Thankfully.
 
Derachi you should play Breath of Fire II on SNES NSO. The first game which I grew up with decades ago was all about “dragons are cool and a guy who turns into a dragon is even cooler.” I played the sequel last year for the first time having never heard anything about it and learned it is about that too, but also it is distractingly obsessed with bathrooms / toilets to the point it is the most memorable thing about the game. Every town has one, a recruitable NPC lives in one, and plot points revolve around them including a hidden toilet elevator installed in a castle, a dramatic escape from an extreme religious group occurs via a toilet, there’s a toilet dungeon (maybe two?), and other oddness. It is exceptionally weird in the context of the prior game and in an SNES game.

Every NSO subscriber can go experience this weirdness for yourself. It is real, it is weird, and it is completely distracting from everything else the game does and doesn’t do lol.
 
xghost777 said:
Derachi you should play Breath of Fire II on SNES NSO. The first game which I grew up with decades ago was all about “dragons are cool and a guy who turns into a dragon is even cooler.” I played the sequel last year for the first time having never heard anything about it and learned it is about that too, but also it is distractingly obsessed with bathrooms / toilets to the point it is the most memorable thing about the game. Every town has one, a recruitable NPC lives in one, and plot points revolve around them including a hidden toilet elevator installed in a castle, a dramatic escape from an extreme religious group occurs via a toilet, there’s a toilet dungeon (maybe two?), and other oddness. It is exceptionally weird in the context of the prior game and in an SNES game.

Every NSO subscriber can go experience this weirdness for yourself. It is real, it is weird, and it is completely distracting from everything else the game does and doesn’t do lol.
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I am genuinely sold
 
Aurc said:
iirc, the OG Resident Evil 2 had no bathrooms whatsoever. The remake rectified this to an extent... by giving the huge-ass police station just one men's room and one women's room, lol.
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This has been my experience everytime I travel to the US. It's either the hotel bathroom or you are out of luck. Every other place its only for employees, it's locked and the person witht he combination is out, or it simply has no bathrooms
 
A lot of rpgs have some nice houses with no bathrooms... I remember looking for one in the protagonist house in Ni no kuni and telling myself there was a hidden bathroom bellow the stairs.
 
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remember in animal crossing new horizons when they made it so if you eat food you can move a tree (bad immersion) but if you get on a toilet you can shit out your extra food points (fantastic immersion)
 
Raccoon said:
remember in animal crossing new horizons when they made it so if you eat food you can move a tree (bad immersion) but if you get on a toilet you can shit out your extra food points (fantastic immersion)
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Hey, wait. Is this real? This is incredible.
 
Raccoon said:
remember in animal crossing new horizons when they made it so if you eat food you can move a tree (bad immersion) but if you get on a toilet you can shit out your extra food points (fantastic immersion)
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I remember seeing someone herding their town’s rocks into a fenced in zone that was guarded by a toilet. That way you had to shit your food points before you hit the rocks so you couldn’t accidentally break them.
 
How long until dril shares this thread?

I don’t disagree, but how many people want to go waltzing into a bathroom to just look around.

Best video game bathroom is definitely Facility in Golden Eye.
 
Derachi said:
I remember seeing someone herding their town’s rocks into a fenced in zone that was guarded by a toilet. That way you had to shit your food points before you hit the rocks so you couldn’t accidentally break them.
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new horizons island trade security was an incredible moment in time

if you posted "raymond in boxes" on forums without verification you would be BANNED
 
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