remember the game developer's most useful tool: when in doubt, lie to the player
Destiny 2's "low health" visual feedback (red vignette, flashing health bar, sound changes etc) kicks in when the health bar is down to about 25%.
Except that's about 50% of your actual hitpoints; Bungie just realised the game feels more exciting if you get the feeling that you narrowly scraped out of a tough fight.
People got VERY mad about this when one of the designers revealed this on Twitter lmao
In Dragon Age Inquisition, whenever you're riding a horse and start sprinting, you don't actually go faster.
The camera just zooms in and there are speed lines so it feels faster
It's all about pulling the wool over the player's eyes, showing them only what you want them to see. To the extent that they can be simulationist, that only enhances the effects of the things that are shown and hidden.
My favorite is example is a boss fight early in Breath of Fire 3. The protagonist is beat up by a couple of anthropomorphic unicorns. This takes place in a boss fight that you cannot win.
And I don't mean "it's really hard" or "unless you grind to level 100" or whatever. It is literally impossible. The bosses don't have HP. They are not coded like any other enemy in the game. It is completely impossible to win, even if you cheat as hard as possible, there is simply no victory condition. The law of the narrative is that you must lose this fight, and if you try to resist, it will only make it take longer.
