/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4809883
Well, based on the dialog it seems like the player could be controlling the "character" of the leader, with the mentat as your character's adviser. Maybe moving the mouse is meant to represent something like pointing your character's finger at places on a map. In that case, the eye movements could be construed as in response to some (unseen by the player) in-universe action.

In games like RTS where the player doesn't necessarily "role play" as a character, it's harder to define what "breaking the 4th wall" even is, since the player interacts directly with the fictional universe (controlling units, buildings, etc. in a godlike manner). It's certainly not "breaking the 4th wall" for units to react to the player's orders, that's just part of the game.
In other types of games where the player directly controls an on-screen character represented by a visible sprite, I think it's more clear that acknowledgement of the player by that character constitutes a break. Dialog between the player and the character isn't part of the game in that case--it's like the difference between controlling Ash directly vs using your direct control of the trainer to instruct Pikachu to use thunderbolt.

Of course it's all up for interpretation, and none of this pedantry matters one bit. But somehow my gut tells me that pic related is not "breaking the 4th wall," while >>4806710 or >>4809683 is.

>>4809983
This example is interesting, because it is part of the menu rather than part of the game. There's no "in universe" excuse for the menu existing in the first place, but I don't know whether that matters. The closest analogue I can think of in another medium would be like the characters from a movie addressing the audience before or after the film itself. Does "That's all folks" break the 4th wall? Often this question is avoided, because works that use that trick often include more direct 4th wall breaking in the story itself.