As the game boots up or if you are using fast travel, the game presents you with this loading screen. It really makes you feel like an android, it really feels like that you are starting up a humanoid machine. You even have to switch on you`r self destruct option, and the player has to do it quite literally themselves. If one thinks about the tutorial with 9S, the menus are not only an user interface for the player to use, but they are for the androids.Īs 2B boots up, you literally have to go trough the menus to adjust the lightning, the sound and voices. However, Automata takes this one step further with its meta elements. The clicks and clacks as you scroll trough the menu feel good, and especially when you select something, you hear a “big click” sound, giving confirmation to the player that you have chosen something. The a bit bleak, computer-like art style fits with the overall style and tone of the game. I think Automata is an example of a well designed menus, sounds and overall user interface. The mood feels just like the one you`d expect from the end of the 1990s. There is something, unsettling about them. I think one of the better menu sounds that with fit the overall tone of the game are from Dino Crisis. When one plays a horror game, the menus one uses should also have some spooky elements weave into them. When it comes to the sound, imagine playing a really good horror game, but the games sound effects in the menu would be these cartoon like, happy-go-luck-sounds. If the menu is sluggish, chaotic and overall just terrible to use, then what a better way to pull you out of the immersion. Of course in the opposite end of the spectrum, poorly constructed sounds design and menus can disconnect the players connection with the game. The sounds and the design of the menus can help the player immerse into the fictional world they are diving into. In this post I will be rambling about 3 things: the loading screen and the menus of Automata, and how they help create immersion to the game world, and about the title screen of the game. I was quite inspired by these videos, and I`d like to apply some of the elements raised by those videos to Automata. I`ve been watching quite a few video game analysis videos which focus more on analyzing their “form” (thing such as sound effects and menu designs). The immersive menu design on NieR: Automata