How is any of this "realistic" or "immersive"? Why is it realistic that I notice the hole in the wall, or the sweat, but not the flies? Why is it realistic that I notice the man's sweat, but not his general build, or his likely age?
Likewise, how does any of this pertain to the GM "just assuming" certain actions?
@Lanefan's description assumes that the PCs look at and take note of features of the wall, but that they don't look at and take notice of flies in their immediate visual field. I mean, how is it supposed to be the case that
I've identified the ceiling is 8' high and yet I haven't noticed the flies my eyes must have passed over in order to take in the ceiling?
I can see bottles on the floor under the window. The window is opposite the door (on the "far wall"). Presumably the man slumped forward in the simple wooden chair (but with no table to lean on? Why isn't he sliding off/down? Has he been nailed to the chair by the people who killed him?) is between me and the window, so how am I even seeing those bottles?
I don't see any realism here. It's all just
gameplay: the GM makes a decision to dispense some information and to withhold some other information; the GM takes for granted that the players will infer some things from what is not said (eg will infer that there are no aliens with rayguns in the room because the GM didn't mention any); and the GM likewise takes for granted that the players will know - in general terms - what information might have been withheld, and hence needs to be asked about. (Or, perhaps, gated behind dice rolls.)
The sort of gameplay implicit in
@Lanefan's set up - which I've described in some earlier posts, and also just above - is not very interesting to me. If the highlight of a "gumshoe" game is
asking twenty questions of the GM to get a description of a sweaty man in a room, so that the play experience is not dissimilar to poking a Gygaxian dungeon room with a 10' pole, then count me out.
What's interesting about the room is the man in it; and what is interesting about the man is whether he's dead or alive, and whether or not he's the person I'm looking for. The GM is able to dispense that information. So why not do so? Either "You open the door, into a poorly furnished office. There's a man sitting, slumped, in the simple wooden chair. Flies are hovering about and above him. You can't see his face. He looks like his dead." Or "You open the door, into a poorly furnished office. There's a man sitting, slumped, in the simple wooden chair. Flies are hovering about and above him. He barely stirs in response to you, but from his breathing and his sweat you can see he's alive."
Now the players can engage with the man, or check out the room, or whatever they want to do, without having that interesting stuff gated behind a bizarre dance of the seven veils as to the basic set-up of the scene.