zinjashike
Honorable
- Oct 4, 2013
- 1
- 0
- 10,510
There's actually a few concepts.
1) The original RE felt scary because you often felt helpless. You couldn't afford to use bullets. Enter the broken controls, wonky camera, and "startle" type scares and it's not hard to see why this type of horror no longer cuts it. Part of the terror was realizing you could barely control your character honestly and would be seen as outright cheating. I mean, how does this sound for game design today "Okay, so we aim the camera at this corner, the player must come in this door which has this other one obscured, they won't be able to turn in time so must run as it comes out of the blind spot" - it feels cheap and on rails rather than feeling honestly helpless in a psychological sense (ala Amnesia). Camera tricks can be used in areas like CG or in very specific cases that a director feels it adds effect, but never in a situation that leads to a cheap death or forces the player to feel like their hand was forced . . . they need to put themselves in danger slowly and surely, that is what allows the tense build-up to occur.
2) Modern RE with action elements, like Dead Space, have only kept the startle elements. Players are now often over-powered and there is no handicap like before. Players NEED to feel helpless to be scared, but not in the broken ways that used to exist.
3) Genres and poor writing. Zombies are no longer really scary (see Dead Rising). Equally there's nothing to really cover about them anymore. Spirits, weird creatures that are abstract, demons - the writing and lore can be expanded on in various ways.
4) Rarely get too detailed in settings, let the player scare themselves. Many things in Amnesia only seem hinted at - how were those torture devices used exactly, what were these marks caused by, etc? The more one can imagine the worst it can get - uncertainty is a prime cause of fear - this can backfire on certain crowds that have symbols and settings going over their heads though.
Players need to be just on the edge where they can suspend their belief that something is happening - blend it with real-life elements that they have experience with day to day and slowly grow it into something horrifying. After they've accepted it and been drawn it ramp up a climax like a proper story that seems logical based on the new constructs they've been drawn into.
That's just my two cents though.
1) The original RE felt scary because you often felt helpless. You couldn't afford to use bullets. Enter the broken controls, wonky camera, and "startle" type scares and it's not hard to see why this type of horror no longer cuts it. Part of the terror was realizing you could barely control your character honestly and would be seen as outright cheating. I mean, how does this sound for game design today "Okay, so we aim the camera at this corner, the player must come in this door which has this other one obscured, they won't be able to turn in time so must run as it comes out of the blind spot" - it feels cheap and on rails rather than feeling honestly helpless in a psychological sense (ala Amnesia). Camera tricks can be used in areas like CG or in very specific cases that a director feels it adds effect, but never in a situation that leads to a cheap death or forces the player to feel like their hand was forced . . . they need to put themselves in danger slowly and surely, that is what allows the tense build-up to occur.
2) Modern RE with action elements, like Dead Space, have only kept the startle elements. Players are now often over-powered and there is no handicap like before. Players NEED to feel helpless to be scared, but not in the broken ways that used to exist.
3) Genres and poor writing. Zombies are no longer really scary (see Dead Rising). Equally there's nothing to really cover about them anymore. Spirits, weird creatures that are abstract, demons - the writing and lore can be expanded on in various ways.
4) Rarely get too detailed in settings, let the player scare themselves. Many things in Amnesia only seem hinted at - how were those torture devices used exactly, what were these marks caused by, etc? The more one can imagine the worst it can get - uncertainty is a prime cause of fear - this can backfire on certain crowds that have symbols and settings going over their heads though.
Players need to be just on the edge where they can suspend their belief that something is happening - blend it with real-life elements that they have experience with day to day and slowly grow it into something horrifying. After they've accepted it and been drawn it ramp up a climax like a proper story that seems logical based on the new constructs they've been drawn into.
That's just my two cents though.
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