Giving me the creeps! I want more!
There's something about a woman whispering in your ear. Especially when you know the woman is dead, and she's giving you a warning. It is creepy. And cool.

I just finished playing through an early segment of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, with the stereotypical haunted house (or in this case, haunted hotel). I have seen this done SO poorly in the past. The last time I played a horror game involving a haunted house that didn't make me roll my eyes was probably the first Alone in the Dark - and even that was probably just because of the novelty of the game. Most games, particularly several highly popular "survival horror" games on consoles, seem to take the design attitude that a haunted house should be like one of those amusement park rides - only where the monsters can kill you.

Boring. After the third or fourth zombie comes crashing out of the door at me, I start feeling like it's a poorly done Evil Dead movie. It's not scary anymore. What designers (and moviemakers) don't seem to get is the fact that what you DON'T see is almost always an order of magnitude more scary than what you can see. When the demon bursts through the door, you've got the old flight-or-fight reflex that kicks in --- even in a videogame. But at that point the object of your fears has manifested itself, and it's now an entity that can be dealt with. What's REALLY scary is when the demon is on the other side of the door, hurling itself at it with great force - you KNOW that door won't hold, and you aren't entirely certain what's going to come smashing through that door.

The fear of the unknown is the greatest of all.

There are a few games that captured this, if only briefly.

In Ultima Underworld, the whole "demon trying to break through the door" thing happened. Yep, it gave me the jitters. You could hear it smashing at the door trying to break it down. Turned out to be a lousy little mongbat when it was all over - which would have made me laugh but my character was only 3rd level, so I had a tough fight on my hands. But the fear was gone.

Doom - it wasn't the rooms full of hordes of monsters that was scary. It was being stuck in a darkened maze where you could HEAR something nasty around the corner, but couldn't see it. Worse was when you KNOW you got a monster's attention - you could hear it hunting you - but it wasn't where you thought it would be. It was somewhere else, hunting you down, attacking when you were least ready. THAT was scary.

In Unreal, you heard the sounds of fighting - saw glimpses of awful stuff happening under jammed doors. Something horrible was being built up in your mind. Then there was that incredible moment a couple of levels later... when you found yourself locked in the corridor, and one by one, the lights began to go out...

And then there was Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. You saw the ghosts - briefly, from a distance, or caught a glimpse of them as they dashed down a hall. You were bashed repeatedly by poltergeist-y manifestations. You never saw the main ghost per se. But the events within the game followed a kind of logic. It was believable. There wasn't door after door of zombies or giant spiders attacking suddenly. Instead there were strange noises - flying pottery - mysterious music - sounds of crying - and old newspapers reporting on an old evil that had been done. It was CREEPY. And scary.

And I was playing late at night, which helped.

Man, we need more stuff like this. Lets have more game designers who understand the nature of fear and horror.

Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:23 PM (Permalink)