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I think that is why the whole Slenderman thing has been so popular, it's because he represents impending doom more than actual, present doom. Thinking of things like Marble Hornets in particular, he just sands there. The camera can cut to black, or he can teleport when you look away, but he doesn't really move.
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Sep 24, 2015 16:52
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chitoryu12 posted:I think it would be an accomplishment to make a horror game that effectively allows for that kind of tension without needing to resort to putting the protagonist alone in a dark area full of monsters. To build on what you've said, Assassin's Creed II's multiplayer gave me a lot of anxiety, especially when you started to hear the 'whispers' that indicated the person hunting you could see you. If you were engrossed enough, and if the moment was right, having your killer appear out of a crowd and shank you could be a genuinely shocking moment. And this was achieved in broad daylight, with dozens of NPCs around.
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Sep 24, 2015 16:57
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I'm not too far into the game, I must have missed the log that explained the naked dudes with structure gel heads in the sunken ship because there was a lot of "Can I look at him? Can he see me? How hosed am I?" trial and error. Fun game though!
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Sep 24, 2015 17:05
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I wish structure gel was real so I could kiss it on the lips. I better go write some structure gel fan fiction and sex drawings on Deviantart.
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Sep 24, 2015 17:28
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chitoryu12 posted:I think I might be getting a little tired of the "This place used to be full of life, but is now wrecked and has a bunch of monsters that you have to hide from" type of game. I think there's an inherent idea in horror that something can only truly be scary if you're alone virtually all the time, and that having companions or other people around would ruin any sense of tension. I'd be more impressed with a horror game that somehow managed to work well in a populated area, or at least allowing you to deal with more NPCs than three or four survivors (who may or may not permanently be hidden behind bulletproof glass and speaking over a radio for the rest of their lives). sure, but an essential part of terror is isolation. humans are social creatures and it's not as bad if people are around to share the load, so to speak. cf. the ending of Until Dawn. Film isn't a great comparison because the viewer is powerless in the film, whereas that's obviously not true of games.
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Sep 24, 2015 19:09
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Blockhouse posted:I'm not too far into the game, I must have missed the log that explained the naked dudes with structure gel heads in the sunken ship because there was a lot of "Can I look at him? Can he see me? How hosed am I?" trial and error. AFAIK there isn't one. They're called "fleshers" in the files if that helps, but it seems to be a general category of monster more than a specific type.
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Sep 24, 2015 19:09
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Orikaeshigitae posted:AFAIK there isn't one. They're called "fleshers" in the files if that helps, but it seems to be a general category of monster more than a specific type. going through the files I think it might actually be mscurie_reanimated_male not that it makes a ton of difference also going through these makes me dread a lot of poo poo I'm going to see coming up!
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Sep 24, 2015 19:26
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Orikaeshigitae posted:sure, but an essential part of terror is isolation. humans are social creatures and it's not as bad if people are around to share the load, so to speak. cf. the ending of Until Dawn. I wouldn't say that, Until Dawn was pretty nerve wracking with at least a few people involved because it gave the impression that they were under lethal danger. The issue is that we fear being alone, so isolation means higher danger normally. But if you can die even with your friends around? drat
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Sep 24, 2015 19:34
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Orikaeshigitae posted:sure, but an essential part of terror is isolation. humans are social creatures and it's not as bad if people are around to share the load, so to speak. cf. the ending of Until Dawn. It depends on exactly what kind of power the player has. The antagonist in It Follows can be hurt and even dispelled in some manner (it's ambiguous as to whether or not it can be killed by anything), but without the right stuff to hurt it you can't do anything except run or put physical barriers in its way (which it can always break down). If it catches you, unless you have active help from other people, you're dead. Even if you're in a crowded mall it'll just walk up and messily kill you without a second thought, and nobody else can see it coming for you. It's a similar kind of horror as Slenderman, as DreamShipWrecked said. You don't have a monster that actively hunts for you and can be fooled or hidden from. It simply knows where you are, appears whenever it wants, and casually walks toward you. Easy to avoid at first, but get into a confined space or get fatigued and it becomes incredibly dangerous. You can't safely sleep or eat or go to the bathroom or anything except be constantly vigilant until you can figure out how to get it to stop following you. You may find yourself staying awake for days, dealing with the mental breakdown on top of the stress, because you can't risk being vulnerable. Or you may only get sleep by sleeping in the back seat of a car while a friend who actually believes you drives you around and you suddenly find yourself in an unfamiliar area late at night with the monster pounding at the window because oops, your buddy stopped for a bathroom break at a rest stop. So imagine a game with a similar premise, a monster that only you can see that doesn't run after you because it supernaturally knows where you are at all times. You first see it somewhere like in class or at a movie theater. Later you're trying to explain to your best friend at his house why you're so jumpy, and it just loving walks into the living room mid-sentence. You start trying to research the creature and recruit people to help you, constantly looking over your shoulder in case it appears. You could even add an extra threat to the game in people who don't understand what's going on and can't see the monster. They just think you're having a psychotic breakdown and need to be restrained for your own safety. So on top of fleeing from the monster, you may have people physically try to stop you from running away and need to be shaken off or maybe even fought to keep them from inadvertently killing you. Imagine seeing the monster walk in while you're trying to explain your supernatural enemy to your best friend, and when you try to run he grabs you by the wrist and tries to haul you back into danger. Well-meaning but ignorant, and you're left struggling with him as the monster gets ever closer over his shoulder. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Sep 24, 2015 |
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Sep 24, 2015 19:49
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Blockhouse posted:going through the files I think it might actually be mscurie_reanimated_male That specific model comes up a few times in the files under different names. I think they might have replaced certain assets with other ones to avoid spoiling plans or DLC or something - the early Simon model is also repeated, including an infected version. It's weird.
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Sep 24, 2015 19:59
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I'm OK with SOMA not being as scary as Amnesia, as SOMA is something I can actually play and not become a total wreck and scared of being alone in my own apartment.  It can get pretty tense though, and I'm sure the worst is yet to come.I also really like the characters and voice acting, even the protagonist who many seem to dislike. Felt genuinely bad for some of the stuff I've had to do as well, which is always a plus.
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Sep 24, 2015 21:26
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Here's something I've always wondered about: what do you think of when you think of the concept 'scary'? What I'm looking for from horror games is something more akin to tension + foreboding - you're unsettled by the thematics of the game & you are dreading what is coming up next. But people post about game X being scarier than game Y, and it doesn't seem to matter whether it's a Frictional game or Five Nights at Freddie's, it all seems to be different definitions of the same word.
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Sep 24, 2015 21:44
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One of my favorite moments in SOMA involved the tiny utility bot that follows you around underwater. At the zeppelin Catherine told me to get a new chip, gave me a gun and said one of the robots have it. There's a big robot floating around with a guy in it saying random poo poo, not altogether there, and your friendly tinybot the game spends effort humanizing through Simon. I of course chose the less monstrous route and killed the big one, it was awful because he acted like a wounded animal, screaming and running away from you while you repeatedly shoot him with the piston gun until he finally falls lifeless to the ground and you harvest your chip. I see tinybot looking at me from a little away and as I approach him he screams and runs away from me, keeping his distance. I never saw him again 
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Sep 24, 2015 21:46
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Demiurge4 posted:One of my favorite moments in SOMA involved the tiny utility bot that follows you around underwater. At the zeppelin Catherine told me to get a new chip, gave me a gun and said one of the robots have it. There's a big robot floating around with a guy in it saying random poo poo, not altogether there, and your friendly tinybot the game spends effort humanizing through Simon. I of course chose the less monstrous route and killed the big one, it was awful because he acted like a wounded animal, screaming and running away from you while you repeatedly shoot him with the piston gun until he finally falls lifeless to the ground and you harvest your chip. I see tinybot looking at me from a little away and as I approach him he screams and runs away from me, keeping his distance. I never saw him again A note says they have complex AI but are only capable of communicating with lights and beeps.
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Sep 24, 2015 21:49
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Demiurge4 posted:One of my favorite moments in SOMA involved the tiny utility bot that follows you around underwater. At the zeppelin Catherine told me to get a new chip, gave me a gun and said one of the robots have it. There's a big robot floating around with a guy in it saying random poo poo, not altogether there, and your friendly tinybot the game spends effort humanizing through Simon. I of course chose the less monstrous route and killed the big one, it was awful because he acted like a wounded animal, screaming and running away from you while you repeatedly shoot him with the piston gun until he finally falls lifeless to the ground and you harvest your chip. I see tinybot looking at me from a little away and as I approach him he screams and runs away from me, keeping his distance. I never saw him again This didn't happen with me, but I think it was behind a rock or something. Or I just didn't notice. Cool moment regardless.
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Sep 24, 2015 22:11
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Orikaeshigitae posted:Here's something I've always wondered about : what do you think of when you think of the concept 'scary'? What I'm looking for from horror games is something more akin to tension + foreboding - you're unsettled by the thematics of the game & you are dreading what is coming up next. But people post about game X being scarier than game Y, and it doesn't seem to matter whether it's a Frictional game or Five Nights at Freddie's, it all seems to be different definitions of the same word. Tension is the big thing for me. A good horror story should make you uneasy. Novels tend to make you overthink things (Stephen King's "The Jaunt" is actually my personal scariest story, as I start thinking too much about what an awake jaunt entails and it plays into a very large fear of mine), but visual media is about making you afraid of what's about to appear on the screen. Bad horror tends to overuse jump scares for the tension, which is kinda cheating. It's not making you feel tension for anything except the knowledge that at any given time the movie could suddenly start screaming in your face for no good reason. Good horror can achieve the same tension with simply atmosphere. You make the audience await the same kind of shock as a jump scare, but don't actually go for one. Any image and loud noise can be used for a jump scare. This is a very famous horror scene from Mulholland Drive. It's basically what I'm going for. I'll include it behind this link as the thumbnail image spoils it. This is the setup to the scene, which you should watch first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yusKlHgtvIE
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Sep 24, 2015 22:20
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Orikaeshigitae posted:sure, but an essential part of terror is isolation. humans are social creatures and it's not as bad if people are around to share the load, so to speak. cf. the ending of Until Dawn. You can feel isolated in a group of people, if there's reason to believe none of them are capable of helping you, or willing to help you. Similarly, just because you have power in a game doesn't mean you have the kind of power that's actually helpful to you.
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Sep 24, 2015 22:22
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Wanton Spoon posted:You can feel isolated in a group of people, if there's reason to believe none of them are capable of helping you, or willing to help you. This is why I find the Slenderman web series like Marble Hornets much better as horror than the Slender games or glut of imitations. Slender and its sequels and clones is the classic example of horror that relies on isolation and jump scares, with loud musical stings and distortion when the villain appears and a huge jump scare if they catch you. Marble Hornets makes greater use of tension-building like glimpses of Slenderman and the masked people in the background or around a corner, or doing things like having a camera turn on while someone is asleep to show what terrifying things go on in their room at night. They don't need to end every episode with a jump scare because they successfully get your brain working, making you wonder about what could happen until you're making yourself anxious.
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Sep 24, 2015 22:28
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I didn't care much for SOMA at first, but the back half of the game was incredible, I thought. I wouldn't give up on it too soon. Especially if you have any fear of the ocean depths. About that, goddamn the abyss got to me. I'm not one of those hurp derp gently caress the ocean types, but what an environment. On the pitch black ocean floor 4000 feet below the surface with a current storm and a few scant lights to guide you. Also all kinds of mutated deep sea life out in the darkness. By far the most atmospheric and terrifying place Frictional has come up with. If your not wearing headphones for this game you're really missing out.
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Sep 24, 2015 22:31
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Yeah, that was one of the best environments in the game. I loved it. Possibly the most inhospitable place imaginable. If the previous monsters didn't spook you just that entire goddamn place should.
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Sep 24, 2015 22:40
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I wish they had done some research on what sea spiders look like rather than just using models of arachid spiders. Most of them are alot creepier, though I liked that tunnel because it seems like it was only included to scare arachnophobes it seems.
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Sep 24, 2015 22:45
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i think a proper "the thing" type game could be scary without making the player totally isolated in a dead place (though of course the characters have to be isolated from the world at large). what kills me in every one of these games is that they tell you the game is saving, so you know something is coming up. either save often enough that it's a false warning or don't show you're saving at all.
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Sep 24, 2015 23:00
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Anyone had that bug where some of the walls and floors disappear and you can walk into the void outside?
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Sep 24, 2015 23:08
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Jim Flatline posted:Anyone had that bug where some of the walls and floors disappear and you can walk into the void outside? I think that would spook me more than the actual game would. There's something about video games glitching out that feels really unsettling, because things in games are (generally) structured and planned, and there's a way things are supposed to work, so if they don't its like there's a break in the game's "reality".
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Sep 25, 2015 04:11
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Jim Flatline posted:Anyone had that bug where some of the walls and floors disappear and you can walk into the void outside? This happened to me while I was running from lightbulb-head in the sunken ship. Ran towards the staircase, went up, saw I was blocked, said "OH poo poo!" and turned around, thinking maybe I could slip past him. Simon, having decided this was the time for drastic measures, pushed through reality itself and fell forever. I honestly don't know what happened, but I saved the video on my PS4. I should probably upload that to YouTube...
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Sep 25, 2015 07:50
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Meta-Mollusk posted:I'm OK with SOMA not being as scary as Amnesia, as SOMA is something I can actually play and not become a total wreck and scared of being alone in my own apartment. He gets worse as the game goes on I think. I was totally fine with him to begin with, but close to the end (pretty sure) he starts to be a complete jack-rear end and it's not in keeping with how I've played him. Demiurge4 posted:One of my favorite moments in SOMA involved the tiny utility bot that follows you around underwater. At the zeppelin Catherine told me to get a new chip, gave me a gun and said one of the robots have it. There's a big robot floating around with a guy in it saying random poo poo, not altogether there, and your friendly tinybot the game spends effort humanizing through Simon. I of course chose the less monstrous route and killed the big one, it was awful because he acted like a wounded animal, screaming and running away from you while you repeatedly shoot him with the piston gun until he finally falls lifeless to the ground and you harvest your chip. I see tinybot looking at me from a little away and as I approach him he screams and runs away from me, keeping his distance. I never saw him again Oh, I was going to go back and do it this way to see what was different. What did Catherine say when you zapped the one that talks? If you hit the little one, she's like "Oh no, they're so cute" after Simon says that he tried to do the right thing and zap the smaller one that couldn't talk. Jim Flatline posted:A note says they have complex AI but are only capable of communicating with lights and beeps. I read that note, and I think the larger one actually has a more rudimentary intelligence which means that my Simon chose wrong in zapping the little guy because it was actually smarter and I'm trying to not hate on other consciousnesses.
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Sep 25, 2015 14:29
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BlackFrost posted:This happened to me while I was running from lightbulb-head in the sunken ship. Ran towards the staircase, went up, saw I was blocked, said "OH poo poo!" and turned around, thinking maybe I could slip past him. It happened to me in the sunken ship too. PS4?
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Sep 25, 2015 17:47
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it's bizarre that a big part of soma has been an idea i been obsessing about over the past week or so (after i had been talking about of all things the movie chappie with a coworker). it's also in a cool short story called Extras (though in the short story it doesn't really make sense).
Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Sep 26, 2015 |
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Sep 26, 2015 03:09
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chitoryu12 posted:I think it would be an accomplishment to make a horror game that effectively allows for that kind of tension without needing to resort to putting the protagonist alone in a dark area full of monsters. There's definitely an appeal to "they exist among us" horror like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, They Live, or Parasyte although it's probably difficult to translate into a video game because you have to spend a lot of time getting the player comfortable with familiar surroundings then make them paranoid when it falls apart. Probably an adventure game or something where all the NPCs have a random chance of getting infected and you're gradually noticing their mental deterioration or maybe you accidentally misread a quirk and kill an innocent.
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Sep 26, 2015 05:20
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Somewhat along those lines, I want to say the Blade Runner adventure game made a semi-random selection of characters replicants each time
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Sep 26, 2015 05:24
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al-azad posted:There's definitely an appeal to "they exist among us" horror like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, They Live, or Parasyte although it's probably difficult to translate into a video game because you have to spend a lot of time getting the player comfortable with familiar surroundings then make them paranoid when it falls apart. Probably an adventure game or something where all the NPCs have a random chance of getting infected and you're gradually noticing their mental deterioration or maybe you accidentally misread a quirk and kill an innocent. Bloodborne.
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Sep 26, 2015 06:27
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Space Station 13, for all the whacky stories and crazy plots that are regularly carried out, can be pretty good at that sort of 'things among us' setup when everyone's playing along. I mean there's a specific mode (Modes are chosen at random, random player(s) made the antagonist role of said mode) called Changeling, which on more roleplay inclined servers often turns out like The Thing in space. Changelings can make themselves look different, sound different, they can paralyze or just overpower you before sucking all the juice out of you, then you're just another face for them to fool the next guy. Eventually someone finds a drained husk and then it gets real good 
Yardbomb fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Sep 26, 2015 |
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Sep 26, 2015 06:29
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Yardbomb posted:Space Station 13, for all the whacky stories and crazy plots that are regularly carried out, can be pretty good at that sort of 'things among us' setup when everyone's playing along. Didn't someone already post a story in this thread about a changeling that somehow also got the captain's job in the game, and proceeded to do such a good job that people were defending him/her when it came out that the player was a changeling and the station descended in a civil war between the people wanting to kill it and the people wanting to save it?
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Sep 26, 2015 06:48
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papasyhotcakes posted:Didn't someone already post a story in this thread about a changeling that somehow also got the captain's job in the game, and proceeded to do such a good job that people were defending him/her when it came out that the player was a changeling and the station descended in a civil war between the people wanting to kill it and the people wanting to save it? Yeah, and that's not even the weirdest thing to happen. People love subverting villainous roles in SS13 to see what happens, like playing a good guy changeling who just helps people. I'm envisioning a situation where a changeling gets hired by the security staff as their new means of execution.
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Sep 26, 2015 06:50
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I'll need to get back to SOMA after I finish Dying Light, but I just wanted to say gently caress you to Zombi and Dying Light for putting zombie suicide exploders in tight quarters. It's really dumb to have a little less than a second to react to a one-shot kill that leads to having to wait through a load screen then traveling back to where I was. The games are otherwise pretty good and I still wanna finish Dying Light, but that sort of thing isn't a good gameplay experience at all. In a crowd in the overworld is fine, I don't mind having to watch out for them as I make my way, as I can at least take steps to avoid them. Otherwise though, it's "welp, time to take 5-7 minutes to work my way back to where I was. Fun." It's dumb and people designing games with that type of suicider enemy need to learn to drop them in with finesse.
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Sep 26, 2015 06:50
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Yardbomb posted:Space Station 13, for all the whacky stories and crazy plots that are regularly carried out, can be pretty good at that sort of 'things among us' setup when everyone's playing along. This sounds pretty cool, but I can't seem to get it to work on my PC. BYOND just flat out refuses to load. Am I missing something?
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Sep 26, 2015 07:36
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BlackFrost posted:This sounds pretty cool, but I can't seem to get it to work on my PC. BYOND just flat out refuses to load. Am I missing something? BYOND itself hopefully shouldn't be that wonky, unless you just got a bad DL of the client or something. If you haven't already, check out/ask in the SS13 thread and one of the BYOND wizards there could hopefully help.
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Sep 26, 2015 08:39
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probably my biggest complaint about soma is the end Simon has no arc and should know that he's not going onto the ARC (heh) because he even saw the original Simon and (if you had a heart) killed him. I got real tense during the download bit and I thought he realized he was just ensuring a copy of himself lived on. I think the ending would've been a bit better had it been he's happy they got through but then the power starts going out and realizes he's lost his friend. that's just me though.
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Sep 26, 2015 14:03
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Groovelord Neato posted:probably my biggest complaint about soma is the end Simon has no arc and should know that he's not going onto the ARC (heh) because he even saw the original Simon and (if you had a heart) killed him. I got real tense during the download bit and I thought he realized he was just ensuring a copy of himself lived on. I think the ending would've been a bit better had it been he's happy they got through but then the power starts going out and realizes he's lost his friend. that's just me though. Spoilers for SOMA: I am with you, the ending really is depressing that the only thing to survive of us is going to be this AI program of someone's memories the human race is completely wiped out and we only exist in a floating thumb drive. I like horror a lot but it really just is too melancholy to me in these stories that our existence doesn't move on, I'd be happier if it was something like genetic material rather than a copy of a copy of a personality.
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Sep 26, 2015 16:42
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i really had no issue with the tone overall/with the plot the issue is more that Simon didn't really make sense at the end. horror media is usually best when it's got a depressing or at least ambiguous in the end, i just wish simon had understood (as he should have since he'd done it once already) that the one being copied gets left behind as that would make more sense as a character and tonally with the final area.
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Sep 26, 2015 18:33
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