I'm a sucker for horror.
Maybe it's because I read too many Goosebumps books, but ever since I was a young 'un I liked scary things. It got so bad that in my freshman year of high school, I read nothing but stories by H.P. Lovecraft while watching all of the shitty horror movies I could get my hands on. I'm sure my parents loved it.
As time wore on, though, I started to get that bored-nerd-urge to analyze the crap I was ingesting. Questions arose, like 'Why am I scared by nasty wriggling parasites but not Michael Myers?' 'What is it about mirrors that creeps people out?' and 'How come the Saw movies suck so bad?'
soooo baaaad
Questions like this became answerable once I went to college and learned that they all basically boil down to "What makes us feel in this specific way?" and "Why does it work like that?" and--most importantly for this article-- "Is it successful?"
These questions apply to any creative endeavor, really. Horror literature in particular is susceptible to this line of thinking, however, because you're more-or-less just asking the question "Was I scared?" and following it up with the question "Why?"
So is Amnesia: The Dark Descent a scary game? Did it scare me?
Yes. But not in a good way.
I noticed that I had a problem with Amnesia when I was walking through the storage rooms early on in the game. I will totally and unreservedly admit that I was scared: it seemed like there was a nasty thing with teeth waiting around every corner, hunching over the bones of its last victim and realizing that it was still hungry. Each stretch of darkness seemed like a hundred yards, even if it was ten. I was scared to open doors.
dun dun DUN
And then I stopped and thought about it. Why was I scared? What had caused me to tense up to such a degree that my cat walking into the room almost made me shit a brick? It turns out, the background music was a minor chord.
That's it.
Just a minor chord.
Not a haunting melody in a minor key, or howling wind that sounded mournful, just modulated tones going one three five three one three five three one. It was really quiet, and to the credit of the game's creators I hadn't noticed it until then, but it was there and it was constant.
This was my experience time and time again while playing Amnesia. I was scared, but in a knee-jerk sort of way. I wasn't afraid, just twitchy. I had no trouble going to sleep that night, in other words.
When it comes right down to it, Amnesia is a game that is designed to be scary, not a game designed to be good. It's not a literary experience, designed to impart a particular vision; it's a manufactured experience, designed to elicit a reaction.
that's right. i majored in words.
I mean, shouldn't a game aspire to something more than a mechanical sense of fear? Like, maybe a contextual and narrative fear? A warranted fear, founded on the world you've created?
For instance, one of the things that I actually really liked in Castle Brennenburg was this statue:
I mean, look at that fucker. Who's decision was that monstrosity? Why the baby's face? And the legs, just chillin' on the edge there?
See, this one architectural element suggests a narrative all by itself. You see it and you start asking questions--consciously or subconsciously--like "What does this statue suggest about the owner of the castle and what I can expect to encounter in the subsequent rooms that I'll be exploring?" It sets the tone by defying the player to justify its existence. It wants you to try to explain it away, because it knows you can't.
But then you have this guy here:
It's scary, I guess. That is one thing we can firmly say about it. Having one of those bastards chasing you is pretty upsetting.
But then you ask, "Why the jaw? Why the bandages? What's with the hands?" and "What's this guy's story?" And then you come up short, because there isn't really a story here. It's just designed to look nasty. This is a monster that was put together in order to freak the player out, so they included body distentions and bloody bandages because they cause a knee-jerk reaction.
The difference between the two examples here is that the purpose of the fountain is--whether they meant it to or not--to suggest an aesthetic and hint at a bigger picture, maybe to weave its thread in the fabric of the overall game, whereas the monster is just there to scare you.
What really gets me is that the makers of the game tell you about a freaky-ass monster at the start of the game that would fit in the context and freak you out, but they never use it. Instead, they go for this guy:
the monster described at the start of the game is just a guy with a big burlap sack filled with a struggling something inside of it, which is infinitely scarier than this.
I guess what I'm trying to say about Amnesia is that, instead of trusting in their story or their world to scare the player, they come up with things that make the player jump.
This is artifice. I'm not necessarily saying that 'artifice' is a bad thing, I just think that--at a certain level--the artifice of a game can hinder the actual success of the game as a whole.
Let's take another example of videogameosity from Amnesia. The Shadow--or, 'the macguffin'--is what drives Daniel to the Baron in the first place, thereby setting the game in motion. We learn that this multi-dimensional horror is tied to the orb that Daniel finds in Algeria, and that it mutilates its victims to a laughable degree. We hear it called The Shadow time and time again, but then we see it manifested like this:
nothing says 'shadow' like abundant fungal growth
This is... bad. This is silly. This is about as videogame-esque as you can get without one-up mushrooms. In a game that stresses the verisimilitude you can achieve in gameplay, having red goo slop itself suddenly across the only exit in the castle is just lazy.
And it's not just a door-blocking mechanism. It's also the force that makes the castle scarier by blowing out the lights and causing parts of the castle to collapse around you.
Don't get me wrong-- Lovecraft proved that there's a lot you can do with an interdimensional horror that freaks people out. There are parts where the game uses this to a pretty awesome degree (like when you're taken to a prison cell, and you have to find a way out before The Shadow makes its way to the prison to eat you.) But mostly, The Shadow is just there to drive the game.
This is my problem with Amnesia. If you've ever played Dungeons & Dragons with a bad Dungeon-Master, you'll know the feeling: there's a specific instance that the directors of this game want you to experience, and they'll be as blunt as possible to get you there.
it's called 'railroading,' for those of you with a life
To summarize, I'm upset at Amnesia because it is designed to be a scary game--emphasizing the mechanical aspects of fear--and not a good game (in which the mechanical aspects of fear make sense.)
So, What Would I Do Differently?
Context.
It's all about context. The difficult thing about a horror game--any horror game--is making a player understand fear rather than just experience it.
One of my favorite examples in any game is the original zombie reveal in Resident Evil. This happens a few minutes after the game starts: you walk down a corridor in this creepy old mansion, you open one of the few unlocked doors, and you see that.
Admittedly, it's not as scary as it was when I was twelve (the original original cutscene is even less so, because we're a jaded bunch of consumers when it comes to graphics.) But what it does do well is set up the context for being afraid of the monsters.
See, by using this cutscene, Resident Evil establishes that--even though these monsters may look like normal people for the most part--if they catch you you will be eaten. If the monsters in Amnesia catch you, you will be scared.
i will walk the fuck towards you
There's just nothing in Amnesia to suggest anything other than a 'run from this dude because he looks gross' sense of motivation. The really disappointing part, again, is that Amnesia already told us about a better monster.
So let's just use that.
Instead of a pallid fish-jawed knife-handed dude that has knives for fingers, let's just have the dude with a sack.
He's a guy who chases you with the goal of grabbing you and stuffing you into a burlap sack. It's a one-hit kill sort of thing, because this is a horror game and we're not fucking around. If he catches you, you're overpowered and stuffed into this bag. The last thing you see before 'Game Over' is the shadowy face of this guy as he pulls the drawstring shut, plunging the player into a final darkness.
Why does this guy want to stuff you in a sack? Nobody knows. Where does he take you? Your guess is as good as mine. What I do know, is that this idea is scary enough to have inspired countless nightmares across the globe.
The important part here is that this monster isn't going to just 'get you,' he's going to 'get you' and stuff you into his burlap sack, never to be seen again.
context.
The Shadow presents a different problem. The player knows, through reading journal excerpts, that the victims of The Shadow have their skin boiled off and their skull split and other nasty things. This is context, regardless of how ridiculously over-the-top it may be.
What The Shadow lacks is an interesting manifestation.
Honestly, I can understand why the creators of Amnesia designed the Shadow the way they did-- it's an easy out for a videogame. Manifesting a puddle of acidic red goo can direct the player's flow. It's a handy way to prolong the gameplay. But also, it's pretty dumb.
I mean, look at the function this goo fills: direction, drive, and obstruction. This goo is the shepherd of Amnesia; the form it takes is irrelevant, so long as it pushes the player along. So really, there's no reason it needs to be a pile of red, stringy goo. This is a videogame, for chrissakes! It can be anything you want it to be!
PONIES
So why are we stuck with red goo, especially when it's the residue of a reality-shattering monster from beyond the void named "The Shadow?" Why can't we have, like, shadow? Seriously, wouldn't it be better if the monster that was eating reality out from underneath the player was just darkness and nothingness? Especially in a game that has nyctophobia straight-up programmed into it.
The best part--from my nerdy, literary, artisan standpoint--is that you could use the parts of a videogame that are exclusive to the media in order to do this. Make like George Herriman did in Krazy Kat and use the medium to your advantage! Manipulate polygons in a virtual environment to give us a terrifying bottomless pit that eats the castle away as the player walks through it! It'd be like the ending of the Never Ending Story!
with less falcor!
Or, if not a bottomless pit built from forever-darkness, then at least create something consistent with the rules you've set up in the story. Make "The Shadow" manifest itself in a way that seems like "The Shadow" could actually be behind it. Not this acidic red goop.
Make the manifested form match the context of the piece you've created. Build a thematically appropriate villain, rather than a videogame villain.
So, What Would I Do Differently in Summary? I would make the world consistent, and have faith in my ability to convince the player that they should be scared of their own volition, rather than just applying manufactured scare-tactics. I would use the medium to my advantage; rather than railroading the player through the use of artificial video-game-y roadblocks, I would use video-game-itude to build a world in which the player wanted to follow the path the story set out. And most of all, I would drop that goddamn red goop.
OKAY! Jesus. Took goddamn long enough to get that article out. Sorry, friends. Hopefully, I'll write more in a more timely fashion. Starting with Borderlands 2! There's a lot to be said about the design choices in that game! WOOO YEAH!
ADDENDUM: For a dissenting opinion on horror in videogames (that jump scares are totally worth playing a game for) check out the Jimquisition's video on the subject. I don't necessarily agree, but he brings up a lot of good points.
