Big Studios Can't Produce Good Horror Games
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
The letter H is a consonant, the pronunciation of H begins with a vowel sound. An is the proper form.Cyrus Hanley said:
I'm sorry but that's just terribly wrong in my books. H is pronounced haich, not aich, and the word an is only supposed to be used before vowels. An HD just sounds completely wrong if you pronounce HD properly.Cyrus Hanley said:
That's okay, you're terribly wrong in my books.CardinalPiggles said:
So you would say "a honour" instead of "an honour"?CardinalPiggles said:
It still starts with a consonant and you said "the word an is only supposed to be used before vowels", not "the word an is only supposed to be used before vowel sounds".CardinalPiggles said:
BUT YARTZEE WUT ABOUT SIREN DA BLOOD CURSE???!!!??
...hold in there Yahtzee. Assuming that devs have been taking your advice on this matter since you started talking about it in your Silent Hill Homecoming review (possibly?), it's only a matter of time before a proper AAA horror game comes out.
At the least, another Deadly Premonition.
...hold in there Yahtzee. Assuming that devs have been taking your advice on this matter since you started talking about it in your Silent Hill Homecoming review (possibly?), it's only a matter of time before a proper AAA horror game comes out.
At the least, another Deadly Premonition.
There's something about saying that Triple A developers are INCAPABLE of subtle, high quality horror that rubs me the wrong way. It's the same way I feel about Yahtzee's argument that depth in games "peaked" with the PS2 era and it's all downhill from here. The view strikes me as too fatalistic, moreover it lets the Triple A developers off the hook too easily. These aren't mentally handicapped preschoolers they're professionals, there's nothing PHYSICALLY stopping the developers of today from creating something of the caliber of SH2.
I refuse to believe, as Yahtzee seems to, that if the designers told the cinematics team that the atmosphere of the game would be better served by a subtle, silent otherworld transition than a big bombastic reality warping sequence that said cinematics team would throw a big fit and burn the office down.
Perhaps Triple A horror needs to learn discipline and restraint but there's nothing to say that they COULDN'T learn those qualities.
Also, I wonder if the Silent Hill HD collection being a huge turd isn't some kind of poetic justice against Yahtzee for getting all excited about it back around E3 on this very column. He's right, it IS fun to feel smugly superior to fans.
I refuse to believe, as Yahtzee seems to, that if the designers told the cinematics team that the atmosphere of the game would be better served by a subtle, silent otherworld transition than a big bombastic reality warping sequence that said cinematics team would throw a big fit and burn the office down.
Perhaps Triple A horror needs to learn discipline and restraint but there's nothing to say that they COULDN'T learn those qualities.
Also, I wonder if the Silent Hill HD collection being a huge turd isn't some kind of poetic justice against Yahtzee for getting all excited about it back around E3 on this very column. He's right, it IS fun to feel smugly superior to fans.
I'm generally in favor of the recent trend of PS3 remakes. You get two or three games on one disk, so it's a pretty good deal. I'd been meaning to give the Sly Cooper games a try, so when I heard that I could get all three at once, and in HD to boot, that was really convenient for me. More importantly, I could never get my hands on Ico, and now it's available with the extra content from the European version and Shadow of the Colossus, which I'd also been meaning to play.
The problem is when the remakes are done shoddily. I've heard bad things about the Prince of Persia collection, and apparently the Silent Hill collection isn't any better.
The problem is when the remakes are done shoddily. I've heard bad things about the Prince of Persia collection, and apparently the Silent Hill collection isn't any better.
Ooh, I am Alive! I'm keen to hear your thoughts Yahtzee. While I enjoyed it immensely, I'm not sure how you'd find it, I got the feeling it might fall into the "Alone in the Dark" realm of games which have stuff you think is great, but executed poorly.
Triple A games of this generation need to be cool and epic. They need to scream at the audience "BUY ME! LOOK HOW FUCKING AWESOME I AM, WOOHOO!!!", because it's the only way they feel they can risk spending millions of dollars on it.
Also, the bigger development teams get the less focused the ultimate vision will become. Game credits in the PS1 era could fit on a postage stamp. These days game credits can take over 15 minutes to roll by.
Also, the bigger development teams get the less focused the ultimate vision will become. Game credits in the PS1 era could fit on a postage stamp. These days game credits can take over 15 minutes to roll by.
It does seem difficult to get a good, scary game out of a mainstream developer. But I think it could be possible. The crux of Yahtzee's argument, from what I could gather, seems to be that there's just so many details and effects crammed into a mainstream game it can't be subtle. I'm not so sure, but it would take a lot of finesse and careful planning.
To bring about good, tension-building you need very quiet moments, but that leaves the question of what the sound designers are supposed to do. Maybe if instead of putting most of their efforts into loud noises, they could work on softer, more stealthy sounds that would keep the player on edge; low creaking floorboards, muffled scrapes and shuffling, whispers, and so on.
Graphical subtlety would be more difficult, but I think doable. Now adding detail to something hideous and disturbing will help make it scary, sure, but you also have to build up suspense as well. You can't have endless hideousness or the player gets accustomed to it. So what else can the graphical designers focus on?
Well, when Yahtzee reviewed "Dead Space" he said it would work better if the ship had actually looked like a safe, secure place to work and live before the corpse-mutating aliens showed up. The graphical artists could put a lot of effort into making the game environments look as safe, inviting and secure as possible. That way when everything goes to hell, it will be all that more shocking that something that locations that seemed so reassuring and comfortable had turned into such nightmarish horrors.
Another subtle effect they might try to create is something to recreate glimpsing things out of the corner of your eye. We've all had that happen, when we've just barely seen something off to the side, but when we turned to look, it wasn't there. If graphics artists could find a way to reproduce THAT, then they'd have a great tool for making the players nervous and scared.
To bring about good, tension-building you need very quiet moments, but that leaves the question of what the sound designers are supposed to do. Maybe if instead of putting most of their efforts into loud noises, they could work on softer, more stealthy sounds that would keep the player on edge; low creaking floorboards, muffled scrapes and shuffling, whispers, and so on.
Graphical subtlety would be more difficult, but I think doable. Now adding detail to something hideous and disturbing will help make it scary, sure, but you also have to build up suspense as well. You can't have endless hideousness or the player gets accustomed to it. So what else can the graphical designers focus on?
Well, when Yahtzee reviewed "Dead Space" he said it would work better if the ship had actually looked like a safe, secure place to work and live before the corpse-mutating aliens showed up. The graphical artists could put a lot of effort into making the game environments look as safe, inviting and secure as possible. That way when everything goes to hell, it will be all that more shocking that something that locations that seemed so reassuring and comfortable had turned into such nightmarish horrors.
Another subtle effect they might try to create is something to recreate glimpsing things out of the corner of your eye. We've all had that happen, when we've just barely seen something off to the side, but when we turned to look, it wasn't there. If graphics artists could find a way to reproduce THAT, then they'd have a great tool for making the players nervous and scared.
Yeah at this point I'm pretty convinced anyone with a sizable amount of money and a massive studio full of people just doesn't understand how horror games need to be made. Dead Space is about as subtle as a brick to the face with its horror. I like the dead space games a lot but they aren't horror games.
The essence of fear is the unknown, the mysterious, the vague, things that confuse people but at the same time encourage them to seek answers. If someone made a game where all you ever had to do was wander around and survive but the one catch was at any time and any place something would get you and you would die instantly and be forced to start over it would be amazingly effective surely. The only way a game would work like that however is if the creature were never fully in view and completely random and the longest the game could go for is a couple hours with its ending changing based on how long the player survived, what they did etc.
The essence of fear is the unknown, the mysterious, the vague, things that confuse people but at the same time encourage them to seek answers. If someone made a game where all you ever had to do was wander around and survive but the one catch was at any time and any place something would get you and you would die instantly and be forced to start over it would be amazingly effective surely. The only way a game would work like that however is if the creature were never fully in view and completely random and the longest the game could go for is a couple hours with its ending changing based on how long the player survived, what they did etc.
I'm still REALLY pissed off with this attitude. Many people in here and Yahtzee have this urge to imply that you can punch the horror formula into your book/film/game and get universal good results.
I'm a huge horror fan and even though I like psychological and subtle horror more than anything, I find it ridiculous to put it on a pedestal and disregard anything else.
I got scared at Alan Wake, at Half Life 2 (even if Ravenholm is basically Evil Town with zombies), reading Dracula, watching the Exorcist (unless you find scary girl puking on people and rotating her head to be subtle), even Evil Dead 2 with its comedy gave me the creeps once in a while.
So please, stop pushing this mantra and understand that "scary" is extremely objective.
I'm a huge horror fan and even though I like psychological and subtle horror more than anything, I find it ridiculous to put it on a pedestal and disregard anything else.
I got scared at Alan Wake, at Half Life 2 (even if Ravenholm is basically Evil Town with zombies), reading Dracula, watching the Exorcist (unless you find scary girl puking on people and rotating her head to be subtle), even Evil Dead 2 with its comedy gave me the creeps once in a while.
So please, stop pushing this mantra and understand that "scary" is extremely objective.
His point is that because everyone expects AAA games to have really good graphics they can't do proper horror because it makes everything too clear and that means there is no unknown and that isn't scary.DVS BSTrD said:
The last, great, truly scary game that I played was the first Bioshock. I think that game was scary because (as others have said here), it didn't rely on jump scares. The first Bioshock was scary because it was about unraveling a mystery. And the more you unraveled the mystery, the more you found out about the horrible things that went on. The jump scares in that game (and there are some) are only the side of fries with your meal. The mystery of who the main character is and the history of Rapture are what makes the game, in part, a horror game.
That's what encourages me about Bioshock: Infinite. It's a game whose scares are wrapped up in atmosphere and unraveling an ongoing mystery. The game trailers for that game - with the woman sweeping off the front porch of her store which is burning down - were far more scary for me than anything I experienced in Dead Space or Dead Space 2.
That's what encourages me about Bioshock: Infinite. It's a game whose scares are wrapped up in atmosphere and unraveling an ongoing mystery. The game trailers for that game - with the woman sweeping off the front porch of her store which is burning down - were far more scary for me than anything I experienced in Dead Space or Dead Space 2.
I find Alien amusing and don't like Aliens - I think I'm starting to see a pattern hereTerminate421 said:
The thing I don't like about the second game is the fact that it's not scary anymore, at all. You've seen the monsters before (and since I bought the games on Steam sale together I might have been just indifferent to their suffering after plying through it in just a couple of days then again together they are like 12hours long).
I liked that Izaac got some personality, I like the supporting cast (one-eyed hottie was ok) but that claustrophobic / I'm alone element was doing it much better for me
Also the entire business with your recent ex was just sooooooo sloppy. I mean come on! How stupid can an engineer be to not see that backstab coming and why would he ever listen to her when fully realizes that she is not real. Also that absolution part where she forgives him - wtf? it goes against story and more importantly logic.