Jimquisition: The Ugly Secret of Horror Games

[Metalrocks]

in the old movies it sure looks more scarier then today. they dint use CGI like today and so things just looked more creepy.
like the clash of the titans comparison. new one, more action and the snake (forgot the name now) looked even beautiful and sexy. old one, more creepier and had tension in it when she was looking for him.
the original japanese version of the grudge was actually scary. the remake was still alright and well made, but not as good the original of course.
movies like the omen, the exorcist etc, they still look more freaky then todays. as jim said, they focus too much on looks then horror.

but with games, i dont think its scary at all when the graphics are not really nice looking. i dint find resident evil 1 scary. sure sounded creepy when you have heard the zombies or what ever in the distance, but scary, no.
the same with amnesia. sure, its a good game and has a wonderful atmosphere, but i dint find it not one bit scary. seriously. amnesia dint scare me or frighten me.
dead space was actually scary for the first 2 levels but after that, it was the same and wasnt scary again.
silent hill 2 was really good and was creepy. like few mentioned before, this long staircase with that weird sound coming closer was freaky and made feel really uncomfortable.
the only game, which scared me, was FEAR 1. no other game actually scared me like this one. just seeing alma was creepy because you never know what she will do. either she just stands there or comes towards you and you have no idea what will happen if she kills you or just disappears again.

 

[Lex Darko]

I have to disagree. A game doesn't need to be ugly to be scary. For example there are a number of areas in Dark Souls that more than qualify as scary: New Londo and its ghost, the Catacombs and its regenerating skeletons, the Tomb of the Giants and its pitch black darkness that hides giant skeletons waiting to chop you down or knock you off a cliff.

Also a lot of people associate horror with a feeling of helplessness but that's not completely correct. Horror is linked directly to futility the feeling that no matter what you do, you will die/lose regardless of what tools you have, what information you possess, or what you are physically and mentally capable of accomplishing.

Let me give you an example. In amnesia they don't give the play any weapons to speak of, creating a feeling of helplessness because you don't have any tools to kill the monsters.

Suppose they gave the player a rocket launcher with infinite ammo that could kill the monsters in one hit; but when killed the monster would then just instantly respawn and pursue you even faster. In that scenario the game would still be scary even without the player actually being helpless.

Another example of this would be the movie Drag Me to Hell. For most of the 2nd and the entire 3rd act the protagonist was never helpless. She had the coin, she had the information, and she had ability to get rid of the curse. But the movie was still scary to end because of the sense of futility in every action she took even with everything she had at her disposal.

 

[EvilestDeath]

I do believe we are missing something here Jim...

Dark Souls

Not a horror game, he was talking about horror games not games with horror elements.

 

[Vault101]

dont know if this is realted...but I found the "darkseekers" in I am ledgend absolutly terrifying at the time BECAUSE of the uncanny valley with the CGI, at the time I couldnt explain why (as I didnt know what the uncanny valley was)

but yeah...the scream bit with the c64 is effing terrifying

 

[Tax_Document]

No, I am not scared of things that look like blocky brown turds that run at me groaning

 

[MisterDyslexo]

"Refined isn't scary"

Huh?

You see, bad controls make the game tense, but also frustrating. Frustration detracts from immersion, and it ruins it. At least, thats how it works for me. You don't have to make the controls shit. Just make the player feel weak in comparison. He said Dead Space had a lot of jump scares, but face it, Isaac Clarke isn't a soldier. He is, at best, an average man. Not powerful, not quick with his reflexes, weaker than his foes. He moves about as fast as I would expect a man in his position to. He isn't a deadly-accurate marksman (well, okay, he probably should be a bit less accurate). He feels slow and sluggish, because he is, but the camera doesn't change every thirty feet down a hallway, just making me dazed and unsure about whats going on. Its hard to be scared of a monster if I don't know its there. In Dead Space, I've had moments where I've run like a madman because I knew that something was behind me. I didn't see it, but a lot of thoughts went through my mind, not one of them being "Man I wish this camera was better". I've played the older Resident Evil games, and it hurt my experience, it truly did. It doesn't make players feel weak like a small inventory, and it doesn't make you feel out-of-control, because that implies you actually know what the hell is going on. And poor camera and poor, clunky controls don't. They just distract, and therefore detract. Or at least, thats my experience. I've played a fair amount of horror games, and that always seems to have been the worse mistake.

Other than that, great episode.

 

[Subatomic]

I don't think 'ugly equals scary' quite fits, as others have said it's more about creating a scary atmosphere which is to a degree independent from technical aspects. One of the most scary gaming experiences I had was the Ocean House Hotel segment in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, which was (for it's day) a very pretty game, one of the first using Valve's Source Engine. Still, fumbling to the dark hotel, finding the clues to what happened, the lights failing occasionally, the ghost of the murderer/father appearing just around the corner, breaking through the stairs into the cellar... it scared the shit out of me.
Objectively speaking, the hotel ia a short, easy quest that can be finished in a few minutes. It's almost impossible to die in (unless you get crushed by a falling elevator), and there are no enemies to fight. But the experience is so well crafted through usage of sounds and lights that, especially on a first playthrough, you are scared of every dark corner, every stair, and even every piece of furniture.

 

[Closet Superhero]

This is a clear case of confusing correlation and causation.

For one thing, game graphics are relative to their time. Put Amnesia out in 1996 and people would have been blown away by the visuals. Would that have made it less effective than Resident Evil? I thought the graphics in Silent Hill 2 were awesome at the time and stand up fairly well even today, but the game totally nails the disconcerting enemy movement.

The other issue is that games like Resident Evil 5 and Dead Space are not trying to be the same as traditional 'survival horror'. For commercial reasons, they are more or less 3rd-person action shooters. This, more than their graphics, explains why they are not frightening in the way that survival horror games of past generations have been.

 

[TheTinyMan]

I thought Amnesia had great graphics. High enough production values that I didn't completely believe that it was really an indie game, honestly.

I like how Jim lauds as a feature the reason I hate the Resident Evil games. Why are these young, fit-looking characters less athletic and graceful than my fat ass? That just frustrated me, and that prevents me from feeling pretty much any other emotion when playing the game.

 

[springheeljack]

The suffering 1 and 2 along with dark corners of the earth are good examples of this
both the games are grimy as fuck

 

[TerribleAssassin]

Amnesia, oh god, storage, oh god, so many un-nice flash backs....


OT: Jim once again has hit the nail on the head, I think everyone here agrees that Silent Hill 2 was piss pants scary because it look awful.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Good point.
They should remake Chiller then...
and have the protagonist in a wheelchair.

 

[Giest4life]

I think is saying "bad graphics" or "ugly games" out of spite, to troll people who would've not agreed with him the in the first place. I agree, though, with Jim. I think horror is all about infusing that feeling of dread, and it's not that pretty graphics are inherently the problem, it's that game designers use graphics to create immensely grotesque characters without the accompanying mood. Without the dark atmosphere or that feeling of helplessness, the monster is not scare, it's just ugly--something I can rectify with my 12 gauge shotgun.

 

[Strain42]

Jim (dunno why I'm addressing you, I doubt you're reading this) let me open up by saying that I have become a big fan of your show, and I do agree with what you've said here. I'll take Army of Darkness horror over modern horror any day.

But I felt like this episode dragged on a bit too long and got sort of repetitive. It was one of your longest episodes to date and half of it was you repeating the emphasis on "ugly is scary, beautiful is not."

 

[Ika Mudlaff]

His understanding of horror seems quite shallow to me. Horror is not really all about aesthetics. It's about creating an atmosphere by preying on our primal instincts like fear of isolation, fear of the unknown and what we can't understand. This is why in Silent Hill 2 monsters could freeze to blend into scenery, why in System Shock 2 monsters spawned randomly and could be heard from far distances - so that the player would know that they're around and he can't let his guard down at any time so that he doesn't get caught by surprise. This is why ALL true horror games are set up by isolating the player character from civilization and give no hope of outside help coming. His point is further invalidated by games like Silent Hill, System Shock, the first AvP and - hell - even Half-Life, all of which had superb graphics for their time. So what that now they're ugly? Today's games will be ugly in a few years too, does it mean they'll get more scary then? I really don't dig this. For me horror was always about psychology.

 

[LogicNProportion]

Agreed.

I must say, this is becoming my favorite show on the Escapist, by far.

For another example, JENOVA scenes were fucking terrifying in FF7, as was the Shinra Mansion, and things of that ilk. Need I remind you of some of the crap you faced in the submarine!?

FUCKING. EMERALD. WEAPON.

 

[Cowabungaa]

There's one thing that needs to be said here.

Yes, I have to agree that with a lower graphical quality you have to focus a lot more on art direction to get the visuals you want, but that doesn't mean that you can't put the same amount of effort in the art direction of games that use cutting-edge graphical technology. The fact that a game developer has yet to do that (although I think that the guys who made Dead Space really tried in some areas, at least in the first game) doesn't mean it can't be done.

Or to put it more simply; don't blame the tools, blame the users of those tools.

Horror is not really all about aesthetics. It's about creating an atmosphere by preying on our primal instincts like fear of isolation, fear of the unknown and what we can't understand.

Those things you describe are made (partially, together with other tools) with visual aesthetics. Aesthetics is more than just graphical quality as Jim points out, it's also about art direction.

 

[Ika Mudlaff]

Sure graphics and aesthetics have some part in it, quite major I suppose (it's be hard to make a horror game with Mario characters without fiddling with aesthetics), but it's not all. Feeling of isolation is best achieved with plot devices. For example, System Shock 2 is set on a ship 63 trillion light years from Earth (if I remember the numbers right) so even outside communication is out of question. You instantly get the feeling that no one can help you because no one even knows that the ship's crew is in peril. In Silent Hill 2 this was achieved by making the player go on foot for roughly first 30 minutes of the game (which proves my point) and by making monsters look and sound like they're not even living beings (which proves your point). Still the message I got from Jim's video is that aesthetics are everything or at least the most important thing in horror and I still tend to disagree with that.