Sanity Meters
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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I love eternal darkness and its use of sanity effects. I think if it didn't have a meter and just occurred as you progressed it might have been better.
Eternal Darkness one of the greatest games of the previous generation of games. I have not played silent hill 2 because of a lack of a ps2.
Eternal Darkness one of the greatest games of the previous generation of games. I have not played silent hill 2 because of a lack of a ps2.
[facepalm] This is why I keep petitioning Konami to get Kojima to remake the MSX2 titles "Metal Gear" and "Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake" for either the PSN or as full current-gen games. They were amazing, but Super Nintendo-esque graphics on a console no one has anymore doesn't translate to a modern gaming experience. Unless one lives in a basement. You want to play them though? Grab a copy of MGS 3: Subsistence, and play the bonus games on the second disc.JaymesFogarty said:
I feel this way too. The mechanic is fine, but I don't want a readout telling me that there's this mechanic. I wonder, playing devils advocate, if we'd be claiming the same thing if the roles were reversed; we've been underexposed to sanity meters, and people then may clamor for a day of readable sanity levels. Hmm.snowman6251 said:
I think the sanity effects in the Call of Cthulhu game worked pretty well. Like somebody else said, it was to preserve this Lovecraftian ideal of not getting a good look at the monsters for too long. I mean, a lot of his stories were all about a really long, slow build for a short final payoff. Often the big reveal is the last sentence or so of the short stories.
Also, screw anyone who says The Whisperer in Darkness hasn't aged well. I'll grant that Lovecraft's paper-thin racism and the overall age of his work has somewhat dulled the horror to be found therein, but some of his writing is really timeless and shows a quality I think is still to be matched in many ways.
Also, screw anyone who says The Whisperer in Darkness hasn't aged well. I'll grant that Lovecraft's paper-thin racism and the overall age of his work has somewhat dulled the horror to be found therein, but some of his writing is really timeless and shows a quality I think is still to be matched in many ways.
My biggest problem with the whole sanity thing is that very few of Lovecraft's characters actually went insane. It was the guy from "the Rats in the Walls" and a few others, but most of them were simply unsettled. If you want a sanity meter in your game, that's one thing, but don't pretend it has anything to do with Lovecraft.
I also have to agree with the whole "break of immersion" thing as well. Scare me, don't point at a meter and TELL me I'm scared.
I also have to agree with the whole "break of immersion" thing as well. Scare me, don't point at a meter and TELL me I'm scared.
Seconded. And, btw YahtzeeTraigus said:
Nyarlathotep usually doesn't appear in a "horrid" form. Most of the time he's just a black man with a horn.
Although, that's even more unsettling.
I played the originals using Subsistance. I hated them; I'm ashamed to say it, but it's the truth. I'd love to see the first two made using MGS4's engine.Nieroshai said:
The story I like the most (which might be adapted to the silver Screen by Mr. Del Toro is "At the Mountains of Madness". But you have a lot of shorter stories which are also good, most of which I do not remember the names of. I have a lot of his stories in a collection book which is of course called "Necronomicon". I don't think it is insanely expensive, so I'd just get that.Vinticore said:
What I like about Lovecraft is that most of his stories are at the very least unsettling. There is always something scary about them, often something you can't really put your finger on. And the fact that he only relies on scaring you psychologically with the settings and the "otherworldy" impossibilites makes it work more often than not. The idea of having the remains of an ancient advanced race buried deep beneath the oceans, or the desert, or the ice-covered Antarctica... it is a brilliant and unsettling idea. Especially when said race might not be gone... And for all we know, there might be something unexplainable deep beneath the oceans. It is not knowing which makes his stories scary, and I still find them scary.
This is hard to translate to games, which is why there are so few genuinely scary games. Note that I do not count jump-scares when talking about scary games. Jump-scares are as far from horror as you can come.
If we can accept that the biggest loss of sanity will occur when a person is subjected to something beyond the understood parameters of the natural laws of the universe, or under considerable emotional distress, then I don't mind sanity meters to represent this in games only if the players are likely to feel the same thing.
Problem is then that the loss of sanity would become a scripted event. Whilst a loss of sanity can only be truly applied *if* a person isn't expecting it to happen.
Sanity meters as a stand alone gauge (a replacement for your health and stamina meters) might work well in a game.
For example ... a game where you can only take so much damage, but every magical and exotic major sensation you find will take a random amount of sanity from you. Not only this but the more sanity you have the more able you are to detect enemy monsters from further away or the more able you are to effectively communicate with others.
I think a sanity meter in some games would make in interesting addition to a game, but only if the sanity meter represents something that will affect how you perceive the game as well as a player.
The less sane your character is, the narrower your vision gets ... the less threatening some monsters and sounds become ... the more attractive sources of evil power become in which you have to actively fight off the temptation to claim the power as your own (yes ... the 'One Ring' style of temptation), etc etc.
As that being said ... in an action-adventure game, sanity could make an awesome substitute for HP + Stamina. But it has to represent something tangible in how you perceive the world and how your character is both influenced and influencing in the environment he/she occupies.
Problem is then that the loss of sanity would become a scripted event. Whilst a loss of sanity can only be truly applied *if* a person isn't expecting it to happen.
Sanity meters as a stand alone gauge (a replacement for your health and stamina meters) might work well in a game.
For example ... a game where you can only take so much damage, but every magical and exotic major sensation you find will take a random amount of sanity from you. Not only this but the more sanity you have the more able you are to detect enemy monsters from further away or the more able you are to effectively communicate with others.
I think a sanity meter in some games would make in interesting addition to a game, but only if the sanity meter represents something that will affect how you perceive the game as well as a player.
The less sane your character is, the narrower your vision gets ... the less threatening some monsters and sounds become ... the more attractive sources of evil power become in which you have to actively fight off the temptation to claim the power as your own (yes ... the 'One Ring' style of temptation), etc etc.
As that being said ... in an action-adventure game, sanity could make an awesome substitute for HP + Stamina. But it has to represent something tangible in how you perceive the world and how your character is both influenced and influencing in the environment he/she occupies.
So long as the protagonist cant properly defend himself, you will have scary. I honestly thought Silent Hill 1 and Resident Evil 1 were the scariest games i've played.
In either case, your arsenal just always seems woefully inadequate. (Kitchen knife, no ammo, not exactly the arsenal u want to have when there are monsters/zombies around.) Not knowing what will happen after turning the corner, and have that creepy as hell music in the background really puts the fear into you. (with RE it was the silence that freaked me out, just hearing your footsteps becomes very foreboding.)
Insanity measured as quantity just becomes another meter to worry about. Immersion breaker for me. No overlay UI ftw in Horror!
In either case, your arsenal just always seems woefully inadequate. (Kitchen knife, no ammo, not exactly the arsenal u want to have when there are monsters/zombies around.) Not knowing what will happen after turning the corner, and have that creepy as hell music in the background really puts the fear into you. (with RE it was the silence that freaked me out, just hearing your footsteps becomes very foreboding.)
Insanity measured as quantity just becomes another meter to worry about. Immersion breaker for me. No overlay UI ftw in Horror!
OKNieroshai said:
Firstly, not trolling, that's hurtful. I was trying to turn your comment on its head for comedic effect. Whether or not you found it funny dosen't change that I was making a joke(just cutting that hydra off at the head before it gets nasty)
Secondly, I called it "MADNESS" because it was unsettling and there were creepy laughing pictures in the background that freak the hell outta me.
Finally, just so you know where I stand, I hate the Metal Gear (or whetever the franchise on the whole is called) series for its overblown nature and conveluted-ness. It feels stodgy to play and watch, and the cutscenes are just ugh. The fourth one was particularly bad. But that's my opinion, and yours is yours, so there's nothing to argue over here.
thats a great idea. i actually really enjoyed that game, but as yahtzee said, it got too easy to keeep your sanity up, so i actually kept my sanity low to see the effects. kinda sad that something so simple like a difficulty level would ruin a great mechanic.hawk533 said:
I have to disagree, at least in regards to Pen and Paper RPGs. Sanity meters are a brilliant touch for a character for one simple reason, I am not insane. Some people argue that alignment in D&D is stupid, because your character should be based on your actions, not your alignment. I think that results in the problem that all of my characters end up being Neutral Good, because I am, as a whole, a good person, who recognizes that this is a game, so I try to do good but work things to my advantage. However, if you say "this character is evil," I then have to play him as evil, and the game becomes playing an evil character and I get a new experience.
Similarly, if you say "your character is losing his sanity," it forces me to roleplay as being insane. It's not a matter of game design, it's a simple matter that if the game were starting to really get to me, mentally, I'd put it down, get a beer, have a poo, and then maybe come back to it. I always know I'm not trapped in a game.
Think of Farscape. John Crichton was going insane by his experience. It was believable, despite the fact that I could watch it and not go insane. Why? Because I wasn't living it day to day, I was just watching an hour a week. I knew they were all muppets, in the show world, they're weird alien creatures.
At some point, the needs of portraying the character outweigh what a game can realistically portray, and that's where meters come in. My character takes physical damage, and that just ends up being a tick off the health meter, why is psychological damage different?
Similarly, if you say "your character is losing his sanity," it forces me to roleplay as being insane. It's not a matter of game design, it's a simple matter that if the game were starting to really get to me, mentally, I'd put it down, get a beer, have a poo, and then maybe come back to it. I always know I'm not trapped in a game.
Think of Farscape. John Crichton was going insane by his experience. It was believable, despite the fact that I could watch it and not go insane. Why? Because I wasn't living it day to day, I was just watching an hour a week. I knew they were all muppets, in the show world, they're weird alien creatures.
At some point, the needs of portraying the character outweigh what a game can realistically portray, and that's where meters come in. My character takes physical damage, and that just ends up being a tick off the health meter, why is psychological damage different?
It's not "even" games like the CoC RPG. It's likely because of them. The "sanity" system in those predates most of these titles by a good margin. It works for an RPG, because it ticks down the essentials and in this case, Sanity is an essential. Especially for a gamer, since after slogging through a lair of dragons very little in Lovecraft is going to make for any pants soiling.
It's harder to represent in video games, though. I think RPG fans will accept more readily that their behaviour can be altered. It's not new. Fail a Will save. Boom, someone else's bidding. Not a good idea for video games, because it's a bad idea to take control out of the player's hands. So other methods are used. And Eternal Darkness did it well--minus the ease which is mentioned. It messed with you on a metagame level.
It's harder to represent in video games, though. I think RPG fans will accept more readily that their behaviour can be altered. It's not new. Fail a Will save. Boom, someone else's bidding. Not a good idea for video games, because it's a bad idea to take control out of the player's hands. So other methods are used. And Eternal Darkness did it well--minus the ease which is mentioned. It messed with you on a metagame level.
Actually, everybody saying the whole "Not giving a meter or anything to show you are insane". That's actually an amazing idea.
Imagine a multiplayer co-op game that implemented an invisible sanity meter, so if you went off and explored something, it would take a hit. If it got low enough, you could have sounds of combat or talking play for that one player alone, and spawn "fake" enemies to attack them. The other guys would see this one player constantly shooting at nothing, running from things that aren't there, and responding to stuff that wasn't said. I keep picturing this in Left 4 Dead, and it's AWESOME.
Imagine a multiplayer co-op game that implemented an invisible sanity meter, so if you went off and explored something, it would take a hit. If it got low enough, you could have sounds of combat or talking play for that one player alone, and spawn "fake" enemies to attack them. The other guys would see this one player constantly shooting at nothing, running from things that aren't there, and responding to stuff that wasn't said. I keep picturing this in Left 4 Dead, and it's AWESOME.
Tabletop-wise, I particularly like Trail of Cthulhu's Pillars of Sanity, which has the player specify two or three core beliefs at character creation. The loss of sanity thus represents the character's crumbling belief system. If a core belief was, say, love for a spouse, then the destruction of that belief represents the realization that love is not eternal and could even be an outright lie.
I don't see how that would translate well for a computer game. It's very much a characterization issue. In most games, your background is decided more or less for you and your mission path is ultimately determined in advance. There isn't the same scope for improv or accidental discovery, nor can the player really tailor the experience for their avatar.
Oh, and @ Vinticor: Lovecraft's Shadow Over Innsmouth is pretty interesting, and you can find it on the net. I think wikipedia has links to some of the best online versions. The HP Lovecraft Historical Society is also worth a look; they shoot movie adaptations, and their fake-silent Call of Cthulhu movie is well worth seeing. I understand they're doing a fake-1930s movie soon; hopefully it'll be as good.
I don't see how that would translate well for a computer game. It's very much a characterization issue. In most games, your background is decided more or less for you and your mission path is ultimately determined in advance. There isn't the same scope for improv or accidental discovery, nor can the player really tailor the experience for their avatar.
Oh, and @ Vinticor: Lovecraft's Shadow Over Innsmouth is pretty interesting, and you can find it on the net. I think wikipedia has links to some of the best online versions. The HP Lovecraft Historical Society is also worth a look; they shoot movie adaptations, and their fake-silent Call of Cthulhu movie is well worth seeing. I understand they're doing a fake-1930s movie soon; hopefully it'll be as good.