Divinegon said:
As long as games don't go so much into the cheap scare or the "The Ring" rip off, then it's okay.
Wouldn't it be a good enough idea if people stopped making the association that fear = monster/supernatural being? How about natural fears? Phobias? I often feel scared with games that don't even have that intention. Take for instance FF7. Back in the days I was scared ******** when Emerald was inside the ocean and I had to go explore around in the submarine, something so tiny compared to a gigantic beast that could slowly materialize as he was heading towards you. Ok, so it goes back to the monster point, but I'm afraid of large depths. Even when Emerald was gone, I felt uneasy during that part. Creating a game that forced you into situations that could cause moments of claustrophobia and common fears wouldn't be bad. Even if you don't have that phobia you'd feel eerie once you notice the tunnel you're going into becomes shorter and shorter until you're left crawling inch for inch in a human sized hole.
This is what we need.
Divi's example of Final Fantasy 7 is reasonable; the whole psychological torture of being small in a very large place, underwater. When designing the game, the writers probably didn't think of the sort of reaction their audience would take to the situation. They probably just imagined we would treat that segment of the game like we did every other. Instead, because of the juxtaposition of the tiny submarine and the mere
possibility that, out of the terribly-drawn blue, a gigantic monster could come and swallow you up. Surely that's simply a survival instinct; that if we encounter something enormously bigger than us and we can't fight it, then we naturally get scared: Especially if we're forced into that sort of situation in a videogame, right? Well how come no one experiences that sort of fear when playing Devil May Cry; where we get to go against impossibly huge bosses - at least ten times the size of the main character? Perhaps because that is a more rational situation, and, after all, we've encountered such an enemy a thousand times before in games: A nice, safe, land-based, giant... thing. The greatest feeling we feel against these, typical bosses is awe; not fright.
Another example of the whole 'horror from the depths' thing which may be somewhat unorthodox would be Super Mario 64. Anyone remember
the eel, or even Nessy in that underwater cavern? Both reasonably dangerous predators (alright, not so much the latter) who swim around in their respective moist areas, awaiting our beloved Mario, ready to strike. So, both of these creatures are hardly scary in retrospective due to the poor graphical quality which makes up their texture and the crap AI they both contained, but what about more recent examples of this subtle scare? How about the massive sea-snake in Shadow of the Colossus? Fighting that thing in a poorly-lit, huge lake was not a pleasant experience. Why is it, then, do players or humans overall dislike these huge, underwater sections more than a lot of horror games overall? A lot of these so-called monsters can have a greater chance of inducing paranoia, sweat and shock than a lot of the traditional scary moments. Certainly, this does not apply across the board, but enough of these 'rare' cases have been found for it to be certainly taken into consideration for any horror writers. Marine monsters - or simply the mere possibility they are going to be present - are a force to be reckoned with in any player audience. After all, there's a reason why the world is fascinated with sea monsters, and not just because of hopeful biological breakthroughs.
