Suggestion: New "Monster Event" Ideas?

[Paddy™]

I thought the music cues were genius. I can understand the criticism that they make it too easy to know when you're safe, but I think knowing you're safe can benefit the atmosphere; it's important for the player to experience periods of relief and allow them to exhale otherwise the experience becomes stagnant. The constant up and down of emotion rattles you much more than a constant stream of unending threat (or unending safety!). The music cues make this work perfectly. Fear, like any other emotion/sensation, is always much more potent when it's teased out of you. Amnesia's soundtrack is very much the horror game version of sex!

I also adore the screeching audio when you're within a monster's field of view. Again, it makes it obvious when you're successfully escaping because the screeching dies down, but conditioning the player to associate that sound with being seen as opposed to just having been seen makes it all the more powerful when it kicks in - you feel panic and you know you're right to feel that way because you know the sound means you've been spotted, not just generally detected/sensed by the enemy, but actually seen and pursued. When it dies down it provides the same kind of respite I mentioned above, which serves to rattle you further and soften you up for future scares. The "come down" is as integral a part of the experience as the frights are.

When you have an encounter with a monster and hide in a closet, and if the encounter scared the shit out of you, you're extremely reluctant to go back outside and continue on even when the music cues signal that everything is fine (because everything was fine before the encounter, right?). If the monster never left and the music never softened it'd be scary at first but you'd feel much less inclined to hide and would just say "ahh to hell with this" and make a run for it. One of the things about Amnesia that makes it unique is the fact that everything conspires to make you want to remain hidden. I think the music cues actually support that by being extremely dynamic and informational. It's like the music is having a conversation with you, constantly reminding you that the situation is out of your control.