Dissertation work with Amnesia: The Dark Decent

[Diz]

I have only recently played the demo, just to see how it was like compared to the full game, but I will be explaining how I felt the first time I played through the full game because I feel that would be much more accurate and preferred information. I hope this is okay with you.

 When first faced with a Gatherer, what distinctive feature scares you the most about it?

This depends on how you mean by facing it, but in the demo, as far as I know, you only see it once in the distance, rather than actually riscing standing infront of it and waving hello, so I will go ahead and assume this means the first few vague encounters.

When a gatherer is near the first few times, you might hear more than you see, so the sounds play an important role. However, in my case, when I actually noticed there was something physically there (Wine Cellar), I only received an impression regarding the visuals, and terrifying at that. I see a silhouette standing far away, so there are not much details, but what you do see is the creepy staggering. You get an even better look at the staggering later on (Refinery). Since Amnesia can make you feel that you are truly trapped in a nightmare, things like these will very likely creep you out more than you might think.

Moving more toward the full game, the first few times when you encounter a brute, chances are you will be seeing nothing and only hearing noises, and the Brute has even more terror to it. The deep otherworldly moaning, the metal groaning as it walks, and simply not knowing what on earth it is or how exactly it looks like. This will terrify you as your mind starts making up for what you cannot see and making you even more scared.

The second thing that genuinely scares me, which is common with both of the gatherer types, and moreso with the grunt, is the music. You hide away and often cannot see a thing, but you hear sounds, and with it comes music. Music sets atmosphere and emotions such as horror very well if done right, which very much is the case with The Dark Descent.

 Out of the two monsters in the game, which scares you the most and give a detailed description why?

In the demo? The grunt and the kaernk, right? In my honest opinion? The grunt, hands down. A lot of players will think the opposite, and I am glad there are different opinions on this matter. The reasoning for some players' choice is that you cannot actually see the kaernk and it is otherworldly, and the gatherers are just severed human beings. I have a totally different experience with this, however.

The first time playing through the game, there is no way for anyone to know what these roaming silhouettes really are. Granted, they first start actually becoming visible to the player after you read the note about the gatherers, hinting toward servants, but I will have to admit that the flashback about the orb in Africa gave a much greater and terrifying impression on the situation as a whole, so when I saw something that actually looked like mummified corpses walking the abandoned castle, I strongly believed that these were ancient spirit visitors out to blindly follow the trails of him who disrupted their sleep. Now, combine this with the fact that you are entirely defenseless in a dark castle. With the kaernk, it would not take long for you to sit on a crate, gather your breath, stay over water and be safe. With the gatherers, there were no feeling of safety whatsoever, so I will definitely go ahead and say that they were the scariest by far, in my opinion. =)

 As you played the demo, did you ever consider turning the game off? If so why?

Once again, I never played the demo, so I will only make a statement about how it was with the full game.

Yes. Well, I really wanted to keep on playing, and I was playing with two other friends watching and sometimes taking over (as there was no way whatsoever I would ever dare play it alone), but how realistic the game felt in regards of sucking you in like the black hole it was, full of anticipation and neverending creepy atmosphere, it was simply too much at times. There was one point, when I entered the prison, a gatherer came after me, I ran, and it was still right behind me and tore me apart. Since my other friends did not want to play at the time, I simply had to give up for the night, because my heart could not take the sense of helplessness anymore.

 How does the general environment make you feel?

The atmosphere is very detailed and rich from the very start until the bitter end, and the music gives off an atmosphere based on terror, mysterious and insanity, depending on where in the game you are (ie. prison, cistern entrance and torture chambers. The environment makes me feel different depending on which part I actually am at, and the story reflects the environment well, but in general, I would just say it makes me feel like I am in a neverending nightmare.

 Do you find yourself throwing objects when the gatherer is chasing you? If so, why do you do this?

Very, very rarely. I do not think I did this once during my first playthrough, but I imagine I would if I truly was cornered and managed to think of using whatever I can when not being totally frozen up. This would only be during an emergency, though, and if a throwable object was right next to me.

 Explain one part in the demo that scared you the most?

Only having played through the demo far after I finished the full game, this is hard, but I imagine it would be the gatherer encounter in the Refinery, as well as the Refinery's creepy and sudden events during investigation.

 Would you consider buying the full game to play in your own time? If not, why?

Seeing as I bought the full game from a colleague's recommendation and never considered to play a demo in order to have a properly fresh experience, I may be eligible for this question, but I imagine if I had played the demo beforehand, I would definitely have bought the full game, granted that I had friends to sit next to me to make me feel less alone while playing it.

 If you could make this game play a lot easier for yourself, what would you add/change?

If I would make this game easier to play, I would remove some music, sounds and scares. This is not something I would do, though. Quite the contrary. It is what makes this game what it is, and this game being extremely hard on me to push through is what made half the experience for me, and I hope I will have that same feeling with A Machine For Pigs!

I hope this helped. Best of luck with your dissertation!