Zero Punctuation: Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs

[Fortigurn]

It only just struck me after watching this video just how spot on he is about the sanity meter for immersion:
"THIS IS A BAR!? YOU SEE THIS? This means you are scared!"

"[...]When actually you should gauge how scared you are by yourself"

I probably misquoted that entirely considering I'm writing that from memory from a video I watched days ago lol

Yeah, as he acknowledged, Amnesia does not have a bar to tell you how scared you are. It doesn't have a 'fear meter', it has an 'insanity meter'. Even that is kept complete offscreen unless you visit the inventory, and the purpose is not to show how scared you are but to provide details of a well integrated mechanic representing a character status which the player is unable to experience directly themselves; mental instability.

Of course players can gauge how mentally unstable they are for themselves, but that's not the point; you are playing a character who is not you, and the qualities and characteristics of that character must be communicated to you effectively. The insanity mechanic does this well (I didn't even see the need for the insanity indicator in the inventory).