Official Poll Regarding SOMA's Monsters

[Damascus Rose]

I was thinking about A.I. My impression is if the A.I. would be more aggressive the gameplay could produce more mental and emotional strain.
As some point A.I. was passive and that lead the player to be half-misunderstood and maybe waiting feeling dull at that time.
Also, there could be one or two more monsters per level.
If the player could have some ability/item to stop,delay,disable or entrap them with paralyzation/stasis/emp effect for a brief moment, this could add to more tense encounter.

My counclusion is that aggressiveness of A.I. and more quantity of monsters could contribute to the game scariness.

But then we get into what happens when the enemies are too effective at killing you. The diving monster is the quickest and most aggressive enemy in the game, but had the poorest effect on me because he was so impossible for me to avoid. After dying once, or even hiding in a spot and having him patrol for too long outside leaving me no room to sneak away completely ruined the experience and the fear. His aggressiveness initially scared me but his unwillingness to leave me the fuck alone killed it.

And for having more monsters, maybe, maybe not. The only place with many monsters was theta and once you get to the area where there's a bunch that patrol, they aren't very scary and are just a gameplay mechanic. Just an obstacle to get around. There needs to be a medium.

I think there might be something to be said about having a way to fight back, a rare item maybe that you have to make a quick decision on whether to use or save if you think you can get away quick enough, like an emp bomb. Maybe something that takes a long time to recharge. This is the philosophy the game Routine is using; they say that having no way to fight back and always being able to outrun the enemy isn't scary, so they are including some form of combat related to what I mentioned to add to the frantic fear of trying to survive an encounter. We have no way of knowing how well their idea holds up though because the game isn't out obviously (and we've been waiting fucking ages for it.)

The only game I can think of with shit ass combat to make you feel weak compared to the monsters is penumbra overture, and I think most of us are well acquainted on how well that worked. But then again the only real threats in that game were zombie dogs that weren't all that scary. I think the concept is sound but needs to be implemented differently. It could take ages of iteration to finally get right though, effective horror is damn finicky.