Official Poll Regarding SOMA's Monsters

[PathOS]

I think in any situation in any game. The more you are around a monster, the less scary it becomes. I've always said that Horror works best when the quantities are unknown, and you as the player are faced with something that you cannot understand or see that well.

I think everyone or most people agreed - whether it was the grunts/brute's in TDD, the pigs in AMFP, or even the inmates of Outlast and the Alien in Isolation - that the longer you saw an enemy the less scary they become. Their only capability to scare is then relegated to what they do to the player when they "catch" them (death or some state) and keeping the user tense that way.

I also agree that good build-up's to monsters are more effective, and someone mentioned the grunts of TDD being done well. In SOMA, since we have a variety of different monsters populating the world it was likely very difficult to give satisfactory build up to so many.

Akers probably had the best build-up since you started hearing of him in Delta and his insanity and how he headed to Theta, and then arriving at Theta to find the main level deserted and all the "black boxes" congregated to the sub-levels, not to mention the screams emanating from below and then dealing with that Proxy in the Server room.

Robo-Girl and Yoshida didn't have much build-up sadly and I think they could have used some more.