Worst Level Design in the game- the Choir room

[avager]

The overall quality of the "levels" within Amnesia is very solid; however, I found the choir room to be the exception.

The level is very bland, and to large (space wise) with a red hue and dust that obscures vision. This not only makes it look uninteresting from a aesthetic point of view, but it also fails as a level in function because it does not utilize the interplay between light and dark the way other levels execute perfectly e.g. the dungeon, or storage.

Having to navigate from one room to another to pick up the shards feels more like a chore, since there is so much space to traverse, with an occasional encounter with a brute mixed in. One plus to this area though is the iron maiden room, that was very well done.

The game is fantastic, don't get me wrong I just figured id offer my 2 cents so that Frictional Games could get some constructive criticism. Anyone share these sentiments?

I don't.

The idea of horror is to take away things from you that normally keep you comforted. This is easily seen in darkness lowering/removing your vision but also with loud machinery removing your ability to rely on hearing. There are many other things that can be removed to induce horror such as self defense (no weapons) or control of character (dizzy/controls wobbly). In this case they attempted to remove your ability to know where you were. You are in a large area where there are few landmarks, limited vision, and repetitive objects/environments. If you are not careful you will easily lose track of where you were and what the map is like. You are also more vulnerable to enemies due to the fact that there aren't shadows to hide in. That was the point of this, they changed what limitations you had and made you have to know where you were.

From the looks of this thread I can see many people got lost b/c they didn't make a mental map or prepare before they ran into the fog. I always knew where I was because I kept a mental map of where the door was. I systematically cleared this area in maybe 10-15min (I misjumped and fell down the hole...). If you found this area irritating its probably b/c you don't have a good sense of direction or spacial skills.

Exactly,

I was playing with my friend over teamspeak (we both tried to keep moving together in story line and collecting things, like: "We are going to enter through first doors on the right", and we both went in in the same time)... My friend keep losing himself in the fog, whenever I asked him where is he to meet in one place and continue our adventure, he kept telling me "I don't know ! Somewhere", or when I asked him to go to the middle bridge (there were 2 bridges, one on the right from first doors and another straight from the same doors you enter this area), he answered "Sure", after 5 minutes of waiting for him, he finally told me that he is lost and he don't know where are the entrance doors... It was annoying as hell. Waiting for someone who constantly loses himself every freaking 10 seconds... I was running like mad around, in middle of the room and I ALWAYS knew where I was...
Anyway, I just painted this map from my memories of how Choir looked like. It isn't 100% accurate especially with the placement of columns, but you get an idea of how simple this place was.

Spoiler below!

LEGEND:
RED= Doors
BLUE= Point of interest (important items)
GREEN= Bridge
BLACK SMTH IN THE NORTH= Collapsed column

At least, I do agree with Choir being the "worst" map in the game, didn't like it at all, It didn't fit in my opinion into whole game, dunno why, maybe that redish light and fog everywhere from vaporized blood (redish light). But ofcourse, game was excellent and I can't wait for custom tools to be released, I'm already planning my custom level ^^ .