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What is the perfect eerieness?
Akong Offline
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#2
RE: What is the perfect eerieness?

Dead bodies are supposed to be scary because they signal danger. There's nothing inherently scary in dead bodies. If you were in a morgue, light of day, working hours and someone showed you a dead body, you wouldn't be scared. You might be disgusted, but that's something else entirely and should definitely not be confused with being scared. That's how horrible "horror" games are made these days.

A body can be used to insinuate danger. If it is a fresh corpse, you have more reason to be immediately tense. If the corpse was mauled, you know you are dealing with a physical presence, perhaps of a monstrous variety. If there are no signs of physical violence, it might have been a more abstract threat, something psychological perhaps, or maybe a disease.

Bodies are very easy tools to use when you want to relay a sense of danger, but that doesn't mean it is the most effective. Penumbra used sound to great effect. Low growls of wolves, for instance, were very effective in communicating the threat and at the same time, it didn't throw anything at our face, letting our imagination interpret the challenge.

Whispering and moving bodies are only effective if used in context. A big problem with horror games, is that they try to force a lot of 'scares' down your throat. It doesn't matter if it is relevant to the plot or anything, as long as the player is freaked out. This is a very bad practice and shows that the developer isn't really concerned about the horror aspect, and are really just throwing some horror in there, because it's popular. Look how many shooters we've had of late trying to shoehorn bland scares into their shooters. FEAR, DOOM, Half-life, etc.

Why would you specifically want moving and whispering bodies? Why do they move? How can they whisper? It could of course be explained by a deranged mind, sure, I can maybe go with that for the whisper, but explaining everything like that is a cop-out and shows lazy writing.

TL;DR: Whatchu talkin' 'bout, son?
02-27-2010, 12:37 PM
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Messages In This Thread
What is the perfect eerieness? - by Googolplex - 02-27-2010, 11:32 AM
RE: What is the perfect eerieness? - by Kman - 09-06-2011, 02:38 AM
RE: What is the perfect eerieness? - by Patacorow - 09-06-2011, 04:35 AM
RE: What is the perfect eerieness? - by graykin - 09-06-2011, 05:56 AM
RE: What is the perfect eerieness? - by Xenomorph - 09-11-2011, 11:04 AM



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