New Game Design/Gameplay needed for dealing with Enemies in future games

[Lazoriss]

Since the monsters in SOMA are victims of the WAU, it would have made a lot more sense for them to be passive entirely. Like... you're supposed to feel sorry for them, but at the same time, they're trying to kill you. Also, since most of the monsters have different gimmicks and patterns, there's so much exposition dedicated to explaining that, which could have instead gone into the backstory of the monsters.

The initial playthrough of TDD was terrifying. The ambiance, sounds, and chase music added A LOT of the scare factor as well. There was also the very important mechanic of how damage/death worked. In SOMA, when you're hit, the screen instantly blacks out. You wake up a few seconds later in a nearby location. Death just has the clip reel and "YOU DIED". In TDD, you can take a couple hits before dying. There's nothing that made me more pants wettingly scared than having one of those abominations catching up to you with that screeching sound in your ears, or the scraping noise the brute's blade makes along the ground as it closes in. You hear it gaining before being slashed. Your screen is now red and you can barely hobble away; you're scrambling desperately for escape before that fatal blow. In some areas, you may be inclined to jump to your death rather than let it catch you.

The thing is, we barely know what the monsters are. A lot of the story is kept vague, at least in specifics of the WAU, which is like the main antagonist. SOMA had me on edge, and there were creepy moments, but the storyline was not one that benefited from roaming monsters as obstacles.
There are games that utilize patrolling enemies that don't despawn very well. Outlast (IMO!) uses this amazingly. All the enemies work the same, but they're scary because of the amount of story they're given. You KNOW what they're capable of, and you can only concoct in your mind the awful things they'll do to you if they catch you. They're smart, they talk to you, and the dialogue can make your blood run cold. We barely know anything about the specific monsters in SOMA, and there's a reason that the Crawler was my favorite monster in the game, and why Aker's appearance disappointed me.

I know Frictional was trying to be creative with the monsters by having more models and mechanics. But it doesn't mesh well with the story, and ends up taking away from it. Don't get me wrong, I really do love the game. But I also think it could have been a lot better as well if it had been more story focused and had more passive "monsters" that you could communicate with, like Carl and Amy. Like Kein said, you could have ones that were only aggressive when provoked. I really really like the first Crawler you encounter because of this. His brand of scary was from his personality and desperation. This is why I'm hoping there'll be DLC for this game. There's a lot of characters and backstory that weren't fleshed out. A good DLC would shed some light and make me appreciated the original game a lot more, too. It wouldn't even have to be a game. Short stories, comics, animation. I'd take any medium, really. I mean, the Transmissions miniseries was really cool! I really liked the directing and how the characters were handled.