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Things that would have made Amnesia scarier
Iddington Offline
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RE: Things that would have made Amnesia scarier

A lot of great ideas in this thread!

A lot of them I'm really keen on such as the one from the OP about the prison doors. Really the most horrifying parts of the game for me was at the beginning when I fully suspected that I was up against a ghost. The phantom footsteps and the groans were so terrifying that I didn't even make it to the lantern before I had to quit the first time. I was so high strung that I would have sworn that I'd heard footsteps coming at me.

Another is the working under pressure. After several playthroughs the most intense part of the entire game to me is
Spoiler below!
in the sewers when you have to lure brute away from the exit and he comes after you.
I would suggest though that you have no monster in chains before the cave-in. A constant working theme behind Amnesia has been that the monsters are scarier the less you see of them. An alternative suggestion might be to not have a visible monster locked up in chains. The chains could just come alive when you're there or in the area. I think it would be extremely scary if they suddenly went silent or limp and we'd be wondering if they suddenly escaped and if they're in the room prowling around us.

One area that I disagree on is mirrors. I agree that mirrors can be very scary but mirrors seem to contradict one of the rules of immersion that Frictional wanted to go by in Amnesia. We are Daniel and so he must look like us. If he looks like anyone else then we aren't Daniel. Windows could possibly work as a replacement.

More random monster placement and sudden encounters would DEFINITELY be scary. Though I believe that if sudden encounters (i.e. you turn a corner and you're suddenly being pursued) it would require that the next game's engine be tweaked so that throwing something at the face of a creature could stun them for a short time. Imagine if you were in the prison holding a rock and you turned a corner to find Grunt about 10 feet from you and closing fast. Toss the rock in his face and stun him for about 5 seconds. 5 seconds gives you just enough time to turn the corner and find a cell to jump into, but you'd better hope that it's enough cover because once that time is up Grunt is going to enrage. Letting out a deafening bellow he's suddenly at maximum run speed, capable of shattering a door in 1-2 hits, and very unhappy with you.

My last point I would like to suggest the elimination of the auto save function. I've seen on Youtube people saying that they just thrown themselves onto the monsters because after respawn they don't come back. Make people manually save or at least limit autosave to each major hub (the safe halls) and combined with more randomized encounters and I think you'd have a big step up in that feeling of helplessness and dread.

P.S. Yes to natural scary environments too. Smile
01-19-2011, 01:12 PM
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RE: Things that would have made Amnesia scarier - by Iddington - 01-19-2011, 01:12 PM



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