(09-26-2013, 08:45 AM)Abraxas Wrote: Except that it was stated from the beginning that AMFP was going to be a distant sequel, meaning a few loose connections and within the same universe.
I didn't mention universe or story anywhere in my post. I said mechanics as in game mechanics.
Take the Far Cry series. Each game has a totally unrelated story, but each game is a shooter with similar gameplay mechanics.
(09-26-2013, 08:45 AM)Abraxas Wrote: The 'catching your breath thing' is an interesting idea, but I honestly don't think it would have stopped people from complaining without good reason.
That's not my point, my point is that they removed mechanics from the game and didn't bother adding anything to replace them. For those of us who liked the mechanics of the original game, this was disappointing. This is is the reason people are complaining.
(09-26-2013, 08:45 AM)Abraxas Wrote: Sorry if I'm misreading your post, but are you not seeing the parallel between the Shadow and Machine, given your description? As you descend into the Machine, it becomes more menacing, especially in view of what Mandus discovers about the connection between himself and it.
That's not a clear parallel.
The Shadow is making noise as it hunts Daniel. The noise means something because we know what it represents.
The Machine is making noise, we don't know what it's doing, does it make more pig-men? does it inconvenience us by destroying a walkway? As such the noise doesn't mean anything, it's just a noise maker.
(This post was last modified: 09-26-2013, 09:33 AM by Quizerno.)
Quote:I didn't mention universe or story anywhere in my post. I said mechanics as in game mechanics.
Take the Far Cry series. Each game has a totally unrelated story, but each game is a shooter with similar gameplay mechanics.
Again, upon reading interviews and such, you'd see that they were toying the mechanics, as in, changing them. They never promised the exact same experience. The mechanics aren't the same because the game emphasizes story instead of survival.
Quote:That's not my point, my point is that they removed mechanics from the game and didn't bother adding anything to replace them. For those of us who liked the mechanics of the original game, this was disappointing. This is is the reason people are complaining.
See above.
Quote:That's not a clear parallel.
The Shadow is making noise as it hunts Daniel. The noise means something because we know what it represents.
The Machine is making noise, we don't know what it's doing, does it make more pig-men? does it inconvenience us by destroying a walkway? As such the noise doesn't mean anything, it's just a noise maker.
The Machine is a living slaughterhouse. When you learn what it is and why it was built, you realize that its movement means death. Sure, it's vague in the beginning, but so is the Shadow in the beginning of TDD (and still is at the end).
Quote:Again, upon reading interviews and such, you'd see that they were toying the mechanics, as in, changing them. They never promised the exact same experience. The mechanics aren't the same because the game emphasizes story instead of survival.
You people are talking as if TDD didn't emphasize on story at all. I think the amount of story in both games is pretty much equal. You can argue which one is better, but I think that's the question of personal taste.
It's just that in TDD the mechanics everyone is raging about had a tight connection with the story. They weren't just "there" for the sake of it, were they? AMFP removed them (I agree to an extent, it makes sense, because different character and all), but it still feels like something small was lost. Something that helped getting immersed and feel connected to the plot.
I'm not hating on AMFP. I liked it, in fact. I just feel that it couldn't make me care as much. I felt distant.
(09-26-2013, 10:12 AM)Abraxas Wrote: Again, upon reading interviews and such, you'd see that they were toying the mechanics, as in, changing them. They never promised the exact same experience. The mechanics aren't the same because the game emphasizes story instead of survival.
1. Pinchbeck (February 2012): 'Pinchbeck explained that The Chinese Room tried to look at protecting the sense of it being an Amnesia game and really belonging to the design template that was set up by its predecessor'.
2. Pinchbeck (March 2012): 'I think the challenge for us is how do you retain the core kind of experience of playing Amnesia but have some new Inge [sic] going on in there that means you can't just settle in and go 'alright, I know how this works, I've done this before''.
3. Frictional (June 2012): 'Hope you'll enjoy the first peak [sic] at what AAMFP (http://aamfp.com) is shaping up to become'.
4. Pinchbeck (October 2012): ''There’s a definite case of 'don’t fix what isn’t broken''.
5. Pinchbeck (November 2012: 'It’s fairly true to the spirit of the original game'.
6. Pinchbeck (March 2013): 'I think this has ended up more of a natural successor to [Amnesia] Dark Descent than we ever thought it'd be'.
7. Pinchbeck (March 2013): 'Originally, we thought it'd be this halfway point between Dark Descent and Esther, but in a lot of ways, it's much more like Dark Descent'.
6. Pinchbeck (August 2013): 'Our initial hope was to have a game that was a cross between Amnesia and Dear Esther. As the project grew and got to be more than we initially thought it would be, it has turned to be more towards the Amnesia type of game'.
(09-26-2013, 10:12 AM)Abraxas Wrote: The Machine is a living slaughterhouse. When you learn what it is and why it was built, you realize that its movement means death. Sure, it's vague in the beginning, but so is the Shadow in the beginning of TDD (and still is at the end).
Yeah but by the time the player comes across it, the Machine isn't killing anyone. Firstly it's out of operation, and even when the player activates it, the Machine isn't actually doing any killing. The conveyor belts are empty, yet inconsistently there's an occasional torso on the hooks, though the Iron Butler isn't carving anything up. There's also buckets of blood flowing here and there at various intervals, for no apparent reason. But the Machine is otherwise non-functional, and isn't killing anyone.
(This post was last modified: 09-26-2013, 10:47 AM by Fortigurn.)
The Machine's a haunted slaughterhouse, and for the first half of the game it's crippled - the sounds you hear of it evoke images of some vast, great mechanism trying and failing to be turned on.
I really don't get this complaint about its noises being any less meaningful than some mystical universal guardian that inexplicably roars and spews red goo around for some reason. Apples and oranges.
TDD emphasized a better story without any compromises. So, this argument that AMFP was this and that because it "emphasized" story is a meaningless statement.
The game should be called "A Machine For Pigs" because if you don't compare it to anything, it's a good game that could stand for itself. Having it be called a sequel just brings it into an argument it can't possibly win.
(This post was last modified: 09-26-2013, 07:55 PM by clashina.)
(09-26-2013, 07:53 PM)clashina Wrote: TDD emphasized a better story without any compromises. So, this argument that AMFP was this and that because it "emphasized" story is a meaningless statement.
The game should be called "A Machine For Pigs" because if you don't compare it to anything, it's a good game that could stand for itself. Having it be called a sequel just brings it into an argument it can't possibly win.
Then again, it's likely that the game would have enough parallels with Amnesia 1 (protagonist with no memory, weapons wanders dark historical environments while hiding from stupid monsters) that attaching the title would have been as a prudent move both thematically and financially.
Inspired by Fortigun's post I decided to re-read every article in the Info Portal and see what they were telling us. I'm not "quote mining" on behalf of one side of the debate or the other; I'm looking instead for quotes which are directly discussing what the game will be, keeping each quote in its respective context where possible.
Joystiq Wrote:At its core, A Machine for Pigs follows the same terror-inducing principles as the first, but changes the gameplay to keep things fresh for veterans. "People going in will not know what to expect," Grip says, noting that elements from The Dark Descent have been ripped out of the game, and new ones have been added. Neither will budge on details, only to say it remains a first-person horror title. Both agree the game has a high bar to aspire to.
"If we don't get as many cool YouTube videos of people having fits, then I'll be disappointed," Pinchbeck jokes.
"We tried looking at protecting the sense of it being an Amnesia game and really belonging to the design template that was set up [by the original]. But it's doing quite a few things that mean players won't be able to play it like Amnesia [The Dark Descent]," he adds.
NowGamer Wrote:So you're still bouncing ideas off of each other?
DP: Yeah, it's good to be in that position as we go forward. What's really important to us is we're all enormous Amnesia fans, and Penumbra before that so for us there's a real sense of wanting to stamp a thechineseroom identitiy on it. We want to evolve the game a little bit. But it's big boots to fill and we've got to stay true to Amensia because it's a fantastic game, and we want to do Frictional and Amnesia justice.
[...]
So compared to the first game A Machine for Pigs will feature different but equivalent types of gameplay mechanics and ways to instil terror?
TG: Yeah, there's going to be equivalents of those things, right Dan?
DP: Yeah, definitely. I think the challenge for us is how do you retain the core kind of experience of playing Amnesia but have some new Inge going on in there that means you can't just settle in and go 'alright, I know how this works, I've done this before.' We want to look at making some changes so players have to learn a few things again, and wouldn't be able to settle in to a comfortable routine of 'I know how to play Amnesia, I'll be okay.' So we've specifically looked at it to go 'where can we see players might make assumptions about how the game works?' and just make a few changes here and there to put them back on their toes again.
[...]
Finally, what are your views on the state of the horror and survival horror genres, and how much of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs will be a reaction to that?
DP: I’m not sure apart from isolated titles that we have a survival genre at the moment. I think we still call things like Resident Evil ‘survival horror’ out of history and habit really. When you look at the last few games I don’t think they are particularly...
[...]
And for all those Amnesia fans brave enough to return - can they expect a game at least as scary if not more so in A Machine for Pigs? Do you see that as a challenge for the next game?
DP: Yeah, I think if we don’t go all out to scare the living hell out of people then we’re doing something wrong.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun Wrote:RPS: What kind of things have to be in a game for it to be an Amnesia game?
Pinchbeck: It has to be absolutely, bone-shatteringly, terrifying. That was the key thing, Thomas said “If we don’t get as many Youtube videos of people spazzing out, then we haven’t done our job.” We’re looking at emphasis on story, which is there in Amnesia, which is a great common ground for us, obviously. It’s not just make you jump terrifying, but it’s got that deep, crawling horror. Even when you’re not being scared out of your wits by something on the screen, you’re really disturbed by what’s going on as well. One of the things that they did really well with Amnesia was unique events, so you couldn’t just apply the same logic that you’ve used before, you have to try and work out your environment. We’ve really looked at that as well, so the journey that you take through this game, you’re not ever going to the same kind of actions to get out of problems each time you’re presented with them. You have to think on your feet each time we throw something at you. Of course there’s no combat, you’re completely defenceless against anything you might come up against, which is such a cornerstone to how the series works.
Gamasutra Wrote:Now that indie studio thechineseroom is working on a sequel to Frictional Games' hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent, the team feels the need to make some changes to the series to keep players on their toes. In its upcoming game, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, the Dear Esther studio plans to create a brand new aesthetic to enable more interesting and horrific scenarios.
In a recent interview with Gamasutra, thechineseroom creative director Dan Pinchbeck explained that he and his team have worked hard to improve the visuals in the new Amnesia title in an attempt to lure players through the game's rich environments, and ultimately chill them to their core.
"With this new game, we want to create a world that is so rich and dramatic and beautiful that the player is constantly torn between wanting to go around the corner to see what's there and not wanting to go around the corner because they're frightened of what's there," Pinchbeck explained.
"Even that will make a significant change to the Amnesia gameplay, even before we throw the new mechanics at them."
The biggest challenge, he [Pinchbeck] believes, will be to make a game that both retains the essence of the original Amnesia, and branches off in some entirely new directions. After all, if players already know what to expect, they won't find the game very scary.
"The thing is, if we don't frighten people as much as the original, then we've failed. But now we have to frighten people that know what to expect," Pinchbeck said. "The big design challenge is: How do we protect the things that make Amnesia great, and how do we evolve everything else to make a really fresh experience?"
The trick, he believes, is to identify what players associate with the original Amnesia, and to find ways to subvert those expectations and deliver a different -- but just as chilling -- experience.
[...]
If everything comes together as planned, Pinchbeck says A Machine For Pigs -- just like its predecessor -- won't just alarm or startle players; it will disturb them at a subconscious, almost primal level.
"With Amnesia, it's not just about a superficial level of fear, it's about feeling that something has burrowed into your head and is just scratching its nails at you. But you're so hooked. Inside, you're peeling away like bodies from a pile and you just can't stop yourself," said Pinchbeck.
"We want this game to be absolutely skin-crawlingly, heart-shatteringly, and nerve-jarringly terrifying -- that's the target. Everything is geared around that. Just turning people to complete ice and making them have complete meltdowns," he added.
[...] Our vision is a game that is the evil spawn of Esther and Amnesia, quite disturbing.
[...]
TechZwn
I’m sure your team learned quite a bit while developing Amnesia. I’m curious if there were any lessons you learned about creating atmosphere and terror that you plan to focus more on with A Machine for Pigs. Penumbra had weapons, for example, but you found games are scarier without them. Could you talk about this a bit?
Jens Nilsson
Not so much for AAMFP, I think most of the things we learned or felt could be improved and changed will be for our next title that comes after AAMFP. AAMFP is in many forms a controlled experiment, so the whole idea is basically to not do the exact same type of Amnesia game again rather to let thechineseroom work their magic within the directions and feedback we advice them.
TechZwn
With A Machine for Pigs, will the gameplay follow closely to its predecessor? What type of gameplay experience do you want players to have?
Jens Nilsson
It’s going to be a quite similar type of game, but also different. We wanted to have another company develop the game because we felt strongly that doing a new Amnesia game and making it exactly the same is of no interest to us. We want to deliver a game that continues to explore how to deliver an interactive narrative and how to do that with a unnerving atmosphere, while also keeping gameplay elements such as exploring and a bit of puzzle solving or activities as we call them internally.
TechZWN Wrote:What’s to Come In ‘Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs’
[About the trailer]
The video is short, but gives us plenty of details about the sequel to Amnesia: The Dark Descent (one of the scariest games ever made). Whereas the first game took place in a dark, crumbling castle—from the bedrooms to the dungeons—A Machine for Pigs seems to have a broader set of locations. The video shows city streets with a factory looming in the distance, so we know there is an outdoor space and possibly the ability to enter some of the buildings (since the video shows furnished rooms, as well as a church where something particularly creepy has happened).
There are also a few shots of a machine of some sorts, with valves and levers, in some industrial space (possibly the factory?). When the player is hiding from the pig monster, they’re in a room with wooden stairs and a wooden door—different from the factory shown in the other shots.
Given all of the information above, we can make a few guesses. The game takes place in a small town, likely abandoned of all friendly life. Some dark rituals had been taking place here, and you’ll gradually find clues as to just what exactly happened. Pig monsters begin roaming the streets (is there a day-night cycle?), and you’ll gradually trace their location back to a factory where the beasts seem to originate.
GameZone Wrote:GZ: You’ve said before that the game will be true to its predecessor, only pushed in new and interesting directions. What’s this new vision like, and does that extend to story, gameplay — everything? Can you talk at all about what’s in store?
DP: The central thing about Amnesia: The Dark Descent is that the player's experience is at the core. It takes precedence of mechanics, over more formal gameplay features as such. So we're preserving that emotional journey — that rollercoaster of fear, awe, desperation, loneliness, sadness, disgust, and terror. There are some changes of course, to keep things fresh, but it will very much feel like an Amnesia game. But what we're hoping for is a very different experience at the same time. I'm not going to say anymore about that yet, though ...
BeefJack Wrote:How Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs is scarier than its predecessor
Thechineseroom have some big shoes to fill with their upcoming follow-up to an indie horror classic, but they’re confident. Here’s how they’re making AMNESIA: A MACHINE FOR PIGS even scarier than its terrifying predecessor.
[...]
From the start, the plan has been to outdo The Dark Descent – a game that, while Pinchbeck loved, he felt frustrated by when it “held back” on occasion. “In a couple of places Frictional pulled up a bit short,” says Pinchbeck. “And I thought, no, you can really really push this.”
One of the main ways thechineseroom hope to do this is through the story – both in its content and its presentation. “What you’re hearing, what you’re seeing and what you’re finding out about is really disturbing,” Pinchbeck says. But it’s also going to be a story told primarily through the environment, only utilising voice acting where absolutely necessary.
“I’m obsessed with the environmental storytelling thing,” he explains. “My marker is: I know we’re getting it right in terms of level design and art if I’m thinking, actually, I’m kind of reluctant to put a script into this.” Oh, and the voice acting’s going to be better, too: Pinchbeck describes Alexander of The Dark Descent as “a moustache-spinning muahaha villain”.
[...]
But what of the game itself? Pinchbeck and co have spoken of how they aim to stay relatively true to the original, so A Machine for Pigs will still be an adventure game that mixes puzzles with frantic running and heart-pounding hiding. But thechineseroom have hinted at tweaks to the formula that should ramp the tension up even more.
Not all of these are set in stone yet, but Pinchbeck tells me a little bit about the thinking behind them, and the sorts of ideas the team are playing with. The use of lights and lanterns – which allowed you to illuminate areas of the world to preserve your sanity – will remain in A Machine for Pigs, but thechineseroom are hoping to make adjustments to how the system works. Elsewhere, the team are looking at how objects are used in the inventory, and – perhaps most intriguingly – a way to remove all barriers to immersion.
“We’re trying to look at ways of making everything in the game in the game,” stresses Pinchbeck, “so you’re never breaking out of the action – you’re constantly in it. There is no recourse to any kind of screens, you’re just permanently in.”
Meanwhile, playing popular ArmA II zombie mod DayZ has got the team thinking about death. The first Amnesia handled this interestingly – but the more you began to work out its systems, the less scary the game became. “We can’t repeat that trick,” acknowledges Pinchbeck, “so it’s about how can we preserve the principle which Frictional were really smart about – which is that the player has to be scared that they’re going to die, and you’ve got to take them right up to that edge. We’ve got to find that edge again, but we’ve got to change where that edge is and how you do it, so players don’t just go, ‘Oh, I get it, it’s fine’.”
Re-capturing the unpredictability that Amnesia gradually lost is high on thechineseroom’s priority list. Enemy AI is being tweaked, to ensure players can’t use their experience from the first game to tackle problems presented in the second. “How perceptive are the enemies going to be? How fast are they going to move? How do they react to sound?” muses Pinchbeck. “We’ve played around with stuff like 360-degree perception, just to try and stop the player from being able to predict what’s going to happen in the game on the basis of what happened in The Dark Descent.”
[...]
For all of the tweaks and adjustments thechineseroom are making, however, they also understand the importance of not trying to fix the perfectly fine. “People are really hungry for more Amnesia content,” says Pinchbeck, “and I think it would have been dishonest to basically say, ‘This is an Amnesia game,’ and then radically change the core of what Amnesia is about. There are tweaks, but Amnesia is standing there and slowly peaking around a corner, or hiding in a cupboard because you thought you heard a noise. We want to keep that core – the very psychological gameplay – or it wouldn’t be an Amnesia game, and that would be disrespectful to the fans.”
“It’s fairly true to the spirit of the original game,” says Pinchbeck. “There’s a definite case of ‘don’t fix what isn’t broken’. We’re not going to be arming the player up at all – you’re still going to be hiding for most of it and running and peaking and not wanting to open doors and things like that. I think that’s kind of the core spirit of the game really, so we don’t want to take that away from the player.”
That said, Pinchbeck hints at some intriguing changes: “We’ve tried to do some stuff which will keep the player on their toes a little bit, to stop them from being able to play the same way. So there’s changes to the way some of the things behave in the game. It’s difficult to talk about that without giving too much away really.”
What's the holdup? Frictional says that A Machine for Pigs was originally planned as "a short, experimental game set in the universe of Amnesia," but as developers thechineseroom filled out the project, it became apparent that the "short experiment" was becoming "a fully fledged Amnesia game." So Frictional has made the decision to do it up right, which means another few months of waiting for fans. Frictional also says pricing and availability information is coming soon, so we'll keep an eye out for that.
“It just felt like I’d done something very, very, very experimental, so the idea of writing something that was kind of steampunk and cool and not having to be incredibly serious all the time, it was just fun. I felt like doing Dear Esther was poetry, and this was a chance to write a comic book. Not everything I write is Dear Esther. In terms of my taste in games, I play a lot more things that are kind of like [triple-A action games]. More Far Cry 3 than Dear Esther.”
Machine For Pigs certainly isn’t without its experimental moments, though, and it’s definitely not about impossibly large men in tights vanquishing beasties that go bump in the night. Make no mistake: this is psychological horror, and snaking ugly tendrils of fear and doubt under your skin has always been thechinesroom’s number one goal.
“What I think we have in common with Frictional is that kind of emotional, psychological element of, like, what’s real and madness, and what mind and personality are,” Pinchbeck explained. “What’s true. What’s not true. I think there’s an awful lot of that in Dark Descent. I think we didn’t want to move completely away from that, because we’re still really interested in that angle.”
“I think this has ended up more of a natural successor to Dark Descent than we ever thought it’d be. Originally, we thought it’d be this halfway point between Dark Descent and Esther, but in a lot of ways, it’s much more like Dark Descent.”
There is no denying Pinchbeck’s excitement about A Machine For Pigs and its horror elements. There was also a challenge, though, of keeping the game similar to The Dark Descent, while also making it something unique. According to Pinchbeck, the basic core gameplay and tone has remained the same. “The Dark Descent is stunning in terms of atmosphere and it was really important to me to protect that, and the core sense of what the game feels like to play,” he stated. “To me, game design is much more about crafting a journey, a feeling, than about mechanics – they are tools to achieve this experience. That’s something Frictional and The Chinese Room absolutely agree on, so it was pretty easy for us to identify what makes an Amnesia game special and make sure that was protected. There are a lot of loyal fans out there.”
But how do you change things up to keep the sequel interesting? Pinchbeck had an answer for that, as well. Apart from losing the inventory system of the first game, allowing players to stay in the game for longer periods of time (unless looking at notes) there are a few other differences. “Light is still important, of course, but that’s changed a bit to keep people on their toes,” he said. ”And there’s a whole new enemy to fear and face, and if you expect you can try the old tricks people learnt to avoid the grunts, there will be some nasty surprises in store.”
Ravi Sinha: The Dark Descent features tons of psychological horror, relying less on jump scares and more on the atmosphere of dread. Will A Machine for Pigs follow that formula, or put in a few twists of its own?
Dan Pinchbeck: Absolutely, you don’t change a winning formula, and it’s that focus on atmosphere that made us big fans of Dark Descent in the first place. The challenge has been looking to extend that, do some new things for existing fans, keep it fresh and new. But yeah, making sure it still is very much an Amnesia game is really important to us.
[...]
Ravi Sinha: Just how far will A Machine for Pigs go to disturb/horrify gamers? Because the basic premise of the game indicates nothing but dark days ahead.
Dan Pinchbeck: Oh, it’s pretty bleak. You have the fear that surrounds you, terrifies you while you are playing. But I hope we’ve also created something that will stick with you afterwards and still be upsetting and frightening you days later.
A lot of puzzles based on physics will be in «A Machine for Pigs». Ideally, puzzles have to be a part of story and move it forward and not just be a part of the game mechanics. Do you agree with it? Can you give some examples of puzzles from your game?
No direct examples, but I can tell you something really great that Thomas and Jens told us early on. They said they didn’t want any puzzles in the game, as puzzles are too mechanical and not part of the fictional world. Instead, they suggested we could come up with situations where Mandus would have to solve a problem, but that every action we asked the player to undertake should have a real basis and meaning inside the story. It makes you realize when you look at this way how often you rely on standard puzzles to pad things out — it’s a lot tougher to try and always look for unique and totally grounded events.
Atmosphere of «The Dark Descent» is usually associated with concepts such as «loneliness», «anxiety», «sadness», «uncertainty». How can you describe the main idea of AMFP?
We’ve done our best to preserve those, but trying to give the player a different mix, a different sense. I think we’ve made a game with more emotional depth and subtlety and that’s because we’ve been able to stand on the shoulders of giants. What’s important to me about the Amnesia franchise is that it’s not as simple as it first appears, so you can just play a scary game where you hide a lot, or you can really get stuck into the deeper themes and story and actually that’s where the really frightening stuff is hiding. Pigs is pretty dark. In every way.
What is «A Machine for Pigs» for you? Horror? Action? Adventure?
Horror. Pure horror for me.
What are the main changes in game mechanics and filing story in AMFP in comparison with «The Dark Descent»?
Again, don’t want to give too much away for players, but let me put it this way. If you have played Amnesia, don’t worry, we haven’t wrecked the core feeling of gameplay. But if you try and play it the same way, there might be some nasty surprises!
Dear Esther had elements of horror, but didn’t embrace being a straight “horror” game. How do you make the jump from Dear Esther to Amnesia?
It’s funny because I never thought of Dear Esther as being particularly horrible or scary – eerie I guess, but not scary. But we’d made another mod before Esther called Korsakovia which was pretty much straight down the line psychological horror and it’s kind of a genre I love, particularly when it gets fused with FPS gaming, so it wasn’t such a big leap. My writing is naturally pretty dark.
What did you learn from Dear Esther that you can bring over to the development of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs?
To trust in stillness and emptiness as being really powerful design tools, to not panic and think that you have to fill every opportunity with stimulus. Horror is really all about anticipation, and inference, and for those to work, you have to create space and time. The core experience design is giving the player just enough to start generating their own fear, then backing off and letting them do the work. You have to understand that there is literally nothing you can show or do that is going to be more frightening than what the player can come up with in their own heads. The challenge is seeding that, giving the player a really engaging architecture that they can’t escape and they are almost driven to populate with their own horror.
How has it been taking on the sequel to such a well-regarded indie hit as Amnesia?
Nerve-wracking – there’s a lot of love for Amnesia out there and you are aware that people are really watching this game. There’s a lot we can learn from the original, it’s a hell of template to work from, so that counterbalances that. But yeah, it’s scary.
There were going to be changes to some of Amnesia's core mechanics. The problem that faced thechineseroom was, how was it to make a sequel to Dark Descent without just rehashing Dark Descent? Among other things, tinderboxes and oil are gone; there's no trace left of the survival element, in this horror title. Survival wasn't what Pinchbeck's team saw as the core element, the thing that made Amnesia so unique. "People were saying lack of tinderboxes wasn't a problem," Pinchbeck remembers, "because you wanted to be in the dark most of the time." They wanted to be immersed in the Amnesia kind of scary, and if resources weren't necessary to that core experience, then out thechineseroom threw them. But if resources weren't central to the enjoyment of Amnesia, what was?
(This post was last modified: 10-02-2013, 06:25 AM by Paddy™.)
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