What do you hope to see and not see in SOMA?

[Chrysler]

Also, I don't want monsters to announce their spawn, like they do in TDD.

Ideally, they don't spawn at all. They are either near the player or somewhere else but don't magically appear and disappear. Technically, it makes sense to simply spawn them somewhere but this mechanic shouldn't be obvious to the player and the player shouldn't have to wonder e.g. how an enemy appeared or disappeared with all doors locked etc.

[TheBlazer]

What I hope to see:

- Omnipresent creatures. In Amnesia it was pretty obvious that they spawned at certain times and according to certain patterns, and it did not help that they even had a specific spawning sound, all like "Watch it man, I'm spawning right now and I'll be coming for you!".

- Exterior Space Walk section. This is usually regarded as a cool thing fit more for an action game, but I believe that if done right it could be downright terrifying. Imagine your character getting out of the airlock, only his breath audilable, and as you carefully try to reach the next hatch something knocks you away from the station and you see the space station getting farther and farther, absolute nothingness around you.

- Non-human creatures. The first trailer more or less confirmed robots for me, and I think that's an interesting take on horror. We have plenty of zombies, animated corpses and whatnot, something that does not even remotely look humane could be even scarier. Frankly, I find that tentacle astronaut thing in the released picture pretty unimpressive.

- Sense of dread. Being afraid of something that you can't exactly describe, not opening lockers because you they scare you despite the game never having shown a "Locker Monster" before... As one of the blog posts said, the best fear is the fear of what you can't see.

- Toying with the player. It would be cool if for a moment the player felt absolutely powerless, and was little more than a plaything in the hands of something. Also, destroying his expectations. Build up a typical jumpscare room with blood and stuff, and then spawn monsters in the clean safe hub instead.

- Exploration that requries you to overcome your fears to reach new areas where you find new useful stuff or additional pieces of storyline. Occasionally overcoming your fears and exploring would result in being attacked by something inhuman, creating uncertainity and the aforementioned sense of dread.

- Neutral creatures that the player is forced to approach and walk by/among to complete critical actions. These would be snappy, and the player would need to be careful around them, but each one would be more or less easily startled. Startled creatures would become hostile, of course. Think about something like those scenes from Star Trek where the Enterprise/Voyager crew walks around a Borg cube in close proximity of Borg drones.

What I don't want to see:

- Picking up a key or other important item triggers a monster spawning. We have enough of this.

- Weapons. Maybe I could take some kind of tool, like a hack tool or repair tool, but other than that the player should be powerless.

- Terror Meter for every single monster. It worked in Amnesia but now everyone is going to expect "The louder the sound, the closer the monster". Instead, it would be interesting if some monster types were mostly quiet during chases, so that you would be constantly asking yourself "Is it still there? Should I turn to look?"

- Scripted sequence where you have finally opened the final door to the safe heaven and a monster with movespeed = 200% and always_know_player_location = 1 spawns behind you and starts chasing you to the door. Feels very Call Of Duty-ish and is clichèd.

- Scripted sequence where you are chased by something horrible but something horrible doesn't bother to actually damage or reach you until you come to the predetermined script point. Not cool, only works once if you're lucky (or not even the first time if your player knows something about scripted sequences and video game scripting) and kills replayability.

- Scripted sequences in general. Leave monsters to their own AI unless it's really necessary to do otherwise.

[Slanderous]

Exterior Space Walk section. This is usually regarded as a cool thing fit more for an action game, but I believe that if done right it could be downright terrifying. Imagine your character getting out of the airlock, only his breath audilable, and as you carefully try to reach the next hatch something knocks you away from the station and you see the space station getting farther and farther, absolute nothingness around you.

Isn't the game set underwater?

[SHODANFreeman]

Isn't the game set underwater?

Yes, it is.

[PutraenusAlivius]

- Exterior Space Walk section. This is usually regarded as a cool thing fit more for an action game, but I believe that if done right it could be downright terrifying. Imagine your character getting out of the airlock, only his breath audilable, and as you carefully try to reach the next hatch something knocks you away from the station and you see the space station getting farther and farther, absolute nothingness around you.

Uhm, SOMA is actually set underwater.

[Slanderous]

Scripted sequences in general

Yea, sure, remove scripts in general, who does even use scripted sequences? Pff.

[MrBehemoth]

-Scripted sequences in general. Leave monsters to their own AI unless it's really necessary to do otherwise.

There are two problems with leaving it all up to AI: firstly, game AIs aren't advanced enough to pull off behaving naturally whilst also being scary and dramatic; secondly, AI is a system, and because of this, it's predictable. As soon as a monster becomes predictable, you start to analyse its behaviour, suspension of disbelief is broken and all chance of genuine horror is lost. This is what scripted events can overcome, as it restores a human element to the monster's behaviour and to the narrative.

I think what you really mean is to avoid predictable scripted sequences. A good scripted event feels natural, and can be used the overcome the limitations of AI in presenting surprising and dramatic scenarios emergently.

- Neutral creatures that the player is forced to approach and walk by/among to complete critical actions.

I like this idea! I'm already playing with it for my next ATDD mod.

[TheBlazer]

I think what you really mean is to avoid predictable scripted sequences. A good scripted event feels natural, and can be used the overcome the limitations of AI in presenting surprising and dramatic scenarios emergently.

Yes, that's what I meant. To be more precise, I should not be able to tell at first glance "Oh yeah, this is obviously a scripted sequence", which is far too common with many of today's "next-gen" games.

And as for SOMA being set underwater... I know, but, a man can dream, right? Maybe we'll teleport to a space station or something.

[Slanderous]

I highly doubt that as such huge environment change wouldn't make sense imho.

[Newsman Waterpaper]

What I don't want to see:
- Terror Meter.