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

[caffeine4671]

this reminds me of this youtube video talking about designing cthulhu for video games:




TL;DR:
cthulhu is the embodiment of madness, human minds can't handle his existence let alone fight it. the reason he is so scary to so many people is because there is nothing that can "beat" him. you can only run away.

the moment you introduce combat, all that changes to "dangerous but manageable". suddenly you are not running for your life, but trying to figure out a way to kill that creature. it becomes a game of cat and mouse and not fragile men facing alien monstrosities.

this is why alexander in amnesia is not scary, because 10 minutes into the game you are told he is "old and weak" and that you should go and "kill him". there is nothing scary in that.

compare that with clarence from black plague, he can read your memories, subvert your reality, make you forget stuff and see things that re not there. he is a virus invading your body but also a personality spawned from your mind. how do you even begin to deal with something like that?

making enemies is hard, and making them scary is hardest. the best horror enemy in any game i ever played was the water lurker from amnesia and i think many would agree with me. it wasn't perfect but it came the closest.

Alexander had lovecraftian properties but he wasn't Cthulu or an embodiment of him by any means.

The Shadow on the other hand rang completely Cthulu, being unstoppable and un-kill able if you got in its way.

[Googolplex]

In that sentence I didn't mean skills as in RPG games.
I mean, why not collect scraps and use your skills to built usefull stuff/items? So, you start as unimportant person but you evolve learning things as in life. RPG survival game could be well done quite with an appraisal.

If you were put is some strange situation, wouldn't you have urge to make something usefull to help you along the way? (you don't have to answer that, it's a retorical question)
Different items could react with some things and figuring out could be quite a puzzle.

Yes, here I absolutely agree with you. Am I right that you mean using scraps in the environment to build your way out? This is something I like in the Penumbra games. Puzzles based on interactions and physics.

[Radiance]

Yes, here I absolutely agree with you.

I think that is for the first time.
But, I also mean to built/create concoctions, mixtures and liquids for manipulating the creatures and environment.
I suppose you wouldn't like that.

Am I right that you mean using scraps in the environment to build your way out? This is something I like in the Penumbra games. Puzzles based on interactions and physics.

Yeah, but not overuse same mechanics. In SOMA this was used only once close to the end.

[Omnitool]

I also found the inability to trap / temporary incapacitate monsters super annoying at some given times. The proxy when fixing the elevator and the Tau monster were such examples.

The other monsters were super OK, you either had to avoid them while there were no important plot items (text / audio logs / computer terminals) around or they spawned after you got to properly investigate the area (the bulky ostrich like walking robot, the crazed helper robots in the ocean, the disco - ball, the proxy in the server room).

But the proxy in the elevator level and the Tau monster were actually more annoying then scary, they just kept getting in my way as I wanted to carefully investigate the beautifully crafted levels, to find each and every hidden plot item there was to find.
This itself would have not been such a nuisance if their AI would have reacted normally, but they were actually cheating! They could hear you from a distance of 2 kilometres away, they could see through walls and in complete darkness, and worst of all they would always seem to teleport within a 5 meter radius of the player, as if Simon had a GPS implant and they had the detector! It would have been a thousand times more immersive and scary if they actually hunted you all over the level (like in Penumbra Black Plague) instead of just teleporting behind you over and over. Is is like the enemy is playing the game with a trainer or cheat console, using noclip, wall, aim, 5x running speed, nightvision goggles, an eavesdropping station and a Simon radar! That is cheesy / hilarious, not scary.

Another thought, after you take the sturdy, pressurised suit...that thing is supposed to take lots of pressure at the bottom of the abyss, it is stronger then steel! How the hell can a weak humanoid actually harm the player through that, it is like trying to break through a bunker with your bare hands!?!
The proxy which has no hands (it is like a potato on legs) can also open doors faster then Simon, and Yoshinda in the bulky suit can run faster then the Road Runner!
No complaints on that it is just a funny observation

This problem could be fixed easily with a patch that aplies just one the following solutions:
1. Fix the AI, make it act in a normal manner, not by cheating (the AI from Penumbra Black Plague could be ported if possible).
2. Allow the player to trap a monster into a room, by luring it inside (only in the areas where the monsters do not allow you to properly investigate the area). Simon could trap the proxy at the elevator repair level into the med room, and close the big pressurised door behind him at Tau to trap Yoshida into that part of the base.
3. Allow the player to keep the stun gun, but only find power cells for it two or three times in the entire game, in the areas where the monsters do not allow you to properly investigate the area for plot items. This could work in one of these two ways:
A. Zapping an enemy disables it for about 1 minute or less.
B. An enemy must be zapped three times in order to permanently disable it. However, the player must stalk it (the hunter becomes the hunted), then zap it, and it will become angry and chase the player, who must run and hide away from it, then come out of hiding and stalk it and zap it again two more times. The monster could also be a bit weakened after being zapped each time.
This would be very interesting and would only occur two times in the entire game (at the elevator level and at Tau).
Think of the adrenaline rush you would get when attempting to lock a monster in a room...what if it gets out before you lock it from the security terminal! Or when you disable it temporary...what if he comes back to life when you expect it least...alternating the moments of tension with relative safetiness is way more scary then just running and hiding around like Newt in the Aliens movie all the time.

Don't get me wrong, I totally love this game, I would rate it at least a 9.9 / 10 and it definetly deserves to be GOTY 2015! It is great and innovative in every single way and a complete, extraordinary gaming experience. The monsters design is awesome, they are genuinely scary in their appearance and the sounds they make, each one has a backstory and a distinctive appearance and behaviour. It's just the AI implementation that spoils them.
I am just trying to point out how the game can be made even better from an objective (gameplay / beta tester) point of view.

The Developers or even the gaming comunnity could easily make a patch to fix this problem...no need to redesign the game or anything like that... Just tweak the AI or a few doors...
But if they don't, we still have a gaming masterpiece just the way it is! Its brilliant plot and beautiful envirnoments and superb settings make us ignore any flaws!

[EnDash]

Spoiler below!

quoting EnDash
That's true for the main boss and Cthulhu's omnipresence throughout the game but it is not the only creature/metaphor-concept you deal with.

Facing Chtuhlu for example in the end of the game or periodically before, should be some scripted events or sequence of puzzles which player must solve without using weapons, of course, because of the nature how Lovecraft imagined it or how developers imagined it.

But what about the other 80-90% of the gameplay?
This is were we diverge our opinions. I think player should choose if he want to engage himself or not.
Furthermore, the player should be able to use environment,skills and wit to his advantage.

but if the player is able to overcome those monsters, even small unimportant ones, the result is that he is no longer afraid. sure you may have the exhilarating survival instinct of "is something going to jump on me?" or the proud feeling of using your wits to overcome obstacles. but those situations are not horror.

i gave cthulhu as an example, he is the extreme of what i'm trying to say. if you can understand and overcome it, you are not scared. which is why making enemies in horror games is so hard.

Spoiler below!

Alexander had lovecraftian properties but he wasn't Cthulu or an embodiment of him by any means.

The Shadow on the other hand rang completely Cthulu, being unstoppable and un-kill able if you got in its way.

exactly, which is why alexander was not scary but the shadow was (although to me he wasn't really that scary because he seemed very limited, he could never hurt you or obstruct you for long).

i still maintain the water lurker is the scariest monster of all times in video games. you can't directly see him, you only know he exists indirectly through water and the unintelligible sounds he make, you can't attack or obstruct him, only distract him. and you can't at any point kill him, in amnesia daniel simply ran away from him as fast he could.

[caffeine4671]

Spoiler below!

quoting EnDash
That's true for the main boss and Cthulhu's omnipresence throughout the game but it is not the only creature/metaphor-concept you deal with.

Facing Chtuhlu for example in the end of the game or periodically before, should be some scripted events or sequence of puzzles which player must solve without using weapons, of course, because of the nature how Lovecraft imagined it or how developers imagined it.

But what about the other 80-90% of the gameplay?
This is were we diverge our opinions. I think player should choose if he want to engage himself or not.
Furthermore, the player should be able to use environment,skills and wit to his advantage.

but if the player is able to overcome those monsters, even small unimportant ones, the result is that he is no longer afraid. sure you may have the exhilarating survival instinct of "is something going to jump on me?" or the proud feeling of using your wits to overcome obstacles. but those situations are not horror.

i gave cthulhu as an example, he is the extreme of what i'm trying to say. if you can understand and overcome it, you are not scared. which is why making enemies in horror games is so hard.

Spoiler below!

Alexander had lovecraftian properties but he wasn't Cthulu or an embodiment of him by any means.

The Shadow on the other hand rang completely Cthulu, being unstoppable and un-kill able if you got in its way.

exactly, which is why alexander was not scary but the shadow was (although to me he wasn't really that scary because he seemed very limited, he could never hurt you or obstruct you for long).

i still maintain the water lurker is the scariest monster of all times in video games. you can't directly see him, you only know he exists indirectly through water and the unintelligible sounds he make, you can't attack or obstruct him, only distract him. and you can't at any point kill him, in amnesia daniel simply ran away from him as fast he could.

I wish I could quote your post twice. You basically summed up why the water lurker worked so well.

[jamman39]

I think Frictional themselves would agree that the run/hide/sneak mechanic is getting a bit played out, and of course any attempt to use that game design will inevitably lead to comparisons to games that took said gameplay and ran with it full throttle, such as Outlast, or the much higher-budgeted Alien: Isolation.

What could be done though? I personally haven't the slightest clue, and I'm the last one who would ever suggest something like adding in "Combat" systems to such a game. I agree with the articles that have stated that Horror works best when it is nebulous and unknown, and by allowing you to fight back diminishes it greatly. Case in point Alien: isolation, which wasn't really "scary" to me at all, other than the tension of "being caught". The Alien was a known quantity and something we'd seen in media over and over again, and its algorithms of tracking were quite, "cheap".

I wouldnt be so quick to throw out Alien: Isolation, it introduced some really fresh although complicated concepts to Survival Horror that could eventually be used to better effect in another game.

First, Alien mixed hide and seek gameplay with classic RE/Silent Hill resource management survival horror, by giving you 'weapons' to use against an invulnerable enemy. This is a really great new idea, instead of using your weapons to kill the enemy you use them to deter it. This keeps the player from feeling empowered but it also lets you feel like a more capable protagonist than the ones in Outlast or Amnesia.

Second, although the randomized AI goes too far, having a truly unpredictable monster can lend itself to some incredible encounters. Even the development team from Alien: Isolation could never feel comfortable predicting what the Alien would do in a given situation, thats a triumph of solid AI design. This needed to be balanced a little more in favor of the player, the stakes were way too high, for the threat level to be as high as it was. The Alien will never completely despawn from an area, which it probably should have occasionally especially after the player used a high level weapon against it.

Third, the game prevents players from spamming the Alien with attacks, or trying to cheat the AI. The most amazing and horrifying thing Alien: Isolation did was allowed the Alien to watch and learn and adapt to what the player was trying to do against it. If a player threw noisemakers to distract the Alien too often, the Alien would begin ignoring them. If the player attempted to spray the Alien with a flamethrower too often, the Alien would approach the player slower, keep its distance, and wait for the player to waste their flamethrower fuel before pouncing and attacking.

Alien had its fair share of problems, almost all of them stem from difficulty balance, but it doesnt deserve to be ignored, I believe the future of survival horror games can be plucked from the work Creative Assembly did. If Frictional are able to implement (or are even interested in implementing) some of these routines into their AI in their next game there wont be nearly as many threads of people complaining about the monster's AI

[Fortigurn]

but if the player is able to overcome those monsters, even small unimportant ones, the result is that he is no longer afraid. sure you may have the exhilarating survival instinct of "is something going to jump on me?" or the proud feeling of using your wits to overcome obstacles. but those situations are not horror.

I disagree with this. The fact is that people can already avoid the enemies if they want to just by running around a lot, and more than a few people have commented on how boring and stale that becomes, and how it ruins the carefully crafted atmosphere of horror.

Providing well structured in game opportunities to delay or avoid enemies would give greater depth to the gameplay, without reducing the sense of horror. They in no way reduce the sense of horror than the situations the game already provides in which you're able to avoid enemies, like when

Spoiler below!

you climb through the lab's broken window and you're able to spend all the time you want in it, while the proxy can't reach you.

All they provide is a temporary respite, which is completely necessary (and built into the game at many points), in order to allow your tension levels to fall from peak to a lower plateau. This gives the game the opportunity to build up that tension anew, which keeps the game lively and engaging, and refreshes the sense of horror instead of it becoming stale.

i gave cthulhu as an example, he is the extreme of what i'm trying to say. if you can understand and overcome it, you are not scared. which is why making enemies in horror games is so hard.

The mechanic in A:TDD is powerful evidence against this. All of us spent plenty of time hiding in closets, knowing we were safe while doing so. Yet the tension and sense of horror did not diminish, and in fact the close proximity to the enemy and the fear of sudden exposure (however likely), only heightened the fear. It did not make us any less terrified of the enemies, even when we saw them repeatedly in the game, and used the same mechanic to avoid them.

[Science Bird]

I think adding new factors of behaviour is what we need to make future horror game iterations more interesting - not so much ways to "deal" with enemies. The simplest way is to make the video game character more like a real human. The addition of "tracking if you are moving your controller around to see if you are flinching" (Until Dawn) or giving you control over blinking and breathing (SCP:Containment Breach) are examples of that. Assuming future technologies we might be able to track Owhat a player is doing with individual hands, where his head is turned in relation to his body or even what he is doing with his entire body. Think "you have to stand absolutely still now for 20 seconds to not trigger it" on the simplest level.

In these cases, it is important to not make it a gimmick. If it is a unique selling point, it likely isn't really the right thing for scaryness. It needs to be ingrained in the non-horror gameplay so much that you know all about it by the time it becomes serious (for example: Turning levers and opening/closing doors in SOMA, which is only a required factor very late in the game, using it earlier on is emergent (fleeing from construct/proxy).

I don't think the solution is adding new ways to "deal with" monsters. Anything that empowers you takes away from the scaryness. But we may not always be stuck just holding the crouch key looking at a wall until a monster goes away. Maybe we'll huddle with our actual body, or we might be holding a door closed to try and make it seem locked (btw, I tried that in the CURIE, it was a bad idea).

There is also one more option: Making horrors that just don't work like "thing that walks around". Think of a Memetic concept that causes haunts in you. You have the option of talking to other people about it, but if you do, they only become infected. Think of all the shiz that the SCP wiki thought of that conventional horror hasn't done yet. We can probably still find new ideas.

[Fortigurn]

I think adding new factors of behaviour is what we need to make future horror game iterations more interesting - not so much ways to "deal" with enemies.

I think we need both. The problem is that programming enemies to make them more human is a lot more difficult than providing environmental features which the human player can use to enhance their experience.

I don't think the solution is adding new ways to "deal with" monsters. Anything that empowers you takes away from the scaryness.

Hiding in the closet protected you from the enemy in A:TDD but didn't take away from the scariness. This is the point, being able to delay, distract, or hide from the enemy does not detract from the fear.

The fact is SOMA did have a Cthulhu fear equivalent; it had the WAU. It was frightening, it was omnipresent, it was a constant though indirect threat, and the only time you could do anything about it was basically right at the end of the game. And even then its legacy lived on, to endanger you.