What would you like to see from Frictional next?

[Jinix]

I went to look and when I read this:
"underwater monsters lurking in the dark and murky waters around the lab, many of them large enough to devour a man in a single gulp"

I had a flashback to a game I played a while back that placed me underwater in a huge sea somewhere with sea monsters and giant whales. But I can't remember anything else....... I think I must have Retrograde amnesia Same as Daniel.

That Pressure Game will happen eventually - altho' I'm betting it'll be changed around a lot - it sounds too good not to.

[Mafer]

no action plz.

[That One Guy]

I'd LOVE to see another game set within the Amnesia universe. Perhaps one that takes place in the village and environs around Castle Brennanburg. It could possibly follow a weary villager as the Shadow follows in Daniel's wake. Hell, it could possibly even follow Daniel again! Maybe a prequel that further fleshes out the incredible backstory of The Dark Descent (even though that wouldn't really be necessary).

You could make use of a new environment, with the forest, and the closed-off village, maybe even some tunnels underneath the ground that Alexander's cult makes use of. There really are a great many possibilities, I'd love to see the sky a bit more in Frictional's next outing, perhaps even some form of human interaction besides the usual disembodied voices.

[Black Rabbit]

come on? it's not like there are not many things to do you can choose hospitals....or maybe an underwater facility. or even a school or a hotel or an apartment building... or even a farm or a village. how about a circus or a theme park? and let's not forget the unbirth alpha thingie...I'd sure love to see something with the unbirth world details that allow you to go anywhere (just like silent hill) in combination with some amnesia characteristics such as hard to deal with enemies and the combat system of penumbra which will make enemies hard to kill and make it a non survival horror...maybe weapons will be breakable or something! I mean my brain is overflowing with ideas...I expect them to make another great game! penumbra had its scary moments but amnesia actually made me whelp "But I don't wanna!" when I was about to continue from my last save because I knew I would get very scared again xD

[Petike]

I still like that idea about a survival horror involving a defenceless everyman set against the backdrop of an alternate World War One, where a sudden invasion of bizarre and mysterious aliens occured in the autumn of 1915 (or 1916). And by bizarre and creepy, I mean downright bizarre and creepy : Things that have a much longer history of evolution, can assimilate living beings on the fly and conquer even advanced civilizations with absolute ease. Basically, think "xenomorphs crossed with bugs crossed with the Borg". They can fool and toy with humans easily, prey on them virtually everywhere, impersonate other humans or living beings, disrupt human infrastructure and sanity anytime, be nearly invincible even to the best military technology of the era, etc. And you'd be absolutely helpless against the creatures. One good gag would be you finding a pillbox with dead soldiers in a town recently attacked and depopulated by the creatures. You'd be given an option to search the dead bodies and pick up a rifle from one of the soldiers for the first - and only - time in the entire game. The catch ? You'd find that there are no bullets left for any of the weapons, since the soldiers fought a last stand against the monsters. And so on... And one of the castes of these alien monsters would have the power to go invisible and try to hunt you down with a combination of telepathy and mild telekinesis : In other words, f*** with your mind and body, make you feel more hopeless, injured, etc. than you really are. Feed you with despair in order to catch you more easily. You'd have to genuinely figure out a cunning and non-violent way on how to evade these monstrosities. And so on and so on... I sort of imagine them as a much darker and sinister version of the alien creatures from this book series.

I liked how in the original War of the Worlds novel Wells kept gradually increasing the subtle horror atmosphere of the dilapidated and destroyed parts of various towns and cities (including London itself), even though the Martians and their military equipment weren't particularly scary in appearance (and wouldn't be at all to a seen-it-all modern day reader). They also appeared pretty frequently, so they weren't as horrific...

But in this survival horror about "intelligent and ruthless alien borg-bugs", you'd be an average Joe, who only heard about the invasion in passing, from various mixed and contradictory news from the local yet still distant frontlines (where the aliens purposefuly landed, right smack-dab between the armies of petty human empires). So, in essence, you wouldn't really understand what's going on once they'd attack your village or hometown in the middle of the night, in the early morning or even during noon. You'd sleep over the catastrophe by accident in a more secure place and then start uncovering what happened and what you have to do to survive in this new mysterious world overrun by a completely unknown and malevolent species, with a completely different morality to humanity and Earth life in general.

[bufalo1973]

But seriously, I'd love to see something similar to this story adapted as a survival horror from the point of view of an average Joe (unarmed and easily killable, shocked and confused, hungry and desperate, with no other property left than his clothes and a few items in his pockets). Trying to survive an unexpected invasion of bizzare and terrifying alien creatures during the early months of WWI, all on your own, could be a pretty intriguing theme if done well, and in a painfully realistic fashion (no running and gunning or "playing hero", or any straightforward Hollywood happy endings for either you or humanity - instead, evasion like in Penumbra or Amnesia, and multiple endings, with maybe only one of them showing a small glimmer of hope at the end of the storyline, etc.).

Why would I like to see something like that ? Because I've never seen a movie or a game with the by-now clichéd theme of "mysterious alien monsters invade Earth, ZOMG !" done right : You almost always get a happy ending, where humanity triumphs, everyone is A-Okay and nobody pauses for even a minute to think about the possible psychological damage of such an event on the mind of an average human, let alone society as a whole.

Maybe you'd like In the mouth of madness. IIRC it's close to what you want about "alien monsters invade Earth" except those monsters are from hell and not from outer space.
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About a new game: what about a game where there are no "usual monsters" (zombies, vampires, creepy things, ...) but just humans... the worst monsters on Earth Maybe you are a jew in nazi Germany, or a black running out of civil war Loussiana, or an heretic running from the inquisition. Something like that, were you are just a human trying to survive without knowing who is a friend and who is a monster. Something like the feeling you get at the end of 1984. Or maybe you are a urban wo/man that gets lost in a strange island (no black smoke, thank you ) and some canivals want you to be their dinner.

Or even another step more: why do you have to be human? Why not be an animal running away from human hunters or an alien (think more of ET and not in THE alien or the predator) hiding from human military? Or maybe you are not even organic but a robot set to be destroyed if found.

Think about it: a horror movie is a horror movie because you see it from the POV of the prey. If you look at them from the POV of the hunter they are just action movies. A clear example is the difference between Lestat in "interview with a vampire" (novel) and "lestat the vampire". Louis sees Lestat's actions as demonic because he doesn't know why he does what he does. But Lestat explains himself and the demonic actions become justice (or something like that): the poor man dead by bleeding was a killer, the poor old woman was a children kidnapper (IIRC).

So, if you take a normal hunt and flip the POV you get a horror story, being it the hunt of a deer, a pig going to the slaughterhouse, a person running from a wolfpack, an alien stranded in Earth and hunted to be cut in pieces, ...

[Unreal]

A game with a co-op would be great and would sell alot more copies.

[Black Rabbit]

I still like that idea about a survival horror involving a defenceless everyman set against the backdrop of an alternate World War One, where a sudden invasion of bizarre and mysterious aliens occured in the autumn of 1915 (or 1916).

But man... there've been so many games about WW and even penumbra mentioned WW (I think)

[Kein]

Yeah, screw WW!

[Mr. X]

I would love seeing a new game set in the 1900 or in the 21st century, like Penumbra