Environtmental Resources Dev choices

[Firia]

By now, we're all familiar with the old teaser trailer Frictional released for Amnesia's August 2010 release. There were a few trailer details that didn't make it into the game that I have been silently asking myself ever since I noticed the discrepancy. So I'm hoping to get an answer or two.

Here's the trailer link. Watch it now, or after reading my post.

At about 2 minutes in, Daniel is running from a monster. It's a classic run and hide scenario we've all done. But Dan adds a little something extra that I haven't been able to quite emulate; Daniel moves a table in front of the door. Have you been able to shift a table?

The table has nice physics too. As it hits the door jam, all its table top contents shift over. It was a physics detail beautiful enough to get the attention of an illustrator (like myself) classmate. There was even a little Jesus Cross figurine that I don't remember seeing in the final make of the game.

I have a Western copy of the game, and can understand that maybe a figure of Jesus on the cross might have some unexpected and unwanted connotations. But I'm curious why the devs chose to not allow players to shift desks. When available, I'd jam crates, and barrels into a doors path, but I was never able to do a desk.

Anyone can chime in; your thoughts, things the devs mighta done differently, tried but didn't go through with, or perhaps pushed current aspects of the game further. While I'm hoping for a dev response, this is by no means an isolated topic.

[thepaleking]

It would have been a cool feature, but if you think about it a completely useless one, since the servants could break through anything. Maybe the difficulty in implementing the system into a full scale game, as opposed to just a quick trailer, outweighed the need for such a feature.

As for the Jesus figure...I could swear I remember seeing one. I'm just glad they kept those neat horseback rider figures in.

[Tanshaydar]

You can put other things in the environment before the door. Table is not a must.

[Thomas]

It turned out that on various occasions having a table that could be moved was a not a good idea. For example we had to have all lights static (for various reasons) and thus any table with a light on would not be possible to push.

Because of this, we had the choice of having some tables possible to push and others not. In the end we wanted to world to be as coherent as possible and chose to simply make all table static and non-interactable.

[LuckyBlackCatXIII]

I recall seeing that Jesus figurine in some of the Study rooms I believe, but they are definitely in the game and show up more than once. Anyway it's clear they didn't care about the Jesus symbolism since there were like 538434 paintings of him being crucified around the castle, yeah? ;D

[thepaleking]

I would have liked to see the fishes in the final game. Fishy fishy. Though I can't think of any reason why Alexander would keep a bunch of fish in his castle.

[Sexbad]

There were fish in the cistern.

[mattwestwick]

If you have seen the video of storage where the dude puts like 20 barrels in front of "the door with light on it". The Grunt mashes the door as usual but then gets stuck behind the barrels. However it then super punches all the barrels and they explode everywhere.

Consider this with a big heavy table instead of barrels.

Sillyness would ensue.

[jaivyn]

There are definately a ton of Jesus cross statues in the game. I've got the western copy too I remember accidentally dropping it in the study.

[thepaleking]

There were fish in the cistern.

Wow, really? Did not pick up on that when I went through there. Guess I really should play through the game again.