Amnesia - problems with getting scared?

[Funman]

I pretty much agreed with everything you said, but for me, it didn't really change the game's effect on me, and I didn't really notice it. Also, you said you're at the "broken lift," which I assume means the broken elevator, which means you're only like halfway through the game. Just wait until the prison/choir, and other areas. It gets much scarier.

Also, try Justine. It fixes most of these problems. If you die, you start ALL OVER. The monsters pretty much constantly roam, they don't despawn. There are dead ends. etc.

[Istrebitel]

I think the "prison" area i SO scary for the very reason i outlined in my post!

1) You got no safe door behind you, no safe spot to back in. You cannot advance with a feeling "i'm fine, whatever happens, i just run here and click the door".

2) You can easilly get into a dead end because you will run from one monster and get into a room you cannot hide in or another monster and they will rape you badly.

3) Monsters are VERY real in that level (i think? i didnt play it yet only saw some little parts in vids)

4) You are always on intersections meaning monsters can come from any direction, and you always have doors which you know when you open may trigger something (and you dont know where it is safe to run to now). And often the intersection is lit meaning you DO NOT see what is to the sides, but you KNOW monster will see you at once since you are standing in the light and you cannot do ANYTHING about it.

5) Being scripted doesn't help to remove fear here because if in a room or simple level you can plan your escape and then trigger something that can spawn a monster, but here you know that even if the script happens you are unsafe anyway and dont know what to do.

So its just the area where they didnt make almost any of these mistakes (or how do you call it, maybe not mistakes, heh, who am i to judge, design choices maybe?) and that made it THE most horrifying moment in the whole game history that people cannot make themselves go through even after they have done it and know where and what happens.

[Istrebitel]

I truly start to think that its too much spoiler here. I'll just pust whole post under it i think...

Spoiler below!

Came to prison, just entered the second part (in the hole), so far the storage room with rods for the elevator was much scarier for me. Since its pitch dark and i just was so scared that a monster would come and DO me i constructed a shelter out of boxes like in every room where there was a quest to do! And in one room, which goes out to a room with a long table, i had to sit and wait for the enemy to go for like 5 minutes. AND HE WOULDNT GO! I could hear him walking and the music was scary and i knew he's there. And then i went to pop up and he was walking there. And he wouldn't go away, so i had to sneak behind his back... but then he poofed away?

Really i start to kinda hate that! Every monster in the game just GOES AWAY. Despawns! You kinda KNOW that if you hid from a monster, he's gone forever. Even the prison one - FUCK that was scary when he bumped into me. But then - after i successfully hid from him in the starting room - he went away. And i KNEW he is gone! I KNEW i'm safe now until i encounter next monster, in which case i can just run back to the starting room, hide form him, rinse and repeat... It would be so damn more frightening when you'd knew that he is LURKING. He is STILL OUT THERE! You'd knew that you barely escaped one and then you bump into ANOTHER! FUCK! What do you do now? Run back - but you may have a second monster there! And as of now, its just "find a monster, make him despawn, find another, make him despawn".

I don't know guys... Maybe i am really "playing to win" this game too much? But how do i deny the obvious? I am trying to immerse myself, but i'm just acting logically. Like, you know, when u're a kid, when you know that lighting the lamp makes the room lit and every spook goes away... you just do it when you're scared! Same with me - if i find a way to protect my character (which i take very seriously, and value his life) i will execute it every time to survive... So, i am just remembering my road to a "safe room" and if i see a monster i go there and trick him... I'm executing the maneuver that works to save my life... but then, it becomes less fun to play? I dont know...

I seriously think that "i'm doing it wrong"...

[Fomzo]

Too long Not reading...

[bobbo]

So, i came about one great game known as "Sam&Max Hit the Road".
Its a 2d quest, where you have a view from the side. It's a childish quest with cartoony characters where you cannot die and there are no moments where you must act very fast or its game over. However, it does have one thing common games never have:
DEAD ENDS!

OT: It was a nice game. But afaik you could always drive back to the office to search it again.

[eliasfrost]

1) Instant-travel doors between levels.

I totally agree that the "safety doors" are an immersion breaker, things could have been a lot more efficiently handled, like trapping the enemy and preventing it from advancing towards you.

2) There is always a way out.

I have to disagree with this one and that's because there always is a way. No matter what you choose to do, you should never ever be prevented from advancing, your choices should only alter the pace and difficulty in which you advance in the game.

2a) Mind your own business, you will never screw up your game.

Design my friend, design. No one would want to play a game that would unexpectedly cut the game for you and force you to restart. Not a single person would play through the game because it's tedious. It's tedious to restart the game again and again just because the game designers decided to cut the game at random occasions and troll your *ss. That's not good game design, that's total rubbish design.

2b) Often, there is only ONE WAY to do it.

Again, because a game should never end abruptly. Games are made to tell a story, not to ruin it for you. Cutting the game in the middle of it will never give you a satisfactory feeling, only annoy you.

5) Being caught/killed/imprisoned via script which is part of storyline and is unavoidable (variation - have to die to continue the storyline)

Because that's part of the story, sorry bro but take it or leave it. It's not a real design flaw, it's just that you don't like it.

6) Death toll is nonexistant.

I totally agree with you on this one. My problem is not that you respawn very close to where you died, it's that you get rewarded for dying. Dying should make things harder, not making things easier. You screwed up, try doing it different this time.

Thank you.

[Istrebitel]

2 bobbo, really, i tried clicking every fucking pixel on that door and they just would not go in! Maybe i had a glitch or didnt find THE pixel to click to get in? Anyways, my point still stands with numerous other games, like Lighthouse.

2 nackidno
Yes, i agree 100% my opinion is not "expert" of any sort nor i speak "the truth". I can be mistaken or shortsighted.

On 2) - well at least that!
I mean, i've read dev blogs and i understand now that you may not make some person replay a moment over and over again until he does it right (see mangaminx's letsplay overture, dying 10 times on spiders just because you do not catch the fact that you can light the fuel on the floor, or getting saved with 2 spiders 1 meter away from you definetly destroys atmosphere - "a cave in, how surprising...")

Still, when you know you always have the way out, it kinda destroys one of the major fears and tension moment... like, when you REALLY doubt that this character you like so much is gonna live through this... I mean, thats what claustrophobia is for - you fear that you'd never get out of this small room!

In the game, if you are SURE you are going to always get out, you can feel much more safe...
However, yes i do not know how to go around a fact that having player to replay a tense moment over and over because he failed at something is immersion-breaking...

On 2a) - on the other hand, knowing the whole game world is based on your character and nothing happens without his action totally shatters the feel "this is real".
You know, real like real, like, if you get into a burning house, you cannot stay there for 2 days just because you didnt advance 2 steps further to trigger a script! If you stay in a perfectly lit place in Storage for 2 days, Mr. Face WILL eventually bump into you, if you stay too long in a place where that red thing eventually grows, it WILL grow there, wether you make progress or not.
Of course we cannot make a fully alive world in an adventure/story game, hell hardly any game has it well done, but still, something could have been done for it to feel different? At least something? At least something that doesnt allow you to afk in obviously dangerous spots or suicide against Mr. Face at your will? Or punish you somehow for that?

On 2b) - i was meaning something different.
What i meant is that there is always one single way from location A to location B and when you notice it once you start to feel "What if" or "how many coincidences had to happen for this to end up like it is now". To leave you exactly ONE way to advance, not zero, not two or more, just one!

I mean, it IS totally fine in Penumbra where we are hinted that some Red guy is manipulating us into going exact one way (he barricades doors, he sets traps or caveins, etc)
When we are supposedly in some abandoned place which was left "as is" with no intention to make a "test course" for our player, it starts to bug you.

Why are there EXACTLY 3 rods left, EXACTLY one of the same type? It was obvious from the notes that there were an abundant supply of rods - what is a chance of EXACTLY that happening? Why did the cave in blocked exactly the room with the rod and exactly in the place where you can go around by hopping on windows. (eh, at least there is more coal than required, that would be totally stupid...)

Why a cave-in traps you exactly in the room where there is a weak wall? What if it would happen in any other room without such wall?

Why there would be exactly one key for every door that needs one, and there would ALWAYS be one available? And Daniel somehow miraculously knows if the key is available or not (if it is he'll write to find a key, if it isnt he'll just say he cant open this lock or he needs to destroy the lock) (and we cannot say he knows because he knew before, something might have happened while he was absent anyway and change the situation)

Why would in every quest hub EACH room would have something required for a quest?
I mean imagine a thief breaking into a 5-room appartament and he has to steal something that is hidden in a safe. He needs a key to the room with the safe and a key (or code) to the safe itself. What is the chance he would be required to visit every other room in order to complete that? Most likely, if the solution exists, he'd go into one room to get the key, and other room to find a note with the code. Or one room for a key to the locker, second room in locker key to the room with the safe, third room code to the safe. Why always every available room has a quest item for us?
But if that'd be a computer game, for sure the appartament would have EXACTLY the number of rooms needed for quest to be solved, isnt it stupid?

I mean i agree giving more than one solution to a problem means player will see less content on a walkthrough (and games like Amnesia are not meant to be replayable just to find another way through that closed door). But still, giving at least any kind of flexibility would go a great way. If at least once or twice in a game we would have more than one distinct way to advance, and that would happen sooner into the game, we would have a strong feeling that we have a choice, and when we would have no choice before us, we would think "well, sometimes there is only one choice...".

But when you KNOW you ALWAYS will have only ONE choice, it feels awful!

On 5) well you can answer this to any kind of complaint, generally. But this forum is called "discussion" and thats what i'm doing - i'm discussing, stating points i think could be improved or changed. Its okay for you to think they dont need a change, but at the same time it doesnt counter my point in any way - it just means you have a totally different one, which is perfectly fine.

On 6) they said in the blog that they view it as breaking the immersion if they make you do trial and error - since then you know what is going to happen and just fight a game mechanic to advance the plot. Still - at least they could make it FEEL awful to die, so you would not be thinking "okay i can just sacrifice myself to Mr. Face and respawn and he'll be gone and i can advance". That should be an option - for a player who lacks skill to survive the current action scene - but at a price... i dont know, i think the sound of the dog chewing you in Penumbra was the right way to go... make death count! Make it awful to feel being killed! With proper immerison, players would really FEAR to watch a death scene and that would motivate them against using death to respawn with enemy gone.

Thanks.

[eliasfrost]

2a:

It's nothing about doing nothing and still advance. Of course you need to do something in order to continue play the game, the thing is that there is always a way to advance, even if you picked up the coin in the beginning or not. It's like in real life, there is always more than one way out of any situation.

2b:

This is kinda contradictory to what you stated in 2a, first you complain that there's always a way out, then you complain because there's only one way to advance. I'm confused? =/

[Istrebitel]

"Always more than one way" is just a saying, it doesnt ALWAYS apply to life.

I think just one example will suffice. People in the top floors of skyscrappers 9/11 didnt have a chance. And you cannot argue that - it was just theoretically impossible for them to get out safely since they had no escape routes whatsoever (remembering that the whole thing went down as a controlled explosion means they didnt even have a chance for building to hold, since the fall was planned from the beginning).

You see then that after some point, there is no choice. When you stand in front of the hole - you have at least two choices - jump down or not. When you jump down the hole, you dont have a choice anymore - either you fall in something soft and survive, or you fall on something solid and sustain damage proportional to the height of the fall, your body composition, position in which you fall and type of the surface you fall on. You don't have a choice to live if there is a fall 20 meters down with poisoned spikes in the end.

Thats what i'm talking about in 2a) - you have no way to reach a point of no return, and this leads to your actions being irrelevant. It doesnt say there MUST be such point, but at least we should see nonsense or crappy choices making the life of the character harder in some way... At least change the story to the least favorable outcome? Or something?

And 2b) isnt contradictory at all - what i mean is that is always a way "forward" but its a single way! Its fine in quests where you have a goal to beat the game mechanics, in quest you think "how do i solve this puzzle". You know its a puzzle, you know its man-made up. In a 3d game that aims to immerse you in an alternate reality, in a body of some person, and let you act as this person, having the feeling of all this being man-made puzzle is NOT good. And when there is always a single way forward, you just naturally start feeling that way.

What i mean is exactly what you said - there is USUALLY more than one way out of situation. In computer games it is often ONE way and that's it. It's acceptable, as i said before, that you can have a point after which you dont have a choice anymore (and story might force you pass that point. But it is not normal for EVERY choice to be singular. For there to be single key for the door, single supply of items for the machine, single way out of the room, single way inside the room, single way out after a cave-in, etc etc. It is just too coincidental to be true. And it is too artificial to be true.

Therefore such "one choice" can only fit if we agree that the world the player is in is a special training course made for him. Like Portal test chambers. Or mario game levels. Or game's tutorial level. Or some soldier training course.

In a game which puts you into a frictional world based on real world, into a collapsing castle, chased by a reality-breaking nightmare, you would expect that you are just a man in a whole universe. I mean, we're not in some artificially created nightmare or dream - we are on planet Earth. There is Russia, America and Poland, there is Africa and Japan and all those people live their lives this very moment. It is just we cannot reach them because its irrelevant, since we're trapped in a castle with no means of long-distance communication. And we are set to follow the route to the inner sanctum of this said castle.

Now at no point of the story we are hinted or somehow told that the enemy (whoever it is, Alexander or the Shadow or...) actually wants us to come so it always leaves a way in. Meaning that everything that stands in our way is supposed to be truly coincidental. Like, the damn red thing grown too fast in front of us so we now need to dissolve it. Or a cave in blocked a path so we need another way around. This is okay.

However, it is naturally not a single way from one point of the castle to another, even if there is a set route of doors we must pass to get from point A to point B. You can climb walls, jump windows, get down holes. You can go trough doors, or bash them, or blast them or dissolve them or break them or lockpick them or destroy lock in any manner or find a key for them... This means our theoretical ways of progressing from entrance to inner sanctum form a very big graph, with interconnected together pretty much.

However, of course since player only needs to take one path from S to E, if we model every path that makes the player see very little content in one playthrough, and as i said, this game wasnt made for replayability. So, we narrow the path. We destroy graph connections. Its fine!
However, as you can see, they don't get destroyed by our will (they really do, obviously, by a map editor, but they dont in reality). So you should think about this destruction as a RANDOM event, UNGUIDED. Since it happens "by nature" or by force undirectionally applied. Therefore, we are bound to still have numerous paths left at least at SOME point of our journey.

Imagine this - we have five steps to take from start (S) to end (E), S-A-B-C-D-E
Now imagine normally there are three ways to go from one to another. This means we have 3 routes for a link from S to A, 3 routes from A to B etc.
This means on one playthrough, player will only see 1/3 of the content.
That's not good.
So we need to lessen those options.
We say "okay our castle is falling apart" or something. Now, normally, this would mean that we start removing the ways between parts randomly. This means, that naturally, the path would be totally broken (from one point to another there is no more ways to get) way before every path would turn down from 3 ways to 1 way.
For example, on the step before last (when there was 1 way in every link except one, which had 2), it was a 2/3 chance that we would break the path (by removing the last way from one of the links) and 1/3 chance to remove the way that made the system one-way in every link. Step before that we had (if we were lucky and we were at a state when 3 links are 1-way and 2 links are 2-way) a 3/7 chance to break the path and 4/7 not to break it, thats 3/7*1/3 - 1/7 chance already. And it only goes down. In fact, having a S1A1B1C1D1E situation will have an insanely low chance of occuring (cant give you exact formula right now, but can figure one out if you wish)

This means that naturally, we would encounter situation when there is more than one way from point A to point B. For example, fix the lift or remove safety measures and ride it down (it crashes eventually anyway). Or find the key or break the lock on the door. Or break the lock or go around hopping windows. Etc. Because it is VERY, VERY unlikey that the castle would end up in such state that there IS a path from S to E, but on every step, only one way to go remains.

[eliasfrost]

Thats what i'm talking about in 2a) - you have no way to reach a point of no return, and this leads to your actions being irrelevant.

The choices you make are never irrelevant, just because you can't screw up the game doesn't make the choices you make irrelevant. That's like saying the only relevant choice we make in our life is the one that will kill ourself or screw us up badly. Choices don't always need to have a huge outcome.

It doesnt say there MUST be such point, but at least we should see nonsense or crappy choices making the life of the character harder in some way... At least change the story to the least favorable outcome? Or something?

That's the most reasonable point you've made about the subject, that's good game mechanics. By altering the difficulty of which the player advance, not screwing things up and the need to restart.

On 2B: I totally understand what you mean now, but making a game with a lot of maps that are connected, then there are multiple routes between each map is very, very demanding, you can't make a game have a specific feature just for the heck of it, the feature MUST have a reason for being in the game. For this multiple route thing to work, they must have a specific reason for you to take this or that way, each path MUST have a reason to exist, otherwise it's sloppy and lazy design.

In real world, of course you can choose to climb through the window to get to your bedroom, but in a game it's not required to do so if you don't have a reason to climb through the window, like the house door being locked. That said, you can't expect a gaming company to add multiple routes just for the heck of it, everything in games must have a reason to exist.

Then..

--This means on one playthrough, player will only see 1/3 of the content.
That's not good.

I don't get this argument, you want the game to have multiple routes, yet you don't want the game to cut any content? That doesn't make any sense, you have to sacrifice one thing for the other. Either you take route one and miss route two or vice versa, you can't have both. Also, having multiple routes add to replayability, which is a good thing.