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So, you're just saying you have to make it more obvious as you approach the choices you need to make? I really like the idea of the gameplay changing based on your decisions.

How about just 2 endings. Either you save the girl/guy and you your self die, or you survive and the girl/guy dies.

This would be a fairly clear cut choice and it presents the player with a moral/ethical dilemma, especially if they know that the one who remains behind will definitely die.

I think that having lots of endings will cheapen the ending that the players chooses. Sure, lots of endings increase replayability, but if all that a player did was to play the game to get the ending, then why have all the other stuff in the game that has no impact on the endings. If you have good gameplay, then only 2 endings can be sufficient.

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Original post by small_duck disease

What you propose sounds an awful lot like Infinity Mode in Dead Rising, where your health is constantly declining, and most of your time is spent looking for food (medicine in this case) to stay alive.

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He can only hope to save what can be saved before collapsing.

That sounds even more like Dead Rising (a good thing!), but I don't know whether feeling rushed would contribute to the atmosphere I'm asking for.

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having to fight with the controls

I've dropped plenty of games due to bad controls. What if instead of that, we make the character sluggish by speeding up the game clock and having everything else rush by him?

Even aside from that, if the disease attacks are periodic, what's to say the player won't just hide and wait it out? Wouldn't that start to bore you eventually?

@s_cloudx: I guess I'll give it a shot, then. Thanks!

@Edtharan:
I don't think more endings would hurt if they are tied to major plot decisions. That sounds like a false dilemma. You can have both good gameplay and multiple endings, can't you?

For instance, my hypothetical ritual murder of your friend for an occult weapon would give you the "killed the monster and went crazy" ending. Not doing that, but sacrificing yourself at the end would give you the "killed the monster and died" ending. Not doing either and making it out with your friend would be the "monster escapes and you doomed humanity" ending.

I suppose it depends on how many plot decisions you want to give the player and how well they are integrated into gameplay.

On your "if it has good gameplay" argument, do you think a running and hiding game could be fun for long?

@Way Walker:
So, you just want to make the multiple paths obvious enough to override our natural assumption of linear scripting? I think that's a fair assessment.

Well two most common sources of fear are jeprody and the unknown. One of things that has always been a good source of tension in games for me has been chase and waiting sequences. Imagine a sequence in a game where you in a hall full strange locked containers, you jury rig the power supply in the room to power the elevator. As soon as you hit the elevator call button a fuse blows cutting power to room. All goes dark except for an emergancy light above the elevator and suddenly you here sounds of breaking container. And in the darkness you can see dozens of pairs of glowing red eyes advancing towards you. The emergancy the only source of illumination. The players only choice is to fire blindly at the eyes in the dark and hope they can hold out until the elevator arrives.

Or maybe they a trapped in an underwater observation tank and have to solve a puzzle to unlock the exits while a vicious creature is is trying the shatter the protective glass wall between you and the ocean.

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Original post by Edtharan Quote: So, you're just saying you have to make it more obvious as you approach the choices you need to make? I really like the idea of the gameplay changing based on your decisions. How about just 2 endings. Either you save the girl/guy and you your self die, or you survive and the girl/guy dies. This would be a fairly clear cut choice and it presents the player with a moral/ethical dilemma, especially if they know that the one who remains behind will definitely die. I think that having lots of endings will cheapen the ending that the players chooses. Sure, lots of endings increase replayability, but if all that a player did was to play the game to get the ending, then why have all the other stuff in the game that has no impact on the endings. If you have good gameplay, then only 2 endings can be sufficient.

I think you missed the point of having more endings. It's not to increase replayability, it's to give the player more choices and to make those choices more interesting.

Or, put another way, why should all the other stuff have no impact on the endings?

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Original post by templewulf So, you just want to make the multiple paths obvious enough to override our natural assumption of linear scripting? I think that's a fair assessment.

I don't see any other choice, unless your goal is to sell more strategy guides, but that idea kind of died with gamefaqs.com.

For starters, there are two major kinds of horror. The first is the slasher, these are your summer teenager thrill movies that just scare the audience by showing them a disturbing image and then threatening to show it again. It's certainly effective, but I always feel extremely patronized by this kind of "horror". The second kind is, in my opinion, a far better approach. It's using atmosphere and story to really screw with the player's head. Lovecraft, as well as even older Gothic Horror, relies more heavily on the second. Modern horror, especially movies, rely almost purely on the first. Video games tend to take elements of both, but do lean one way or another. Silent Hill is a bit more the first (grotesque monsters, lots of blood and gore) while Eternal Darkness is a bit more the second (loads of atmosphere, mindbending story). I get the impression you're leaning more towards the second.

Scaring the player with something that they know shouldn't even exist (such as Cthulhu) would be an awesome thing. However, because it's a video game, the player's entire notion of what should and shouldn't exist is thrown out the window. Orcs shouldn't exist, and they never seem to drive Lord of the Rings fans to the brink of insanity. I'd say we can't really accomplish this with video games. We can get close to it with some incredibly bizarre and unexpected things, though. I remember being sincerely perturbed by the rooms that turned on their side in the forest temple from OoT. This was largely in part because as you ran down the hall, the "gravity" changed slowly. It was somewhat of a technological feat at the time that resulted in a singularly eerie effect. The portals in Prey, however gross that game may be, are similar in design. So we can use the tip of the technology curve to really weird out the player.

Chasing the player with some evil monster, while stressful, isn't really scary in my opinion. To be perfectly honest, it's pac-man. Sure, you can enhance the terror with mangled bodies, broken down doors and shadows in the corner, but it's still just pac-man. If you were to not show the monster, then you're delving right back into the first kind of horror. The only real fear the player ever has is that something is going to jump out at them, and it may not be pretty. If you're just aiming for an adrenaline rush, this is a great tactic. I myself, however, preffer the very narrow market of horror games that don't rely on adrenaline rushes to scare me.

I think what might really scare a player is forcing them to rely on themselves. To illustrate, just forget about games for a minute. Imaging this is real life and you've just discovered a Lovecraftian evil that's plotting humanity's demise. You can't tell anyone else or they'll think you're mad and lock you away. You obviously can't forget what you know, and as such you've got to do something. So you're left to rely purely on your own resources to either find a way to stop this or die in as painless a fashion as possible. I don't know about you, but the thought of that is at least a little bit frightening to me. Hopelessness is scary, and if you were to inject a game full of that, I think you'd have a pretty darn scary title.

How do you inject a game with hopelessness, though? I think you've already got the answer with multiple endings. Here's the problem with user defined stories, though. Either they don't realize they're in control, and as such feel like their actions have little outcome on the game. If they make a wrong choice, they just have to try over until they make the right choice. Conversly, they know perfectly well that they're at a plot decision and what they choose now will affect the ending. When this happens the player becomes totally detached. Now what was an emotional experience is nothing more than a set of choices. The game is no longer trying to survive, it's now trying to pick the right dialogue option.

So how do we circumvent this problem? Obviously there's no defenitive answer, and everyone here seems to have good ideas. However, I think rather than having somewhat obvious choices (like letting a character die) affect only the ending, it would be worthwhile to have a number of seemingly innocuous choices affect multiple "tiers" of the game. Someone referenced the trial sequence in Chrono Trigger. I think this is exactly what should be strived for. Eternal Darkness did something like this based on which statue you picked in the first level, as well as if you picked up a few side-objects in the other levels. Expand it to affect numerous things in the game, and make it clear to the player their choices have results but keep it unclear as to what choice leads to what result. I don't think anyone expected an item you find in the beginning of Eternal Darkness to affect the attributes of the enemies the rest of the game. I sure didn't!

On a side note, I would hate a game that I invested hours into only to have to choose between dieing, killing the heroine or letting the evil win. Of course, if the evil didn't win, but got away, and there was the promise of a sequel...that might be another story.

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I don't think more endings would hurt if they are tied to major plot decisions. That sounds like a false dilemma. You can have both good gameplay and multiple endings, can't you?

Yes, you can have good gameplay and multiple endings. I never said that they were mutually exclusive. All I said was that you only need 2 endings. You could have more, but each one you add makes the value of the others less. I did not say that you couldn't do it.

It is not an "Either/Or" choice. It is a scale that you can choose at what point you want. If the initial value of your endings are high, then you can get away with more than 2.

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I think you missed the point of having more endings. It's not to increase replayability, it's to give the player more choices and to make those choices more interesting. Or, put another way, why should all the other stuff have no impact on the endings?

Because they are related to the short term goals. This might be just getting past a particular enemy/finding a secret area/new weapon/etc, and so might not have any bearing on the final ending.

If we look to other media to see how they handle the resolution phase of a plot arc, then this choice would usually occur around 2/3 to 3/4 through the arc. If it is too early, then you would have to give the player too much information too early (and ruin the suspense) or just turn the choice into a gamble (which isn't a real "choice" as such).

The choice of ending should be a major decision, as it is the defining moment of a story. Every thing the player (or reader or audience) has experienced should be leading up to this choice. This build up leads to a sense of anticipation and tension on the player. As a designer you can use this tension to heighten the experience of the player.

It is this anticipation and tension that is used in horror films to give the watcher the fear that they feel. IF you were to take a random scene out of any horror film and just watch that in isolation, you would not feel near the horror that that you would if it was viewed in context (ie the rest of the film).

All the other stuff that comes before should not have a direct impact on the ending, but it should have an impact on the player to enhance and give meaning and context to the ending that they choose.

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On your "if it has good gameplay" argument, do you think a running and hiding game could be fun for long?

Yes. As someone mentioned earlier: Pacman.

This game is about running and hiding. But not all of it is about that. You do occasionally have the opportunity to fight back. Even if it is, in the long run, pointless as the Ghosts will always come back.

Gameplay is about choice. If you can't influence the enemy, then there is not much choice. Even if you can't defeat the enemy and fighting back is ultimately ineffective, by giving the player the ability to just "slow them down" so that they can run away is enough.

Only running and hiding is not much choice. That is if they get too close -> Run away. If they are out of sight -> Hide).

So yes. A game that is about Running and Hiding can be fun or otherwise Pacman would not have been as popular as it was.

What freaks me out / scares me the most in a game is when I start doubting myself. Did I see something in the corner of my eye, or was it just my imagination? It might be a shadow around the corner or a flash in the mirror.

Seeing something abnormal is sort of scary. Not seeing something, but knowing it is there is a bit more scary. But when my imagination starts adding to the game and I start wondering if it is there or not, that is when things start getting really freaky.


(and little undead children scare the crap out me, eg. the Ring)

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What freaks me out / scares me the most in a game is when I start doubting myself.

I don;t seem to be able to have the suspension of disbelief that is necessary for a lot of the horror films and games. For me just seeing ugly monsters doesn't scare me (otherwise I would be scared every morning when I look in the mirror :D).

The best scars I get are the ones that take a normal situation and do something odd with it. A good movie is "The Birds". There was an actual incident where real birds started acting crazy (not quite like what occured in the birds, but close enough).

Alfred Hitchcock was the master at horror and he didn't just resort to the ugly monsters.

I think the scariest monsters of all can be other people. And they can be people doing what they think is right.

I majored in philosophy, and my favorite brain-busters are the ones that deal with ontology, challenging the assumptions that my worldview is based on at the most fundamental level. David Wong, internet funnyman, does this very well, if in a giggle-inducing way, in his "horror" stories.

The first page of John Dies at the End is a good example of it. I laughed when I read it, and then I spent some time thinking about it. There are more exhaustive, serious iterations of the same principle, but he does it well with few words and ample humor. The hotshot police detective in the most recent installment is a spectacular example of what I'm talking about, but you've got to read a lot before that makes sense.

In terms of monsters, I like doubt as a vessel for fear. Wavinator's opus dealt with it on some level, where deteriorating sanity (via drugs, stress or mind control) would lead to things like horrible monsters being rendered in the game at the coordinates where your squadmates are standing. So you open up on the "monster" and kill your friends, and next time you see a horrible beast you hesitate. That's good fear.

Zombies really interest me. Not just zombies themselves, but how people are so curious about them. Zombies are scientifically impossible. Yet, for some strange reason, highly intelligent people (more so than averagely intelligent people) are completely fascinated by them, and fanatical with their movies.

Zombies aside, I've played several games that put me on serious edge. Playing both Resident Evil 1 and Doom 3 at 1:AM had me frightened to the point of being intoxicated by the intense stirring in my gut. Damn I love that feeling. I head plently of guns, and knew exactly what the evil bastards looked like, but I was still tripping. Doom 3 would have scared the hell out of a lot more players without their quicksave (everyone please note my bias anti-quicksave tattoo).

I don't think the player needs to feel hopeless. I think hopelessness would actually subtract from fear. Without hope, you accept your fate. I think they need to instead feel vulnerable. A shotgun does little to subtract the fear of an ape-like demon that leaps across rooms to decapitate your hero. The fact that you have a fighting chance is partly what makes it so terrifying to die.