Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Character control in horror games
I am largely unfamilliar with the horror genre of video games, and have found it very interesting thus far that every game we are studying or have talked about studying involves either a first person view, over the shoulder view, or some other direct way of controlling your avatar. This makes lots of sense, since these games derive much of their scariness from the unknown. The overall scary environment created is most effective if the player is directly in control of the avatar, which creates a unique connection between the player and the game. This may be my personal naivety of the genre, but does a horror game exist without this first-person quality to the game? If so, I wonder what adjustments a game must make to sucesfully fit the horror genre. Traditional horror in all media forms follows the calm-before-the-storm sensation, dark corners, high single violin note, all preceding some loud and sudden event. Suspense is essential to any true horror media. Would it be possible to research what, if any, techniques could be employed to create a sucessfull horror game without being a first person game? Does anyone know if this already exists?
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Yeah, several of the games we've been playing aren't first person. In Fatal Frame 2 you have no control of the game camera -- unless you are in fact operating your camera. You kill ghosts by photographing them. This is an interesting blend of first and third person. Other examples are The Path and an old text-based horror game called "The Lurking Horror". You should try out FF2 and see if you think that it is successful.
ReplyDeleteThe Path is interesting because all of the actions in the game take place ONLY if you actually stop controlling the game and take your hands off the mouse and keyboard and just sit back and wait. You can't interact with anything on your own; you just need to be inactive long enough for the girl to go after the nearest object and interact with it. The girls also control in a very weird way-- there's a strong sense in that game that you, the player, are NOT supposed to 'be' the girls in that game. You're showing the girls around. They have histories you're not privy too, and you learn about them bit by bit. You're behind them and you can't make them do anything they don't want to. Sometimes you'll come across an object that the girl will simply refuse to interact with. There's a feeling of enormous, confusing distance between you and the girls in that game.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to a third-person shooter being scary, look no further than Dead Space (at least for the beginning of the game). Early on, the third-person controls contribute very much to the game's horror element. The camera is placed intentionally close to Isaac's body so that even with a 360 degree view, the visible portion of the screen is limited. Also, the shooting controls build the tension. In a first person game, the gun is almost always at the ready. In Dead Space, time must be taken to raise the gun to eye level. Furthermore, there isn't a direct line of sight from Isaac's perspective making it more difficult to aim. It's easy to shoot wide with precise weapons like the plasma cutter or the pulse rifle.
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