Blog: "10 Ways to Evolve Horror Games"

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(06-05-2012 10:34 PM)AspiringFailure Wrote:  Meh, I really disagree with the idea of human interaction. Movies can build horror from the drama that people can have with eachother. But unless this is the main source of horror, I just can't see it working. Human interaction provides comfort and assurance to the player. Unless every human you see is horribly insane, -that adds horror but subtracts realism and immersion substantially. It also becomes repetitive.


Human interaction is part of what ruined SH: Homecoming for me, and it even negatively affected SH: 2 IMO. It definitely ruined Downpour for me. Now it can be argued that human interaction isn't the issue, and that EXECUTION is, as Thomas said, but I just don't believe there' s RIGHT way to do it without using wholly unrealistic people and/or focusing on said interactions.

Depending on the setting, meeting no human characters is also unrealistic. It's just that games that have absolutely no other humans (even if they are only in cutscenes or flashbacks) are usually really depressing. Horror games should be horrifying and it's fully possible to do this with other human characters. The key word really is execution. But it makes the game much more varied which is never a bad thing. Even if the human interaction is negligible it still makes you feel hopeful, and shattered hopes are much more horrifying than no hopes at all, IMO.