How do you feel during a chase?

[felixmole]

The reason for my paragraphs is that the soundtrack does potentially make the game scarier, if anything. Music will impose feelings and terror if done right, something Mikko Tarmia (and I am more than confident the composer of A Machine For Pigs will too) pull of extremely well. Of course, if you play custom stories and the like, the soundtrack may not play as important a role and may more serve as tool for analysis and all of that, but I am mostly refering to one's first playthrough of The Dark Descent here. For most players, music will enhance emotion and terror. If the problem is that players use it too much to their advantage, it is better to come up with a system that better implements it and makes it behave less to an advantage, even if that might be very hard to implement, as I still feel removing monster tracks would have potential intensified atmosphere and additional horror go to waste. =)

What I think is that nothing should be changed with respect to the music system. Instead, each encounter should be well scripted and make it so the player will not always have to "sit-n-wait". This has nothing to do with the AI of the monsters but with the scripting of the levels.

For example,

• Depending on the corner you are sitting by, make the monster slowly but surely head to said corner.
  
• If there are multiple rooms during a "monster roaming" sequence, make the monster break into each of them, but make it so that the last room it breaks into is the one you are occupying.
  
• And of course, a few encounters where the player only has to hide behind a pile of boxes and wait.
  

Of course, I am certainly biaised, I may be liking Mikko Tarmia's music too much