Sweet Bro
Junior Member
useless piece of shit
where MAKING THIS HAPEN
Posts: 70
|
Post by Sweet Bro on Jun 28, 2010 21:06:06 GMT -5
So, what do you guys about settings?
I think any real setting can work for a horror game, yet they all have common factors. With Silent Hill, you are given a feeling of isolation and ambiance that was adapted into many other games. You also feel very mortal, very fragile, which is an important factor and also very delicate. If done right, you will be terrified and shitting your pants throughout the game. If done wrong, you'll just get pissed and this game and the fear factor will be thrown out the window. Silent Hill was set in a town caught between 2 realms of reality.
With Resident Evil, you are given a huge feeling of insecurity and a real on-edge kind of feeling throughout. Enemies are a big factor in Resident Evil, yet you don't feel NEARLY as mortal as you do in Silent Hill. You are a badass, special forces kind of guy in nearly all of the games. You have guns and you kill the bad guys. Yet, the on-edge feeling throughout is still prevalent. Resident Evils 1-4 (5 is not a horror game) were set in various settings, mansions, settlements, cities, all providing a relatively everyday environment. Large areas and exploring/sections were very big with Resident Evil, unlike Silent Hill.
Yume Nikki, I don't know. I know a lot of people have played it, and most people get a really unique feeling from it. I wasn't wow'd by it, I really found myself going "Huh" and "Wow, that's weird" a lot, not "What the fuck, that ain't right dawg." Yet there are some qualities that are remarkable. The setting revolves around a dreamland sort of things, and sections that I took at sections of sub-conscious maybe? Anyways, that's what one of the qualities that stuck with YM for me, confusion, which really wouldn't work that well with a high-budget/big name kind-of game because people don't want to be confused, they want cheap shocker scares.
I think any setting could work, just look at the 3 examples above. Perhaps Silent Hill and Resident Evil aren't all that different, but they all have common feelings of isolation and helplessness. Those should be focused the most in setting, there should be an abandoned or kind of a panic/riotous situation going on. I can't really think of a horror game with BIG crowds besides Dead Rising, and I found Dead Rising more humorous than anything (I know what I'm doing, I've covered wars before).
I'm quite partial in the setting working against the player, rather than enemies. Not like obstacle courses or like clock-work puzzle rooms, but more a feeling of the protagonist's mind slipping away, giving a wrapped reality of what you see. This could work in any setting, but either an urban area or an insane asylum would make the most sense in my eyes.
|
|
slob
Junior Member
Gay Anime Man
THE THROB OF THE ENGINE FEELS GOOD DOESN'T IT
Posts: 94
|
Post by slob on Jun 29, 2010 0:44:53 GMT -5
i've actually been playing yume nikki a lot lately. i wouldn't say it's scary as much as it is creepy, the real shocker about all that is that the dreamland is supposed to be in the mind of a girl, which if so honestly makes her quite a fucked up girl, the setting itself is the girl, which is what makes it unique.
also there is honestly some stuff that did make me jump but they usually require you to know previous knowledge of how to get it, like entering and re-entering the green dressed girl's room and turning off the light switch every time, that got me good, but because i was told by a friend to do it, so in a sense it's an UNLOCKABLE scare kind of thing i dunno
settings in horror games can be done well as long as they provide a sense of mystery and insecurity around it, something unknown that is probably dangerous.
|
|
|
Post by Kino on Jun 29, 2010 1:11:00 GMT -5
One of the ideas that was being thrown around was the main character having a sort of dream-like, hallucinogenic sort of experience that would impact the environment.
Like in Yume Nikki, you're often transported into scary unfamiliar areas. Other times you find yourself in areas that almost seem like (symbolic) character development... being watched by buildings with eyes, walking in the "desert" area and coming a across a picnic / party that you can't join, etc. Silent Hill was like that too since the enemies in the game were manifestations of the main character's worst fears.
I guess my main point is that I'm thinking of something like the movie Jacob's Ladder only with a more structured plot. In the beginning of the game you seem to be in a normal environment, but if you pay attention some things seem a bit off. As you continue to play the game your perceptions get worse and worse and you realize that the previous levels of the game were memories of the past. And it goes into question whether or not you're still hallucinating or if anything is actually real so as you're playing the game the timeline of events seems a bit jumbled. Plotwise this could get really gimmicky so to avoid a disappointing bs ending there'd need to be a polished ending that would tie things together... or at least explain some of your hallucinations... I'm not sure what that would be but maybe when we figure out what the main character would be like.
The thing that could differentiate this game from other games is your interaction with reality / the environment. Like as you approach something / an object/ person/ whatever, the closer you get the more it changes into something horrific. You see one of your family members in the distance but no matter how long you run after them they still seem the same distance away even though they're standing perfectly still. Walking down the hallway, the wallpaper seems to be melting and the floor starts to sink... I don't know stuff like that. Also, turning your back on things but when you look behind you the environment has changed. Or if you open a door you're looking into what seems like an ordinary room... but when you step inside the walls and floor fade out and suddenly you're out in the woods (but the door frame is still behind you. If you try to return into the hallway that might trigger an event that would send a monster after you or something).
But I guess this is just like Silent Hill with the whole normal world vs. scary schizophrenia world... I'm just imagining the main character living quietly in the normal suburbs with a small family but then OH SHIT. Like, the first time you notice things aren't quite right would be within your own house. One of the reasons I found The Room scary because your home wasn't safe. Sometimes you wake up and everything's fine, other times a monster appears right over your bed or something worse. Giving the player a sense of security and then stripping it away seems like one of the best ways to scare someone... with or without jumpout scares. It makes what happens next completely unexpected... Hopefully some of this makes sense.
|
|
Sweet Bro
Junior Member
useless piece of shit
where MAKING THIS HAPEN
Posts: 70
|
Post by Sweet Bro on Jun 29, 2010 9:09:47 GMT -5
Kino, I think that's a great idea. I'm not going to quote all that shit though. Stripping away the player's ability to trust the world he is in, having it a changing, almost living environment and subsequently making it one of your biggest enemies is a really interesting mechanic in my eyes. It provides a sense of danger and unpredictability that couldn't be done with "monsters" or other tangible enemies. That's what I thought was cool about Fatal Frame, you could only see them with your camera so you were always jittery and on edge, listening to every little sound, never safe nor secure.
I think you're absolutely right about the 'stripping of safety' thing. When you have so few safe areas in a horror game, there's a goldmine for scares, that don't have to be shock scares, but increase the feelings of insecurity and danger wherever you go. Like, for example, have one room on one level of an apartment complex that you can use to save/replenish health/review notes/whatever, and at some point have an old women sit in a rocking chair that wasn't there before, and have the player looking at her from behind. When you go up to look at her face, either have her disappear or appear behind the player similar to the mannequins from Condemned. Having her sitting away from all the peripherals like a save point or some other station will force the player to approach her out of sheer curiosity. Slow and subtle changes to the environment, especially the safe areas, keeps players on edge, which is a good thing. I liked about Dead Space, but the presentation was wrong. I vividly remember at one point that some necromorphs had infested a save point, and from there on I felt very cautious about EVERY area I was in. But with Dead Space, I remember myself feeling pressured to kill these things, as if it was a chore instead of terrified that monsters could be behind any corner. I'm getting heavily off track here though.
A two reality setting, and a slow meld of both sounds really attractive to me, it provides the player a sense of insecurity, confusion, and hopefully terror. If we can settle on one idea, I think we can really get the ball rolling on this. I think The Room was done pretty well, but there are mixed reviews about it, so I don't know. Where do we go from here?
|
|
|
Post by Kino on Jun 29, 2010 12:41:45 GMT -5
I like the idea of the characters memories impacting the environment... like the character's dreamworld and real world co-exist from time to time. It wouldn't have to be straight-up flashbacks though. Just changes in the environment would suffice.
Plus maybe time keeps slipping past the viewer, the kitchen is clean but returning to that area a short while later it's covered in dust, the dishes in the sink and food in the fridge are rotting, etc.
Lastly, maybe the effect of player choice? Besides something based on good deeds or bad deeds (this game should be very grey, not black and white). Or defeating x amount of enemies or x amount of accomplishments in order to get the super good end either. To me the ideal horror game would have several equally terrible bad ends (like creepypasta) and maybe one good one... but maybe you get the good end by not being 100% perfect and saving everyone. Like you try to "save" somebody but they actually are an enemy that will kill you later. Instead of being blindly good you have to try and be intelligent and pick what you think would be the best thing to do next. Maybe you have to make some sort of horrible decision... One last quick idea... half way in the game you have two ally characters. Paranoia is getting the better of you and you start to doubt that either of them is an ally. Like one of them is sabotaging you and you don't know who. Eventually you have to decide whether to kill one of them... one is a real person and one is a hallucination but the player won't know that at the time. Depending on how you play the rest of the game determines whether or not that one surviving teammate was actually real to begin with. (So that's a potential of four possible endings, not including if you kill both of them or neither of them). I'll stop rambling off-topic now... But making choice matter could really effect the environment too, such as the potential to uncover new areas that you wouldn't've otherwise, accessing different memories of your past, stuff like that.
|
|
Sweet Bro
Junior Member
useless piece of shit
where MAKING THIS HAPEN
Posts: 70
|
Post by Sweet Bro on Jun 29, 2010 15:24:48 GMT -5
I remember an idea similar to that reoccurring in the original couple of threads. Having a strong, cool, bro-like ally to which the audience will love, and having him either die or turn on you leaving you with the horrifying setting you are in could intensify that stranded, helpless feeling that is so prevalent in so many horror games. It could also put into question your sanity, or the player's.
However, we're being very broad here. I still want to talk about what the perfect setting for a horror game should be. Perhaps something like a Psychonauts/Yume Nikki thing going on, delving into the mind of the protagonist, facing battles within one's self, a la Silent Hill. We have a lot to work with if that's the direction we take. I really like the idea of a sterile hospital, a la The Ward though. My God, it just comes off as completely terrifying to me. A completely white complex with hallways upon hallways, no openness, the enclosed spaces... The game I want to make would make white much more disturbing than anything grimy, gore inspired palettes could compare to. Just the thought of it runs a plethora of ideas throughout my head.
Like, okay, how about you're a patient and you're going insane, but the doctors don't know it. You're about to be released when you hit the breaking point and become down right violent. The game starts a ways into your insanity and you're hiding out in some ventilation shaft or some shit while the entire ward is on lock-down. Your past is not revealed to you directly, yet you see glimpses of who you were through photos that you collect throughout the game. You see the world as a terrifying demon-infested hell, but with white walls and starched nurse uniforms. You eventually find your way out of the ward, only to find yourself in the real world, which is much more terrifying to your addled mind.
Or maybe even you're a worker at an asylum and shit hits the fan. Convicts and criminals run rampant and it's up to you what you do. You can either do what you can to keep them in the asylum, and eventually restore some semblance of order within the facility, or you can just escape, and bring the hundreds of insane patients with you. It's similar to Arkham Asylum, except you're not the god damn batman, you're a janitor, or a security guard, or a nurse, it really doesn't matter. You begin to lurk and cower your way throughout the facility, kinda like Penumbra. There is a large feeling of helplessness, as no-win scenarios are common and weapons are mostly situational.
|
|
|
Post by Kino on Jun 29, 2010 17:15:42 GMT -5
I really loved Psychonauts so I'd support that 100%
> no grimy, gore-splattered walls
YES. This has always been a staple for horror games so that would be nice for a change. Also, in a such pristine place if any gore actually DOES show up it would be all the more amplified. It's probably going to be inevitable if this is taking place in a building full of insane people. (Insanity manifests in many different ways so not a lot of people would go violent immediately though... well maybe when the food runs out or something)....
I feel like the main character would seem / feel better but all the commotion would send him into a relapse... instead of health you have a sanity meter? (The TWEEST is that you were insane all along).
Back on topic though... I feel like insane asylums are really common in games. But hm... if the gameplay is original enough it shouldn't matter. As long as it's not another Condemned. Sort of like the Yume Nikki doors, different rooms could bring you to different areas? Maybe not entire worlds, but maybe a really specific memory. Or pieces of places you used to know, good and bad, would merge with the asylum. Other fellow inmates could sometimes turn into people you used to know... maybe somebody you used to hate when you were sane keeps showing up no matter how many times you kill him but of course you're killing actual people. Now I'm imagining two different areas merged together like they crashed into each other or something. Of course things like this could be done in a more subtle way... Near the end of the game things should be a clusterfuck + some kind of evolving boss battle.
|
|
Sweet Bro
Junior Member
useless piece of shit
where MAKING THIS HAPEN
Posts: 70
|
Post by Sweet Bro on Jun 30, 2010 6:39:19 GMT -5
Damn. Only two people in this thread. I was hoping for a large collaboration of what the perfect setting for a horror game was, or at least some people giving their ideas for a scary sounding game. Oh well. Let's stick with this idea.
Perhaps...perhaps there were sections within the patient's mind that characterized how you reacted and what you saw in your environment. I don't know, I'm big about subtlety so I don't want a big hub to separate all your different forms of consciousness or insanity... Perhaps with every memory revealed to you, you see things a bit more differently. Like enemies seem a bit more human, or maybe their attacks do less damage, but so do yours, some sort of tweak to the mechanics to show that collecting memories is a good thing. Okay, I have an idea.
Have the game start out as down-right chaotic. Shit has hit the fan and you are just trying to survive. Patients are lurking, but they're no longer patients, but twisted mutilated silhouettes of who they had been before. Power is out, there is no order anymore. I'm thinking of something similar to The Ward. The only things you have in your inventory is a map, with some scribbles on it before the blackout, and some pills which you don't really know are for. On the map there is a question mark somewhere on it, and a circle around the power generator room. Going to the question mark restores memories pre-blackout. They start out to be pretty small-scale stuff, how to take care of a specific enemy, or where an ammo cache is located, or where an ally is hiding, but eventually you begin to remember your family, you remember who your friends were and HOW the blackout happened. Each time you restore a memory, the facility's image restores a bit, and the walls are less grimmy. Eventually, with all the memories restored, you achieve a good end. You restore order to the facility, and turn yourself in, knowing that you're not right in the head after that entire ordeal. Otherwise, if you did not collect the memories, because they are completely secondary, the memories are an option to get, you don't have to collect one during your entire play through. You will infact be pressured to avoid the memories, as collecting each will present its own unique challenge. Like maybe a boss is guarding it, or the lights are completely off in that sector, and you have to trudge through the darkness. Also, the memories will be relived, so they're not cut-scenes, but similar to Cryostasis, where you have to make things right and you can even die during the some of the flashbacks. But, again. The memories are wholly optional. If you do not collect them, you get an ending that reflects that. You still see the asylum as a demon infested hell, but once you escape, you see the rest of the world the same. By the end, when you've collected 90% of the memories, the facility looks pretty normal, and enemies just look like normal guys. You can even talk to some of the enemies, however, if you killed a lot of people before hand, you will still be met with hostility.
Well, that's all I got.
|
|
|
Post by Mr Snibbles on Jun 30, 2010 8:07:52 GMT -5
Damn. Only two people in this thread. I was hoping for a large collaboration of what the perfect setting for a horror game was, or at least some people giving their ideas for a scary sounding game. Oh well. Let's stick with this idea. That's because you're the guys with the ideas....
|
|
Sweet Bro
Junior Member
useless piece of shit
where MAKING THIS HAPEN
Posts: 70
|
Post by Sweet Bro on Jun 30, 2010 12:39:24 GMT -5
Damn. Only two people in this thread. I was hoping for a large collaboration of what the perfect setting for a horror game was, or at least some people giving their ideas for a scary sounding game. Oh well. Let's stick with this idea. That's because you're the guys with the ideas.... Come now. I'm sure you can think of something. This website was made because you had ideas. We all are here because we want to see the best horror video game made, or at least imagined. What do you think is the best setting? You have to have some idea.
|
|
|
Post by Kino on Jun 30, 2010 15:23:42 GMT -5
I guess I'd rather have the game start off with the character semi-sane but things getting worse and worse as time goes on instead of the game winding down the longer you play. Like the character thought he was better but relapses because he still has baggage to deal with / running out of medication. Or maybe the game is your character loosing and gaining sanity over the course of the game (as in, lots of ups and downs) depending on how you play. But having things be high-action the moment you start might not be a bad thing either. Also, this could be an interesting way to block or allow access to new areas in the game and this would add to the environment-that-works-against-you idea. As in, if your character is still insane at the time you'd be able to enter a strange-looking passageway that you wouldn't be able to see otherwise. Or if you try to enter some place you're not supposed to all sorts of crazy, trippy things happen and you end up back where you started. Once you're sane enough you can walk by this area with ease.
>Patients are lurking, but they're no longer patients, but twisted mutilated silhouettes of who they had been before.
It's a tried-and-true element of horror games, and a lot of the time it's genuinely scary. I do really like these types of enemies but I'd love to see a new spin on this though... like instead of those bloody, tumor-y Silent Hill -type ememies that most games have. Something more surreal... like the what-the-fuck-am-I-looking-at kind of stuff from Yume Nikki only stepped up a few notches. (Not surreal to the point of it being silly or too confusing for the player.)
Another thing about horror game settings is color... it's usually either all muddy reds and browns or dull blue / grey. Once the power comes on again I'm imagining that the normal building interior being bright, white starched looking area. (Entering a dark area or the lights suddenly shutting off again would be even more dramatic.) Any areas of saturated color would be jarring which might not be a bad thing if done properly. I'm not saying rainbows everywhere but if you walked into a bad early-childhood memory that's really garish-looking when the past half-hour was pretty bland...
When it comes to reality + the characters perception I was also thinking of something like concept of The Meat Circus from Psychonauts. Sort of like a half and half mix of reality plus your imagination. Lot's of out-of-place objects... also things like finding your old living room or some other place exactly the way it was back home, merged at the end of an asylum hallway. The next time you visit that idea it would be gone though... So... maybe there's many different mental triggers distributed around the game that could only be activated through exploring. Though some are obviously mandatory to find for the sake of the plot.
I also like the idea of memories being a bit deteriorated or if your character doesn't remember some of the details those things would be replaced with surreal oddness. Like if you were in a public area with a friend and you were remembering a conversation. The passerby could look extremely strange or if for some reason. Or if you cut the conversation short and run for it... at a certain distance the scenery would start deteriorating. Or your friend, now a monster, would chase after you, drag you back to where you once were, change back to normal and things would continue how they were like nothing happened. Or maybe you can visit some memories more than once but certain aspects of it would be radically different.
But I'm really liking your idea so far Sweet Bro. People should post more in this thread too!
|
|
Sweet Bro
Junior Member
useless piece of shit
where MAKING THIS HAPEN
Posts: 70
|
Post by Sweet Bro on Jun 30, 2010 15:50:24 GMT -5
I see what you mean about the enemies, and I think you really broke apart a lot of what I had to say. Perhaps a straightforward kind of thing straight to sanity would be too simple. A steady upper and downer cycle could be really cool... Like a steady stream to downer as you run out of meds or you witness a scripted event of something disgusting like patients eviscerating a worker or some shit, then an upper stream as you begin to avoid seeing enemies and reclaim memories. Perhaps if you were to reclaim some specific BIG memories your sanity bar would be raised and you begun to slowly see things as they were. At MAX sanity you see everything as it is supposed to be, but at NO sanity, things go all Silent Hill. Wait...no...yeah, not like Silent Hill, more like your idea. Everything is as it should be, there are just out of place objects. We could even turn this into a gimmick and have areas that can only be accessed through low sanity to unlock dormant memories.
I think you also addressed another hole in what I had to say. The enemy design should not be something so tried as messes of flesh...but when it comes to enemies, just 3 horror-archetypes come to mind.
Lovecraftian Monsters: No semblance to ANYTHING in reality. Pure imagination. Flesh beasts. e.g. Uhh...I have no idea. I don't think anyone has really tried for a Lovecraftian sort of game besides Call of Cthulhu:DCotE Silent Hill-esque: Familiar objects turned horrifying. Nightmarish reimagined takes on people and animals. e.g. Silent Hill, Castlevania (more mythology, but whatever), The Suffering Zombies: Zombies. e.g. You don't really need examples, do you?
A surrealist take...perhaps... It could bring the whole sanity mechanic to such a higher plane. Having a lot of 'lolwut' moments would be very interesting. Yet I simply can not imagine enemies within a surrealist environment. What would they be? Would we have to hire druggies to come up with ideas of such baddies? Perhaps we can make a thread to outline some enemies for our game.... Just nothing comes to mind. What do you think?
|
|
Sweet Bro
Junior Member
useless piece of shit
where MAKING THIS HAPEN
Posts: 70
|
Post by Sweet Bro on Jul 2, 2010 10:35:57 GMT -5
Another thing about horror game settings is color... it's usually either all muddy reds and browns or dull blue / grey. Once the power comes on again I'm imagining that the normal building interior being bright, white starched looking area. (Entering a dark area or the lights suddenly shutting off again would be even more dramatic.) Any areas of saturated color would be jarring which might not be a bad thing if done properly. I'm not saying rainbows everywhere but if you walked into a bad early-childhood memory that's really garish-looking when the past half-hour was pretty bland... ANDI also like the idea of memories being a bit deteriorated or if your character doesn't remember some of the details those things would be replaced with surreal oddness. Like if you were in a public area with a friend and you were remembering a conversation. The passerby could look extremely strange or if for some reason. Or if you cut the conversation short and run for it... at a certain distance the scenery would start deteriorating. Or your friend, now a monster, would chase after you, drag you back to where you once were, change back to normal and things would continue how they were like nothing happened. Or maybe you can visit some memories more than once but certain aspects of it would be radically different. I'm getting a lot of ideas from this and I think they're wonderful. The idea of an active environment coupled with your limited sanity could really expand our options for what we can do to make this game TOTALLY CRAZY. Your second idea has me thinking. The process into a memory and out of one should be smooth. There should be no flashing light or some cutscene or any other kind of gimmick to transition you. Since you're insane, it should be just like you're not going into or coming out of anything. You're crazy, this is what you see. Like picking up a photo or some other sort of memorabilia causes you to look lovingly or whatever feeling the memento conveys as the camera slowly pans to your face showing the background to be completely different and related to the event you're remembering. Being unable to complete the memory for whatever reason, (I think they should be little challenges like after you start remembering who your were, memories down the line will have you live out the memories correctly or else) you will be ejected from it, unable to reap the benefits that may come with the memory. Taking some pills or raising up your sanity enough would allow you to take it again, but being ejected would leave you painfully insane. I think I'm getting a bit off track here, the transitions should be smooth and the scene shouldn't have any cutscene or loading or yadda yadda. If you were to be ejected, it should be like a hit in the face. If third person, the character falls backwards and the memory washes away, almost like water color. If first person, the protag should cover his eyes as if rubbing them, then come back to see the world as how it was before hand. Those are just some ideas that I mustered up. The transitions themselves can be debated. Also, ejection should also suggest that you have not collected all the memories that allow you to properly remember things. It should be like a chain. Finding Memory 1A allows you to properly remember 1B and 2B, however if you only remember 1B and not 2B, you can not remember 1C. There should be a few different chains, one for family, one for friends, maybe a mistress or a hated co-worker here and there. The character should be completely fleshed out by the end of the game. I want him to have a voice, how do you feel about that? Something nice. No Vin Diesel, but something more like...Ed Norton. Humble, quiet, likable, yet secretly an underground brawler and anti-Semite. Yet having him talk too much would detract the whole immersive kind of feel which would be a shame, but I didn't really have a problem with immersion and Red Dead Redemption even though John talked to god damn much. I guess it's because they're completely different genres. Well, this is a problem for another thread, onto my next point. For your first idea, I think we can really abuse this in a lot of ways. For example, after an intense chase scene and the enemies are beginning to crawl into the room, the blackout kicks in again and the lights cut off. The groaning and shit stops and you fumble your way to the light switch to find all the enemies gone and the walls completely white again. Colors should be the main way we need to convey feeling and mood, yet I agree, we should not go overboard with this. It requires a soft touch. Players shouldn't be going "oooh, this area is brown/grey, that must mean there's some bad guys" or "thank god, it's white so I can relax." Maybe...something like Silent Hill? I don't know. I'd like to hear what you have to say about this. Just like the surreal thing, I can't quite imagine it. The palette should be vast enough, yet we can't make it too...cliche I suppose? White walls should not immediately be associated with safety, in fact it should be the opposite. The player should be always on edge, regardless of the palette, the colors should just influence the...reason the player feels on edge? Fuck...I don't know. There should be an eerie feeling like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, some sort of eerie sort of thing associated with the white walls. They should be unrealistically white, like beyond what Portal had. They should be downright shimmering. Oh, that gives me an idea. What if the insanity factor, is not always the same. What if the character visits the child ward at some point and gets some memories about his baby. The memory could be all pencil drawn and simplistic kind of thing. Then, once he got out of the memory, everytime the character went insane in that area, everything would look all simplistic, black and white, pencil drawn. And once shit REALLY hit the fan, your views of the world would start becoming all static and altering and fighting each other. Like maybe it's all grimmy in one view of the world, then it turns into the simplistic black and white, then it goes into hyper-reality kind of felt Muppet style, then it goes all surreal and gives a flat kind of 2-d feel...maybe we should make a list of the different types of art styles associated with insanity. It'd be a lot of work to have all these views working at once, but this is just the planning stage, right? ANYTHING can happen. That is, if you're on-board with this idea Kino.
|
|
|
Post by Kino on Jul 2, 2010 13:32:27 GMT -5
I'm loving where this is going, so sure. But oh man, there's a lot to reply to... A surrealist take...perhaps... It could bring the whole sanity mechanic to such a higher plane. Having a lot of 'lolwut' moments would be very interesting. Yet I simply can not imagine enemies within a surrealist environment. What would they be? Would we have to hire druggies to come up with ideas of such baddies? Perhaps we can make a thread to outline some enemies for our game.... Just nothing comes to mind. What do you think? A thread for enemy types would be a good idea. I don't think we need to resort to drugs (it would probably help) but it would be more important to study different examples of surreal artwork to be inspired by. If you hired good concept artists, showed them a bunch of images and told them you want enemies that evoke this emotion, style, or whatever else you find compelling about the designs they'd probably be able to produce what you wanted. (Just don't say COPY THIS EXACTLY, get reference art that shows the general idea). Even better is if the artist themselves made the artwork... and basically say "I liked x and y pictures you did, do it again". When I said surreal I guess I was imagining stuff like Dali or the tons of pictures I've saved from /x/ artdump threads and conceptart.org. More importantly, I just wanted to stray away from making mutilated corpse tumor guy #553. Also, playing with the animation style. I... don't really know how to explain this well but it's basically a continuously transforming NPC. Like, the NPC's transformation would be a looping animation that would continue to happen whether it was moving or standing still. Things like drifting facial features, or changing back and forth from something more realistic to odd geometric shapes, splitting in half Herbie-style and reconnecting, just batshit crazy stuff. When the main character has completely lost it fellow inmates don't even have to look vaguely humanoid anymore. Like a school of fish swims past you in the hallway. Or horrible faces meld out of the walls. I don't know, my ideas are crap right now. I'll get back to you. If you don't have ideas I guess try to remember the weirdest crap you ever saw during one of your dreams. I'm okay with this. So your sanity is basically your health bar... and if you hit zero you don't die, you just have to start over Mario 64 style. But instead of falling out of a painting, it's some sort of crazy acid trip. I'd be okay with really short cutscenes, for the sake of a transition. Not so much dialog or anything... would each memory have its own special way of kicking you out? YES. Well as long as crazy backtracking and hard-to-find triggers aren't going to happen. There could be more obscure, but not crucial, triggers in this game. Also, the chains shouldn't be too long, besides maybe one long one of core of important memories. And maybe the side quests could stem off of that. I'm just worried that things could get frustrating if they are too hard to find. So the core gameplay would be exploring a constantly evolving world (depending on sanity), keep yourself from getting killed by figments of your imagination, recover memories, and ultimately escape the asylum. Whether you're genuinely sane at the end of the game is up to you. I'm not sure I'd want the good end / bad end being solely dependent on collecting items though... When it comes to voice acting I've always preferred the protagonist being silent most of the time. It does really mess around with immersion, especially with horror games. Most times when the main character is overly vocal the game gets bogged down with pretentious dialog and cliche stuff. But throwing in bits of dialog here and there to get a sense of his personality would be nice, especially if they're different depending on if you're playing like an asshole or not. But since he's totally insane it would probably be like The Milkman ramblings from Psychonauts. I would avoid brown / greys I guess. Since this was a non-abandoned asylum I don't think things have gotten grimy just yet. That and people associate tripping balls with more vibrant colors. But yeah the color scheme should really reflect the emotion the main character would have at that moment. And when he's sane, things should have naturalistic lighting. Just-after-sunset colors showing through the windows would be interesting. Anyways, since he's hallucinating so much the colors of everything would definitely shift. So when everything is devoid of any real color things would feel extremely artificial, lonely, claustrophobic... especially if the only noise was a quiet hum of florescent lighting. Color + sound design will be important too. Other artificial looking lighting could be effective... like monochromatic color? When it comes to darkness and shadows... things should be just as dangerous and scary even if you can see everything. But of course darkness is extremely important to use in a horror game. I like the idea of using it as a tool for transitions. It almost seems like he'd be safer hiding in the dark... Maybe this kind of event would be in a specific area of a building with lots of doors... the texture effects would be randomized. So each time you enter the same room it has the potential to be different. But I like the flickering-between idea a lot better. WALL OF TEXT BATTLE, SUDDEN DEATH
|
|
Sweet Bro
Junior Member
useless piece of shit
where MAKING THIS HAPEN
Posts: 70
|
Post by Sweet Bro on Jul 2, 2010 17:39:07 GMT -5
It's time to flex my patience and address EVERY POINT INDIVIDUALLY! HAVE AT YOU! When I said surreal I guess I was imagining stuff like Dali or the tons of pictures I've saved from /x/ artdump threads and conceptart.org. More importantly, I just wanted to stray away from making mutilated corpse tumor guy #553. Also, playing with the animation style. I... don't really know how to explain this well but it's basically a continuously transforming NPC. Like, the NPC's transformation would be a looping animation that would continue to happen whether it was moving or standing still. Things like drifting facial features, or changing back and forth from something more realistic to odd geometric shapes, splitting in half Herbie-style and reconnecting, just batshit crazy stuff. When the main character has completely lost it fellow inmates don't even have to look vaguely humanoid anymore. Like a school of fish swims past you in the hallway. Or horrible faces meld out of the walls. I don't know, my ideas are crap right now. I'll get back to you. If you don't have ideas I guess try to remember the weirdest crap you ever saw during one of your dreams. I actually think this is very interesting. Something that hasn't been done before, a sort of psychedelic feel to the characters, completely unique, and the only thing remotely close to it would be Psychonauts, which, while a great game, was not horrifying. At least not intentionally. Total abandonment for logic and physics could lead to some actually terrifying scenes. Like simple things. Perhaps when mid-sanity, while talking to a woman her eye just happens to fall out. Not gory or anything like that, more like it was glued on, like a googly eye, and it just falls off. And under where the googly eye was is just a bare, flat surface. Something like that. Or perhaps, while walking down a hallway, some fellow just happens to be walking on the ceiling, wait no, actually it's the floor. You're the one on the ceiling. And you fall down, your perspective suddenly warped. Sadly, I feel that if we took this route, this completely sporadic and insane route, a lot of scripting and coding will have to be done if we are to make each of these instances unique. BAH, leave rationalizing for another time. IN THESE PARTS MEN DREAM! But jeez, what a unique thought, to base fear not out of creepy, gory, icky shit, but generally unnerving, weird, "this shit ain't right" kind of stuff, that really hasn't been done before. Kinda like how people are freaked out by glitches from old N64. They're freaked out because THAT SHIT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN, and if we embody that feeling, it could be something never seen before. Or maybe people will just laugh their asses off, everybody is different. I feel like the cutscene would take away from the immersion. It's what I liked about Silent Hill. The load times were brisk and negligible, everything felt seamless, even though it was obviously not. Loading screens and cut scenes, I feel like they have no place in a horror game. Dead Space did it pretty well. All cutscenes were a part of the game, so while talking to some mother fucker through a glass wall, at any moment a necromorph could jump out and bite your face or something to that variety. However, perhaps I'm being obtuse about this. The areas where you'd find mementos would not necessarily be high-danger areas, (Although, maybe a couple could be just for shits and giggles, and to add that little stealth gimmick.) so a cutscene would not interfere in the intensity of the game per se. As long as there's not too many of them. I just hope the loading times are few and far between. The memories should allude to one another, at least give a good idea to where the next item should end up. Like...if the last words you're having with your wife in one memory is about her having a baby, you should expect something in the infant ward (I don't know the proper term for infant ward...), what an infant ward is doing in an asylum is not for me to decide. This is all brainstorming. Or maybe my initial idea, you will have a map of where you are. Everytime you go to a new area, you'll eventually find a map for that area. Maybe you have a master map, I don't know. Maybe you can even have a notepad with hand-drawn looking maps. But the point is, on the map you'll start with 2 major points of interest. A mark over where the generator is supposed to be and a mark over a possible memory. After getting your first memory, you'll write a note down in your notebook about it or you'll mark your map, or some shit. THE POINT IS you'll have a good idea of where you're supposed to go. If you decide to ignore the memory, fuck it. The memories should not be the entire game, they should be about plot and fleshing out your character and all that jazz. At most, they should be a cool and note-worthy mechanic that will be praised, but not the centerpiece. Maybe make the first few mandatory, then leave it to the player to decide if he wants to put up with that shit. Make it a challenge to get to them too. Like at some point, have a memory so fucking hard to get, that players should be like, "Fuck this shit. Wow, I'm just going to play the game." All challenges should be unique, or at least connected to their area. Like if it's in a dark corridor, make it a stealth challenge. Or if it's in a decrepit area, make it a platform challenge. If it's in a security area, marksman challenge, you get the idea. When it comes to the ending being based on the memories...hmm... There should definitely be different endings depending on if you played the souvenir game or not. Yea...if you decided to leave the main character as a Link or Gordon Freeman, and not as a Drake or John Marshton, you should necessarily be punished for it, just given different view points. Good point. What I had in mind was he wouldn't always be talking. Just like simple dialog, though memories or between workers. Yeah, we should make him reserved at least, and explain his personality though his memories, fleshing out who he is and why things are the way they are. Maybe you can even delve into his past exploits, who he was before the asylum, why he's in the asylum. But again, you can give all this future grade A writing straight from Sweet Bro himself a pass if you so choose to. I feel like there should be SOME story, you know. Not just "fix the facility" or "escape the facility" but more like a discovery kind of thing, unfolding all sorts of...shit that makes the player think "huh, that's pretty cool." Not only exploring the facility, but exploring your mind... Yeah, and not in the Psychonauts sense, just mementos. Beautiful. I love this idea much more than my own. At whole sanity, a realistic palette should be used. Maybe go to an actual asylum, take some pictures at various times of the day, look at them, those are our colors. And the lower your sanity, the flatter the colors, eventually making it almost 2d, maybe kind of cartoony? Nah, I think the whole surreal thing would work better if it was all realistic, yet the surreal elements were still present...but some kind of visual or maybe audio give. Maybe as you go loony, music begins to play or sounds are exaggerated. No...I don't want the game to go all cartoony once you lose sanity, because once you hit rock bottom, that's where the game should shine and strike fear into the player. That's when the game should go all LSD on you (if you haven't played it, it's a great game. Very weird, very surreal) and start to freak you out. Perhaps...perhaps to palettes could become exaggerated? Like white walls get all bright, like blindingly so and darkness starts to look like it's grabbing at you? How about when you're going insane, when you try to look out a window, the curtains violently close right when you're about to see what's outside? I think's the best answer I have for the moment. I think that's interesting. I think views should only start fighting with each other once shit really hits the fan. Like you're irrecoverably mentally broken at this point. It's almost the end of the game, you've found out who the Big Bad is at this point, some sort of TWEEST and you're breaking down, maybe you remembered your wife died or you killed her or some shit, and your brain is just flipping the FUCK out. Okay, for the area, how about it's like one of the last areas of the game, preceding the climax where your character flips the fuck out? It's like a visitors center/recreation center. Perhaps it's the rooms of some of the less severe cases, the ones that aren't violent. Think One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. You go into their rooms and find a couple actually cowering in there, too afraid to look or talk to you, since the facility is in total chaos and they've heard banging and screaming throughout the facility. So they're cowering and you're looking for a key or a memento or some shit. In each room you find some sort of THING and it affects how you see the world, since you've recently hit your breaking point and shit is affecting you in the worst ways. Maybe one room, there's a doll from a patient's daughter and suddenly, everything in that room is felt and there's a little platform challenge after that. Then you exit into the hall and everything is normal, or surreal as you put it. You enter another guy's room and you find a hand-drawn little picture and suddenly everything is all black and white, or crayon and you have another platform thing to get you back to reality. It could be a very interesting and memorable part of our game. It should also make you see what has happened to everyone else in the facility, not just the crazies, touch your mortality and see that everyone has a family, shit like that. Maybe the room with the doll, the guy in there is killed, his throat slit. That could be a real little egg, and people who see it might be touched. Oh shit...how about the doll is in there and on it is a note that says "i luv you dady" or something to that extent. Shit, I'm getting all depressed thinking about it. EVERY room in that area should be like that. It'd be amazing. Maybe in the last room, have it normal looking, but as you tear the wall paper away, the guy turns out to be a real psychopath, and he's not in his room. Then the view gets all grungy and silent hilly before you get back to reality. That's probably the room of the guy that killed our father character. I think that'd be pretty interesting. Something there for people who notice it, but it shouldn't be shoved down the player's throats, it should be relatively subtle. THERE IS MY REBUTTAL YOUNG...ERM...BRO OR SIS? ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE/FAIR LADY TO RESPOND TO IT?! PS: If we're going surreal, we GOT to have an MC Escher kind of room going on. Come on, it's a must. Maybe in one of the Cuckoo's Nest guy's rooms, he has an Escher painting or some shit. We just HAVE to stick something in there.
|
|