I don't think an Aliens game in 3rd person would work at all, unless they made something akin to Mass Effect with a whole squad of players. The problem I have with such a game, is that the scariness would be very much subdued because of the view and presence of a whole team of people. Aliens without scary seems pointless to me.

I don't think an Aliens game in 3rd person would work at all, unless they made something akin to Mass Effect with a whole squad of players. The problem I have with such a game, is that the scariness would be very much subdued because of the view and presence of a whole team of people. Aliens without scary seems pointless to me.

It doesn't have to be 1st person in order to be scary. Josh already mentioned RE4, and it seems Mass Effect is going to carry this further with a squad. 1st would be crucial to have physics/environment interaction importance - like Dark Messiah or Condemned, but I think that's not what Obsidian is aiming for. And I agree with Tale that the shooting part in Deus Ex was sub par. Firing a Shotgun at an Alien just in front of me while missing because the dice said so would make me mad (yeah, a little exaggerated, but there's still the "wtf" moment).

RE4 camera style while carrying a Smart gun would make the action "loud, and visceral".

 

Another thing maybe I don't want to see are floating icons and oversaturated particle effects (like the circles and shields from various D&D games that surround the PC) that indicate the health bar or type of foe you have to face. Better make them visually distinguishable, a'la TF2, where you don't have to cluster the screen with signs and indications. Comes also handy in order to maintain the visual aesthetics.

Edited November 16, 200718 yr by Morgoth

I don't see why people think first person equals scary. I really don't see that. The survival horror genre revolves around third person. The term "immersion" people like to use to justify that idea seems to be more a buzz word than anything else.

Edited November 16, 200718 yr by Tale

Action: My hope is that an Aliens game would have a nice mix of fast paced visceral action, slower moments where the "threat" of action keeps me on my toes, and more sedate moments to catch my breath and engage the world around me in a non-tactical way. I'd not want to see stat/skill checks when performing actions as much as stat/skill modifiers to those actions; i.e. my targeting reticule expands slower when firing on full auto as i increase my strength or firearm skill instead of am artificial forced miss (a la Bloodlines). stat/skill checks are fine for non-combat interactions, such as dialog, would be kosher.

 

Perspective: I'm going to say Third Person for this. I like seeing my character and i like having the larger view of the world around my characters. I look at games like Gears of War or Lost World and just imagine how amazing a fully realized Aliens game would look and i get all misty.

 

Combat: exclusively ranged weapons with melee options, much like halo. The caveat being that it shouldn't really do much, if any, damage. Instead it should push back an opponent and give the player some breathing room to fire his weapon without fear of spray.

 

world interactivity: Please, please, please steal the computer interface style of Doom 3. For all that utterly drove me nuts in that game, how you interacted with various computer monitors was perfect. It added to my sense of being part of a real, living setting and didn't break the pacing or tension of a moment. With the Aliens setting I'd love to be able to gather information from computers, use security stations to override atmospheric controls to take out enemies, all while not removing myself from the moment.

I never really found the Resident Evil or the Alone In the Dark games scary at all. Fun, but not scary.

 

The only 3rd person view game that I found kind of scary was Silent Hill, but even that felt a bit gimmicky at times.

I don't see why people think first person equals scary. I really don't see that. The survival horror genre revolves around third person. The term "immersion" people like to use to justify that idea seems to be more a buzz word than anything else.

Hitch**** once made a film (the name eludes me now) where he didn't have one single cut in it. He just moved the camera through the house, following people, lurking behind corners and so on.... after some time, it drove the audience mad.

Thief, while it didn't drive me mad, did one thing right: It never pulled me out of the moment with any kind of cutscenes.

 

But yeah, while this hasn't anything to do with Aliens: Do you remember the Fahrenheit scene were Carla had to sneak through the sanatorium? Why did the designer decide to place the cam there into 1st person view? Why no RE4 or Silent Hill type? My guess it due to the confined FOV...the nutjobs just could suddenly enter the FOV, making them more menacing. That's what Obsidian also should think about: Visual detection. Is it good to see/hear Aliens in advance?

 

Edit: Another matter about detection: Be careful about dynamic music, if you use any. Often it gets triggered in advance, destroying the suspense that there's something or not around the corner.

Edited November 16, 200718 yr by Morgoth

I never really found the Resident Evil or the Alone In the Dark games scary at all. Fun, but not scary.

 

The only 3rd person view game that I found kind of scary was Silent Hill, but even that felt a bit gimmicky at times.

I have to say the same of the first person ones. FEAR's scare factor was nothing but gimmick, same for Condemned, and according to Pop, AvP 2. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth's fear factor only comes from the fact that the enemies will respawn and all you have is a very crappy weapon with limited ammo. Bioshock doesn't even get that benefit.

 

There's really no way to avoid scary becoming a gimmick. Scare factor is a gimmick.

 

Hitch**** once made a film (the name eludes me now) where he didn't have one single cut in it. He just moved the camera through the house, following people, lurking behind corners and so on.... after some time, it drove the audience mad.

Thief, while it didn't drive me mad, did one thing right: It never pulled me out of the moment with any kind of cutscenes.

This is often an issue related to pacing, I imagine. Cutscenes are a period of time where you just put down the controller. You give up control both literally and metaphorically. It can be dull to players to give up control.

 

But yeah, while this hasn't anything to do with Aliens: Do you remember the Fahrenheit scene were Carla had to sneak through the sanatorium? Why did the designer decide to place the cam there into 1st person view? Why no RE4 or Silent Hill type? My guess it due to the confined FOV...the nutjobs just could suddenly enter the FOV, making them more menacing.

You have a confined FOV in third person games, you're not all seeing. You can have things suddenly enter the FOV just as easily. Taking away a player's control so you can artificially surprise them is a poor cheat.

Edited November 16, 200718 yr by Tale

But yeah, while this hasn't anything to do with Aliens: Do you remember the Fahrenheit scene were Carla had to sneak through the sanatorium? Why did the designer decide to place the cam there into 1st person view? Why no RE4 or Silent Hill type? My guess it due to the confined FOV...the nutjobs just could suddenly enter the FOV, making them more menacing. That's what Obsidian also should think about: Visual detection. Is it good to see/hear Aliens in advance?

 

That scene was about Carla's claustrophobia. I'm guessing the designers thought (in my opinion, correctly) that 1st person view was the best way of connecting the player to Carla's plight.

I never really found the Resident Evil or the Alone In the Dark games scary at all. Fun, but not scary.

 

The only 3rd person view game that I found kind of scary was Silent Hill, but even that felt a bit gimmicky at times.

I have to say the same of the first person ones. FEAR's scare factor was nothing but gimmick, same for Condemned, and according to Pop, AvP 2. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth's fear factor only comes from the fact that the enemies will respawn and all you have is a very crappy weapon with limited ammo. Bioshock doesn't even get that benefit.

 

There's really no way to avoid scary becoming a gimmick. Scare factor is a gimmick.

 

 

I didn't think FEAR was scary either. But that, I think, was because the whole game except for the combat was very poorly designed. The other games, I haven't played with the exception of AvP2. That, and the first game as well, I found scary more because I related the experience to the movies. The speed of the aliens couple with the beeping from the radar really scared the bejeezus out of me.

 

SS2 would be a better example of a FPV game I found scary, and a lot of that scariness came from the view and the positional audio. Hearing the zombies coming at me from behind really got to me and wouldn't have been achievable without first person view.

Edited November 16, 200718 yr by Pidesco

Hitch**** once made a film (the name eludes me now) where he didn't have one single cut in it. He just moved the camera through the house, following people, lurking behind corners and so on.... after some time, it drove the audience mad.

Thief, while it didn't drive me mad, did one thing right: It never pulled me out of the moment with any kind of cutscenes.

The film was Rope, and it did have cuts but they were all hidden so well that it effectively looked like an endless shot.

But yeah, while this hasn't anything to do with Aliens: Do you remember the Fahrenheit scene were Carla had to sneak through the sanatorium? Why did the designer decide to place the cam there into 1st person view? Why no RE4 or Silent Hill type? My guess it due to the confined FOV...the nutjobs just could suddenly enter the FOV, making them more menacing. That's what Obsidian also should think about: Visual detection. Is it good to see/hear Aliens in advance?

 

That scene was about Carla's claustrophobia. I'm guessing the designers thought (in my opinion, correctly) that 1st person view was the best way of connecting the player to Carla's plight.

That reminds me of Gorky 17, where there was some sort of a "being-terrorized" stat that would make the NPC insecure, hence decreasing aim skill and shooting team mates at accident.

 

There was also this one Outer Limits series, where Marines were waging war against Aliens. They had to inject drugs constantly, because it was told they had to, lest getting infected by contact. It turned out that humans were just fighting humans and the drugs just "clouded" their minds.

 

Perhaps having a visible "Sane-Meter" (better stabilized by improved skill, drugs temporarily) would make the player paying more attention during the fights. Also think about the Queen and her terrible roars. Who wouldn't just want to drop the pants and run away there without swallowing the daily drug dose at breakfast before?

Edited November 16, 200718 yr by Morgoth

Hitch**** once made a film (the name eludes me now) where he didn't have one single cut in it. He just moved the camera through the house, following people, lurking behind corners and so on.... after some time, it drove the audience mad.

Thief, while it didn't drive me mad, did one thing right: It never pulled me out of the moment with any kind of cutscenes.

The film was Rope, and it did have cuts but they were all hidden so well that it effectively looked like an endless shot.

Possibly, I never watched the film myself. It think it was once mentioned in the Making-Of of "Contact", where Robert Zemeckis used some camera blending work (outside to inside without any cut).

I never really found the Resident Evil or the Alone In the Dark games scary at all. Fun, but not scary.

 

The only 3rd person view game that I found kind of scary was Silent Hill, but even that felt a bit gimmicky at times.

I have to say the same of the first person ones. FEAR's scare factor was nothing but gimmick, same for Condemned, and according to Pop, AvP 2. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth's fear factor only comes from the fact that the enemies will respawn and all you have is a very crappy weapon with limited ammo. Bioshock doesn't even get that benefit.

 

There's really no way to avoid scary becoming a gimmick. Scare factor is a gimmick.

 

 

I didn't think FEAR was scary either. But that, I think, was because the whole game except for the combat was very poorly designed. The other games, I haven't played with the exception of AvP2. That, and the first game as well, I found scary more because I related the experience to the movies. The speed of the aliens couple with the beeping from the radar really scared the bejeezus out of me.

 

SS2 would be a better example of a FPV game I found scary, and a lot of that scariness came from the view and the positional audio. Hearing the zombies coming at me from behind really got to me and wouldn't have been achievable without first person view.

 

See, I've always noticed that scary games go about it one of a few ways:

 

1) Constrict players control or knowledge of the environment. This way they have difficulty recognizing threats or they have difficulties adjusting to threats.

2) Pacing. This often ties into lack of knowledge of the environment. A player that doesn't know when to expect combat, may be overly tense in anticipation of combat. If you pace unevenly, the player may not be able to expect rest from combat. Which can lead to tension. Though, for me it always leads to fatigue.

3) There's something to be said about sound in horror games. Like in horror movies, it helps establish mood and and tension on its own. The sound of heavy breathing monsters or a beeping motion detector are quick to be picked up by us and related to our own breathing and heart beat. It's a weird human-environment empathy where humans take cues from the outside and relate them to our responses to a situation.*

 

And that's why FEAR has a problem with being scary. It has all the environmental and supposed immersion factors. It jumps things suddenly into view and things sneak up on you. It has positional audio. But, the actual threats to produce tension are known about in advance and paced so that you can relax between them. I'm not even going to speculate on slow-mo's role in that.

 

And ultimately, I see no reason these three functions can't be handled with a third-person camera.

 

 

*One of my classes actually presented us with this dilemma. The notion that our perception of physical responses encourage our emotional responses is fascinating. Most people would think it the other way around. We get scared, so our heart speeds up! But, it's possible the heart speeding up is how we identify that we're scared.

Edited November 16, 200718 yr by Tale

I didn't really find RE4 scary, it was a lot of fun though.

 

I didn't find the rest of the RE games I've played scary either, but they weren't very much fun to play either.

 

AvP2 scared the crap out of me at parts.

And that's why FEAR has a problem with being scary. It has all the environmental and supposed immersion factors. It jumps things suddenly into view and things sneak up on you. It has positional audio. But, the actual threats to produce tension are known about in advance and paced so that you can relax between them. I'm not even going to speculate on slow-mo's role in that.

The relaxation phases were introduced so that the following combat scene would feel a bit more fresh. Because repetitive fighting always leads to fatique. Doom3 or Kotor are good examples of this pattern.

And that's why FEAR has a problem with being scary. It has all the environmental and supposed immersion factors. It jumps things suddenly into view and things sneak up on you. It has positional audio. But, the actual threats to produce tension are known about in advance and paced so that you can relax between them. I'm not even going to speculate on slow-mo's role in that.

The relaxation phases were introduced so that the following combat scene would feel a bit more fresh. Because repetitive fighting always leads to fatique. Doom3 or Kotor are good examples of this pattern.

I can agree on Doom3, but not sure I can on Kotor, because it's not just repetitive fighting. It's constant tension in general that leads to fatigue as far as I can tell. Fatigue is the result of overwork and kotor isn't that demanding on the player to cause that effect. At least for me. I have trouble playing Resident Evil prior to 3 and have never gotten far in a Silent Hill game because I never feel free to relax. I'm not sure if I'm just a particularly abnormal case or if there's a balance that can be achieved. If there is, I feel AvP 2 did a relatively good job before the end parts because there were times were you could feel safe.

 

Combat can be as exciting and non-repetitive as it wants to be, but a guys got to get up and wipe the sweat off his palms every now and then. But, you do it too often and the palms may never sweat.

Edited November 16, 200718 yr by Tale

See, I've always noticed that scary games go about it one of a few ways:

 

1) Constrict players control or knowledge of the environment. This way they have difficulty recognizing threats or they have difficulties adjusting to threats.

2) Pacing. This often ties into lack of knowledge of the environment. A player that doesn't know when to expect combat, may be overly tense in anticipation of combat. If you pace unevenly, the player may not be able to expect rest from combat. Which can lead to tension. Though, for me it always leads to fatigue.

3) There's something to be said about sound in horror games. Like in horror movies, it helps establish mood and and tension on its own. The sound of heavy breathing monsters or a beeping motion detector are quick to be picked up by us and related to our own breathing and heart beat. It's a weird human-environment empathy where humans take cues from the outside and relate them to our responses to a situation.

 

And that's why FEAR has a problem with being scary. It has all the environmental and supposed immersion factors. It jumps things suddenly into view and things sneak up on you. It has positional audio. But, the actual threats to produce tension are known about in advance and paced so that you can relax between them. I'm not even going to speculate on slow-mo's role in that.

 

And ultimately, I see no reason these three functions can't be handled with a third-person camera.

 

 

I think the main and best way to make a player feel scared is by making him feel threatened and not a master of the environment around him. It seems to me that the best way to achieve this, should be making the player feel alone, helpless and immersed (yeah, there's the word ) in the world around him. This, I think is best achieved by a first person view. Because, fisrt the player should only be able to directly control his own character, and shouldn't be able to see the whole of the game world around him. The view of the gameworld should be limited, but not artificially limited like, say, the fog in Silent Hill. As such, first person view is more conducive to a scary game than third person view.

There are a couple of things I want to say to that:

 

1) As a matter of mechanics, a third-person camera in no way gives you full view over your environment.

2) As a matter of preference, if that's your idea of scary, I'd rather the game wasn't. I'd prefer the game played out more explicitly like an RPG, with meaningful party character interaction and stat based combat, than an FPS, even if that meant it didn't scare even a little. I see no reason for Sega to hire an FPS studio and an RPG studio to make 2 games off the same license if both studios are going to work on an FPS that's only different in side mechanics and story. And part of this is because I think that without meaningful party interaction it's a waste of Obsidian's talent.

Edited November 16, 200718 yr by Tale

Party, ohh gawd, do we have to have one of those

 

If they could pull off something cool reminiscient of the squad based combat immortalised in Aliens then sure, but that would almost invariably make it into one of those number crunching deals. Do you really want a pause and give orders type of deal ?

Why should I need to pause and give orders? Are my characters likely to run into melee to swing their sword? Do I need to select a specific spell? Maybe I'll need to have all my characters focus fire on the big alien that's healing the other aliens!

 

Combat in aliens isn't 1/10th as complicated as D&D combat. You shoot the alien closest to you. That's it. Even interhuman combat wouldn't be nearly D&D levels of complicated. You all have guns and that's it. That's all you're using. Have a proper priority list and you're set. Republic Commando commands would be good, too.

Edited November 16, 200718 yr by Tale

I suppose not, but the other pitfall is doing it KOTOR style, where the party mostly did just fine without you. No great need for any player input, the game could all but play itself.

 

And what happens when they die, raise dead ?, or do they just have a gazillion hitpoints ?.

First note that I'm not an aliens fan and barely remember them so my comments are quite general.

3) There's something to be said about sound in horror games. Like in horror movies, it helps establish mood and and tension on its own. The sound of heavy breathing monsters or a beeping motion detector are quick to be picked up by us and related to our own breathing and heart beat. It's a weird human-environment empathy where humans take cues from the outside and relate them to our responses to a situation.*

 

*One of my classes actually presented us with this dilemma. The notion that our perception of physical responses encourage our emotional responses is fascinating. Most people would think it the other way around. We get scared, so our heart speeds up! But, it's possible the heart speeding up is how we identify that we're scared.

I don't think sound can have an important enough status when it comes to the horror genre, there are many ways to scare but using sound properly to build up tension only to release it in an completely unexpected way is often much scarier than other methods.

 

Healing: I have no bloody clue what to expect here. Fantasy games, first person shooters, and tons of games in general get away with immediate healing, whether it's potions, healthkits, blue orbs, or mysteriously found potted plants. I want to say I would expect something different from an Aliens game...

I think properly made slow healing lends itself well to the horror genre, but it requires a lot from the game design, and a badly implemented instant healing would be better than a badly implemented slow healing.

 

Since hitch**** is being discussed, I should mention that the perhaps one of the most scary hitch****s for me would be "An Unlocked Window" that was part of the "The Alfred Hitch**** Hour".

It completely surprised me, and as such scared me too, since it completely convinced me that the murderer would come from the outside, partly through the unlocked window and also through the opening sequence that happened outside etc. Eventually the murdere was shown to be one of the people inside the house masquerading as one of the nurses (the victims of his crimes) and that completely shocked me.

 

Quite a lot of the scaryness of something depends on being able to make the player/viewer see what you want them to see and think what you want them to think, it is very hard in my opinion and something most horror movies and games does very badly.

As you might be able to guess I'm not much into the quick shock horror movies but mostly interested in scaryness as a long continous buildup with an eventual release, hitch**** is a great example (psycho is often mentioned) and that's why I continued the discussion of his work.

 

On the mechanical side I don't have a stance on the 3rd person 1st person question, what I can say is that it is a very important decision that will affect the entire game and as such has to fit with the entire design to feel right.

 

@Tale's latest post

There should be commands if there is group combat, I don't want a group that fires on everything but the important target. A few buttons for some simple commands will suffice though.

 

Edit: I just found out that Hitch**** didn't even direct "An Unlocked Window" (according to IMDB), point still stands though.

Edited November 16, 200718 yr by Moatilliatta

There are a couple of things I want to say to that:

 

1) As a matter of mechanics, a third-person camera in no way gives you full view over your environment.

2) As a matter of preference, if that's your idea of scary, I'd rather the game wasn't. I'd prefer the game played out more explicitly like an RPG, with meaningful party character interaction and stat based combat, than an FPS, even if that meant it didn't scare even a little. I see no reason for Sega to hire an FPS studio and an RPG studio to make 2 games off the same license if both studios are going to work on an FPS that's only different in side mechanics and story. And part of this is because I think that without meaningful party interaction it's a waste of Obsidian's talent.

 

A game can perfectly be a full blown RPG and use first person view. An RPG isn't necessarily about tactical combat. It's possible to have meaningful character interaction without having to carry those characters around in a squad. As for the standard RPG, stat based combat, the question seems to be either to get away from it in order to make combat more visceral, as befits an aliens game, or find a way to make regular RPG combat more "meaty."

 

I agree that, in terms of marketing, having two very similar games come out at more or less the same time may be a problem, it's just that I don't think the Aliens setting fits a standard RPG format particularly well.

A game can perfectly be a full blown RPG and use first person view.

Never claimed otherwise.

 

An RPG isn't necessarily about tactical combat.

Never thought I even incidentally implied that.

 

It's possible to have meaningful character interaction without having to carry those characters around in a squad.

I have to disagree on this point. I have never played a game where I cared about another character who wasn't in the trenches with me. Maybe I should have said "interesting" instead of meaningful. Meaningful interaction is almost a buzzword.

 

As for the standard RPG, stat based combat, the question seems to be either to get away from it in order to make combat more visceral, as befits an aliens game, or find a way to make regular RPG combat more "meaty."

I see no reason for it to be difficult using stats to make RPG combat visceral or meaty. The problem with most is they start you out as an incompetent. Start the player off feeling like a military badass. After that, make them a god among badasses.

 

I agree that, in terms of marketing, having two very similar games come out at more or less the same time may be a problem, it's just that I don't think the Aliens setting fits a standard RPG format particularly well.

I don't think it does, either. But I do expect an Alien RPG to have RPG features in combat and be distinct from another product in the works. That's probably one of the reasons I want it to have third-person camera, actually.

Edited November 16, 200718 yr by Tale

The problem with most is they start you out as an incompetent. Start the player off feeling like a military badass. After that, make them a god among badasses.

Would that work in an Aliens game? I would think that the aliens would need to at least feel stronger, and as such dangerous to the player. I guess you could just make the aliens feel ultra-badass compared to the players badass, but it gets harder to make the game properly when you get to that point, in my experience.