Hi, been lurking and finally wanted to post. I'm personally looking forward to hearing more about this game because 1) I love Aliens, 2) An Aliens RPG? Neat! 3) Hey a scary RPG!

 

I know there have been some mixes of horror and RPGs, but it seems to me (while not a connoisseur of RPGs) that there are few RPGs that are frightening. So I'm hoping that if this game does come out it will start a mainstream trend of frightening and 'pee your pants' style RPGs. Could it happen? I've heard this game is tyte, but could it fryte?(sorry)

Highly doubtful since its a squad based game.

 

That means it won't be scary when you are not alone. At most it would provide a level of suspense, but scary? Frightening? Like Silent Hill or Fear? Naw.

 

Maybe terror at max. But not horror. Just like Alien did which focuses on horror and Aliens which focuses on the terror.

Edited February 22, 200917 yr by Zoma

Well you could always get seperated from your squad, and then you'd have to find your way out of a hive or something. They certainly could provide some horror elements there. But then again, I'm one of those who thinks a true horror experience can only be delivered from a first-perspective view.

Dead Space did pretty well for itself, and even Resident Evil can still provide some nice "oh ****" moments. It's hard to be relaxed when you're being chased by a chainsaw-wielding maniac.

I think Pop was spot on with the ResEvil example. Fear of the unknown and fear of character death and consequences is still there, nevermind how many folks you have with you. ResEvil 5 has a co-op feature, but even with multiplayer it's still severely unnerving and frankly depressing when you are setting up for ambushes and preparing to enter new areas because you know by your previous fights that it's not going to be a cakewalk and that you'll likely survive by a thread. So the player'll walk into the newly opened area memorizing button combinations for throwing a grenade or looking for obvious chokepoints, etc.

 

And I'm sure some of us have played Left 4 Dead, oh yess...

 

It could just be me though, I was scared brainless in Freespace 2 at times(goddamn Ravana for the first time), I think setting the mood of threat is a very powerful way to instill fear and horror when used properly. Not to mention, xenomorphs have been permanently imprinted on my childhood as a favorite boogeymen and I doubt I'm the only one. The monster in the attic and that something in the dark open closet, etc.

Its really down to how you manipulate the audience if you're going for fear. You have to basically play with the expectations of the audience.

 

Of course jump scares are a bit easier than that building tension in video games, I think, just simply because one of the easiest ways to build tension is to let the audience in on something that the characters don't know. Dead easy in books and film, but a lot harder in a game where the main character and the "audience" is, essentially one and the same.

 

But I still think its possible, it just requires some more work.

Dead Space totally failed in that regard, as it didn't master to create mood and tension to keep me tight. It used just those typical Hollywoodish "Boo! Monster-jumps-out-of-closet" sort of tricks. And the new Resi5 isn't even scary or moody to begin with.

No, first-person view it must be.

No, first-person view it must be.

 

I agree with this to some extent, especially when looking at games like System Shock 2.

Edited February 24, 200917 yr by Syraxis

I call bullcrap, the only thing first person view has over third person is the lack of the ability to cheat by seeing around corners. Otherwise it is a complete preferance issue. First person view has arbitrarily limited view point ever since Doom, I don't see it as any kind of merit. Especially the "gets you in character" and "immersive" arguments have never been tried for true for everyone, since most iterations of the view point just limit your peripheral vision to artificially harden the game. Games like Battlezone directly applied this method. However, there's good argument for first person vision that tends to get overlooked - it seems to, acording to a Finnish reasearcher, make it easier to identify with main characters. This is especially true when the said character is female, e.g Perfect Dark Zero and Mirror's Edge. Ironically, it's the distance you put between the model, the actual graphical representation, and yourself that makes the view popular for some.

 

Anyway, I don't really have a preference. I still think horror is as aural as it is visual, view point doesn't play into it much for me. Sounds however...

I played through Dead Space looking at Isaac Clarke and thinking "This is my avatar". A bit like Mass Effect or WoW, this is just a way for me to beat the game.

 

Meanwhile, going through Bioshock, I literally thought " Well crap, how bad is this going to get for me", and not "Well crap, how bad is it going to get for [the guy I'm controlling]" when

Fontaine started making my maximum health drop

. Same thing for FEAR (1 and 2) where I really worried what the hell Alma was doing to me.

 

This is not entirely because of the first person view, but pretty close.

Edited February 25, 200917 yr by WILL THE ALMIGHTY

I start to lose the immersion once I reach some kind of peak moment and fail it by looking down and not seeing any legs or body.

 

Suffice to say, Dark Messiah was pretty grand at parts. So was Deadly Shadows.

If first person was inherently more immersive, then switching from first to third person in games like Blood Money or Deadly Shadows should see a drop in immersion. It certainly didn't do that for me, but that's the thing about immersion, it's a personal thing. If you hate a particular feature, it doesn't matter how many other people claim it's the bee's knees, it ain't gonna do anything for you.

I start to lose the immersion once I reach some kind of peak moment and fail it by looking down and not seeing any legs or body.

 

I just have to give props to every game developper who gives an actual body to their first-person protagonists.

 

So basically this includes DICE, Bungie and Monolith.

Oh, the list is bigger than that, I assure you, it's just that I'd like to see it as a standard.