No Mutants Allowed

[Brother None]

Oh yeah, breaking it down with our boy MCA

Regardless, we were shooting for a Horror experience with Dead Money. As for what we tried to do with Horror, to make the game scary, we tried to do two things - one, have enemies you couldn't headshot and required a different approach (holograms, toxic cloud), and worse, they could headshot you if you weren't careful (bomb collars + radios). My experience with most horror games is that the enemies become scarier when you can't kill the adversaries (which most role-players will try and do if the enemy has any number of hit points or any measurable way to hurt them, no matter how small). So what am I happy about, even if the final result ended up veering from the intention, is watching YouTube playthrough videos where folks (1) start panicking when they hear beeping (exactly the experience we wanted), and (2) seeing players take a step back, figure out the puzzle, and then study the environment to solve it (again, what we wanted).

As for Horror: Things get scarier and tense when you can't escape, no one's coming to help you, and your resources are limited, and Dead Money was built around this. Watching the YouTube playthrough footage where players started re-appreciating chems and Stimpaks made me happy - these things are miracles of medicine, and they should be viewed as such and appreciated for that in the world of Fallout. One issue I've always had with Fallout is it's really easy to amass a lot of chems and stims, so much so you lose the sense of wonder and relief when you get these items, and I feel situations like in Dead Money can give you a new appreciation for food, crafting (we put a higher priority on crafting and supplies to make crafting worth more in the DLC), unconventional water sources, and the joy at finding an otherwise common chem in the Mojave takes on a new level of preciousness when you're in hostile territory. One YouTube video showed someone finding Buffout - and to hear them say, "thank god" and hear genuine appreciation for finding something so rare is exactly the kind of value I want people to attach to these items... usually people seem to care less when they find Buffout, but it all depends on the environment context. I want players to attach value to them again rather than, "oh, more Buffout." It's BUFFOUT. It's a STIMPAK. Your character should be OVERJOYED to find these things, each and every time.

[sea]

So long as you keep copy-pasting articles between NMA and GameBanshee, I'll keep copy-pasting my comments. :B

One thing that game designers have figured out for a while now is that implied danger is scarier than real danger... dying is frustrating, but being kept just on the edge of life with the thread of failure at every turn can be exhilarating, and many modern horror games have figured that out (Silent Hill in particular is a great example). I think that Obsidian were trying to work towards that with the bomb collar and its beeping, and while I haven't played Dead Money, it sounds like they may have succeeded in part. The problem is that balancing fear of dying with actual dying is pretty hard, and I'm sure it was mostly a matter of time constraints that they couldn't fine-tune things (I understand the mechanic is extremely punishing, perhaps too much so).

As for the issue of chems, stims and other resources being available too easy: that's a problem with Fallout 2 onwards, not with Fallout 1, where the game world is more controlled, arranged more thoughtfully; consequently, finding useful equipment and resources is difficult, and choosing which things to take with you is also quite tough (the Glow is the ultimate example). Interestingly, the first STALKER also totally nailed this (unintentionall y?) in its underground sections, giving the player a renewed appreciation of ammunition and health after its abundance on the surface.

The biggest problem with the Fallout sequels is that, being more open-ended, it's really hard to control what resources the player has available, what level they are, etc. Level scaling can help create a more controlled experience, but balancing free-roaming gameplay with a system that inherently encourages linear upward progression is a huge balancing act, and it's not surprising no game has really got it right. The best open world games, like Just Cause 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, etc. rely more on "peaks and valleys" in challenge rather than a steady upward progression in difficulty, and even then they're able to manipulate things somewhat by providing new weapons, vehicles, story challenges etc. in a linear fashion tied to non-linear progress (Just Cause 2's black market, GTA IV's weapon shops).

[Brother None]

[LinkPain]

I'm overjoyed how much thought was put into DLC . Sadly i think I'll wait for all of them to come out , spent over 200 hours on NV . That's too much if you need to pass exams . And i say that because i have faith in Obsidian that they will make all DLCs worth play time and money .

Gonna have to agree that Fallout roots , now with Wasteland waking up from war , are beginning to fade away slowly .
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War. War never changes.

[sea]

[DemonNick]

[Brother None]

[PlanHex]

BN, I think you need to qualify that statement above, since the last two posts have taken complete opposite meanings from it.

I like it when games are just atmospheric with no real threat of death, as in the first hub-area of Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
There'd be constant noises and stuff like that to keep you on your toes, but there's only a couple of instances during the 1 hour playtime that can actually hurt you, and you will most likely not die at all.
Kinda like the VtM:B Ocean House that was mentioned.

edit: DAMN YOUR NINJA WAYS!
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[Brother None]

Amnesia is not a good example because even when there is no "combat" threat your insanity is constantly under pressure by the sights you see and the daaarrrrknneeessss. There are solid ingame mechanics to make the threat of insanity real to you, in other words.

A better example is many of the sequences in BioShock 2. It has a lot of moments when it's trying to scare you but it's too easy to catch on that there's no real threat. "The entire level is flooding RUN", and then it gives you forever to walk out of the level at your own pace.

[Surf Solar]

I didn't really see Dead Money as "horror" - it just had a good atmosphere of Survival and such, but not really "horror".
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Ambient. |  More Ambient. | Pictures.

[PlanHex]

[Crni Vuk]

the one or other might remember AvP1 on PC ? That game was in my eyes pretty scary. Mainly for 2 reasons. You had only a limited number of times you can save (depending on the difficulty) AND it was rather hard to survive. God I loved that game. Now there you really would jump sometimes because you had to fight alone and could die quick. Without really danger scary situations kind miss their point in my eyes. But I cant tell anything about the DLC. Just saying.

[Bad_Karma]

It really comes down to keep the player guessing if a threat is real or not. As soon as you don't have to guess the scare-factor seems to go down.
So i would say it's not just about games who forget to have real thread but also ones who forget to have phases of relaxation. But that's just my opinion.

The motion trackers in AvP games (and even in the movies) were therefore a very great device. Is it just a freakin' lift going up and down or is it another Alien?
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[LinkPain]

After killing about 10 standard human enemies you walk through the door into the building and begin searching for clues . There's blood stained trail and lights in the hall begins to fade away slowly . Light bulbs pop up for some strange reason , electric buzzing and static on your radio speaker . You think "Damn , this is so lame , i can almost see something coming."
You activate your flashlight , steady your gun and walk more only to find parts of some ravaged body . There is a clue , some insane talk ....ok, let's just leave it for now but first deliver a bullet into it's head . Nothing , one bullet less . After all that walking and searching for anything interesting except blood and gore you realize there is no background game music . Something is definitely wrong , you can feel it in your spine but nothing is appearing as you look up and down left and right in the room . You walk on more and there's some light at the end of the sterile clean hall and an elevator door . Pointing your gun you open them , and there nothing in there too , it's perfectly clean . As you enter that empty and clean elevator you think :
"Hell wtf those guys didn't bother to add some music or noise to scare me , my gun is locked and loaded and let the bastards come , although i don't have that much ammo so let's conserve it"
You press the key to start it . Hummm hummm , boring , i got my gun i'm covered , you sit back relaxed on your chair . Suddenly lights go out for no reason . Lame...we saw that coming right ? You activate your flashlight , BOOM! , some ugly damn little ring lookalike girl appears in the dark beside you where once was nothing and screams your eardrums out . You unload the whole damn clip into her , half scared half pissed . She ain't there after all . Thinking : "godamn , i hate that crap" and then "heh , so what , it doesn't matter , just a small scare ."
At last you realize : "did i just unload my whole clip into nothing? AMMO dumbass AMMOO!"
Elevator doors open . Ok , let's go fetch more ammo . Shall i go into that dark room over there or this one over there . No ammo in either one.... FUUuuuuuu!


^
FEAR , good old .
I want something like that in Fallout
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War. War never changes.

[DemonNick]

[sea]

[Walpknut]

Talking abotu Horror in game I never understood why people said that the Resident Evil games were super scary, for me it was more like a meta fear of losing the last hour of nothing because the game decided to put in some instant death trap, the situations in the game weren't scary (I mean the enemies were oversized animals, OOOOOOoooooooh like a kid horror house) and the fixed camera angles were pure nonsensical bullshit, coupled with the horrible control. maybe it helped that I played them when the hype about them had died down a little and I was older than most peopel when they first played it.
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[Tagaziel]

[Ilosar]

Yet an armor that can easily withstand crush depth is useless against pistol bullets and wrench hits from raving lunatics Bioshock 2 had tons of questionable design decisions.

On topic, I would not say Dead Money is horror either (especially when you enter the casino proper) but survival is the right word here. They really nailed the feeling that the place was friggin dangerous, as a post-apocalyptic wasteland should sometimes be.
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Shepard: Conrad... if you have a shrine to me, I'm going to be upset.

Conrad: it's just a poster and some candles, it's very tasteful.

[Crni Vuk]