SEGA and IGN have recently released a video showing the reactions of IGN’s journalists while playing the game. Naturally, this video went viral and Frictional Games’ Thomas Grip felt the need to mention a couple of things about this upcoming horror title. After all, Frictional Games was behind the amazing Amnesia game – and is currently working on SOMA – so who better than Thomas to comment on that recent footage?
According to Thomas, Alien: Isolation seems to be plagued by two major horror design issues. One is the fact that players should feel relief while dying in a horror game. “Watching a gory cutscene ain’t scary, it makes you relax” and horror games should avoid something like that. Thomas went ahead and explained it further more, claiming that players can relax a bit more on future encounters the after their first death in a horror game. As a result of that, the way to build tension afterwards relies ‘more on “will I have to replay the mission?” which is a lot less potent from a horror perspective.’
So, should horror games not feature deaths? Obviously that’s not what Thomas claims.
“I think you need to have proper death at some point, but if the player reach that it should be seen as sort of a failure. Also, this makes one think of the fun question: “What is worse than death?” of which there are way too many answers.”
The other major flaw according to Thomas is the fact that monsters can become really lame when players are under a desk, 1 meter away, looking straight at it. Thomas believes that this destroys player’s imagination.
Moreover, Thomas believes that developers of horror games should not reveal their monsters via cutscenes as the reveal of the monster is a core moment of a horror story.
Frictional Games is currently working on its upcoming horror title SOMA that is planned for a 2015 release, so it will be interesting to see whether the company will be able to scare the hell out of us with its new title!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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It’s Creative Assembly, they’ll have to patch in the scares.
He’s not wrong, these thoughts crossed my mind when I saw the footage.
Maybe this game genre should be classed as Alien Survival since technically this is what this game really is about rather than using the standard horror survival formula.
yes,typical jumpscares and loud surprise noises aren’t horror as far as i know.
After having watched that video I wont be buying this game, its just another crappy Outlast which wasn’t scary either. There’s only 2 scary games I have played that actually scared me and that’s Condemned and Dead Space 1.
I smell chicken. bagock!
I agree… but Outlast can be scary sometimes. But Dead Space… I wasn´t brave enough to run… just walk aiming… all the game. Condemned works a lot with SFX to build tension… and very effective.
Nothing’s worse than hearing a beast’s growling/breathing somewhere offscreen in DOOM.
“Thomas believes that developers of horror games should not reveal their monsters via cutscenes as the reveal of the monster is a core moment of a horror story.”
I agree wholeheartedly with this. A lot of devs or movie directors forget this, and some even show the titular monsters right in the trailers, you should never do that. One thing I’m absolutely loving about the marketing campaign for godzilla? It’s really not going all out, and has wrapped godzilla in such an ominous and scary image. That first halo jump Trailer? It was spot on.
I’m happy that they are not showing everything in godzilla trailers . Otherwise most of Hollywood trailers these days feel like mini version of the whole movie . Same goes for video game’s marketing .
Sounds like butthurt to me. I loved me some amnesia but come on. Don’t be so upset alien isolation is doing so well.
Hmm, this makes me think that maybe the best way to make a horror game would be to only give the player one life. This significantly increases the tension. Or, maybe have a system of levels with no save or checkpoints.
Roguelikes. Look it up.
Firstly just because you see a cutscene doesn’t mean you won’t have to replay a big portion of the level and that will make it scary dying. And secondly we all know what the alien looks like anyway so the second point is irrelevant.
Good point .
I agree with this… if you are hiding and able to see the creature, the player feel with some control of situation. Look to the Alien should be more scary… and clear the game with the less cutscenes and scripted moments as possible… invest more on SFX and subtlety encounters. The lesser we see directly the creature, the more we defecate in our sub-pants.
still better than Colonial Marines
i think Thomas is a bit jelly
Bet this game flops!
The monster you can’t see holds much more terror than the one you can.
Thomas does realize that 98% of people who will play Alien: Isolation will know what the alien looks like prior to playing, right?
His comments just seem like he’s trying to overcompensate because his game is getting overshadowed. That’s not a knock to SOMA because I’m definitely looking forward to it, but Alien: Isolation will likely reach a larger audience and he seems a bit pissed/jealous about that.