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Subtracting Horror With Project Zero
The Guardian Gamesblog posted an interview yesterday talking with Makoto Shibata, the director of the Japanese Horror series Project Zero. In addition to a lot of talk about the latest title in the series, there's some interesting stuff about evoking horror in games, and the ways Japanese culture influences the genre. From the article: "We designed this intentionally so the player would be drawn into the Project Zero world, and would thus imagine various horrid fantasies. This design and approach is different from the previous games in the series. However, I believe that the design fits into the game concept of, 'invoke the fear in the player's own imagination'. I personally believe that even the greatest computer graphics cannot create greater fear than that which is created by the player's mind. This is an idea we maximized in PZ 3."
So true - nothing scarrier than that purple 'h' coming at you in Nethack, and your character without a helmet!!!
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"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." -H. P. Lovecraft
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I've been a fan of it since the very first one (Known as Fatal Frame in the United States), and it has an atmosphere that relies more on the creepy "this is messing w/ my head and creeping me out" factor then the "What's gonna jump out at me next" type of Horror that Resident Evil an almost all other survival horror games have. Third game was released I think this past November. Good game to play alone, turn out the lights, and really get into if you want a good scare (Some say it's stupid, but every horror movie/game that relies on the psychological type of horror instead of the "what's gonna jump out next" type of horror is stupid if you don't allow yourself to get into it). Great game. Temco's Deception was supposidly the semi-prequel (in style) to it, but I've never played that series. It's sad the creepy property of Ghosts isn't used more in survival horror games. Only game/movie that can really creep me out to the point of not playing it late at night if I'm not in the right mood.
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Awwww, nuts. I was hoping they had invented some technology to remove horror from games.
THEN maybe I could finally play the Shalebridge Cradle level in Thief: Deadly Shadows. Or System Shock 2, for that matter. :-(
From the article:
In Japanese horror, fear is not simply generated through surprise; the silence and suspense in-between the action is important too. This silence makes the player's fear build in his or her mind. Japanese horror is always designed this way.
News flash, all the best horror is generated that way. Why do Japanese game developers (and anime producers for that matter) always seem convinced there's something just incredibly unique how they approach these art forms? Horror has always been based on the unknown and the best games use that. They're not doing anything unusual here, and while it may be a nice, scary game, I think in terms of horror Thief 3 already set the bar pretty damn high, and I haven't seen anything out of Japan, the US, or anywhere else that comes close.
Might want to point out this series is called Fatal Frame in the US. This is nowhere in the summary or article.
I personally believe that even the greatest computer graphics cannot create greater fear than that which is created by the player's mind.
All fear is created by the human mind. There are no exceptions.
- IP
I think one of the reasons X-Files was an excellent series was because of this approach. Clever camera shots would avoid the alien or murdered body etc... and so viewers were left to create something more terrifying and detailed than the writers could have ever dreamed of.
The Silent Hill series are still the only games that can claim to be horror ones, afaik (though #4 was quite poor, but oh well).
I have played Fatal Frame, Resident Evil, System Shock, Half-life, etc. but they are only mildly creepy at most, with the ocassional monster-crashing-through-the-window thrown in for good measure.
However, Silent Hill does manage to mess with the player's mind and evoke a constant feeling of unease. Perhaps I'm quite a coward but Silent Hill 1-3 actually forced me to sleep with the lights on for a couple of days.
I think its success is in the pervasiveness and strength of its atmosphere, as well as the quality and bizarreness of its stories(again, #4 not withstanding).
I really recommend them, specially 1 and 2(in that order).
Absolutely love this series. Made a card game based on the second one. And the best website covering the FF/PZ series is Beyond the Camera's Lens.