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."

Comments

Lovecraft knew something about fear and horror.

[cryptomancer]

"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