December 28, 2014Soboy opinion

Consider games from the perspective of those who make them are always interesting. In October, we laid out the first part of Thomas's essay from Frictional (authors Penumbra , Amnesia And coming Soma ) about one of the main games of this year – Alien: ISOLATION. In it, he shared his concept of “horror symulent”, told about their differences from the so-called “horror shells” and smoothly led to what, in fact, Alien.

After some break, we represent the translation of the second part. Here, the flu goes to the most important thing: to what Isolation did unique, and what was still not enough for her to achieve the ideal.

Horror-Simulation in Alien: Isolation

The game has a group of elements working on creating an ideal model of thinking and doing Alien: ISOLATION Really scary.

Firstly, as in any horror, the sound is vital here: the player constantly has to listen to the world around him and catch tips about what and who awaits him further. It can be other survivors (hostile to you), faulty androids or alien own person.

All this not only creates an amazing and terrible acoustic background, but also significantly helps to advance in the game. Be careful and how much noise you produce yourself. The game warns that you should not use the famous squeak of traffic next to other people, since you may be drawn. After that, you already develop natural paranoia regarding noise and sounds.

The stations of conservation, which should be found, are also writing – quietly, but distinguishable. It is dark around, the station can be located in some unobvious corner, and this is another reason to listen. The difficulty is high, the game does not forgive the slightest domgame Casino misses, you need to persist, persist and persist once again.

Therefore, moving away from the station, you begin to listen especially intensely … and shudder from any rustle. Remember the clips-panels that are asked to watch and listen carefully in advance-and still some kind of horror jumps on you at the most unexpected moment? About the same technique is used here, only it does not bore. Add here that a stranger can appear wherever and if you like – and you will receive a model of thinking configured to identify and serious thought of the slightest noise.

The unpredictability of the appearance of a stranger does not allow to build a system – what exactly to be afraid, what to expect. The model loses clarity, gives free rein to paranoid imagination, and for the horror it is just wonderful. In addition (unless you have a truly powerful weapon), you should notice you someone else, and you are a corpse. Unable to escape, the player perceives his own movements much more acutely, the likely location of the stranger and – again – the noise that he hears or produces himself.

This is attached to a set of objects (sources of noise, torches, revolver, etc.D.) with its pros and cons (the torch, for example, illuminates, but attracts attention), as well as the interaction of different opponents. Say, you can throw a noise generator into the room to hostile people – this will attract someone else who will overwhelm them, but will leave a monster under your side, potentially much more dangerous than people. Game systems are difficult, the outcome of events is difficult to predict, and the player is constantly in uncertainty.

I also really like that a stranger forces you to move furtively. In stealth games, you, as a rule, lie in an ambush and remove the opponents passing by-such tactics are preferable (since it is more suitable from the point of view of the narrative) the opportunity to smash past.

But in Alien: ISOLATION You do not want to raise an alarm in any case, so secrecy always seems to be the best way out. Other people, in turn, seem more alive from this: you most often see only obscure outlines, hear distant conversations … Imagination is completing a much more believable picture that does not suffer from ordinary gaming pads, because you are trying not to meet the characters face to face.

These actions available to you, combined with the thinking model, are formed in segments of the gameplay, properly simulating horror. Sometimes you even become a witness to spontaneous horror scenarios: a stranger can overtake a group of people and tear them out before your eyes while you are sitting in a closet and shaking with fear of becoming the next.

Like in Outlast, Any scene can be taken and inserted into a film or book. A terrible story unfolds during the game and depends on your actions. And unlike similar games in horror-shells, such as Dead Space, Here your actions look natural and meaningful. If you do not take into account purely gaming moments – points of conservation, picking up and so on – you behave exactly as a character of a film or book with an appropriate plot. Here is the simulation of the horror in the best.

Underwater stones

However, such close attention to the simulation of Horror, does not affect the game as a whole in the best way. Like her predecessors in the genre, Alien: ISOLATION At times, just infuriates. The voltage, depressed in twenty minutes that passed after visiting the conservation point, instantly is replaced by anger and disappointment, when you are taken and killed for no reason. Although the game successfully forms the correct model of thinking, it is still quite predictable so that with due caution and cunning, any danger can be avoided. Judging by the reviews, the moment is controversial, but the game itself also sometimes eagerly angry.

There is a certain golden mean in the right approach to game situations. Too aggressive is fraught with frequent deaths, too passive – a malfunction of the game. Focus in measured advance forward, careful enough to avoid death.

It would be possible to fix this by making the stranger more responsive to your manner of the game: if you often hide, the stranger leaves faster, the pace persists, playing is still interesting … Perhaps the developers should more diversely encourage the players to think in the right direction and somehow to soften the difficulty for those who behave correctly, but too passive to secure an interesting game.

Irritation and pace problems are bad, but, in my opinion, it is far from as bad as it seems, and – look above – relatively easily fixable.

It is much worse that such a system extremely simplifies the narrative. The first part of the problem is the conservation station. They are important and necessary, if only because after a while the player will relax slightly and cease to be afraid of someone else's. The gameplay is needed to maintain the degree of tension and the correct mood of the player, and the saving stations with this role are perfectly coping.

Side effect – turning them into the main goal of the player. Finding the next point of conservation becomes much more important than finding and starting the energy station. And then for you personally, the narrative is collapsed, turns into an elementary search for prey and conservation points, and you do not think about the meaning of your actions in the context of the plot.

But the problems of goal -setting do not end there. All your tasks are extremely simple and do not carry an interesting plot load. Everything comes down to starting the technique and searching for magnetic cards. Old -fashioned mission design covered with a thin plot layer.

This kind of boring tasks in games are often found, but Alien: ISOLATION Especially gravitates to them. There is so much information in the game that needs to be remembered and tracked (points of conservation, movement sensor, signs of the presence of a stranger, prey, resources and the like) that more complex tasks simply do not fit in the head.

It is still very important to maintain a sense of direction, otherwise the model of thinking suffers. Because of this, according to the normal tasks in the general tasks (find a card on the doctor’s corpse, finding out where the doctor has visited) you are not led by the handle: the next destination is always indicated for you. Otherwise, the game risks you to get you again. About the same situation with missions and in Outlast – And, although there, in my opinion, there were more opportunities to do everything better, the designer solution of the developers must be due to similar difficulties.

Another adjoins the described problems: from notes and sound recordings found during the game, too little to use. It again reminds us of Outlast , Although in Alien: ISOLATION The content of the records seemed to me much more interesting. But the real problem is that they cannot be quite useful and important: the player is too dangerous to linger in the terminals. It is difficult to explore the environment, look around and think about the plot when the game holds you in constant tension and the danger can come at any time.

Too many hide and seek

If you look closely at these shortcomings Alien: ISOLATION , It becomes clear that she is a really clean horror symbol like Slender or 3D Monster Maze , Only more size. The purpose of the game is not to tell a long terrible story. The purpose of the game is to hold a player according to a variety of scenarios with the participation of hostile people, creepy androids and/or alien. The interestingness of the narrative depends on how these scenarios play. There is no global plot, there is no idea except “get out of here as soon as possible”.

The catch is that Alien: ISOLATION Too long. If you (like me) need a rather deep plot to stay in the game for a long time, then keep in mind that in Alien: ISOLATION It is depleted in the first hours. For the game lasting at least fifteen hours, this is bad. Outlast You can go in five hours, and this is a much more suitable duration for such gameplay.

U Alien: ISOLATION there is another big problem. If you hoped for an interactive version of the first film, you will be disappointed. This is more like playing adaptation not the first, but the third or fourth part. The first film is the birth of a monster, a long expectation of a creature and a final clash. He is rather about the discovery of a certain Lovecraft Horror, and not about people who are saving from a well -known monster. All the hide and seeking the game is only a small part of the original and in no way recreate the desired impression.

However, developers are difficult to blame for. To repeat the experience of the first film, they would have to significantly process someone else's and, most likely, deviate from the source. I don’t think that Sega or 20th Century Fox liked it, because first of all it is the famous alien that sells the game. But even without this it would be incredibly difficult to repeat the specifics of the film in the given framework. If you trace her gameplay to the origins, to Monster Maze , We will see almost nothing of the other aspects of the film, making it so successful. All these games put the player in a ready -made situation and let it develop. The great power of the genre is to arouse the horror of the persecution in the player – this is why all the attention is paid.

Alien: ISOLATION Trying to repeat the source as best as possible, it even has a trip to the famous abandoned star. But eggs, lyceums-all this a long time ago is known, there is not a drop of secret in this. Worse, the game scene is so different from the movie – where everyone acts extremely carefully – that there is no stress in it. The game so accustoms you to look for points of conservation, track resources, listen to certain sounds and all in such a spirit that it is worth to tear you out of this situation, and most of the impression will be confused in an instant.

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The third part remained, and we will publish it in the coming days. There we will talk about how many significant problems can be solved.