Where Fear Comes From

Happy few-days-after-Halloween!  I wanted to get this post up on Friday, but I’ve had tons of homework and couldn’t find the time to do so.  Anyways, I had a lot of fun on Halloween and I hope all of you did too!  Whether you dress up and have fun with friends, go to a party, or watch scary movies, Halloween is a fun holiday to celebrate.  In a previous post, I mentioned that video games can be even more scary than horror movies because you are directly immersed in the experience.  However, many horror games, as well as movies, do not do a good job of making you feel scared.  Sure, they’re dark, supernatural stuff is happening, and monsters jump out at you.  But is that enough to make someone truly terrified?  The game I’ve decided to make my Halloween post about goes far beyond the normal standards of horror and takes the genre to the next level.

 

(you should definitely play this in the background while you read the post!)

As I said, many horror games and movies have monsters that jump out at you.  Startled, you gasp and reel away from the screen, momentarily frightened.  After a moment, you settle down and continue watching, maybe laugh and joke with some friends.  “Wow, that really got me!”  These moments are called “jump-scares,” and while they are an easy and effective way to startle an audience and make them feel uneasy, they don’t make for a truly scary experience, because not only is it over in an instant, but it takes you out of the immersion instead of pulling you in.  You’re relieved once it’s over, confident that it won’t happen again for a while, since the tension has released.  The best horror movies, the ones that a wuss like me doesn’t want to watch for how scary they are, use more subtle techniques to slowly draw you in to what’s happening and keep you on the edge of your seat.  The game Amnesia:  The Dark Descent does the same thing, and it’s what makes it one of the best and most terrifying horror games ever made.  How?  Well, let’s take our own journey into the maw of madness, and discover what sets this game apart from its competitors. 

 

Let’s start at the beginning.  You wake up in a mysterious castle with, wait for it, amnesia.  Your character, Daniel, has no memories of his past and no clue as to why he’s here.  He soon finds a letter that he has written to himself, stating that he chose to forget his past so that he could have a fresh start.  It also reads that the baron of this castle, Alexander of Brennenburg, is an evil man who coerced Daniel into committing terrible deeds in the past, and that you have to stop him.  And one final message:  A Shadow is following you, a terrible and unstoppable creature that you can only escape for so long.

The rest of this game’s story is incredibly lengthy, so I won’t try to explain all of it here.  Suffice to say that its awesome and really adds a lot to the immersion and atmosphere, as you slowly discover more about Daniel’s past and what is relation to Alexander is, as well as the horrible things that have happened in the castle.  You have been left with one choice:  Descend into the deepest and darkest chambers of Castle Brennenburg, find Alexander, and murder him.  But from the very beginning, it’s clear that it won’t be an easy journey.  There are no weapons in this game.  Your only choice is to hide from danger.  And if danger finds you… then you have to run for your life.  Armed with only your wits and a lantern, you take the first step into the darkness of Brennenburg.

 

The walls echo with screams and growls, around every corner a threat lurks, and each room is darker than the next.  There are puzzles to solve, and they would be pretty easy if not for the fact that you don't want to solve them.  Because that would mean going to a new room, one that’s even worse.  But why are you so terrified?  The game’s barely started, and you haven’t even seen any monsters and nothing’s tried to kill you.  The castle is certainly dark, and ominous voices from the past echo all around you, as well as the sounds of creaking floorboards and dripping water.  And again, during the first part of the game, you aren't in any real danger.  But it doesn’t matter, because the scariest parts of Amnesia are when there aren’t any monsters and things don’t jump out at you.  You're scared for the simple reason that the castle itself is really, really terrifying.  A jump-scare releases the built up tension a person has, and though it’s startling, they feel relieved afterwards, because it’s over.  This game never releases that tension.  Throughout every excruciating step of your journey, you're painfully aware that things are out to get you, and without realizing it, you wish that they would see the monster, that something would jump out at them, just so that it would be over with.  And it only gets worse as the game goes on.

The subtlety of the game’s design and ingenious ways the creators find to scare you are what makes this game go way beyond normal horror.  The ways the developers use darkness and sound effects to immerse the player and make them feel like they really are wandering Brennenburg are incredible.  Because areas are so dark and foreboding, your first instinct will be to light them up using the tinderboxes and lantern fuel you find.  But if an area is too well-lit, then monsters can see you and there’s nowhere to hide.  At the same time, you have to light up some areas in order to see where you're going, find items, and keep Daniel from going insane.  Because as you find out from the story, Daniel is more than a little mentally unstable, and grows paranoid and delusional the longer he stays in the dark.  His vision blurs, bugs crawl across the screen, and he breathes more and more heavily, alerting potential enemies to his presence.  No matter how much you light up the castle and no matter how much terror you endure as you explore, you never feel relieved, because you know that there’s always another room.  One that could hold a real threat.

In one room, you enter the darkest and most exposed area yet.  You slowly descend a winding staircase down into the pitch-black room.  Suddenly, you hear a low growl, different and more prominent than any of the other sounds you have heard throughout the game.  Then, a tutorial hint pops up on the screen:  'If an enemy is near, stay out of sight and hide in the darkness.'  Immediately, you panic and think that for the first time, a real enemy is close.  Even the mechanics that aren’t a part of the actual gameplay work to the developer’s advantage and make you even more terrified.  This is a game that realizes where real fear comes from:  Not from jump-scares, but your own imagination.

 

 

If you manage to solve the first few puzzles and are brave enough to continue, then the real game begins.  After a long and painfully terrifying chase scene, which requires you to hop across boxes as you evade an invisible creature, and the Shadow is close to catching you, you finally escape to a new area of the castle.  Calm music plays, the area is large and well-lit, and for the first time, you feel safe.  But even this room holds its own special brand of terror:  there are tons of doors into new areas that you must explore.  While this is a temporary safe haven, the prospect of going on and facing even worse terror is daunting and oppressive, as though the game is defying you to complete it.  And this is where the monsters appear. 

 

 

As you can see, the only way to avoid these horrific creatures is to hide in closets and other dark areas.  It gets to the point that when you see a closet, you immediately grow fearful that you’ll have need of it soon.  This game emotionally tortures your mind as you descend deeper and deeper.  You would think that the game is less scary once you finally have to escape and allude monsters.  But when you’re trapped in the massive labyrinth that forms Brennenburg’s Prison, each cell offering little shelter from the legions of creatures that stalk the halls, you feel an entirely new sort of terror.  Now, you aren’t merely a person exploring a scary castle with monsters in it.  You’ve gone too deep to escape, and now, you’re being actively hunted.  And you’re only halfway done.

 

Fully describing the multitude of reasons this game is, in my opinion, the best horror game ever made would be impossible.  The story of Daniel, Alexander, and Brennenburg is a deep and terrifying one, and I hope you’re all brave enough to experience it for yourselves someday.  This game is a true step forward for the horror genre, and since its release, many horror games have attempted to move away from things popping out at you to the more subtle and truly terrifying way that Amnesia scares its players.  Amnesia stands out in the crowd because it isn’t seeing the monster that’s scary:  It’s the dread that comes with not seeing them.  The idea that as you continue down the dark descent, that there will be no coming back.  The idea of being terrified at nothing at all, and thinking about what will happen when you finally do confront something, and how much worse it will get before the end.  In the absolute darkness, you can't see what you should be afraid of, so your own imagination will fill the dark with the worst things your mind can come up with.  Thus, you're terrified.  Because that's where fear comes from. 

Thanks for reading everyone!  J