Got me some fine wares over on me patreon, wot'chu buyin'? (note: gun upgrades are unavailable until you've beaten the first boss, sorry for any inconvenience): www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames Looking for a real scare? You only need to click on this link to get the fright of your life!!!!!: twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Adam: "And the answer is..." My brain: "...what?? What is the answer?! OH GOD TELL ME ALREADY I CANT TAKE THIS ANYMO~" Adam: "...Tension" My brain: *sighs with deep relief*
Fallout 4's Survival Mode also has a great mechanic that ratchets up the tension, called Adrenaline. As you kill enemies you gain ranks of Adrenaline, each rank adds 5% to your damage, up to a total of 50% bonus damage, but you lose Adrenaline every time you sleep, which is the only way to save. So the game pushes you to into these situations were you can risk progress to make a challenging dungeon significantly easier.
Oh that sounds tricky, but I feel like I'd just save and if I ever had trouble with a dungeon just mindlessly grind for a bit to get adrenaline back up.
I actually think it's a bad use of it. On the one hand, it does sound great at first, but this mean much more setback when you die. Again, it sound nice, but the point of a game is to keep you playing. And I'm sure many of us have left a game after losing hours of progress. Rewarding no saving over extended period of time while interesting to an extent, also mean a point where 1) the player consider that extra power as a given and 2) dying being too high a risk of rage quit. The 1st mean that player will feel powerless when they finally save, which is a requirement to stop playing at some point, rather than them feeling good when they get more powerful. Resulting in bad emotion rather than good. The 2nd is quite self explanatory. The game is likely to feel too punitive, because it basically tell the player "Keep taking risks. Safety is discouraged" leading to a very big drop in satisfaction. You potentially lost 2 hours of progress, and also lost your precious power that you now considered as a requirement. It sounds good on paper, but is disheartening more often than not. I think a better alternative to it would be better 1) adrenaline start decreasing after 10 minutes. 2) adrenaline no longer increase after 20 and 3) sleeping gives you a 20% buff to damage for 5 minutes. As such, you reward player for taking risks and not saving every 10 seconds, but you also make that boost temporary so it never feel like "it's the state I'm supposed to play in", bringing a constant up and down of damage which make ups feel better. Giving the player a boost for sleeping also mean that to keep going for too long is simply worse than sleeping. This introduce an easier cycle of playing/saving that keep player engaged, makes losses much less painful and re-introduce a sense of risk/reward rather than risk/losses. You take risk for a while, then you have to bank your progress to repeat it. Instead of risking until you ragequit, or have to stop playing, feeling bad because you'll have to "grind adrenaline afterward"
@@MrElgate Also that bethesda games in general are notoriously buggy / unstable (even unmodded)... which usually just results in you losing varying amounts of progress for things outside of your control, such as getting stuck or a CTD...
You can wear a gas mask in Half Life: Alyx, which negates the tension of that element of the Jeff chapter. Also keeping both of your hands free to use however you wish (within the limits of the game, of course).
I like how two of the points that can cause tension (absence of Information) and (absence of action) was brought up in a similar video essay about how FNAF 1 was able to make the player afraid (made by scruffy)
13:58 I mean it definitely could be a great temporary cathartic release while making you weak again afterwards because you can run out of ammo and the rocket launcher would become useless
I can't handle tension in any moderate amount when I once convinced myself that I should play amnesia I played it until the part where you can hear the monster making sounds and noped the fuck out of the game. I have never touched that game or any other horror style game since then
For me, it really depends on what type of tension. If it's "I have 3 bullets and zombies are chasing me" tension like in RE or Evil Within, that I can handle. If it's like Layers of Fear or Amnesia, it's too close to reality for me, and I immediately close the game
Two multiplayer games that I think do tension REALLY well is hunt showdown, for both it's fantastic sound design and sluggish aiming mechanics, and rainbow six siege for it's unbelievable potential to know exactly what the enemy team is about to do in a 1 V X situation and executing a plan that will leave you victorious.
My favorite difficulty settings in games are the ones that increase tension rather than just increasing enemy damage and health. The best examples of this are dead space 1 and 2 and metro 1 and 2. Even though these may increase enemy damage and health with difficulty they also lower the amount of resources you get and amount of information you're able to see. One of my all time favorite missions in a video game is one of the standalone dlc's for metro last light, but only if played on ranger hardcore difficulty. It's single 30 minute long mission that sees you trapped in a pair of old missile silos that are infested with giant mutated spiders and where the air is poisonous. I think it shines best on ranger hardcore bc on that difficulty you never know how much ammo you have left, how many gas filters you have left, or how long your current gas filter will last. It's absolutely nerve racking and terrifying. When played on any of the easier difficulties it's an almost laughably easy and boring walk through.
Much of what you describe here is how I view what makes something "horror". Lack of resources, information, and even just knowing that you don't have the means to fight back all create a feeling of vulnerability. It's hard to generate tension if there isn't a sense of vulnerability, which is even more the case in games compared to movies. That combination of knowing how and why you're vulnerable, along with the knowledge of what dangers threaten you, even if only vaguely, builds up that dread that your relative safety could easily disappear. It's also why a game needs to keep players on their toes; as with the Dead Space example, once it becomes a pattern, routine, it looses tension because what you expect to happen often does, because you now know the system too well. It's why I've always felt "action horror" to be something of an oxymoron, or at least very hard to balance correctly.
whats so funny to me is that ive been watching long enough that i mostly know who the patrons you shout out are from memory. obviously new ones occasionally appear but the old ones
Informational tension reminds me of the deep dive I did on Mark Brown's analysis of stealth games. He broke the quintessential stealth protagonist kit into tools that allow you to: 1) manipulate the environment, 2) _traverse_ the environment (in unexpected ways), 3) manipulate _your enemies,_ 4) _incapacitate_ your enemies (at great personal cost), and 5) obtain information before the enemy can. At the time, I was theorycrafting a stealth-horror hybrid that doesn't boil down to 'hiding in lockers until bad man go away.' Because I couldn't find a concrete breakdown of horror game fundamentals, I reasoned: what if horror comes _from having stealth game fundamentals used against you?_ From facing enemies who manipulate your behavior and the environment, and can hop into your blindspots to stalk you, unseen -- and eventually incapacitate you? Enemies like the cloaked pirates in Metroid Prime, who _bypass_ your advanced information-gathering HUD until you get the upgrade to gather information on their ilk specifically? PS: I blew $80 on the Souls series during a Steam sale and got too burnt out on tension to launch the game after I encountered the Hydra. Now I just waste my time fiddling with fashion and gimmick builds in Warframe.
Subnautica's release of tension is great. Not only are you introduced to your rocket, which is bigger than anything you've constructed before, but the last chores to get it running (the lever pulling once it's built) is just counting down to the realization that you're actually done. The relief of knowing you'll never have to face another reaper, the joy of completion as your rocket takes to the stars, and the melancholy of leaving this ultimately wonderful world all come together in the ending, giving you a mix of emotions that surpasses the cocktail that the main game served (which was just anxiety, fear, and awe).
Dude your channel is absolutely stellar. So many retrospective channels these days just regurgitate the story and give some opinions on mechanics and story beats. Your work is such a academic and insightful approach, every video, even those about games I have no understanding or knowledge of, are interesting and conversation starting. I could listen for hours As we say in the UK. Take a bow son 👏👏
For dead space I actually like the effect you described. Because you get the experience going from scared and inexperienced to a monster killing badass. There's something fun and empowering in it's own right of overcoming a villain and making the unknown the known to the point it becomes a normalized thing you can beat.
I'd say, be careful with saying it's loss of control. Because if developers take away control completely, it generally doesn't work. If there's nothing you can do, it's just frustrating. I think the better way to say it is limiting control. The same could probably be said about information, though no developer ever takes away *all* information. So it's not as necessary to talk about.
also another great tention you didnt mention that much is music, in silent hill they go hard on it, and they keep confusing you with new levels or changing levels
"... through loss of control." While showing Subnautica. Reminds me that the most terrifying moment I had in that game wasn't caused by a leviathan, or the spider crabs, but rather by a moment when control was very briefly rested from me. Those who've played probably know what I mean, though it apparently wasn't as scary for many. Also, the talk of the mercenary mode reminds me of the fact that the end of Subnautica doesn't really work very well, in the same way. Once you've created all the vehicles and mastered movement and learned the way the various critters work, a lot of the tension dissolves.
minecraft's nether is the most tension I can handle in a real time game. XCOM, sure. XCOM I can do without issues. Not minecraft though, god forbid an enemy surprises me and 1 heart of damage gets through my enchantments
The nether generates a pretty crazy amount of tension, you are potentially losing a massive amount of resources on death, it's fairly difficult to leave whenever you are done with what you are doing there and the threat of a ghast launching you into a sea of lava is present at all times. I have felt more genuine fear in minecraft than any actual horror game I have ever played.
I’m playing RE7 right now, and the fights and enemies them self are pretty un-thrilling. When Jack grabs me, I’m like ‘ugh, I don’t wanna die and re-do this part.’ When I’m hearing Jack and fearing his presence, that’s when the thrills begin.
but to emulate the horror movies it draws inspiration from, using environmental elements would probably work better as a philosophy, even though it comes with its own issues (telegraphing the use of the environment)
Awesome video as always. Puts into good, understandable terms why I love putting myself through the hell of losing all my souls over and over again in souls like lol
I have to say the Long Dark is very good at handling tension because of how intense the survival is. Mainly because you have moments where you just have to sit and eat and warm up, they give you the option to skip to when the food is cooked or water boiled, but using that time to find "peace" gives the game balance.
A game that does tension incredibly is Spiderman: Web Of Shadows on the DS, it breaks up danger zones with safe rooms in which there's witticisms, upgrade shops, some of the only friendly characters (survivors) and calm music. These rooms are almost all a perfect respite and the only place Spidey is truly safe, everywhere else is a flood of non-stop enemies that respawn, patrol and force you to move, even the early areas will get slightly beefed up monsters as you move on so you'll never have an easy time. Best DS game ever.
Sounds like Highfleet. Might be one of the most tense games out there, at least in recent memory, although it may have released after this video came out. I think it would make an excellent example explaining how tension can work.
the Jeff chapter of Alyx is the most scared i’ve ever been in a video game before, the dread of the bit with the door had me quaking in my Virtual Reality boots i haven’t been that scared in a game since playing a friends copy of Silent Hill 2 when i was a kid
8:20 agreed, but the biggest fail that dead space does is give you too much ammo, yes you can sell it for nodes, but tbh i'd prefer if the nodes were much more available and less ammo and med kits were available instead. For example resident evil 2 is so good exactly because you manage a low ammount of healing items and ammo, and your weapon upgrades come at specific times in the game itself. So the nodes in dead space, should've been found on specific locked places, secret places, hidden places, to encourage exploration, and cost much less to max out certain weapons, so you can use them differently. Exactly like leon's gameplay.
[HELLBLADE SPOILER] It's funny that you mentioned Hellblade, because the permadeath mechanic is actually a lie. You will never really loose your progress.
I thought Adam has worded that phrase so that it's not a spoiler, but if you knew about it, you'd understand. "If the game revealed the truth about how the rots mechanic works, the tension it creates would evaporate." Which is very accurate, actually!
tension is certainly the most slippery thing... it can keep hyping up until a point as it goes more and more in intensity, but if a game loses you it's gone for good... this is what happened to me in alien isolation... that would've been an amazing 3-4 hour game but it goes for like 30 hours and by that point you stop feeling that same dread and tension you initially felt.. so it's certainly something that should be fed in moderation
It's just as important to have periods of relief as it is to have building tension at all in a horror game. Human brains are extremely adaptable and if we are exposed to the same thing for a long time we will just start to think of that as a normal thing regardless of what that thing is. If the game doesn't reset your brain back to a normal state periodically eventually nothing will generate a response.
The alien AI was so random and erratic that I was stuck at a section, where no matter how hard I tried, I always got caught. Dread soon turned into irritation, then the fear of "oh no, he heard me" quickly turned to "oh, not again..."
Overall, awesome video. However, I do wish you could tackle why games like Into the Breach and Slay the Spire are able to generate so much tension, despite having almost perfect information.
It is nice to see that someone else gets that tension was always more integral to Resident Evil's success rather than simple 'scares' as for those of us who were at or above the recommended ESRB age range at its time of release, it was never truly 'scary' nor could it ever be. It was a schlocky playable B-Movie, albeit one which could be genuinely chilling due to expert building of tension and the cathartic release of said tension once one has mastered the games' systems (that being the Knife Only Run. It was interesting to learn how many people independently came up with the idea to do that even without Internet Challenges or Achievements).
Luigi's mansion would be a great example of handling tension, with the player being vulnerable in dark rooms as ghosts could appear anywhere but when you defeat all the ghosts the room lights up, letting the player know they're safe now
about knife fighting in Village...blocking is reaaaaally strong...for a big part of the game I forgot you could even do that...and because he is merely raising an arm, I wouldn't think it blocked a whole lot of damage, but man those blocks are good
Suppose I should mention that ‘the Rot’ from Senua’s Sacrifice wasn’t an actual mechanic in the game, just a fib told to keep gamers on edge according to the developers. In a certain way I suppose it’s true then that it keeps tension, but only so long as you’re not aware of it’s true nature.
I've been playing Subnautica Below Zero as of late and got an upgrade to the sea truck that lets you zap things around you to scare them away. I started to find exploring a bit dull and now I know why, with the total control over even the biggest leviathens in the game even after they grabbed me I stopped caring about them. Will be ditching that upgrade next time I play. Thanks for the grate vid as always!
You should give The Long Dark another shot, maybe at voyager difficulty. While it can be INCREDIBLY tense, it also has a lot of relaxing and very beautiful moments where you catch your breath.
4:37 This is something that I wished was in the Left 4 Dead franchise years ago. When I was just getting into the game, seeing the Smoker's smoke all over the place and having your character cough if you were caught inside of it made me think that the coughing would alert the common infected and the Witch special infected to your presence and would get them to aggro you, but I was disappointed that this wasn't a mechanic. Glad to see it done in an actual horror setting years later, at least.
to me two of the biggest sources of tension were the moments where there was a Witch around, (especially that one field in L4D2's Hard Rain campaign, and when I get covered in Boomer bile, I can't see and I know that a swarm is going to be after me.
In traditional resident evil games (1-3 + Veronica, as well as the remakes of 2,3) killed enemies don't drop any additional items, that's one of the elements that makes these games survival horror to begin with. Enemies dropping ammo was introduced in re 4 alongside the currency system, idk what you're on about at 12:30.
RE7 actually gave me nightmares after watching it. That's right - not even playing it, watching someone else play it. The feeling of Jack's basement, where at any moment a monster might come lurching out around a blind corner, combined with the claustrophobia of the first person perspective, genuinely spooked me. The monsters themselves aren't even that scary, but the setting and presentation more than make up for it.
Alfred Hitchcock's "Baseball/Bomb" analogy is an excellent example. The loss of control in his case, however, was from the media of film, in which the audience has no control over the story.
Tension is such a fickle thing though. It's necessary but I feel like that line really needs to be toted. I'm glad he talked about survival games in general. Games like Ark, Rust, and "The Long Dark" stop being interesting to me for the exact reason of too much tension. The line between punishing and rewarding has to be toted and properly.
For RE's HP system, iirc, the boxes are split in 4 stages for classic RE (max, yellow, orange, red) For RE village I don't think Health level really create tension as much you portray as there is the certain threshold of will you die or not from the next attack (not apply to Strum fight as you could get in soft lock and died)
I realized the thing about great horror games and why all Resident Evil games since 4 seem to have adopted a dynamic difficulty of some kind is that horror games don't want to make you enter a game over state too often. It's the problem I ultimately had with The Evil Within. That game has too many enemies with on-hit-kills. After a while on the thing in the parking garage and dying too many times. The tension was gone. Horror games make tension on the fear of death. If you're dead, you're annoyed. If you're running for your life, you're scared.
You should do a video on release dates and dates when teasers release. When the new hyrule warriors was announced I was super excited. But it took to long to actually release. Now I don’t care about it. E3 and stuff like that are good for showing the masses but I feel like you should tease a game 3 months at the very most before you release it.
personally i have come to call revil games "resource horror". because the newly added hard modes arent any more scary, if anything they are less scary if youre going through on ng+ or the likes. The scary part comes from the fact that just some dude can force out a healing item with one hit where before it was 3, or 4 or maybe you could even save them for the boss. similar situation for ammo. your amazingly efficient one hit kill shotgun quickly turns into its own source of horror once it run out of shells and youre forced to swap off or desperately scavenge for items
Funny enough, I was recently playing monster Hunter and there were 4 of us constantly beating on my first elder dragon. Towards the end, I was like, “WHY. Won’t. THIS. THING. DIIIIEEEE!!!!”
Dark souls perfected that sweet tension, hitting the right spot between mediocrity ( as in the setting & controls ) and uniqueness ( by its everything else ).
Definitely true about survival games. I slide right off anything with half as much survival requirements as Don't Starve because i just get sick of it (also the controls feel wank to me)
My issue with horror games is that the game doesnt need to do anything to build up tension, I do it myself. The anticipation of something popping out drives my tension so high I have a hard time playing such games.
I really don't care for tension. I find it slow and tedious. Which is probably why I don't play these kinds of games. Which is exactly why this video is so useful to me, because I had no idea about how games do these things! I appreciate your video, and the insights!
Got me some fine wares over on me patreon, wot'chu buyin'? (note: gun upgrades are unavailable until you've beaten the first boss, sorry for any inconvenience): www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames
Looking for a real scare? You only need to click on this link to get the fright of your life!!!!!: twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Did you actually do a whole video without mentioning Into The Breach? Unheard of, scandalous even!
“The answer is, wait for it . . . tension.” ah I see what you did there.
;)
i got that too
:/
Adam: "And the answer is..."
My brain: "...what?? What is the answer?! OH GOD TELL ME ALREADY I CANT TAKE THIS ANYMO~"
Adam: "...Tension"
My brain: *sighs with deep relief*
Yeah the tension between me and the Huguenot vampire lady was killing me.
This video should just be 5 seconds long and just be the clip of Chris punching the boulder
Fallout 4's Survival Mode also has a great mechanic that ratchets up the tension, called Adrenaline. As you kill enemies you gain ranks of Adrenaline, each rank adds 5% to your damage, up to a total of 50% bonus damage, but you lose Adrenaline every time you sleep, which is the only way to save. So the game pushes you to into these situations were you can risk progress to make a challenging dungeon significantly easier.
Oh that sounds tricky, but I feel like I'd just save and if I ever had trouble with a dungeon just mindlessly grind for a bit to get adrenaline back up.
I actually think it's a bad use of it. On the one hand, it does sound great at first, but this mean much more setback when you die. Again, it sound nice, but the point of a game is to keep you playing. And I'm sure many of us have left a game after losing hours of progress. Rewarding no saving over extended period of time while interesting to an extent, also mean a point where 1) the player consider that extra power as a given and 2) dying being too high a risk of rage quit.
The 1st mean that player will feel powerless when they finally save, which is a requirement to stop playing at some point, rather than them feeling good when they get more powerful. Resulting in bad emotion rather than good.
The 2nd is quite self explanatory. The game is likely to feel too punitive, because it basically tell the player "Keep taking risks. Safety is discouraged" leading to a very big drop in satisfaction. You potentially lost 2 hours of progress, and also lost your precious power that you now considered as a requirement.
It sounds good on paper, but is disheartening more often than not.
I think a better alternative to it would be better 1) adrenaline start decreasing after 10 minutes. 2) adrenaline no longer increase after 20 and 3) sleeping gives you a 20% buff to damage for 5 minutes.
As such, you reward player for taking risks and not saving every 10 seconds, but you also make that boost temporary so it never feel like "it's the state I'm supposed to play in", bringing a constant up and down of damage which make ups feel better. Giving the player a boost for sleeping also mean that to keep going for too long is simply worse than sleeping. This introduce an easier cycle of playing/saving that keep player engaged, makes losses much less painful and re-introduce a sense of risk/reward rather than risk/losses. You take risk for a while, then you have to bank your progress to repeat it. Instead of risking until you ragequit, or have to stop playing, feeling bad because you'll have to "grind adrenaline afterward"
@@MrElgate Also that bethesda games in general are notoriously buggy / unstable (even unmodded)... which usually just results in you losing varying amounts of progress for things outside of your control, such as getting stuck or a CTD...
Yo, Emil's my favorite character in Nier. Such an underrated game.
The true tension comes from wondering if that stuttering means you're about to crash or not
As a Mechanical Engineer, I almost yelled when you said "tension is an invisible force". 🤣
"Well yes, but actually no"
Ah yes tension and very good “marketing” of a great “character design” also helped out to the success.
Boobas
@@WhenDoesTheVideoActuallyStart heheh.. yea
I mean it is character design and marketing
Very good on both ends :)
Also just fun gameplay. The tension is gone on your second playthrough, but that's not keeping people from playing it over and over.
booba vampie
You can wear a gas mask in Half Life: Alyx, which negates the tension of that element of the Jeff chapter. Also keeping both of your hands free to use however you wish (within the limits of the game, of course).
One more hand to give jeff the finger
@@ArchitectofGames need to play with at least 6 controllers to have enough, tho
0:32 That's a killer transition
I expected this to be a pun and for the cut to be him getting murdered. This is a flawless transition though.
Damn didn't even notice
That's awesome tho
reminded me of FunkE
I like how two of the points that can cause tension (absence of Information) and (absence of action) was brought up in a similar video essay about how FNAF 1 was able to make the player afraid (made by scruffy)
love scruffy! he hasn't made an analysis video recently :,(
@@ellen3666 he just made another one on fnaf. Recommended to check!
Resident Evil's success used to come from scares
Now it comes from sexy enemy design
Its objectively wrong since resident evil 5 was neither a horror game or had any hot vampires and yet it sold 13 million copies.
More than you know. I checked Tumblr on a hunt for some fanart - they're thirsty for Heisenberg too.
RE7?
@@grfrjiglstan well that's unexpected
@@grfrjiglstan I’m simping for Karl more than Dimitrescu
13:58 I mean it definitely could be a great temporary cathartic release while making you weak again afterwards because you can run out of ammo and the rocket launcher would become useless
I love the disparity between the subtitles and what he says at 11:47
I can't handle tension in any moderate amount when I once convinced myself that I should play amnesia I played it until the part where you can hear the monster making sounds and noped the fuck out of the game. I have never touched that game or any other horror style game since then
Haha I feel you. I wound up using a guide to know exactly when the monsters popped out. Ruined the tension but I got through the game lol
For me, it really depends on what type of tension. If it's "I have 3 bullets and zombies are chasing me" tension like in RE or Evil Within, that I can handle. If it's like Layers of Fear or Amnesia, it's too close to reality for me, and I immediately close the game
I literally started playing the first RE today. Awesome timing.
I love when Adam uses the script in creative ways, like what he did on the boss-fight video or the wait before saying “tension” on this one
Great video as always. Leaving comment for the almighty algorithm.
PRAISE BE TO THE ALGORITHM
The tense algorithm
11:20 i saw where you zoomed in there.
lies and slander - I would NEVER
Two multiplayer games that I think do tension REALLY well is hunt showdown, for both it's fantastic sound design and sluggish aiming mechanics, and rainbow six siege for it's unbelievable potential to know exactly what the enemy team is about to do in a 1 V X situation and executing a plan that will leave you victorious.
My favorite difficulty settings in games are the ones that increase tension rather than just increasing enemy damage and health. The best examples of this are dead space 1 and 2 and metro 1 and 2. Even though these may increase enemy damage and health with difficulty they also lower the amount of resources you get and amount of information you're able to see.
One of my all time favorite missions in a video game is one of the standalone dlc's for metro last light, but only if played on ranger hardcore difficulty. It's single 30 minute long mission that sees you trapped in a pair of old missile silos that are infested with giant mutated spiders and where the air is poisonous. I think it shines best on ranger hardcore bc on that difficulty you never know how much ammo you have left, how many gas filters you have left, or how long your current gas filter will last. It's absolutely nerve racking and terrifying. When played on any of the easier difficulties it's an almost laughably easy and boring walk through.
The transition from subnautica to dead space was smooth as hell
Much of what you describe here is how I view what makes something "horror". Lack of resources, information, and even just knowing that you don't have the means to fight back all create a feeling of vulnerability. It's hard to generate tension if there isn't a sense of vulnerability, which is even more the case in games compared to movies. That combination of knowing how and why you're vulnerable, along with the knowledge of what dangers threaten you, even if only vaguely, builds up that dread that your relative safety could easily disappear. It's also why a game needs to keep players on their toes; as with the Dead Space example, once it becomes a pattern, routine, it looses tension because what you expect to happen often does, because you now know the system too well. It's why I've always felt "action horror" to be something of an oxymoron, or at least very hard to balance correctly.
Capcom is an expert in all forms of tension, even sexual tension.
whats so funny to me is that ive been watching long enough that i mostly know who the patrons you shout out are from memory. obviously new ones occasionally appear but the old ones
Informational tension reminds me of the deep dive I did on Mark Brown's analysis of stealth games. He broke the quintessential stealth protagonist kit into tools that allow you to: 1) manipulate the environment, 2) _traverse_ the environment (in unexpected ways), 3) manipulate _your enemies,_ 4) _incapacitate_ your enemies (at great personal cost), and 5) obtain information before the enemy can.
At the time, I was theorycrafting a stealth-horror hybrid that doesn't boil down to 'hiding in lockers until bad man go away.' Because I couldn't find a concrete breakdown of horror game fundamentals, I reasoned: what if horror comes _from having stealth game fundamentals used against you?_ From facing enemies who manipulate your behavior and the environment, and can hop into your blindspots to stalk you, unseen -- and eventually incapacitate you? Enemies like the cloaked pirates in Metroid Prime, who _bypass_ your advanced information-gathering HUD until you get the upgrade to gather information on their ilk specifically?
PS: I blew $80 on the Souls series during a Steam sale and got too burnt out on tension to launch the game after I encountered the Hydra. Now I just waste my time fiddling with fashion and gimmick builds in Warframe.
Subnautica's release of tension is great.
Not only are you introduced to your rocket, which is bigger than anything you've constructed before, but the last chores to get it running (the lever pulling once it's built) is just counting down to the realization that you're actually done.
The relief of knowing you'll never have to face another reaper, the joy of completion as your rocket takes to the stars, and the melancholy of leaving this ultimately wonderful world all come together in the ending, giving you a mix of emotions that surpasses the cocktail that the main game served (which was just anxiety, fear, and awe).
Dude your channel is absolutely stellar. So many retrospective channels these days just regurgitate the story and give some opinions on mechanics and story beats. Your work is such a academic and insightful approach, every video, even those about games I have no understanding or knowledge of, are interesting and conversation starting. I could listen for hours As we say in the UK. Take a bow son 👏👏
For dead space I actually like the effect you described. Because you get the experience going from scared and inexperienced to a monster killing badass. There's something fun and empowering in it's own right of overcoming a villain and making the unknown the known to the point it becomes a normalized thing you can beat.
I like how you labeled the guy hanging by his foot at 2.48 as lack of agency :-)
I can’t play games with lots of tension. It’s bad for my mental state and nerves. But they are fun.
I can only play games in which I'm in control/the "hunter". Being hunted stresses me out so much 😅
Damn, that subnautica to dead space transistion was seamless
Tension is a critical component in what makes Escape From Tarkov great
I'd say, be careful with saying it's loss of control. Because if developers take away control completely, it generally doesn't work. If there's nothing you can do, it's just frustrating. I think the better way to say it is limiting control. The same could probably be said about information, though no developer ever takes away *all* information. So it's not as necessary to talk about.
Resident Evil has made a comeback like no other series, I love it.
also another great tention you didnt mention that much is music, in silent hill they go hard on it, and they keep confusing you with new levels or changing levels
0:32 that is _smooth_
Excellent video explaining something which most of us likely intuitively understand but weren't able to put into words.
"... through loss of control." While showing Subnautica. Reminds me that the most terrifying moment I had in that game wasn't caused by a leviathan, or the spider crabs, but rather by a moment when control was very briefly rested from me. Those who've played probably know what I mean, though it apparently wasn't as scary for many.
Also, the talk of the mercenary mode reminds me of the fact that the end of Subnautica doesn't really work very well, in the same way. Once you've created all the vehicles and mastered movement and learned the way the various critters work, a lot of the tension dissolves.
YOU ARE ADVISED TO MOVE DIRECTLY TOWARD THE LIGHT
While I agree with your comment, I have to say, being able to finally oneshot those annoyig monstrosities feels very satisfying as well
8:56 that regenerator fight in vr is fucking terrifying
Holy fuck, the editing at 0:33 was smooth af
Are we not gonna mention that transition at 0:33? Smooth af
minecraft's nether is the most tension I can handle in a real time game. XCOM, sure. XCOM I can do without issues. Not minecraft though, god forbid an enemy surprises me and 1 heart of damage gets through my enchantments
The nether generates a pretty crazy amount of tension, you are potentially losing a massive amount of resources on death, it's fairly difficult to leave whenever you are done with what you are doing there and the threat of a ghast launching you into a sea of lava is present at all times. I have felt more genuine fear in minecraft than any actual horror game I have ever played.
@@Doombacon I appreciate the validation, then.
I’m playing RE7 right now, and the fights and enemies them self are pretty un-thrilling. When Jack grabs me, I’m like ‘ugh, I don’t wanna die and re-do this part.’ When I’m hearing Jack and fearing his presence, that’s when the thrills begin.
Wrecking annoying bosses is _cathartic,_ even if you get a rocket launcher to do it.
but to emulate the horror movies it draws inspiration from, using environmental elements would probably work better as a philosophy, even though it comes with its own issues (telegraphing the use of the environment)
Awesome video as always. Puts into good, understandable terms why I love putting myself through the hell of losing all my souls over and over again in souls like lol
I have to say the Long Dark is very good at handling tension because of how intense the survival is. Mainly because you have moments where you just have to sit and eat and warm up, they give you the option to skip to when the food is cooked or water boiled, but using that time to find "peace" gives the game balance.
A game that does tension incredibly is Spiderman: Web Of Shadows on the DS, it breaks up danger zones with safe rooms in which there's witticisms, upgrade shops, some of the only friendly characters (survivors) and calm music. These rooms are almost all a perfect respite and the only place Spidey is truly safe, everywhere else is a flood of non-stop enemies that respawn, patrol and force you to move, even the early areas will get slightly beefed up monsters as you move on so you'll never have an easy time. Best DS game ever.
Ahh no more jockeys, I love that show.
You sir, got a subscriber.
I will watch your career with great interest.
Sounds like Highfleet. Might be one of the most tense games out there, at least in recent memory, although it may have released after this video came out. I think it would make an excellent example explaining how tension can work.
the Jeff chapter of Alyx is the most scared i’ve ever been in a video game before, the dread of the bit with the door had me quaking in my Virtual Reality boots
i haven’t been that scared in a game since playing a friends copy of Silent Hill 2 when i was a kid
8:20 agreed, but the biggest fail that dead space does is give you too much ammo, yes you can sell it for nodes, but tbh i'd prefer if the nodes were much more available and less ammo and med kits were available instead.
For example resident evil 2 is so good exactly because you manage a low ammount of healing items and ammo, and your weapon upgrades come at specific times in the game itself.
So the nodes in dead space, should've been found on specific locked places, secret places, hidden places, to encourage exploration, and cost much less to max out certain weapons, so you can use them differently.
Exactly like leon's gameplay.
[HELLBLADE SPOILER]
It's funny that you mentioned Hellblade, because the permadeath mechanic is actually a lie.
You will never really loose your progress.
I think that was the point, but he didn't want to spoil it for people who don't know.
You should label this as a spoiler. I was considering getting the game, and wish I hadn’t read this
@@henryrothert6160 Oh, sorry. The game is still great though.
I thought Adam has worded that phrase so that it's not a spoiler, but if you knew about it, you'd understand. "If the game revealed the truth about how the rots mechanic works, the tension it creates would evaporate." Which is very accurate, actually!
tension is certainly the most slippery thing... it can keep hyping up until a point as it goes more and more in intensity, but if a game loses you it's gone for good... this is what happened to me in alien isolation... that would've been an amazing 3-4 hour game but it goes for like 30 hours and by that point you stop feeling that same dread and tension you initially felt.. so it's certainly something that should be fed in moderation
The same happened to me in the first outlast. The tension in the first few hours is almost unbearable, but af the end I just got numb to it.
It's just as important to have periods of relief as it is to have building tension at all in a horror game. Human brains are extremely adaptable and if we are exposed to the same thing for a long time we will just start to think of that as a normal thing regardless of what that thing is. If the game doesn't reset your brain back to a normal state periodically eventually nothing will generate a response.
The alien AI was so random and erratic that I was stuck at a section, where no matter how hard I tried, I always got caught.
Dread soon turned into irritation, then the fear of "oh no, he heard me" quickly turned to "oh, not again..."
Overall, awesome video. However, I do wish you could tackle why games like Into the Breach and Slay the Spire are able to generate so much tension, despite having almost perfect information.
It is nice to see that someone else gets that tension was always more integral to Resident Evil's success rather than simple 'scares' as for those of us who were at or above the recommended ESRB age range at its time of release, it was never truly 'scary' nor could it ever be.
It was a schlocky playable B-Movie, albeit one which could be genuinely chilling due to expert building of tension and the cathartic release of said tension once one has mastered the games' systems (that being the Knife Only Run. It was interesting to learn how many people independently came up with the idea to do that even without Internet Challenges or Achievements).
Yeah, tension is important. And so too is release. Edging only goes so far if there isn't an opportunity for release.
breh
The effort put in your videos is really astonishing.
Keep up good work 👍👍.
Luigi's mansion would be a great example of handling tension, with the player being vulnerable in dark rooms as ghosts could appear anywhere but when you defeat all the ghosts the room lights up, letting the player know they're safe now
about knife fighting in Village...blocking is reaaaaally strong...for a big part of the game I forgot you could even do that...and because he is merely raising an arm, I wouldn't think it blocked a whole lot of damage, but man those blocks are good
I like how even our resident Architect has fallen for Lady D.
Suppose I should mention that ‘the Rot’ from Senua’s Sacrifice wasn’t an actual mechanic in the game, just a fib told to keep gamers on edge according to the developers. In a certain way I suppose it’s true then that it keeps tension, but only so long as you’re not aware of it’s true nature.
I've been playing Subnautica Below Zero as of late and got an upgrade to the sea truck that lets you zap things around you to scare them away. I started to find exploring a bit dull and now I know why, with the total control over even the biggest leviathens in the game even after they grabbed me I stopped caring about them. Will be ditching that upgrade next time I play.
Thanks for the grate vid as always!
You should give The Long Dark another shot, maybe at voyager difficulty. While it can be INCREDIBLY tense, it also has a lot of relaxing and very beautiful moments where you catch your breath.
4:37 This is something that I wished was in the Left 4 Dead franchise years ago. When I was just getting into the game, seeing the Smoker's smoke all over the place and having your character cough if you were caught inside of it made me think that the coughing would alert the common infected and the Witch special infected to your presence and would get them to aggro you, but I was disappointed that this wasn't a mechanic. Glad to see it done in an actual horror setting years later, at least.
to me two of the biggest sources of tension were the moments where there was a Witch around, (especially that one field in L4D2's Hard Rain campaign, and when I get covered in Boomer bile, I can't see and I know that a swarm is going to be after me.
In traditional resident evil games (1-3 + Veronica, as well as the remakes of 2,3) killed enemies don't drop any additional items, that's one of the elements that makes these games survival horror to begin with.
Enemies dropping ammo was introduced in re 4 alongside the currency system, idk what you're on about at 12:30.
0:15 The irony of this video is that by giving the answer away in the thumbnail, you've completely ruined the tension in this sentence.
RE7 actually gave me nightmares after watching it. That's right - not even playing it, watching someone else play it. The feeling of Jack's basement, where at any moment a monster might come lurching out around a blind corner, combined with the claustrophobia of the first person perspective, genuinely spooked me. The monsters themselves aren't even that scary, but the setting and presentation more than make up for it.
Alfred Hitchcock's "Baseball/Bomb" analogy is an excellent example. The loss of control in his case, however, was from the media of film, in which the audience has no control over the story.
Tension is such a fickle thing though. It's necessary but I feel like that line really needs to be toted. I'm glad he talked about survival games in general. Games like Ark, Rust, and "The Long Dark" stop being interesting to me for the exact reason of too much tension. The line between punishing and rewarding has to be toted and properly.
That reaper roar still scares me to this day, and i killed 2 sea dragons and beat both games, and killed a reaper, still scares me
For RE's HP system, iirc, the boxes are split in 4 stages for classic RE (max, yellow, orange, red)
For RE village I don't think Health level really create tension as much you portray as there is the certain threshold of will you die or not from the next attack (not apply to Strum fight as you could get in soft lock and died)
I want an apologie for all the ammo you wasted in the re4 clip
Whoever manually swarms an adult Bulborb in Pikmin needs to have their Pikmin rights revoked.
I love how Adam talks about a game by talking about other games
Great stuff 👍
The rot in Senua's Sacrifice is a bluff. The rot can creep up her arm but will never reach her head.
Great video! Thanks for the content.
Wonderful video!
I realized the thing about great horror games and why all Resident Evil games since 4 seem to have adopted a dynamic difficulty of some kind is that horror games don't want to make you enter a game over state too often.
It's the problem I ultimately had with The Evil Within. That game has too many enemies with on-hit-kills. After a while on the thing in the parking garage and dying too many times. The tension was gone. Horror games make tension on the fear of death. If you're dead, you're annoyed. If you're running for your life, you're scared.
that was a cool subnautica to dead space transition
Ah yes, the rot of Senua's Sacrifice which can really for real reset your save if you die too much.
very interesting, great video!
Brillant video!
great video, thanks
Interesting, thank you!
Great content as usual! Thx!
I've never played a resident evil game because I don't like horror/high-tension games, so I'm just gonna assume this video is 100% accurate
You should do a video on release dates and dates when teasers release. When the new hyrule warriors was announced I was super excited. But it took to long to actually release. Now I don’t care about it. E3 and stuff like that are good for showing the masses but I feel like you should tease a game 3 months at the very most before you release it.
It’s the big vampire lady, I’m sure
great minds think alike
Nice transitions 👍🏻
I recently started playing Frostpunk and i'm pretty tense most of the time
Tension as secret of RE games? It's probably more about being great horror attraction where you are entertained all the time and entertained well.
personally i have come to call revil games "resource horror". because the newly added hard modes arent any more scary, if anything they are less scary if youre going through on ng+ or the likes. The scary part comes from the fact that just some dude can force out a healing item with one hit where before it was 3, or 4 or maybe you could even save them for the boss. similar situation for ammo. your amazingly efficient one hit kill shotgun quickly turns into its own source of horror once it run out of shells and youre forced to swap off or desperately scavenge for items
Funny enough, I was recently playing monster Hunter and there were 4 of us constantly beating on my first elder dragon. Towards the end,
I was like, “WHY. Won’t. THIS. THING. DIIIIEEEE!!!!”
Dark souls perfected that sweet tension, hitting the right spot between mediocrity ( as in the setting & controls ) and uniqueness ( by its everything else ).
No mention of the save rooms in Resident Evil?
Tension, wasn't that the thing that became before elevension?
Definitely true about survival games. I slide right off anything with half as much survival requirements as Don't Starve because i just get sick of it (also the controls feel wank to me)
My issue with horror games is that the game doesnt need to do anything to build up tension, I do it myself. The anticipation of something popping out drives my tension so high I have a hard time playing such games.
I really don't care for tension. I find it slow and tedious. Which is probably why I don't play these kinds of games. Which is exactly why this video is so useful to me, because I had no idea about how games do these things! I appreciate your video, and the insights!
Adam Millard: Tension makes games better
Me, an intellectual: what does mass, gravity and acceleration have to do with video games?