Resident Evil 0 – Dissecting Traditional Horror
March 6th, 2010
Recently I completed Resident Evil 0 on the Gamecube and have prepared a few articles snuffing out some observations. My primary interests this time around lie in the traditional Resident Evil template (that used in RE 0-3) which I’ll explore in the 2 mini-essays below.
Genre Origins and the Creation of Traditional Horror
The Resident Evil template is ultimately an evolution of the traditional point and click adventure, perhaps the first stage of migration after the genre’s demise from the mainstream. What separates Resident Evil from the genre previously is the inclusion of an entire offensive system, giving Resident Evil more than just a purely investigative, puzzle-solving feel. As with many point-and-click adventures however, Resident Evil‘s exploration and shooting mechanics take a back seat, not to narrative though (the narrative is atrocious), but to atmosphere.
The majority of the player’s time in a point-and-click adventure is spent investigating, sifting through for environmental clues and interrogating the locals in pursuit of the next lead. Resident Evil removes the people from the equation, leaving the quiet isolation of the player’s unassuming puzzle solving as the dominate part of the game.
It’s easy to see from here where survival horror comes into play, all we need is a little atmosphere to set the tone. The atmosphere is created largely through soundscapes. Of course, the realism of the pre-rendered backgrounds, particularly those in RE Remake and Resident Evil 0, discomforts the player and the limited supply of items work to suffocate the player, setting a tense mood. Sound, maybe just because it’s more dynamic than the visuals, is the primary director of the experience, it tells the player whether or not they should feel calm or frightened. A prime example of this is in Resident Evil 0‘s laboratory area where on the first floor the “tension” music is played in an empty hallway connecting multiple rooms of importance. Although I’m aware that nothing is going to happen (there’s tentacle monster directly downstairs and the music therefore seems misplaced), every time I enter this hallway I feel nervous and rush to the nearest exit.
Some other horror games just stop here, at the preparatory stage, and leave the player hanging with the illusion that horror will occur at some point, most likely when they least expect it. Resident Evil is pretty standard horror, I think, and there are usually two directions where the atmosphere may head, either a climax in tension or a jack-in-a-box scare. On the former, tension crescendos in, in lead-up to a dramatic event which then unfolds and spooks the player; horror which is explicit and affirms the players assumptions (ie. rooms with splatters of blood which leads to other rooms painted in blood, finalising with the source of the killing). The alternative is horror which scares through surprise, where discord is in fact created by the way atmosphere is interrupted by the invasion of a threat. Atmosphere, in regards to music, can be broken by the breaking of a long silence (and damn these games sure are silent, which is why the cheap scares are so effective) or by the clashing of one set of music with another. With this technique, your assumptions that the environment is safe is quickly subverted, leaving you in a panic. Between these two approaches, the build-up and the cheap scare, is variance in the middle, which I don’t think requires much exploration as it’s just a blending of the two aforementioned techniques.
On the whole, the puzzle solving provides the stage for the atmosphere to be set, the limited load-out and item slots along with the realistic visual and soundscapes set a tone where your assumptions can be subverted or affirm in the horror. The effectiveness of the horror is therefore dependent on the developer’s ability to massage the player into psychological states.
Contrasting Traditional and Contemporary Horror
We can learn quite a lot about the way atmosphere is constructed in this traditional mold of survival horror by comparing Resident Evil with similar titles. I choose you Eternal Darkness!
Eternal Darkness is far more dynamic at creating horror since, for one, the game is rendered entirely in 3D, but more importantly the means to horror, the insanity effects, are dependent on the player’s agency. The 3D environment offers more options to create tension than a still, 2D one, and Eternal Darkness capitalises on this, in my opinion, largely through the brilliant camera orientation. Ontop of this the player can shrink, objects can fly around, the player can hallucinate, sound will warp and other strange events will happen in-game; there’s an ample amount of variety. Not only is the horror dynamic, but the jack-in-the-box scares are still viable, and this gives Eternal Darkness a real edge.
With the horror now player-dependent, Silicon Knights forfeit part of their directive control, one would think. The player’s sanity meter drops upon catching sight of a demonic creature, and it’s here where Silicon Knights can regain control through the placement of enemy types within each chapter of gameplay. Silicon Knights can’t ever have total control, mind you, but they can increase the likelihood of the experience unfolding as they intend it. Interestingly, despite all the qualities this system offers, the psychological course run through each chapter is largely identical: a slow crawl building up towards a tightening squeeze of tension, culminating at insanity. A result of this, as with the repeated use of the same environments, is that the horror becomes routine and therefore less effective.
Resident Evil is less sophisticated and highly rigid in comparison, but it does use its assets well. The horror is scripted through cause and effect scenarios, ie. if the player walks to this point or enters an area, dog will jump out of window, music will start playing, zombie will start groaning. Since Resident Evil‘s graphics are 3D models over 2D stills, the stills can be more realistic and the models can support an increased number of polygons, as a result the Resident Evil are supremely more convincing and perhaps better at creating a general sense of tension.
Conclusion
Some people seem to get off on criticising the Resident Evil titles, but it’s pretty unfair really. The Resident Evil games are simply representative of a certain style of horror, be it the traditional style of the earlier games or the new mob-horror approach of Resident Evil 4 and 5, and there’s no denying that these games have each served their respective styles well. The future of the franchise (perhaps evident in this upcoming Resident Evil Portable game for the PSP), I think, comes in the series either A) finding new approaches to explore horror in video games or B) reinterpreting the origins and readapting these mechanics into the modern day. I would like to see both, and I certainly think that there is room for both in the franchises’ extended lore.
Additional Readings
Resident Evil Retrospective – GameTrailers
Resident Evil 0 [GC – Beta] – Unseen64
Eternal Darkness: Breaking the Equilibrium
December 19th, 2009
(I’m posting from my new Mac and it appears to substitute fonts and stuff, so if there’s a sudden change in font/formatting, do be kind and leave a comment, thanks and sorry for the delay, I finished my course yesterday).
In my evaluation of Eternal Darkness I concluded that:
“Eternal Darkness is a context-rich game with a wonderful narrative, a demonising camera and spooky music which conceal a set of mechanics that whilst decent, fail to stand on their own. These mechanics are organised in a way so that, for the most part, one element is never used enough to become uninteresting to the player. This isn’t a criticism, mind you, but rather a deconstruction of the fact that Eternal Darkness is driven by its narrative and atmosphere.”
This time I want to discuss four examples of where Eternal Darkness falters in its balancing of the various puzzle, exploration and combat elements, or more simply wears out a single mechanic.
Roberto Bianchi
The characters in Eternal Darkness all convincingly tire after they’ve run for a short while. The tiring influences walking at two levels, in the first they slow the pace, in the second they drop to a slow walk. There’s a third tier too for when they’re hurt, slowing the jog to a hunched limp. Each member of the cast has differing degrees of stamina which influence their walking speed. Roberto Bianchi has the lowest stamina of the entire cast, therefore he walks relatively slowly, even slower as he quickly tires. There’s plenty of backtracking and fetch questing in his chapter, particularly at the end where the player must get Roberto from one side of the environment to the other. This drags on for minutes and, as you can imagine, drops the pacing down to a crawl. There’s a section nearing the end of the chapter where he’s forced to run across a passage with a floor cursed by the ancients, sapping his life away, causing his jog to drop to a walk and then a limp—it’s almost as if the game is teasing him.
Alexandra Roivas
In Alexandra Roivas’ chapter, the final chapter of the game, the player has to complete a series of 9 trials which warp Alexandra to different areas underneath the mansion, all leading back to the same hub. Every time that a trial is completed the player must walk their way through a series of rooms back to the hub. The problem is that the warp points transporting the player to the trials sends the player to rooms further beyond the ones they’ve already completed, adding to an already heavy load of backtracking. Furthermore, for each trial the player must choose a rune which contributes to a spell formed by completing the trials. Three of those selections are multiple choice. If the player chooses the wrong rune, they are still teleported to the room of the trial, and forced to walk all the way back for no good reason. This point in the game is unbearably frustrating.
Peter Jacob
At the end of Peter Jacob’s chapter, the reporter faces one of the only bosses in the game, the Black Guardian. To defeat the Black Guardian, the player must summon a certain spell before they are interrupted by an attack and the spell is subsequently canceled. The window here is painstakingly narrow and it took me about an hour of continual failed attempts to actually down the bastard, seemingly by random coincidence too. The short window to attack made the combat drag on until it because unwelcomed.
And a General Qualm
The last point is a general criticism, being that—like any traditionally-minded adventure game—the puzzles often feel extremely arcane and sometimes inventory is difficult to discern from the environment (the colour can be a little too dark at times) or clues aren’t perfectly distinguishable. Most of the game’s puzzles communicate very little to the player, and it’s when these puzzles don’t fall on common logic that they become frustrating. It happens quite regularly too.
Evaluating Eternal Darkness
November 22nd, 2009
If we consider games to consist of two key parts: The mechanical and the contextual, then mechanically-speaking Eternal Darkness isn’t a particularly interesting game. The foundation is simply the framework of a traditional, point and click adventure game, in 3D, and with a few combat elements layered on. The inherent nature of the genre (fetch questing and rubbing items against random pieces of the environment) relies on the solid construction of puzzles and contextual bits in between to make itself enjoyable. I mean, running around and randomly clicking on everything isn’t particularly fun now, is it? If we’re to evaluate Eternal Darkness then it’s fundamental that we judge it on these two points, the contextual and the construction of puzzles and other mechanics.
The Contextual Bits
The literary story of Eternal Darkness is clearly the game’s greatest strength. It spooks me and not because of its psychological undertones. The narrative, a well integrated mix of cutscenes, text and in-game elements, doesn’t feel like anything from a video game. It’s a complicated tale dealing with complicated themes and it treats itself very seriously. Eternal Darkness‘ narrative spooks me because it gives me a story which I care about and a cast of characters that I can sympathize with—and as a fan of this power-fantasy-heavy medium I can’t help but be taken back by the maturity and adherence to quality.
The music and camera work are also standout qualities which drive the atmosphere immensely. The music feels weighty, knowing when to quiet down and let the ambiance take over. The camera is surprisingly dynamic, sliding around the environment, always looking for angles in which to frame the player in a vulnerable position. In this regard the camera itself is rather frightening as its prosecutes the player’s subordination. The camera is probably the single biggest factor contributing to the superb and much touted sanity effects. As the player traverses the environment their intersections with the undead causes their sanity meter to decrease, resulting in a series of bizarre gameplay- and presentation-altering effects depicting the illusion of insanity.
What makes the insanity effects so persuasive—and not the back-of-the-box bullet point which the games press gushed over at the time—is that they’re implemented so subtly that it’s difficult to distinguish between the intentional and unintentional. A daft camera angle, a door which won’t open or obtrusively loud background music could just as well be interpreted as a flaw of the game rather than a consequence of a low sanity meter. This masterstroke of genius is ultimately what makes the effects so powerful; it leaves you questioning every part of the game world. Due to the press’ fanatical raving over this mechanic, I think players who bought the game based on reviews were a little underwhelmed that insanity effects weren’t jumping out at them every 30 seconds or so, but it’s not really meant to be like that. As the players progresses through a chapter, they’ll quite naturally miss opportunities to replenish their sanity meter (such as failing ‘finish off’ a downed zombie before it vaporizes) and slowly as the player makes their way further into the environment, Eternal Darkness will turn on the squeeze.
The characterization is also well done. At the opening of each chapter, the protagonist for the respective time period narrates their own tale of tragedy and/or victimization. The sad irony being that their unfavourable circumstances are often collateral and/or intentional consequences of Pious Augustus’ (the game’s antagonist) schemes. In this way, every tale in Eternal Darkness is enveloped in the wider plot and thereby feels meaningful and cohesive. The personal narration introducing each chapter allows the player to understand the humanistic side of their avatar. Additionally, with convincing voice acting and a script that empowers its speakers, it’s easy to sympathize and care for the characters you embody. The chapters in culmination form a tale of great tragedy as the player experiences the individual struggles of the Roivas family tree as each member, doomed to suffer at the hand of their inherited fate, edges a little closer to equipping Alexandra (the lead protagonist based in the present, so to speak) with the tools she needs to stop Pious Augustus from resurrecting the Ancients. The chapterized nature of Eternal Darkness not only facilitates the multilayered plot, but also allows for a well developed hub-world too.
The subtly of the insanity effects and the deep story are just examples I’ve used to press the point that Eternal Darkness is a very adult-natured game. But further to the point, we can see how the contextual elements are very strong.
The Mechanical Bits
Lest we forget Eternal Darkness is a game, a game which stands on the supports of rules and rule systems. There isn’t terribly much to say about the mechanics and design really. The player’s repertoire of abilities is minimalistic, allowing the emphasis to fall on the environment and atmosphere, since all the player does is gather items, cast spells and engage in simple combat. These three components, along with the narrative sequences, insanity effects and frequent switch between time periods can’t stand for very long by themselves and are therefore constructed so that they offer enough substance in the one instance of play. It’s all about balance and Eternal Darkness switches to something different at the right times to remain interesting, for the most part. Each individual element also allows for variety within itself.
Take the combat as an example; the fundamentals of combat are built around a mechanic which highlight varies body parts that can be individually attacked. As players soon learn though, attacking a zombie’s head will cause it to fall off making combat considerably easier. From then on the player simply has to move into a different position and hack away. It’s a tactic which quickly becomes standard fair and therefore the continual repetition of this technique (honestly, there’s no reason to try anything else) has the potential to become grindy.
In respect to the other parts of the game, grind is alleviated (and subsequently enjoyment takes its place) as the combat only occurs in short patches between the overarching puzzle and exploration elements. It never outstretches its means. Furthermore, sometimes the combat is intertwined as a part of the puzzling itself.
In respect to just the combat itself, the chapters affect the weapon selection, therefore the player is often changing their loadout between guns to swords, daggers and axes. Enemy types too add a little bit of variety, but there’s only a handful. Spells can also be used offensively, for example to power up weapons or cast protective walls.
As we can see, the individual parts are constructed and spliced in with the rest of the game in a way that conceals their shortcomings. The combat by itself isn’t very interesting, neither are the fetch quests or rubbing random objects against one another, but sliced and diced with other elements and the mechanics are fine. There isn’t anything inherently fun about the game, a talking point that I’d like to address (generally) in a later article.
As for the construction of the puzzles (yes, I totally digressed from my intended point for this heading, but it all times back in together in the end) most are find this, run there, run here, flick this sort of affairs and to be quite honest, there isn’t much to discuss as the simplicity of the puzzles only becomes apparent if you’re paying a lot of attention, like myself. The puzzles are neither “good simplistic” or “bad simplistic”, they’re mostly just unapparent to the player as like everything else, they’re integrated well with the other ingredients. That is, the simplicity of a run here, do that puzzle doesn’t become relevant to the player when you’re clearing zombies, casting spells and watching cutscenes in between.
The Evaluation
As we can see, Eternal Darkness is a context-rich game with a wonderful narrative, a demonizing camera and spooky music which conceal a set of mechanics that whilst decent, fail to stand on their own. These mechanics are organised in a way so that, for the most part, one element is never used enough to become uninteresting to the player. This isn’t a criticism, mind you, but rather a deconstruction of the fact that Eternal Darkness is driven by its narrative and atmosphere.
Next time we shall look at what happens when the equilibrium breaks and a single system is overworked.
Additional Readings
Welcome to Daniel Primed, my self-titled games analysis blog and the online supplement to Adventures in Games Analysis.
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Game Design Companion: A Critical Analysis of Wario Land 4 - $7.99
Level Design: Processes and Experiences
Speed Boost: The Hidden Secrets Behind Arcade Racing Design - $5.99
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