What do you do with a problem like Amnesia?
I don't consider myself a big horror gamer. The list of games I've noped out of is pretty long. There are games that have that reputation, such as Alien Isolation. The entire Outlast series is not something I can stomach. Even Dead Space and some of the Resident Evil titles were too much for me. Perhaps it's ironic then, that Frictional games' offerings have never made that list. I just have a different relationship to them.
I was first fascinated with Penumbra when a friend of mine enthusiastically showed me a tech demo of what this new development studio was coming up with. Frictional's in-house developed HPL engine stretches all the way back to this initial release in 2007. Physics modelling was settling around Havok, but developers were still experimenting with different possibilities. The somewhat quirky style of Frictional's interactions – the way you open doors and drawers by grabbing the handle and pulling back in an analog fashion, were defined in this era.
It's something that is still present today, though I'm not sure it's quite as impressive. In a Frictional title, the world is populated with objects that can be picked up and rotated and tossed about, as if the protagonist has telekinetic powers. Most of these interactions serve no gameplay function. Sometimes you might replace a pipe or gear, but these days that kind of “put the shape in its proper place” physics puzzle earns you just a paltry korok seed.
It's perhaps ironic that The Penumbra series starts off with Overture's (2007) awkward combat, which is quickly dropped in the Black Plague (2008), which focuses on the storytelling Frictional is regarded for. Requiem (2008) closes out that series with a focus on puzzle solving.
But it is Amnesia: The Dark Descent (September 2010) that really gained Frictional its fame and its reputation as one of the big names in horror games. It's initial release looms back to the earliest days of streaming, and has remained once of those games that audiences insist their favourite streamers play through, so they can watch how they react. It's reputation is one of bringing players to their knees.
The thing I must stress at this point is that I approach Frictional's titles as narrative adventures first and foremost. The erasure of combat in the post-Overture titles represented for me a release of tension that is ever present in games that place a gun in the player's hand. You do not walk into a room full of waist high walls in Amnesia. Creative Director Thomas Grip has said that “In Amnesia, we relied a ton on the player not understanding the mechanics of what was happening”. The monsters themselves are used sparingly. Audio cues and visual distortions mix with the darkened environments and for a large part of the game, the biggest source of scares is the player's own imagination. For me, this meant a wonderfully atmospheric narrative with a few mercifully short stealth sequences.
This focus on narrative might help to explain why SOMA (2015) is among my all time favourite games. If you have not, I implore you to play SOMA. The monster interactions are such a small part of that experience. They released a “Safe mode” that all but disables them. There is a survey built into the game. You get to take it twice, once at around the mid-point and again during the ending. One of the remarkable things about that survey is that your answers will very likely change as a result of your experience.
Frictional are no doubt influential in the genre of “horror games where you don't fight back”, but they are far from alone. Studios such as Bloober Team (Layers of Fear, Observer, Blair Witch) and Red Barrels (Outlast) have found large audiences for experiences that follow a similar formula. But the genre also received a general critique that is perhaps illustrated not jsut by the inclusion of safe mode in Soma, but by the promise (and inclusion of) an “Adventure mode” in Amnesia Rebirth (2020), Frictional's next game.
This critique is that, when you get down to it, what do the monsters really add to these games? Sure, having something scary chasing you in an interactive medium can be pretty compelling, but once the monster catches you and eats you, there's a certain catharsis that occurs. The worst thing that could possibly happen has happened. What does it say if removing the threat of these monsters doesn't detract from the experience, but opens it to a whole new audience? Frictional Games' Creative Director Thomas Grip says “If a horror game focuses on combat, you want that combat loop to be fun and once it's fun you want to deploy it regularly. One of the worst tendencies for a horror game is killing the player over and over”.
Which brings us to The Bunker, a game where I died 4 times in the first 2 hours. A game that is in some ways the antithesis of where Frictional has been finding it's success. It seems paradoxical given the studio's commitment to de-fanging its creatures to let players rummage through the environment reading diaries and collecting cranks and gears for puzzle solving purposes. But the Bunker doesn't luxuriate in killing the player either. There are no elaborate death animations. Just a series of earnest hints and tips encouraging you to persevere.
The monster is ever present. The game mercifully pauses when you are reading notes or browsing your inventory, but in order to solve puzzles and make any progress here you will have to encounter the monster. You'll have to survive that encounter too, because if you die, you lose all your progress since you last hit one of the game's few save rooms. In this game, the monster is the point.
These encounters aren't all scripted either. It's just more or less guaranteed by the various systems interactions that drive the game. In something reminiscent of a roguelike, each death is a lesson. Each encounter gives you more information about what the rules of this game are. If you want to progress you're going to have to make a bit of noise, and that's going to bring the beast to you. But that means you're largely choosing when and where the encounter is going to happen. At that moment, for me, the game started to feel like it was channeling something close to The Predator.
While the fear of dying does indeed give way to frustration, something else comes out of this mix. You are forced to grapple with your antagonist. You can plug up some of its entrances and exits, which won't deny it access to the area but will make its routing more predictable. You can throw bottles to misdirect its search. You can do much more, including shooting it with a gun (it doesn't bleed, you can't kill it) and the end result is you slowly learn to de-fang the monster yourself.
That brings a certain satisfaction. I think The Bunker has armed me with the tools to face my fears and play something like Alien Isolation. That's something. I am changed by this experience. But the cost to the narrative is also felt; the shorter run time and focus on shuffling things around to service repeat playthroughs has resulted in a story with perhaps the least fleshed out cast of characters in any Frictional title to date. The broad lines of the plot are laid out in a style reminiscent of earlier titles, yet we are whisked away to an ending without being asked to consider altogether too much about it. Frictional put the combat back in, but it's not what I come to their games for.
Sources: – How Amnesia: The Dark Descent Tricked Players Into Scaring Themselves | War Stories | Ars Technica) – How Horror Works in Amnesia: Rebirth, Soma and Amnesia: The Dark Descent | Ars Technica