Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs Discussion Topic Part 1

[Fj128]

Funny, permadeath in Justine had the exact opposite effect on me. I died five times or so in the sewers and after the first time everything that came before had lost all scaryness for me. I simply breezed through, knowing exactly where the monsters would appear and what I had to do for the puzzles. It became a tedious chore instead of a thrilling experience.

Yes, but the point is that this chore takes about ten minutes, maybe five if you do it right.

It's not the same time that it took you the first time. That's what a lot of other posters miss, for me Justine was a five hour game that I, now, can run through in ten minutes. When you first go through a level, it can take you half an hour, being scared of dying, after you've figured it out it's a couple of minutes, but you've already spent that half an hour.
And each time you get to the unexplored part you switch to the "scared as hell, sticking to the walls, running back to safety at every sound" mode, and spend most of your time playing in that mode.

Of course you shouldn't be punished by having to retrace your steps for the entire five hours, even if knowing what you're supposed to do can reduce the time tenfold, to thirty minutes or so. As I said, autosave at the beginning of each chapter plus level design that does allow you to run through the familiar ground ten or twenty or fifty times faster than on your first trip, that might do the trick.

Having real life repercussions for death may increase tension, sure, but its a different kind of tension. It does not stem from the atmosphere and immersion but simply from the fear of peing "punished."

A valid point, but frankly I just don't see any viable alternatives. The A:TDD approach felt totally flat to me, even worse than giving the ability to save. I'm sorry, I can't get myself all hyped and scared if I know for sure that dying means that I'm revived nearby and the monster is no longer there. At least with manual saves I can impose my own restrictions on myself.

On the other hand, I assure you, I was not consciously thinking "OMG, I will lose five minutes of my time if I die here" when I was playing Justine, I just knew that the death is final there and my body did the rest. Also, a similar kind of restrictions worked for me in the original Aliens vs Predator, as in, I was scared shitless when playing as a marine on the hardest difficulty.

Also, to be honest I did not die at all after the potato basement, so my perception might be skewed. But I still stand by my statement: Justine was way more scary and therefore enjoyable for me than the core game, because of permadeath.

Maybe they can make permadeath-within-a-chapter an option, to accommodate for different kinds of playstyles, but if it is an option it also requires a proper level design, the whole "the second run-through is orders of magnitude faster" thing.