Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs Discussion Topic Part 1

[felixmole]

You guys focus way too much on physical fear rather than mental fear. Sure adding more disturbing monsters or making the monsters AI better or other stuff along those lines will give you a brief moment of panic when you initially see them (whether it be a super super fucked up looking monster or a monster that can hunt you down like a pro), but not much past that. What really sticks with you is mental horror though; not the fear of actually seeing the monster, but the fear that a monster may be near by is what really causes paranoia. That's what I loved about Amnesia so much, it didn't need really terrifying monsters or monsters with amazing AI to be scary, in fact you hardly ever even get to see the monsters close up, it relied almost completely on the fear that there might be a monster near by and you never knew from where they would come. It's the difference between seeing someone get their leg sawed off or having someone explain to you in great detail how they're going to kidnap you and saw your leg off. Sure the initial shock of the first one might be greater, but the second scenario could really fuck with you mentally and make you incredibly paranoid for weeks to come.

Exactly my point! I hesitated to say that AIs are there mostly for those who don't "play the game", but actually it seems to be partly true for TDD. Those who have noticed the AI glitch upon their first playthrough of Amnesia probably got wrong the whole point of the game.