New Game Design/Gameplay needed for dealing with Enemies in future games

[PathOS]

SOMA is my GOTY of the year so far, I enjoyed almost every aspect of it.

I actually enjoyed the monster encounters, I thought that compared to Amnesia's predictable monsters they were much more unique, and it helped that each Monster was only encountered once, or confined to a section of the game.

But that said, I definitely have noticed a trend in the overall feedback and critique from the critics and consumers that the monster encounters overall were not very fulfilling. I don't agree entirely, I found several of the enemies like Disco-Ball-Head (I liked how it took the "don't look at it" from Amnesia and ran with it where you were in real deep trouble fast if you did) pretty fun and challenging to get around. But that said, in the end, the main ways to proceed through enemies is to run/hide/sneak by them, same as it ever was.

I think Frictional themselves would agree that the run/hide/sneak mechanic is getting a bit played out, and of course any attempt to use that game design will inevitably lead to comparisons to games that took said gameplay and ran with it full throttle, such as Outlast, or the much higher-budgeted Alien: Isolation.

What could be done though? I personally haven't the slightest clue, and I'm the last one who would ever suggest something like adding in "Combat" systems to such a game. I agree with the articles that have stated that Horror works best when it is nebulous and unknown, and by allowing you to fight back diminishes it greatly. Case in point Alien: isolation, which wasn't really "scary" to me at all, other than the tension of "being caught". The Alien was a known quantity and something we'd seen in media over and over again, and its algorithms of tracking were quite, "cheap".

The best I can think of is to take the ideas that I think were slightly here in SOMA, where Enemies were clearly thought out very well with how they fit into their respective environments, and run with them to the next level, such as using environmental puzzles and such to deal with enemies, or in certain areas, maybe make available the use of "weapons" to deal with something only in specific situations.

It would also be great if there was a way to make the "chasing" of enemies be more "interactive" as well. It's tough in the first-person, but it'd be great to maybe create some ways to keep enemies at bay somehow without breaking the feel of Horror:



Of course the trick as Frictional themselves have written about in their blog, is that once you start introducing more "gameplay" mechanics to deal with Horror entities, then you run the risk of making these Horrific monstrosities become too obviously "programmed" (I ran into this with the "Proxy" and its circular patrolling of the area when I locked myself in a room to avoid it).

Again, I wouldn't know what the answer is, but I think many would agree that there does need to be some iteration upon the current enemy schema.