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

[Fortigurn]

but if the player is able to overcome those monsters, even small unimportant ones, the result is that he is no longer afraid. sure you may have the exhilarating survival instinct of "is something going to jump on me?" or the proud feeling of using your wits to overcome obstacles. but those situations are not horror.

I disagree with this. The fact is that people can already avoid the enemies if they want to just by running around a lot, and more than a few people have commented on how boring and stale that becomes, and how it ruins the carefully crafted atmosphere of horror.

Providing well structured in game opportunities to delay or avoid enemies would give greater depth to the gameplay, without reducing the sense of horror. They in no way reduce the sense of horror than the situations the game already provides in which you're able to avoid enemies, like when

Spoiler below!

you climb through the lab's broken window and you're able to spend all the time you want in it, while the proxy can't reach you.

All they provide is a temporary respite, which is completely necessary (and built into the game at many points), in order to allow your tension levels to fall from peak to a lower plateau. This gives the game the opportunity to build up that tension anew, which keeps the game lively and engaging, and refreshes the sense of horror instead of it becoming stale.

i gave cthulhu as an example, he is the extreme of what i'm trying to say. if you can understand and overcome it, you are not scared. which is why making enemies in horror games is so hard.

The mechanic in A:TDD is powerful evidence against this. All of us spent plenty of time hiding in closets, knowing we were safe while doing so. Yet the tension and sense of horror did not diminish, and in fact the close proximity to the enemy and the fear of sudden exposure (however likely), only heightened the fear. It did not make us any less terrified of the enemies, even when we saw them repeatedly in the game, and used the same mechanic to avoid them.