After a long summer, we are finally back in Norwich and ready for our first uni project. The task is to take one of five games and "re-imagine" them into something new, maybe even better. We are apparently aloud a fair amount of freedom with this one. The game's primary influence should be visible underneath it's new shimmering coat which we are to create for it, at least to those who look for it. Our choices were: Medal of Honor (EA, 1999), Flow (Thatgamecompany, 2006), Fatal Frame II; The Crimson Butterfly (Tecmo, 2003), The Portopia Serial Murder Case (Yugi Horii, 1983) and Moshi Monsters (Mind Candy, 2008).
For this project me, Juliette DesForges and Jack Eastoe teamed up. After some discussion we decided to go for Fatal Frame II. The primary reason for choosing this game was because of it's genre and it's way of approaching it. Having already researched the Horror genre for a previous project, we felt like we had already sharpened our analytical claws to the genre with extensive and were ready to use this as a foundation to create something truly terrifying out of a game which has a cult following of people who believe that it is the scariest out there.
The game is filled with Japanese cultural references. So as a first research task for all of us, we all decided to look into folk lore and legends in other countries to attempt to find a more relateable setting and theme for the game. I also wanted to spend some time playing the game in order to get to know how to really get to know how the game worked and how we could create something out of what this game does.
So far I have only spent one brief session playing the game, spending just enough time to get to know all of it's basic elements. The game clearly takes a huge amount of influence from Japanese horror films and the old Kaidan, traditional Japanese ghost stories. This is reflected in the game's themes, which are often heavily based on relationships between the deceased and their lack of coming to terms with this, and the games art style. The setting is also set in an old Japanese village which time forgot.
The game features a lot of flashback and visions which are choppy, grainy and yet show violently loud images and audio, like the fragments of a nightmare you just awoke from.The story tells of two twins one of whom wonders off into the woods, pursued by her sister, and into a creepy lost village. Which they then choose to explore, until one sister wonders off again and it's the job of the other sister to find and save her.
The gameplay is pretty typical of a J-Horror game. Fixed camera angles, slow movement and a flashlight all serve their usual purposes as in Silent Hill (Konami, 1999) and Resident Evil (Capcom, 1996). There is however a few key differences. The game relies much less on puzzles and more on combat than Silent Hill and the original Resident Evil games and more on it's unique combat system. The game requires you to take a picture of the attacking ghosts with the Camera Obscura. The only way to score significant amounts of damage, however, is to take the picture at the exact moment before they attack you. You will also occasionally allow you to take control of the wandering sister, however, this only seems to serve as a narrative element rather than an actual gameplay device.
My first, personal, impressions of the game weren't great. The game's constant desire to bombard the player with cutscenes feels unnecessary and often breaks the feeling of immersion. The combat allows for the player to see the enemy for way too long. Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Frictional Games, 2011) and Slender (Parsec Productions, 2012), now thought of as some of the scariest games out there, make a point of making looking at the enemy a bad thing. This emphasizing the desire to survive by getting away. Not only this, but the Fatal Frame II makes a point of throwing enemies at the player at nearly every turn. This means the player quickly gets used to seeing enemies and the fear factor is lost. Another problem with the combat is its power-up system. This gives you the ability to earn points and find items which can upgrade your camera, giving you a better chance of exorcising the ghosts. This does not suit the Horror game genre and makes the player feel as if they are playing a game instead of being in any real danger. The game also has a bad habit of having ghosts visibly walk into a room, you follow only to discover there is nothing there, then you leave the room and the ghost is outside. This can be an effective device for surprising a player, but the game overkills this method to the point where it is mind-numbingly predictable.
I have a few suggestions as to how to solve some of these problems. Most of the storytelling could be done in-game. Conversations between twins while moving from place to place, the main character vocalizing thoughts and good use of visual storytelling can all be used to make the narrative clear to the player in-game, without breaking the immersion or flow. Combat could be a last resort, only to be used as a means of escape. I also think that it should not be able to completely exorcise the enemies, only stun or distract them. This would wrestle the game back into the survival horror genre, where you spend more time running, too scared to look back, than looking at the slow moving enemy head on. It would also help if the only glimpses of the enemy where fleeting, just enough for it to be obvious that the enemy is getting closer. The camera could be upgraded with individual camera parts which can be attached to a 3D model of the camera. This avoids RPG-esque menus which, I feel, ruin the realism required to make a horror truly scary. Journals have been used to this effect in many games to show small extra pieces of information without going through any menus that break the mood. Improvements in the field of AI will help prevent the predictability of the enemies by removing as many scripted events as possible and replacing them with intelligent enemies. I also think that the sister, instead of just being used as a narrative device, could have abilities of her own, a different way of dealing with enemies perhaps.
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