31st May 2023, 11:20 AM
I've been looking into a lot of survival horror games lately, like Dead Space and Resident Evil and Silent Hill and Alone in the Dark. I gotta say it's rather interesting that every single one of those games eventually descends into action movie cliches a few entries in.
Alone in the Dark did it in record time. The first game takes a slow methodical way of building up tension as you slowly arrive at the old evil mansion and steadily isolate yourself deeper and deeper before the game finally gives you control.
The second game starts like this.
The third game is a LITTLE less action heavy? It's still a dramatic jump though. There's a reason for the dramatic tone shift though. The original creator had left the company midway through Alone in the Dark 2's production, and the new lead had a different vision for what the game should be.
Meanwhile, Resident Evil happened. Of course, the first game is basically a genre shifted remake of Alone in the Dark 1, with a shift from Lovecraftian nightmare to science fiction, but it grew from there and expanded on what made the original so haunting. Resident Evil 2, for it's part is a sequel that improves everything the first game did, and the third game tightened up controls while still keeping that "depowered" tank driven mindset. Of course, they ALMOST jumped straight into anime nonsense territory with the second game. Check out some screen shots and videos of Resident Evil "1.5", the prototype of what could have been. Basically it almost had some kind of anime racecar jumpsuit wearing ridiculous character in the form of Elza Not-a-real-name Walker. The decision to have characters that wear clothes people might actually wear in the real world in the actual 2 was a welcome shift. She was a special anti-Umbrella unit tasked with being a badass and going full assault on Raccoon City's lab. Not exactly... horror stuff. More actiony. Basically, any time you turn your protagonist into a badass on the offensive, you've just removed the horror element. Horror should involve overwhelmed protagonists that are on the defensive. The threat should come into their lives, rather than them seeking it out. But, fortunately they hired a good script writer who set the game back on course. So, it wasn't until Code Veronica that the series jumped into ridiculous action movie stuff. Behold the opening of Code Veronica:
She surrenders, drops her gun, slow motion grabs it out of the air and shoots exploding gas cans right behind all those enemy soldiers. Scary stuff! Oh wait no I mean not that. It's undoubtedly COOL, don't get me wrong but... not horror. Heck I like Code Veronica, and the equally ridiculous "4 Resident Evil", but they've clearly gone off the tracks as far as horror goes. Resident Evils 5 and 6 go even further off the deep end:
That's muscle head Chris "What's Umbrella?" Redfield pushing a 150 ton boulder, and realizing he can't do it he decides to throw in a few right hooks to work the body... of the boulder.... which apparently weakens it's resolve so Chris can push it further.
And this is how Resident Evil 6, which had originally promised to bring horror back to the series, STARTS.
This almost tops Carnby in Alone in the Dark 2 just straight up dynamiting the first gate in his game, but just look at this chain reaction of nonsense going on. This feels more like Resident and Furious.
Fortunately, after all of this madness, Resident Evil VII finally brings the horror back to the game by... straight up recreating the dinner scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre but hey... do what works, and it did.
Meanwhile, just after Resident Evils 1-3, Konami says "hey me next" and we get Silent Hill. This series remarkably stayed true to it's psychological horror roots for four full games. Yes, even The Room managed to keep that mood going. Then Team Silent leaves Konami for good because as it turned out Konami are just the worst, and over time every last one of their teams responsible for some of the greatest games in the medium's history abandon the company, until only Kojima was left. But, we're going to instead discuss a number of "western" developed titles. Once Team Silent left, sequels and prequels and remakes were put in the hands of all sorts of different teams. Origins contradicted some plot points from Silent Hill 1 and 3, and it's "tone" wasn't QUITE capturing the eerie and surrealist horror we'd come to expect, but it at least still felt like survival horror. Shattered Memories had us using wiggle and waggle and got a little... too literal about the "psychological horror" angle with a straight up psychiatrist analyzing you for hidden meaning. Heck that's become a cliche outside of Silent Hill.
Side diatribe: "Oh you want psychological horror? Hey how about an asylum! We'll have broken people with all kinds of Batman villain style quirky obsessions doing deranged stuff, and doctors doing horrible experiments, and you have to survive a... well a bunch of sick people actually. Wait this is pretty damn horrible come to think of it... most mentally ill people aren't dangerous and are more likely to be abused than do the abusing."
Back on topic, even Shattered Memories still managed to feel like survival horror. It just failed at being all that fun or allowing much in the way of exploration, and that doubling back on previous paths and picking your own way forward is a big part of what made older survival horror games tick. Oh no, it wouldn't get truly bad until Silent Hill 5 and 6. These ones were insultingly on-the-nose with their "hidden meaning" and focused way too much on expanding the combat. It never did quite reach the level of schlocky action movie cliches that the other two series reached, but then we got Book of Memories. That Vita game was a dungeon crawler mess completely outside the genre of surivival horror with barely even a touch of just plain regular horror, and thus it's transformation was complete. P.T. happened, but then Kojima was pushed out of the company and most of the Fox team left with him. Now we'll see whether Konami even has enough talent left to ensure the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake is true to the original. Weltall I expect a full written report!
After the first Silent Hill, Atari comes along and tries another stab at Alone in the Dark with The New Nightmare (no relation to Wes Craven). This one actually manages to pull things back into the survival horror direction and is fairly well done, but with enemies respawning (instead of specially scripted moments where new enemies start to populate old areas), it makes the game far too difficult unless you're going for a speed trial. Heck this game learned so much from Resident Evil that we've got this perfect circle of inspiration. It even opens with a narrator saying "Alone in the Dark" in a spooky voice. Interesting, but not close to the best at the time it came out, and it's pretty dang edgelordy in it's execution of the modern day Carnby descendent. That eventually became a "let's throw every single mechanic we can at the wall and see what sticks" approach with the next game, right down to actually navigating your character's literal pockets in real time to get items. Many of the mechanics are just too glitchy though and the game comes across overambitious. It also comes across as much more action horror than survival horror. Then the most recent game is a frickin' multiplayer squad shooter... But, we do now have a team that's doing a full on remake of the very first game to the same degree as the current remakes of older Resident Evil games and the Dead Space remake.
And speaking of Dead Space. That one started out slow and methodical, and if played at the hard difficulty, it really is a full on survival horror game with less backtracking. People bemoan backtracking but in certain genres like survival horror, it's a good element to have that benefits the game. Dead Space 2 kept on the horror but was already leaning towards making things more action oriented. It wasn't too bad though. Things still felt tense, just with a more experienced Isaac and a few more actiony cut scenes and set pieces. Also you get an eye piercing at one point to impress your friends. Dead Space 3? That was EA being EA. They wanted to turn a HORROR game into a regular action franchise that, like the shambling horrors in the game, would never die. To be fair, as I mentioned Capcom had already well and truly did that with Resident Evil and hadn't yet pulled back into horror at that moment. To be even fairer, they also ruined the "survival" pacing with microtransactions. The previous two games already had all these alternate costumes that would utterly LITTER your inventory box with duplicates of every weapon in just... different color schemes. The alternate suits also didn't evolve over time like the main one. Ultimately the first two are just plain better off if you never install any DLC except the added playable chapter for the second game, and the games have the proper amount of resource management challenge that way too. Not so for the third entry! They put a LOT of emphasis on collecting random "junk to not just mod weapons but make medi kits and ammo. They make you utterly dependent on them, then try to sell you those resources as well as "upgrade kits" to speed up the collection of junk to it's "intended" rate. If you do that, it becomes trivial to collect as much junk as you want and it basically becomes the action game it was designed to be, right down to the co-op, the over the top action scenes, and the fact that all these paramilitary groups are using the same weapons as Clark. Remember how in the original game, these aren't actually weapons? They're tools Clark is forced to use as weapons to get the job done. Well apparently they're what everyone was using all along in the third game. I will give it this though. If you play the added DLC chapter, you get a truly cosmic horror level ending, where you and all humanity realize how futile it was to even try to resist. That... was a return to a moment of gut sinking horror the third game was missing until then.
As amazingly well done as the remake of Dead Space 1 is, I actually really hope to see how they handle remaking number 3. What I hate though is giving ANY money to EA considering the nature of the game itself. The new studio was hired because EA fired the studio that originally made these games. They fired that studio because Dead Space 3 "underperformed", a game that underperformed because of their own executive meddling, to turn it into something it was not, because they got too greedy and wanted even MORE of the money than they were already getting. Let's be fair about one thing though. Dead Space 2 didn't make it's money back. That's why EA execs got involved. Still, their advice and attempts to make the game more appealing were... their own fault at that point.
Anyway, it's just really interesting to see how survival horror has this long legacy of devolving into action in just about every series.
Alone in the Dark did it in record time. The first game takes a slow methodical way of building up tension as you slowly arrive at the old evil mansion and steadily isolate yourself deeper and deeper before the game finally gives you control.
The second game starts like this.
The third game is a LITTLE less action heavy? It's still a dramatic jump though. There's a reason for the dramatic tone shift though. The original creator had left the company midway through Alone in the Dark 2's production, and the new lead had a different vision for what the game should be.
Meanwhile, Resident Evil happened. Of course, the first game is basically a genre shifted remake of Alone in the Dark 1, with a shift from Lovecraftian nightmare to science fiction, but it grew from there and expanded on what made the original so haunting. Resident Evil 2, for it's part is a sequel that improves everything the first game did, and the third game tightened up controls while still keeping that "depowered" tank driven mindset. Of course, they ALMOST jumped straight into anime nonsense territory with the second game. Check out some screen shots and videos of Resident Evil "1.5", the prototype of what could have been. Basically it almost had some kind of anime racecar jumpsuit wearing ridiculous character in the form of Elza Not-a-real-name Walker. The decision to have characters that wear clothes people might actually wear in the real world in the actual 2 was a welcome shift. She was a special anti-Umbrella unit tasked with being a badass and going full assault on Raccoon City's lab. Not exactly... horror stuff. More actiony. Basically, any time you turn your protagonist into a badass on the offensive, you've just removed the horror element. Horror should involve overwhelmed protagonists that are on the defensive. The threat should come into their lives, rather than them seeking it out. But, fortunately they hired a good script writer who set the game back on course. So, it wasn't until Code Veronica that the series jumped into ridiculous action movie stuff. Behold the opening of Code Veronica:
She surrenders, drops her gun, slow motion grabs it out of the air and shoots exploding gas cans right behind all those enemy soldiers. Scary stuff! Oh wait no I mean not that. It's undoubtedly COOL, don't get me wrong but... not horror. Heck I like Code Veronica, and the equally ridiculous "4 Resident Evil", but they've clearly gone off the tracks as far as horror goes. Resident Evils 5 and 6 go even further off the deep end:
That's muscle head Chris "What's Umbrella?" Redfield pushing a 150 ton boulder, and realizing he can't do it he decides to throw in a few right hooks to work the body... of the boulder.... which apparently weakens it's resolve so Chris can push it further.
And this is how Resident Evil 6, which had originally promised to bring horror back to the series, STARTS.
This almost tops Carnby in Alone in the Dark 2 just straight up dynamiting the first gate in his game, but just look at this chain reaction of nonsense going on. This feels more like Resident and Furious.
Fortunately, after all of this madness, Resident Evil VII finally brings the horror back to the game by... straight up recreating the dinner scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre but hey... do what works, and it did.
Meanwhile, just after Resident Evils 1-3, Konami says "hey me next" and we get Silent Hill. This series remarkably stayed true to it's psychological horror roots for four full games. Yes, even The Room managed to keep that mood going. Then Team Silent leaves Konami for good because as it turned out Konami are just the worst, and over time every last one of their teams responsible for some of the greatest games in the medium's history abandon the company, until only Kojima was left. But, we're going to instead discuss a number of "western" developed titles. Once Team Silent left, sequels and prequels and remakes were put in the hands of all sorts of different teams. Origins contradicted some plot points from Silent Hill 1 and 3, and it's "tone" wasn't QUITE capturing the eerie and surrealist horror we'd come to expect, but it at least still felt like survival horror. Shattered Memories had us using wiggle and waggle and got a little... too literal about the "psychological horror" angle with a straight up psychiatrist analyzing you for hidden meaning. Heck that's become a cliche outside of Silent Hill.
Side diatribe: "Oh you want psychological horror? Hey how about an asylum! We'll have broken people with all kinds of Batman villain style quirky obsessions doing deranged stuff, and doctors doing horrible experiments, and you have to survive a... well a bunch of sick people actually. Wait this is pretty damn horrible come to think of it... most mentally ill people aren't dangerous and are more likely to be abused than do the abusing."
Back on topic, even Shattered Memories still managed to feel like survival horror. It just failed at being all that fun or allowing much in the way of exploration, and that doubling back on previous paths and picking your own way forward is a big part of what made older survival horror games tick. Oh no, it wouldn't get truly bad until Silent Hill 5 and 6. These ones were insultingly on-the-nose with their "hidden meaning" and focused way too much on expanding the combat. It never did quite reach the level of schlocky action movie cliches that the other two series reached, but then we got Book of Memories. That Vita game was a dungeon crawler mess completely outside the genre of surivival horror with barely even a touch of just plain regular horror, and thus it's transformation was complete. P.T. happened, but then Kojima was pushed out of the company and most of the Fox team left with him. Now we'll see whether Konami even has enough talent left to ensure the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake is true to the original. Weltall I expect a full written report!
After the first Silent Hill, Atari comes along and tries another stab at Alone in the Dark with The New Nightmare (no relation to Wes Craven). This one actually manages to pull things back into the survival horror direction and is fairly well done, but with enemies respawning (instead of specially scripted moments where new enemies start to populate old areas), it makes the game far too difficult unless you're going for a speed trial. Heck this game learned so much from Resident Evil that we've got this perfect circle of inspiration. It even opens with a narrator saying "Alone in the Dark" in a spooky voice. Interesting, but not close to the best at the time it came out, and it's pretty dang edgelordy in it's execution of the modern day Carnby descendent. That eventually became a "let's throw every single mechanic we can at the wall and see what sticks" approach with the next game, right down to actually navigating your character's literal pockets in real time to get items. Many of the mechanics are just too glitchy though and the game comes across overambitious. It also comes across as much more action horror than survival horror. Then the most recent game is a frickin' multiplayer squad shooter... But, we do now have a team that's doing a full on remake of the very first game to the same degree as the current remakes of older Resident Evil games and the Dead Space remake.
And speaking of Dead Space. That one started out slow and methodical, and if played at the hard difficulty, it really is a full on survival horror game with less backtracking. People bemoan backtracking but in certain genres like survival horror, it's a good element to have that benefits the game. Dead Space 2 kept on the horror but was already leaning towards making things more action oriented. It wasn't too bad though. Things still felt tense, just with a more experienced Isaac and a few more actiony cut scenes and set pieces. Also you get an eye piercing at one point to impress your friends. Dead Space 3? That was EA being EA. They wanted to turn a HORROR game into a regular action franchise that, like the shambling horrors in the game, would never die. To be fair, as I mentioned Capcom had already well and truly did that with Resident Evil and hadn't yet pulled back into horror at that moment. To be even fairer, they also ruined the "survival" pacing with microtransactions. The previous two games already had all these alternate costumes that would utterly LITTER your inventory box with duplicates of every weapon in just... different color schemes. The alternate suits also didn't evolve over time like the main one. Ultimately the first two are just plain better off if you never install any DLC except the added playable chapter for the second game, and the games have the proper amount of resource management challenge that way too. Not so for the third entry! They put a LOT of emphasis on collecting random "junk to not just mod weapons but make medi kits and ammo. They make you utterly dependent on them, then try to sell you those resources as well as "upgrade kits" to speed up the collection of junk to it's "intended" rate. If you do that, it becomes trivial to collect as much junk as you want and it basically becomes the action game it was designed to be, right down to the co-op, the over the top action scenes, and the fact that all these paramilitary groups are using the same weapons as Clark. Remember how in the original game, these aren't actually weapons? They're tools Clark is forced to use as weapons to get the job done. Well apparently they're what everyone was using all along in the third game. I will give it this though. If you play the added DLC chapter, you get a truly cosmic horror level ending, where you and all humanity realize how futile it was to even try to resist. That... was a return to a moment of gut sinking horror the third game was missing until then.
As amazingly well done as the remake of Dead Space 1 is, I actually really hope to see how they handle remaking number 3. What I hate though is giving ANY money to EA considering the nature of the game itself. The new studio was hired because EA fired the studio that originally made these games. They fired that studio because Dead Space 3 "underperformed", a game that underperformed because of their own executive meddling, to turn it into something it was not, because they got too greedy and wanted even MORE of the money than they were already getting. Let's be fair about one thing though. Dead Space 2 didn't make it's money back. That's why EA execs got involved. Still, their advice and attempts to make the game more appealing were... their own fault at that point.
Anyway, it's just really interesting to see how survival horror has this long legacy of devolving into action in just about every series.