Darker atmospheres

Entità

The game is gaining fluency, variety and balance with each passing day, and I will never thank the developers enough for their efforts in this regard. What I personally need, being a lover of horror in search of adventures and emotions, is a decided increase in dark, sinister, disturbing and frightening atmospheres. It is not just a matter of profound graphic revisions, which take time and will surely be postponed to work for dedicated servers, but also of small tricks in assets, lights and music.

To be clear, with "darker atmospheres" I mean sinister settings, disturbing sounds, assets evocative of death, of barbarism, of agony, games of shadows and chiaroscuro that whet the atavistic fears of the unconscious. On the contrary, "darker atmospheres" does NOT mean implementing the New Moon Bouquet, flatly darkening the tones of all the maps.

For example, I greatly appreciated the introduction of a slight ethereal music, evoking a kind of suspended animation, while the survivor is in the killer's grasp. It effectively transmits to you the sense of the heart that stops, of the ghostly silence that precedes the torture, of the loss of the innocent victim before the looming horror.

I believe that the basement should recover the disturbing red light at the bottom of the flight of stairs, present in the very first version of the game. And it wouldn't be bad at all if that light bulb was the only source of light inside, so that the four hooks could cast sinister shadows. Furthermore, the terror radius should be impossible to hear from those in the basement: those who dare enter the killer's kingdom (and earn Boldness points for this), must know that is an inhospitable place, imbued with death and despair, a place blessed by the Entity as the heart of the killer's power. At present, however, the basement is simply disadvantageous for tactical reasons, but it does not seem at all a sinister receptacle of evil.

If you have other suggestions, write them below and I will insert them in the opening post. Of course, constructive comments are always welcome!

Entità

Nobody wants a scarier game? :(

NoShinyPony

After you have played this game (or any game) for a while, the horror is gone. Bad lightning or music won't change that.

Concerning the basement idea: That wouldn't affect SWF. The survivors would just tell each other what the killer is doing.

Mifian

Personally I am a fan of these ideas. Yes, as NoShinyPony mentioned the horror is gone for the majority of people, but that doesn't mean we can't have a darker atmosphere to help people sink deeper into the game. I don't see how people getting a richer experience is something to be shied away from.

I personally enjoy the basement idea, and not everything needs to be balanced against SWF. In fact, there are a lot of design decisions regarding this game that aren't structured around SWF.

Entità

@NoShinyPony Of course, after thousands of trials, many things are now predictable and no longer frighten you, but the magic of the game deserves to be preserved and increased: I don't think that reducing it to a mechanical sequence of moves to manage the chases is the best way to savor it in its entirety. Furthermore, not all teams are complete (statistics reveal that only a small minority of players face trials with three friends in voice chat), and not all survivors belong to a team. I play with friends when it happens, but if I look for the horror challenge I launch the game in the middle of the night, with the lights off, with headphones and nothing else to distract me from the appalling beauty of the Entity's realms. **

TheShape78

I totally agree with you, OP. This game used to be darker in terms of the lighting, and even going to the basement felt like you were stepping into an evil place. Sadly, these elements are gone for the most part, as the lighting has been brightened to almost cartoonish levels, and the basement no longer feels like an evil place, to me. They need to make the lighting darker like it used to be, maybe add more mist to the maps as well.

NoShinyPony

@Entità I don't think it's a good idea to introduce things to the game which would widen the gap between SWF and solos while the devs are trying to close this gap.

Entità

@NoShinyPony The full SWF issue is that they have freely Aftercare, Bond, Empathy and Kindred as extra perks by voice chat, and killers suffer against them, but cannot be buffed without destroying solos' hopes to win a trial. Darker atmospheres in the game, and especially in the basement, are not a problem, according to my humble opinion, and even the terror radius disappearance in the basement is just a BEWARE message for those who freely decide to go there.

NoShinyPony

@Entità Again: It absolutely makes a difference whether you hear terror radius in the basement or not, especially when you are facing non-stealth killers. The solo player doesn't know whether the killer is near, the SWF player gets this information from his teammates. Also, there is no horror element for the SWF player because they know what's going on and it is not necessary to have a full 4-men-SWF for this scenario.

The horror aspect isn't relevant. There is no horror after playing this game for houndreds or even thousands of hours. A darker environment and no terror radius is not going to change that.

Btw: Did you want to make the maps darker only for survivors or for killers as well?

Shaped

This helps the atmosphere.

Raptorrotas

More atmosphere sounds good. Graphical improvements are mostly good.

But "just maling things dark" will only help sirvivors. They can blend into the blue'ish lighting of macmillan maps already and turn invisible in the shadows of red forest. Double so for claudette.

After a certain threshold, the killer would need a bigger fov and/or the red stain wprking as actual flashlight (you know, brighten the center of the screen)

But more fluid animations, optimised textures etc are always weöcome.

Entità

@NoShinyPony @Raptorrotas I fear that there is a big communicative misunderstanding linked to the linguistic difference: with "darker atmospheres" I mean sinister settings, disturbing sounds, assets evocative of death, of barbarism, of agony, games of shadows and chiaroscuro that whet the atavistic fears of the unconscious. On the contrary, "darker atmospheres" does NOT mean implementing the New Moon Bouquet, flatly darkening the tones of all the maps.

NoShinyPony

@Entità Okay, thanks for clarifying. However, it doesn't change my opinion. When you've reached a certain level of playtime, the horror is gone. No matter the choice of music etc.

Entità

@NoShinyPony I respect your opinion, but don't you believe that darker atmospheres could still be more attractive for:

1) new players, who discover the pleasures and torments of the Entity for the first time;

2) immersive players, who focus on living an adventure while implementing hunting or survival strategies?

NoShinyPony

@Entità Tastes are different. Some players may like it. But liking something for esthetic reasons and having a feeling of horror are different things.

Angelicus23

Everyone in pc uses sweet fx, high brightness and low graphics because of the bad optimization and ilumination

TheGorgon

yes please

Entità

@Angelicus23 It's not a matter of brightness settings. I refer to something scary, both for video and audio effects: a place of pure evil, sinister shadows, terrible sounds, a domain of pain and death...

megdonalds

I totally agree to this. It was also my question for the recent Q&A.