59 - Enemy Encounter Update

[Alina David]

All the other posts sound very interesting but there is still something missing.
A one shot encounter that is only present for a second and is never encountered again for the rest of the game.Sounds strange but if you have seen the movie Jacob's Ladder you will know what I'm talking about.
The encounter can be just a voice telling the player something simple but disturbing or just a moment where the player has no control over and everything goes mad/psycho bunkers.
Usually in horror games nowadays the mindfuck moment has been eliminated so having one might be very cool.

[Grabthehoopka]

I would love enemies to not just patrol but stop, feign interaction with the environment and so on, look at stuff... but especially mumble or similar things. The mumbling and groaning of nearby enemies was a very important aspect to the atmosphere of System Shock 2, especially when you could HEAR enemies before you could SEE them, before you knew where they would come from, so the stuff about sound already seems good to me. Sound is SO important to me when it comes to gaming experience.

Charging CAN work, but I don't mind "sauntering" if it's done in a nicely stilted, horrifying way. In a sense, it comes back to the "slow zombies" versus "fast zombies" debate, eh? The slow, unstoppable advance of the undead can be much more horrifying than the screaming charger, at least that's where I fall on that issue.

That said - if it's possible to do - I see nothing wrong with having charging AND shambling enemy types...? Or even ones that are kind of unpredictable, slow and passive one moment, charging the next?

I agree, System Shock 2 is one of the scariest games ever made, and 99% of that is because of the sound design (cyborg midwives will haunt me til the day I die). If the enemy displays some level of intelligence, it's scary. Because now they're not just some mindless beast, there's a reason to it all that we can't fully grasp.

That's one of the things I like so much about Condemned (the first one). The crazy people are crazy, but there's a coordination to it that you can't quite understand. And furthermore, you often underestimate the intelligence of your enemies, and then they outsmart you. And there's something fundamentally terrifying about being outsmarted in a life-or-death situation.

[matt]

I hope to have all sorts of different enemy behaviors, but it will really come down to time for how much we can implement. Sometimes the details take forever. I spent maybe a week on "Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters" programming the crabs in the first level to pick up a can, examine it, and then throw it out.

The crabs are one hit kill enemies that swarm the player, so you can really only notice it if you reply the level with a sniper gun and observe them... I'm trying very hard to avoid anything like that (and all of Retro/Grade) on Neverending Nightmares.

[ranger_lennier]

I suck worse at stealth than all of you. Outlast kicked my ass. haha Maybe I'll have to check out Mark of the Ninja although in general, I usually avoid stealth heavy games.

I'd be interested to hear what you think about Mark Of The Ninja. I felt like it avoided the problem of Outlast and many other stealth games where it can seem like just luck whether or not you run into an enemy. I wouldn't say it's easy, but I definitely felt like it was fair. There's always a way to slip by unseen, if you can just figure it out. It has some awesome animation, too.

[matt]

I did listen to their talk at GDC, and I was really impressed with their approach to stealth. It sounds like they really did a great job creating a fair stealth game.

I also am a big fan of Sly Cooper, and I think they did stealth well although it's more of a platformer. (I played 4 at E3 and it was underwhelming. I'd recommend the Sly Collection over that)

I was the lead gameplay programmer on Secret Agent Clank and did some stealth work there. Overall, the stealth stuff is the weakest part of the game for various reasons. I was pushing for all stealth segments to take place at night, so that we could do visible detection areas, but I was unfortunately overruled...