Amnesia: The Dark Descent Preview
M.Josette Camilleri
The scariest game of the summer?
There aren't many games these days that can be accurately described as survival horror. Take a look at Resident Evil 5, Alan Wake, the unfortunate Alone in the Dark remake, and other games meant to frighten like Condemned or Dead Space. Sure, they can be scary, but they're not really survival horror experiences. You always get a reliable weapon and the focus is on combat, not a creeping, pervasive dread that can't be shaken and a constant fear of getting your face clawed off with precious few ways to adequately defend yourself. Having a gruesomely twisted tentacle space monster jump out at you from an air vent is enough to make your teeth snap shut, but you've at least got an overpowered energy blaster to sever its limbs until it stops twitching.
Enter Frictional Games, a tiny Swedish studio responsible for the Penumbra series. If you've never heard of it, Penumbra consisted of three titles released from 2007 to 2008 that sent players into a network of catacombs buried in the Arctic wastes. The first episode, Overture, was marred by awkward combat issues, but the Black Plague follow-up righted a lot of the wrongs. It was a genuinely frightening trek into the unknown that called into question the reality of the game world and your character's sanity as you stumbled through a gauntlet of Lovecraftian horrors.
There aren't many games these days that can be accurately described as survival horror. Take a look at Resident Evil 5, Alan Wake, the unfortunate Alone in the Dark remake, and other games meant to frighten like Condemned or Dead Space. Sure, they can be scary, but they're not really survival horror experiences. You always get a reliable weapon and the focus is on combat, not a creeping, pervasive dread that can't be shaken and a constant fear of getting your face clawed off with precious few ways to adequately defend yourself. Having a gruesomely twisted tentacle space monster jump out at you from an air vent is enough to make your teeth snap shut, but you've at least got an overpowered energy blaster to sever its limbs until it stops twitching.
Enter Frictional Games, a tiny Swedish studio responsible for the Penumbra series. If you've never heard of it, Penumbra consisted of three titles released from 2007 to 2008 that sent players into a network of catacombs buried in the Arctic wastes. The first episode, Overture, was marred by awkward combat issues, but the Black Plague follow-up righted a lot of the wrongs. It was a genuinely frightening trek into the unknown that called into question the reality of the game world and your character's sanity as you stumbled through a gauntlet of Lovecraftian horrors.
The eventual third expansion pack was a bit of a disappointment, but that shouldn't temper any excitement horror fans should have for the studio's new project, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I had a chance to spend a few hours with a preview build, and so far it's looking like the best game Frictional has produced.
That doesn't mean much if you have never played Black Plague, so a little bit of a reset is in order. Like the Penumbra games, Amnesia's gameplay hook is the ability to pick up and manipulate environmental objects with the mouse. It's nothing revolutionary, but it does give you a nice sense of tactile connection between yourself and your in-game character. The whole experience plays out from a first-person perspective, and if you move your cursor over something like a box or book or chair, you can hold the left mouse button and pick it up. With it in the air you can then hold R to rotate the object however you like, which can be useful for stacking items on the ground to reach high ledges. You can then either set the object down or toss it forward at high velocity by hitting the right mouse button. This toss feature isn't just for show: It occasionally ties into puzzle solutions like knocking holes in walls or ripping paintings off a wall to reveal a hidden switch.
That doesn't mean much if you have never played Black Plague, so a little bit of a reset is in order. Like the Penumbra games, Amnesia's gameplay hook is the ability to pick up and manipulate environmental objects with the mouse. It's nothing revolutionary, but it does give you a nice sense of tactile connection between yourself and your in-game character. The whole experience plays out from a first-person perspective, and if you move your cursor over something like a box or book or chair, you can hold the left mouse button and pick it up. With it in the air you can then hold R to rotate the object however you like, which can be useful for stacking items on the ground to reach high ledges. You can then either set the object down or toss it forward at high velocity by hitting the right mouse button. This toss feature isn't just for show: It occasionally ties into puzzle solutions like knocking holes in walls or ripping paintings off a wall to reveal a hidden switch.
Well, that's creepy.
Amnesia is a mix of adventure game item collection, puzzle solving and exploration broken up by the occasional action sequence. The actual mechanics of collecting and puzzle solving don't appear to be dramatically different from what seasoned adventure gamers are accustomed to: collect reagents to mix into a potion, use the potion to open the way forward, find a key in one room to open a door in another, pull a secret book from a shelf or hit levers in sequence to open hidden doors. That's just the early portions of the game, though, so who knows at this point how things progress.
What Frictional appears to have really nailed is a sense of creeping dread that follows you around from room to room. When the game begins, you wake up knowing nothing of the world. You're trapped in a castle called Brennenburg with no clear exit or reason why you're there. The stone halls are dark and echo with the sounds of scratches and creaks that indicate others are shuffling ominously about. It's the kind of atmosphere you would think could drive a person crazy--which it actually does. As you witness events like dust storms kicking up as you enter a room, doors slamming open in empty halls, footsteps creaking across overhead floors, swirls of darkness that snuff out candles, and the reverberations of growls from deep wells, the scene will start to shift and swirl as sanity decreases. Standing in the light, solving puzzles, and making progress in the game will restore some mental stability, or you can quaff one of many specialized potions littered around the castle.
Soon after waking up in the castle you find a note that reveals your identity. Strangely, the note is written by your past self and says you'd previously ingested some kind of potion on purpose to make you forget. The reasons why you'd want to force amnesia upon yourself aren't clear, but the note talks of an odious, ferocious presence that prowls the castle gobbling up reality, which I assume likely has something to do with it. The note also gives you a clear objective: kill Alexander of Brennenburg. He's located somewhere deep within the castle, and the opening parts of the game involve trying to unlock the way there.
The rest of the story is told through notes and diaries that lay on desks and tables throughout the castle as well as bizarre dream sequences where it seems as though your former self is giving you directions. This is meant to represent, I assume, your past memories bleeding through to the present, giving hints about how to progress. But I could be wrong, and it might be something else entirely. Maybe it's that evil presence trying to toy with you, or another character not yet encountered.
As the action continues and more notes are discovered, filling in the history of Brennenburg, you slowly discover the place was a site of ghastly experiments for unknown purposes. Accounts of a strange journey into ancient tombs in search of ancient relics have a distinct H.P. Lovecraft feel to them, with references to impossible geometries, alien vistas, and various other oddities. In case you've never read anything written by Lovecraft, his type of horror is more psychological than the shock scare variety. The real horror of a situation isn't simply observing a creature that looks gross and has a bunch of tentacles, but coming to the understanding of what that creature represents. In a Lovecraft story, as soon as the protagonist comes face to face with the full scope of the horror that's been encountered, it's beyond their ability to comprehend, driving them insane. The gradual unraveling of the story of Brennenburg and the disintegration of Daniel's sanity in Amnesia has a similar vibe, which should be great news for any Lovecraft fan out there, and anyone who enjoyed Eternal Darkness and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
After puzzles are solved, the appearance of the castle changes, with a reddish, organic compound covering areas that had been previously nothing but bare stone. Is this simply a cosmetic attempt to scare, or an indication of another layer of reality that Daniel only notices as he comes closer to the truth of the situation? Effects like this, combined with the constantly shifting soundtrack of ambient clicks and creaks, help to maintain the level of tension even when you're simply moving across bare floors. The control mechanic contributes to this too, since you have to actually swing doors open by moving your mouse. It's not just a click to open affair. Instead, you grab the door, hold the left mouse button, and push the mouse forward to swing the door from the frame. You can do this quickly if something's on your tail, or, if you're trying to hide from one of the shuffling horrors I saw only briefly, slowly to avoid being seen. The lighting helps as well, as you'll need to snag oil cans from around the castle to keep your lamp lit and your sanity levels healthy.
What Frictional appears to have really nailed is a sense of creeping dread that follows you around from room to room. When the game begins, you wake up knowing nothing of the world. You're trapped in a castle called Brennenburg with no clear exit or reason why you're there. The stone halls are dark and echo with the sounds of scratches and creaks that indicate others are shuffling ominously about. It's the kind of atmosphere you would think could drive a person crazy--which it actually does. As you witness events like dust storms kicking up as you enter a room, doors slamming open in empty halls, footsteps creaking across overhead floors, swirls of darkness that snuff out candles, and the reverberations of growls from deep wells, the scene will start to shift and swirl as sanity decreases. Standing in the light, solving puzzles, and making progress in the game will restore some mental stability, or you can quaff one of many specialized potions littered around the castle.
Soon after waking up in the castle you find a note that reveals your identity. Strangely, the note is written by your past self and says you'd previously ingested some kind of potion on purpose to make you forget. The reasons why you'd want to force amnesia upon yourself aren't clear, but the note talks of an odious, ferocious presence that prowls the castle gobbling up reality, which I assume likely has something to do with it. The note also gives you a clear objective: kill Alexander of Brennenburg. He's located somewhere deep within the castle, and the opening parts of the game involve trying to unlock the way there.
The rest of the story is told through notes and diaries that lay on desks and tables throughout the castle as well as bizarre dream sequences where it seems as though your former self is giving you directions. This is meant to represent, I assume, your past memories bleeding through to the present, giving hints about how to progress. But I could be wrong, and it might be something else entirely. Maybe it's that evil presence trying to toy with you, or another character not yet encountered.
As the action continues and more notes are discovered, filling in the history of Brennenburg, you slowly discover the place was a site of ghastly experiments for unknown purposes. Accounts of a strange journey into ancient tombs in search of ancient relics have a distinct H.P. Lovecraft feel to them, with references to impossible geometries, alien vistas, and various other oddities. In case you've never read anything written by Lovecraft, his type of horror is more psychological than the shock scare variety. The real horror of a situation isn't simply observing a creature that looks gross and has a bunch of tentacles, but coming to the understanding of what that creature represents. In a Lovecraft story, as soon as the protagonist comes face to face with the full scope of the horror that's been encountered, it's beyond their ability to comprehend, driving them insane. The gradual unraveling of the story of Brennenburg and the disintegration of Daniel's sanity in Amnesia has a similar vibe, which should be great news for any Lovecraft fan out there, and anyone who enjoyed Eternal Darkness and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
After puzzles are solved, the appearance of the castle changes, with a reddish, organic compound covering areas that had been previously nothing but bare stone. Is this simply a cosmetic attempt to scare, or an indication of another layer of reality that Daniel only notices as he comes closer to the truth of the situation? Effects like this, combined with the constantly shifting soundtrack of ambient clicks and creaks, help to maintain the level of tension even when you're simply moving across bare floors. The control mechanic contributes to this too, since you have to actually swing doors open by moving your mouse. It's not just a click to open affair. Instead, you grab the door, hold the left mouse button, and push the mouse forward to swing the door from the frame. You can do this quickly if something's on your tail, or, if you're trying to hide from one of the shuffling horrors I saw only briefly, slowly to avoid being seen. The lighting helps as well, as you'll need to snag oil cans from around the castle to keep your lamp lit and your sanity levels healthy.
Adventure elements like item collection and puzzle solving.
You'll be hearing a lot of Daniel as more of the castle is explored; he gulps and gasps as the events of the game test his sanity. Eventually he'll open up the way deeper into the castle and encounter more otherworldly creatures. An invisible horror only detectable as its footsteps made contact with the water was a highlight of my demo. To get by you'll need to hop across the tops of boxes and shelves, since falling into the water alerts the monster to your location. Luckily it's possible to toss body parts into the liquid to distract the creature, giving you a few free moments to turn a wheel to raise a gate, open up the way forward, and run away as quickly as possible until you can slam a door behind you.
I won't talk about much more to avoid too many spoilers, but it's looking like Frictional's Amnesia could be the scariest survival horror game in quite a long time. It'll be ready later this summer for PC, and expect more updates on IGN leading up to that.
I won't talk about much more to avoid too many spoilers, but it's looking like Frictional's Amnesia could be the scariest survival horror game in quite a long time. It'll be ready later this summer for PC, and expect more updates on IGN leading up to that.
Source: IGN.com
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