First-Person Horror

First-person horror is the design of a game to frighten a player who sees through the character’s eyes. The reviews here, from 1997 to 2004, describe how it was done on the PC: sound that reaches the player before the monster does, light kept scarce, set-pieces placed for the moment of false safety, and a preference for sustained unease over gore.

Fast facts

• Named in the period press: System Shock 2 (Irrational/Looking Glass, 1999) for “sustained psychological unease”; Aliens Vs Predator (Rebellion, 1999) for “sudden scares”; Realms of the Haunting (Gremlin, 1997) and Clive Barker’s Undying (2001) for tone; Doom 3 (id, 2004) for the flashlight and the dark.
• The design statement: Ken Levine on System Shock 2, 1999 — “more [for the] feeling of suspense and terror [than] actual gross-out gore horror.”
• The recurring tools: sound cues that precede sight; flickering or absent light; a motion tracker or other instrument that reports what the eyes cannot see; triggered events “just when you thought you were safe.”

Unease before fright

Edge reviewed Realms of the Haunting in January 1997 as a fusion of “two very familiar 3D game styles - the adventure and the Doom-alike” held together by “the essential element of horror”. Its method was already the genre’s: “Realtime lighting effects add to the ambience created by the eerie and demonic visuals, while the soundtrack successfully plunders such horror staples as quickening heartbeats, ominous musical crescendos and disembodied shrieks to add to the feeling of unease.” The magazine faulted the engine and the interface, then called the game “a triumph” for “brilliantly handled set-pieces, some well-crafted location work, intelligent placing of enemies” — and observed that the monsters worked best “when played alone”.

Hearing them first

PC Zone’s 1999 review of Aliens Vs Predator called it “certainly the scariest” 3D shooter — “Well, a third of it is”, the Marine’s third. The reviewer’s account of the demo is the technique from the player’s side: “sneaking down a flickering corridor, chucking flares ahead, listening for movement.” The Marine’s motion tracker “works up the fear factor by registering not only enemy movement, but also breaking glass and flying limbs”, and “Flickering lights even cause you to see things that aren’t there. Then, when you’re convinced you’re not going mad, an Alien drops from the ceiling or a Predator phases into view.”

Mark Hill’s Undying review two years later set out the same rule in one line: “You can always hear them before you can see them”. The list of what the player hears — “the sound of the weather, while the unobtrusive music, the distant howl of monsters, the creaking of floorboards, even the breathing of a nearby creature” — is the sound design of the form, and Undying added a first-person touch on top: when attacked, “your screen is physically affected, jolting your vision and tearing streaks of blood that last a few seconds, long enough to throw you off balance and make you panic.”

Suspense over gore

Previewing System Shock 2 in July 1999, PC Zone asked Ken Levine whether he was going for big scares. “Oh yes,” and then: “you certainly need a se[nse of] Grand Guignol in these things, but we’re going at it in a fairly restricted manner. We’re going more [for the] feeling of suspense and terror [than] actual gross-out gore horror.”

Paul Mallinson’s review of the finished game credited the effect to the sound designers: “monsters that groan in the distance and get louder as they near you; the calming sound of the machine that goes ‘ping’ in the medical wards; the crackle of the Geiger counter”. Together, “they bring the whole environment to life in a way that has never been seen for as long as this reviewer can remember”, and “it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll jump out of your skin on more than one occasion”. The magazine’s editorial that month made the general case: “any game that scares you half to death is already halfway to capturing your attention completely and making you believe you are ‘there’.” Hill’s later verdict split the two schools: System Shock 2 for “sustained psychological unease”, Aliens Vs Predator for “sudden scares”, with Undying between them.

The flashlight and the dark

Computer Gaming World’s Doom 3 review of October 2004 describes the form at its most concentrated. “You’ll be wandering darkened hallways armed with a flashlight. You spin around to a hiss, but it’s only some hydraulic machinery grinding away. Can a human being sustain that kind of heightened paranoia for hours at a time?” Darren Gladstone compared the pacing to “the classic horror-movie scene in which there’s a sudden musical spike and a cat leaps from the closet”, noted that “All the event triggers are strategically placed and add that extra bit of fear just when you thought you were safe”, and gave the practical advice the design forces: “go slow and steady through each level”, and buy a 5.1 speaker kit.

See also

• Horror Games
• Survival Horror
• System Shock 2
• Doom
• Thief
• Tank Controls
• Pre-rendered Backgrounds