“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”
– Alfred Hitchcock
Esteemed filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock knew better than most the importance of building to climax: that the true fear in an event rested in the anticipation of it.
There’s something to be said for a slowly unfolding disaster.
Perhaps inspired by Hitchcock himself, this principle has been used to great effect within the video game industry as well.
Even going back to the old Atari 2600 days, one doesn’t have to squint to see the concept at play in a game like “Haunted House,” which battled through its technical limitations to provide jump scares that generate without any sort of rhyme or predictability, leaving the gamer always guessing about what might await them around every corner.
Importantly, these jump scares are not relentless in their approach. Instead, they come at odd moments, spaced from one another, creating a tension in the process.
Action platformers like “Metroid” built off of the idea and leaned into a sense of isolation in particular, milking the anticipation – primarily through scoring and level/enemy design – so as to make the gamer wait for the action to be sprung upon them, often by a creepy-looking critter.
The game was more “Alien” than “Vertigo.”
The important bit was to make the gamer wait, but the developers also emphasized this feeling of being alone, and in the case of the original Metroid in particular, of feeling lost.
Much of Samus Aron’s story since has been built upon this tenet.
Attempts at the “survival horror” genre in the early 90s (before it was even called that) included titles like “Alone in the Dark” and “The 7th Guest,” games that were preoccupied with expanding upon the idea of an isolated traveller being trapped in a specific, well-realized place.
In each case, it was a dangerous, haunted house. And the developers added set pieces and puzzles to the equation within a more graphical presentation. The gamer felt directly challenged by these games – as if the contest was personal. The comparatively fast-moving action of Metroid was discarded in favor of slower, more carefully considered dangers – a noteworthy shift itself – but the main outcome was this sense of being personally involved in the conflict.
You were being invited to observe the situation AND to intervene. Like a security guard watching security footage and reacting to it, these games didn’t so much put you in the protagonist’s shoes as challenge you to help them.
Have you ever watched a horror movie and felt an overwhelming urge to yell at the characters to act a particular way? Perhaps you’ve actually yelled at the screen (it’s cathartic and I recommend it).
“Don’t go into the woods!”
“Arm yourself, you fools!”
“Hire an acting coach, for the love of all that’s holy!”
The first brave steps into the survival horror genre tapped into this exact desire of barking commands at people, but instead of being a passive passenger, they allowed you to directly influence the survivability of your usual collection of morons and actually stack the odds in the protagonists’ favor.
All of which leads us to “Resident Evil,” which today has established itself as inarguably one of gaming’s most popular and important series.
And the franchise’s success can be traced to this impulse of wanting to save people in danger. Resident Evil, perhaps better than any other gaming property, allows you to step in and do that.
(And you can still yell at them if you want to.)
Resident Evil 2 at a glance:
Genre: Survival horror
Released: 1998
Platform: PlayStation
Game Informer’s 34th best game of all time
Continue reading Resident Evil 2 — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 54)
