When we think of horror games, we think of things like Resident Evil, The Last of Us, maybe even Silent Hill. These titans of the genre are known for their effective stories (most of the time, cough, cough Resident Evil 6), but what often goes unsung is their effective use of environments, and by extension the horror that awaits within said environments.
Think of the long winding corridors of Brookhaven Hospital in Silent Hill 2, the seemingly endless liminal darkness that lays ahead, the creatures obscured in the veil the shadows provide. Now think of the empty, lifeless cliffsides of Moreau’s Reservoir in Resident Evil 8. Brookhaven stands out because of how claustrophobic and ominous the location is, whereas Moreau’s Reservoir is an unfortunate example of an environment being hopelessly dull.
Brookhaven doesn’t ask the player to move, it demands them to. If you want to make any form of progress you must press on through the corridors, move silently into the operating rooms and pray you don’t run into a monster that’s inevitably waiting for you. But when it comes to Moreau’s Reservoir the player moves forward not through fear, but through a need to get through the game.
Moving on from general environments, when it comes to making an environment feel lived in, a couple notes and trinkets can go a long way. For example, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us series is perhaps the best example when it comes to constructing narratives through environments that are outside of the primary story.
Throughout both games you’ll find notes from survivors, detailing their lives before and after the Cordyceps breakout. Some notes detail what it’s like to transform, whereas others are written minutes before the writer succumbs to a horrible death. These small notes serve the purpose of making the world of The Last of Us feel lived in, regardless of its apocalyptic setting.
Many horror games have employed this lost note style of environmental storytelling in the last decade, but very few make these notes feel like a true part of the fictional world. Alien Isolation gives the player terminals they can interact with and discover emails sent between workers of the Sevastopol Space Station. Most of these emails have nothing to do with the imminent threat of the Xenomorph, but they clue the player into how the station operated before it was turned into a nest for hungry alien’s.
What makes these notes and emails so fun to engage with is the environment they are found in. The environments of The Last of Us are broken and decayed, reclaimed by nature, the notes themselves are alien to where they are found so they immediately stand out. Overloading the world with notes and items can serve the opposite purpose of alienating the player from the world, breaking their immersion completly.
To make a great horror environment is harder than it first may seem. The environment must function well within the primary narrative, but it must also provide the player with interesting environment story elements that they can pick up on. Silent Hill 2 remake is perfect when it comes to environmental story-telling.
Each location James Sunderland wanders through reflects his ever deteriorating mind, and the stories and people he finds within these nightmarish locations are often even stranger than the environments themselves.
As fans of horror games, it’s important to remember the amount of time that goes into making these lived in environments within our favourite games. So show some praise to the environmental designers and discuss their work more often as without it, the games we love would be hollow shells of themselves.
Featured Image Credit: Konami
Fourth year Film and Journalism student
Deputy editor
Contact - deputyeditor@brignews.com
