Warning: Possibly triggering material ahead!
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From their very origins, human beings opted to survive in groups, rather than alone.[1] This came with the realization that there is strength in numbers. But even more so than just numbers, there is efficiency and more room for growth in teamwork, task allocation, and dependency on one another. Individuals can specialize and focus on certain tasks which help the collective, trusting that others will do the same, and the entire group will prosper as a result. When a community is formed, its problems and threats are diminished. It is only natural to assume that this behavior, so crucial to our progress and survival, remains an integral part of what it means to be human. To be human, beyond the individual level, means being a part of a collective consciousness where skills like empathy and understanding are necessary for healthy development. As such, over the centuries, like a vestigial organ, our ability to thrive alone has almost disappeared. We are specialized versions of our ancestral selves, thriving in an environment into which we are molded through our childhood, learning necessary social skills to simply pick up where everyone has left off. Having said all of that, it then becomes evident how problematic for an individual, completely dependent on society and others, it is to survive alone. Like throwing a person that never learned to swim, in the sea, the effects of isolation are not an illusion, they are real, and they can adversely affect health[2] and as an extension facilitate fear.
This knowledge isn’t anything groundbreaking and novel, it is common to us all and it’s safe to assume that we’ve all at some points in our lives experienced some separation from those we love and the panic that ensued. It seems logical as well that when in a state of stress and fear, caused by isolation for instance, we experience other fears more intensely[3]. Horror stories exploit this fear of being isolated, to generally create a more terrifying experience. However, the effect is achieved to varying degrees of success. I find the effect to be most effectively conveyed in video games actually due to their interactive nature. Empathy is only so effective in subjecting a viewer to the difficulties a character in a book or film feels. A video game’s interactivity places your very own interests at stake, creating the strongest bond between character and “audience” since arguably the beginning of all storytelling. In this analysis I will explore how isolation is used as a tool to evoke fear in players, how the narrative and game world supplant that fear, and what the varying effects can be in subtly different approaches and design decisions. The games which I will analyze are Outlast (2013) and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (2004).
In Outlast the player takes on the role of freelance journalist Miles Upshur who receives anonymous intel that there are inhumane experiments being conducted at Mount Massive Asylum. The premise sets a powerful tone for the story. It uses common tropes and themes to literally “cut to the chase”, the setting is not at all something unique and fresh, but it gets the job done. The job being letting the player know they’re in for a terrifying ride. It’s clear the game does not set out to create a narrative that’s never seen before, instead, it plays up the fact that it’s a game, offering a fresh gameplay experience first and foremost, everything else is secondary. Ever since you start the game you are alone, you reach the asylum by car and cannot use the front entrance, you must find an alternate route, further emphasizing that you are not welcome and that you do not belong. Being unwelcome is a crucial part of feeling alone and isolated. For example, we feel alone if we find ourselves in a situation where others around us do not want us around in the first place. Outlast uses every trick in the book to isolate you as much as it can. Everyone you talk to is either insane, wants to kill you, or both. Needless to say, it is very effective in its methods. As a bonus, there is no method of combat, stripping you of all power in your surroundings – you’ve guessed it, alienating you even more.
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth[4] is a far more outdated game, and despite the many game-breaking bugs present in its final release, it belonged to an era of video game development when developers were more inclined to experiment and the mainstream was still in the process of being defined. Call of Cthulhu employs many similar “tactics” to instilling fear in its players, yet still does it in way that’s very different to Outlast. The game opens with a cinematic in Arkham Asylum (unrelated to Batman, and yes, Asylums are used a lot in horror stories), then moves into the first section of gameplay at a manor inhabited by obscure cult members who are holding off a police siege. The protagonist, Jack Walters, manages to enter the manor, witness a mass suicide of cult members, meet the leader of the cult who subsequently dies in the siege, and find a secret entrance to a basement in which the protagonist goes insane, upon which he is admitted to the Asylum shown in the opening sequence. This is all very confusing in the beginning and it is by design, the player is supposed to be confused, experiencing some of the madness of the situation first hand. Six years later, Jack Walters investigates a missing person report in a small port town called Innsmouth. This is where the main story actually begins. The town of Innsmouth is unwelcoming and moody to say the least. NPCs visually all reside in the lowest depths of the uncanny valley, their voices are contorted and odd, and they generally give off the vibe that you should not be here, and that you should leave soon. The atmosphere of the game is incredible in further conveying this feeling. A dark moody setting, decrepit buildings, cold weather, odd conversations between NPCs, the occasional terrifying hallucination due to your character being a recovering asylum patient, and the scripted sequences where you see yourself through the eyes of a stalking creature wandering on the roofs and through the dark alleys of Innsmouth all play into the incredibly powerful atmosphere. The game starts out with no combat, as an investigative puzzle-solving detective game, and turns into an all-out shooter by the end. The game supports both sneaking and combat as playable methods. There is also no HUD, which helps the immersion of the game. And even more notably than the HUD, is the insanity meter, which fluctuates dependent on how many terrifying or grotesque things your character encounters in the game. A full insanity meter causes the protagonist to commit suicide.
Both games are very successful in maintaining a sense of alienation and isolation. Whether it’s by making a player feel unwelcome, or just generally through gameplay aspects mentioned above. Where the comparison between the two becomes important is the varying degrees to which the player is made to feel isolated based on a few crucial differences in approach. In Outlast you enter an Asylum where from the get-go, you not only feel unsafe and unwelcome, but you know that your first encounter with anything breathing will be very unpleasant. In Call of Cthulhu once you reach Innsmouth, the population of the town is displays its xenophobia, but you are generally safe to wander around, speak to people, and although made to feel unwelcome, you can at least speak to people and so you don’t feel as alone. This feeling is dramatically contrasted with the moment the whole town turns against you and becomes very hostile towards your presence. It feels like you walk into a den of lions who are at first disinterested in you, causing tension with every next step to increase, because they are very much aware of your presence, and you know that it’s only a matter of time before you become the prey. This method of contrasting is incredibly powerful in making the hostile parts of the game seem even more, because you are provided a point of reference when you could at least coexist with those around you. Outlast on the other hand doesn’t provide this contrast, as mentioned earlier, opting to barrage you with tension and hostility from the moment you enter the Asylum.
This brings me to the next point. Call of Cthulhu then becomes a stealth game where you are trying to escape the town to save your life. Along the way, you meet characters who seem to be normal, which serve as brief moments to catch one’s breath. Again, Outlast opts for breathers in the forms of entering a ventilation shaft where you know you can’t be caught, but other than logistical and physical barriers, there is no comfort in the presence of “normal” people. Somewhere in Call of Cthulhu you manage to escape the town, and all seems well, until you find yourself in an FBI vehicle headed back for a factory in the town. The horror is real when you finally breathe a sigh of relief that you escaped, only to realize you are going back into the hell which you worked so hard to get out of. This time around you are well equipped, and you have allies. The cruel aspect of this is that just as quickly as they appear, they are one by one picked off. More interesting than this “trope” of losing team members, is how quickly you grow attached to normal people in such bizarre scenarios.[5] It happens once more in the game when you are fighting alongside even better equipped marines, who also all meet their untimely deaths. The game gives you comfort only to take it away and remind you how cold and lonely the game world really is. In contrast to Outlast which maintains the same circumstance, and never attaches you to the idea that there is any person you can trust in the asylum. Going back to the sense of attachment, Call of Cthulhu, by design or not, is able to introduce characters you truly care about, without ever providing backstory, or any important character details. The catch is that in the circumstance, our hardwired ancestral need for teamwork kicks in, there is another normal, conscious individual who is witnessing and experiencing the horrors of this world with you. Madness is such a large theme in Lovecraft’s work, it’s a sigh of relief when you’re not the only one experiencing the insanity and terror of the world.
One must ask themselves, upon playing the two games, which method of approaching the horror of isolation is more powerful. The two options seem to be either isolating a player entirely from the start, with no hopes of return, or offering glimmers of hope only to quickly jolt you back into your terrifying hellish reality. Both methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. Namely, the first option creates a very stressful experience for the player. You are constantly on your toes. It feels like you are holding your breath the entire time you’re playing. However, humans are adaptable by nature, as such, it is entirely possible to grow desensitized to the tension and understand that there is no hope, and that this reality is there to stay. On the other hand, the second option gives a chance to players to take a breath, offering them artificial moments of lowered tension. It’s like walking through a terrifying unwelcoming dark hallway, into a well-lit welcoming room, knowing that you can’t stay there forever, and that the next door leads to another dark hallway. The reluctance to move forward and back into the dark can sometimes become crippling. Having said that, the moments where you can catch your breath can sometimes actually be very helpful in maintain ones composure and actually completing the narrative. There is no one right way. As mentioned, each method has its drawbacks and strengths, and it really depends on the person experiencing the situation. Regardless, it stands that horror is best experienced when made to feel isolated, not by chance, but by nature.
[1] Boyd, Robert, and Peter J. Richerson. “Culture and the Evolution of Human Cooperation.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 364.1533 (2009): 3281–3288. PMC. Web. 2 Mar. 2017.
[2] Ye Luo, Louise C. Hawkley, Linda J. Waite, John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness, health, and mortality in old age: A national longitudinal study, Social Science & Medicine, Volume 74, Issue 6, March 2012, Pages 907-914, ISSN 0277-9536, dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.11.028.
[3] V. Vachiratamporn, R. Legaspi, K. Moriyama and M. Numao, “Towards the Design of Affective Survival Horror Games: An Investigation on Player Affect,” 2013 Humaine Association Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction, Geneva, 2013, pp. 576-581.URL: ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6681492&isnumber=6681389
[4] Based on Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft
[5] Interestingly, this is kind of exactly what Kocurek talks about in his paper, except it’s extended the other way as well. In the game you are fighting monsters, and it is clear they are otherworldly, alien, and not to be cared about. On the other hand, the game does an incredible job of attaching the player to allies in the game, to characters we should care about, who we do not want to see die, and whose deaths are meaningful. This is very important as many games are not able to create this sense of attachment, and usually suffer from not evoking the player’s empathy. It is a very strong, albeit small, aspect of Call of Cthulhu which is worth being inspired by.