If Pyramid Head falls in the woods and nobody's around to hear it, does the
console render the sound of him falling?
Whenever new technology debuts, media adjusts alongside the innovation. From
the creation of talking pictures to binge-watching TV shows, each new innovation
changes the style of the media that's produced for it.
For example, while people were still adjusting to audio syncing up with a
video in the talkies, horror cinema capitalized on the transition by
disconnecting sounds from visual markers.
[eerie laughter]
"Why, he's mad! Look at his eyes"
Renfield doesn't look like he's laughing, and the sound isn't acknowledged, so it
feels more unreal, like it's just in your mind. Once sound film became standard and
everyone got used to it, this technique fell by the wayside.
[Renfield sobbing with laughter]
The same evolutionary principle is true for survival horror games and the
capacity for 3d graphics and surround sound. Modern games regularly use
surround sound to position enemies on a map relative to the player. To pinpoint
an enemy, the player will move the camera to determine where the sound is coming from.
Part of the fear mechanic in survival horror games comes from knowing
that if you can hear an enemy, they can hear you. Gameplay becomes hide-and-seek.
Now it's easy to take for granted the technological capacity to render 3D
sounds in a 3D environment, but there was a time when 3D graphics processing
wasn't as powerful, and surround sound wasn't available at all. And survival
horror looked a lot different because of that.
Resident Evil, released in 1996, was
the first game to be described as survival horror, but a game like 1992's
Alone in the Dark can retroactively be considered part of the same genre. Along
with 1999's Silent Hill, these represent the first wave of survival horror games.
For Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark, even though 3d graphics were possible,
there wasn't enough rendering power to create 3D characters AND a 3D room model.
To compensate, both games relied solely on a fixed 3D viewpoint, where the camera
remained still as the player wanders within its purview, switching when they
move out of frame. Silent Hill combined a fixed
third-person view with an eerily roaming POV camera. It also used fog outside and
darkness inside to cut down on the load of rendering distant background graphics.
Although the fixed camera was a way of managing technological limitations, these
games used it to their advantage. The inability to control the perspective
underscores a sense of powerlessness. Hearing a monster roar implies that it
must be nearby, but without the ability to see where it might be the danger can
come from any direction. Instead of sounds being a deterrent for exploration,
it forced the player to move forward so that they could find the camera angle
that allowed them to see the monster. Because the developers controlled the
viewpoint of the camera, scenes could be structured around moments of terror.
Which is uncommon outside of cutscenes in modern survival horror.
Consider this scene from Silent Hill:
[endless alarm] "What's going on with that radio?"
[glass breaks]
[glass breaks!]
This jump-scare works because we are drawn – visually aurally and through the
dialogue – to concentrate on the radio.
The camera cuts away so the player is no longer visible.
The glass breaks, drawing the attention away from the radio,
which leaves us unprepared for the aural spike and sudden monster that comes from the
front. You can't create moments like this if the player is capable of controlling
their viewpoint. Specifically. the camera angles mimic the cinematography of
horror films. The player is positioned as the subject, then pushed to explore, even
though they're not in control of what they see. And it's no coincidence that
this style is reminiscent of horror cinema; The creators of Alone in the Dark
and Resident Evil both cite George Romero as an inspiration, and Silent Hill
was explicitly described as an attempt to make quote "Hollywood horror"
Survival horror games shifted once 3D graphic technology became sufficiently powerful,
and surround-sound became standardized. It was possible to program parameters
such as a room size and acoustic properties to create a dynamic landscape,
and make the sound location of the player available to enemy AI. Thus you
have modern survival horror games, which are often closer to stealth games in
terms of mechanics. Creators used fixed cameras as a workaround, but that choice
has informed the styles of all of these franchises. Silent Hill games relied on
cinematic camera usage long after technology had advanced beyond the need
for it. And even though fog and darkness started as a workaround to a technologic
restraint, it's become a part of the franchise signature style. It's very
possible that if 3D technology had arrived even later than it did, the
aesthetics of survival horror would have been codified to be more cinematic.
And it's likely that survival horror will look and play entirely different in VR,
once creators figure out how to translate the experience in the most
terrifying ways possible.
Once they do you can be certain we'll talk about it here,
in the FiendZone.
Hi! Thanks for watching this video. If you enjoyed it go ahead and hit like and
subscribe to Polygon. Also check out our other videos – we have a ton, including a
bunch of other episodes of FiendZone, so if you liked this or you learned
anything, go ahead and watch those, and learn something else.