How to make Amnesia scary again

[sull]

Don't get me wrong-- Amnesia scared the crap out of me on the first playthrough. The whole time. But as I play more of it, the effect wears off. The music, while excellent, only intensifies when there is an enemy spawned, and the same is partly true with the insanity effects. This makes the game feel predictable after a while. So I have devised a two-step plan to nearly triple the game's horror value: Mute your speakers and disable all the insanity effects. Suddenly, you have no idea if there is a monster behind the next corner, just like if you were actually alone in a dark, foreboding castle. Don't believe me? Try it yourself-- do this and play Storage, Prison, Sewers, etc. The Choir is especially terrifying due to the nature of the encounters. Soon you'll realise that what you once thought was one of the scariest parts of the game(music and sound) is actually the one crutch that keeps you from succumbing to insanity.

EDIT: Playing with no sound whatsoever is silly, there are better ideas in the comments below.

[sull]

Keep in mind that the game is significantly less immersive without sound. This should only be done if the player has already beaten the story and wants to be scared again. Also, I would not reccomend this to anyone who has heart problems(though the same could be said of survival horror as a genre).

[Project Hiraeon.ttv]

Could work, but I enjoy the music too much.

[Tilu]

I should try this sometime! o:

[FoodOnCrack✠]

How about deleting/muting the sound files of the monsters??

[sull]

Originally posted by FoodOnCrack:

How about deleting/muting the sound files of the monsters??

Good idea, as long as you muted the music too, or somehow got the normal ambiences to play the whole time (as opposed to the intense music). It would allow the player to still hear the sounds the objects make.

[Tilu]

Yeah, you could get the normal sounds to play and delete the monster sounds AND the music. All you'd have to do is delete 'enemy' in the sounds folder and delete the 'music' folder.

[aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

well, the fact of it is, that would get rid of the beautiful music we love, so I have devised a plan to make it scarier without losing that wonderful ambience, OK! So, one, go into the game files, two, go into the music/sounds sections, three, go on google and find the name of the music that intensifies when the monsters are near, four, go back into the game files, five, copy+paste the music and sounds into a backup file on your desktop (I forgot to mention, make a back-up folder on your desktop for what you are about to delete), after you are done copying the songs and sounds into the backups, six, go back and delete the sounds from the original file (LEAVE THE BACK-UPS ALONE, THEY ARE THERE FOR A REASON), and seven, you are done. The reason we delete them from the Amnesia file is because, when the monsters are near, it calls a function that brings up the songs, but if they aren't there, there is nothing that is ends up calling, so you are completely left in the dark about this stuff, same with the sounds, we are deleting the sounds the monsters make, like the grunt's... well............. grunting, his grunting sounds, and the brutes scream before it starts attacking, you know, his yell, it sounds like the one the troll from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone makes, the moan-yell thing, if we delete all those sounds, we don't know when they are about to attack, or are around the corner, and the back-ups are there so we can copy+paste them back into the files if we want them back. Also, like you said, do turn off insanity effects, they are a dead giveaway. After you delete this stuff, and turn off insanity, you have no more sound effects or chase music or ripple effects to tell you off the coming chase, while still having that choir and that ambience music. :D I hope this helped better. I know this all was already stated, but the person said delete all music, when all we gotta do is delete the music that kicks up during the chase, so we still have the choir and other stuff.

[sull]

Good thinking! I've also figured out that, by using Notepad to open game.cfg, you can turn the in-game music volume to 0 (InGameMusicVolume = "0"). This will apply itself upon the next map transition. It mutes all music and leaves general sound effects (including monster sounds) untouched, with no need to delete music from the folder.

Looking back on this thread, I realize that the problem I had is totally solved by playing custom stories. Not only are they "fresh" (ie. it's your first time playing it so you don't know when monsters appear) but they also tend to be more demanding and creative with monster encounters than the vanilla story.

So, we can do some tricks with the music to make the main story less predictable, but as long as we can find new content through custom stories, Amnesia will never stop being scary.

[chollirem]

Hey DEVS, just make a "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" mode where the music will get intense and go back to normal at randome (so you may think theres a monster... but its nothing... and then you all happy and get your face ripped off)

[razberrie]

you could always whomp yourself along side the head really hard....

then "you" will have amnesia, and the game will be like you're playing for the first time.

.

[76561198205901381]

Originally posted by Everyone:

Don't get me wrong-- Amnesia scared the crap out of me on the first playthrough. The whole time. But as I play more of it, the effect wears off. The music, while excellent, only intensifies when there is an enemy spawned, and the same is partly true with the insanity effects. This makes the game feel predictable after a while. So I have devised a two-step plan to nearly triple the game's horror value: Mute your speakers and disable all the insanity effects. Suddenly, you have no idea if there is a monster behind the next corner, just like if you were actually alone in a dark, foreboding castle. Don't believe me? Try it yourself-- do this and play Storage, Prison, Sewers, etc. The Choir is especially terrifying due to the nature of the encounters. Soon you'll realise that what you once thought was one of the scariest parts of the game(music and sound) is actually the one crutch that keeps you from succumbing to insanity.

That, and not using the lantern and tinderboxes.

[sull]

Or, you could turn the gamma down (or mess with the "night vision" settings) so that dark areas appear pitch black, thus making the lantern necessary even when there are monsters about.