Disappointed by the monster design [Spoilers]

[John Fallout]

TDD had grunt which is enough by itself. One of the spookiest monsters in horror games. Now it's just generic humanoid ghoul and one which look like it came from Silent Hill. I think it hurts this game in a longer run. Because custom stories will be done with these 2, at least most of them until people make few of their own some day. They are boring and not scary. Of course if in the darkness + great game audio it can be scary when it chases you but it doesnt compare to the grunt in the slightest bit. And it's again only 2 types of monsters. I don't count the story one in the labyrinth. We could have deformed french soldiers for example, or villagers. Rebirth in itself in my opinion is one time play because they've put so much time into developing characters by flashbacks and notes.

[Sotomar0]

Right, the monsters really look avery silly in this game. For me in my neighborhood, they seem more realistic.

[Crusta]

TDD was insanely lacking in enemy variery when you come back to it. Its just the grunt and split face, and thats it.

Rebirth does a better job. And SOMA just trumps over all games with its great enemy variety.

[John Fallout]

Originally posted by 𝐑𝐞𝐝♚𝟒𝟓𝟕:

TDD was insanely lacking in enemy variery when you come back to it. Its just the grunt and split face, and thats it.

Rebirth does a better job. And SOMA just trumps over all games with its great enemy variety.

Amnesia has grunt, split face guy and water monster. Rebirth has ghoul, silent hill floatin thing and expedition member which is basically a ghoul. How is Rebirth better?

[Hubert]

In terms of body horror, the dark descent just nailed it perfectly. The servants are reminiscences of human beings : so mutilated that they are barely recognisable, but not too much, so you can tell they were human.

[DF]

Originally posted by 𝐑𝐞𝐝♚𝟒𝟓𝟕:

TDD was insanely lacking in enemy variery when you come back to it. Its just the grunt and split face, and thats it.

Rebirth does a better job. And SOMA just trumps over all games with its great enemy variety.

Considering enemy variety, how is Rebirth better? How many enemies are there exactly? You are counting the fear mask in as well?

@Panic! exactly. I get there are fanboys on Amnesia forum, but what the hell?

[DF]

Originally posted by Ding dong:

In terms of body horror, the dark descent just nailed it perfectly. The servants are reminiscences of human beings : so mutilated that they are barely recognisable, but not too much, so you can tell they were human.

You also know they were human from the cutscenes early on. It's terrifying and mysterious at the same time. I'd even go as far and say it's brilliant. TDD design overall was just more clever.

[Scriptimus]

Grunt, brute and an invisible splishy splashy thing, truly the best monster design to ever grace the horror genre.
Roxanne you don't have to put on a roooose light!

[Askari]

I completely agree. That's one of my main issues with the "horror" part of the game. Encounters with the enemies in Rebirth just don't bring the same level of terror as they did in TDD and MFP. The ghouls are simply not that scary and they look very generic too: remind me of blind cave dwellers from the movie "Descent" that came out in early 00s. While not that bad by itself, combined with the luck of good scares, it results in a very uninspiring horror game.

Monsters from TDD, on the other hand, were absolutely terrifying and hideous. Their overall design was superb and had very memorable facial features. Even Pigs from the second game were really well made and also terrifying. The sound design accompanying thier presence was incredibly unsettling.

[Neptune Towers]

The ghoul in Rebirth was rather clumsily foreshadowed in a written message ("there is a creature here" - oh my, spookiness!) and then had all the spotlights cast upon it in a pointless cinematic. However, I think it was very well used in the fort level, and by the end of the cistern it had somewhat outstayed its welcome.

One of the huge problems of the game is that it remains pretty much the only enemy you encounter for the rest of the adventure, appearing in droves during a bunch of scripted scenes and chase sequences. It's also shown clearly to the player multiple times over, having a rather bland and uninteresting design, and everything about it is explained in great detail through what can be summarized as a terrible bathwater joke. An overexposed, overexplained and overused enemy. I don't understand how this holds any relationship to quality horror.

I won't even comment on the other monster, because I'm fairly certain I killed it in one of the Dark Souls games.

[John Fallout]

Originally posted by .xXx.W4R10KK.xXx.:

The ghoul in Rebirth was rather clumsily foreshadowed in a written message ("there is a creature here" - oh my, spookiness!) and then had all the spotlights cast upon it in a pointless cinematic. However, I think it was very well used in the fort level, and by the end of the cistern it had somewhat outstayed its welcome.

One of the huge problems of the game is that it remains pretty much the only enemy you encounter for the rest of the adventure, appearing in droves during a bunch of scripted scenes and chase sequences. It's also shown clearly to the player multiple times over, having a rather bland and uninteresting design, and everything about it is explained in great detail through what can be summarized as a terrible bathwater joke. An overexposed, overexplained and overused enemy. I don't understand how this holds any relationship to quality horror.

I won't even comment on the other monster, because I'm fairly certain I killed it in one of the Dark Souls games.

Couldn't put it better.

The dark souls monsters tho haha xD

I really don't understand how this ghoul went through to the final game. It's face is kinda spooky sure. But that's about it. Very generic. Grunt will never get old. I they want to take inspiration for monsters then why not take a look on "The Thing" from 1980. Deformed humans bro. Imagine a tall man with dispositioned eyes, big mouth and loooong arms and fingers coming at you from the darkness in the unlit fort instead of this ghoul. damnit it's almost annoying because it's done and nothing can be done about it now. I knew from the trailer it's gonna be bad but I hoped they wont put just this guy as a main enemy.

[Neptune Towers]

Originally posted by Panic!:

Couldn't put it better.

The dark souls monsters tho haha xD

I really don't understand how this ghoul went through to the final game. It's face is kinda spooky sure. But that's about it. Very generic. Grunt will never get old. I they want to take inspiration for monsters then why not take a look on "The Thing" from 1980. Deformed humans bro. Imagine a tall man with dispositioned eyes, big mouth and loooong arms and fingers coming at you from the darkness in the unlit fort instead of this ghoul. damnit it's almost annoying because it's done and nothing can be done about it now. I knew from the trailer it's gonna be bad but I hoped they wont put just this guy as a main enemy.

I have to admit that I myself was a bit apprehensive of it after seeing the trailers, but I imagined there would be better stuff saved for the full game. The weird thing is that in the fort you do find notes evoking several entities pertaining to Arabic lore. I'm guessing that perhaps the game took a very abrupt change in development at one point (no plane having a nosedive jokes please) and all that stuff got completely removed or never made it past basic concepts. It's unfortunate that they ended up with a bland presentation and a bland enemy while keeping an interesting presentation for creatures that never made it in game. Also unfortunate that overall the quality of the game steadily declines past the fort and never really picks back up again. It's as if they managed to work on it properly only up until that point and then everything else got rushed.

SOMA had seen some massive changes in direction as well during development, yet they managed to find clever ways to reuse the assets and made some really memorable experiences in the game out of them (Theta Labs).

[a bitch of culture]

I was terrified of the first couple encounters and had no idea that both the thing in the fort and the thing in the cistern were the same creature, since I was trying not to look at them as they freaked me out so much lol. Thought the fort thing was a djinni spoken about in the papers you pick up. That said, the Harvesters are a classic Frictional design and I like them, but I really do not like the Searchers (or whatever the things with the lanterns were called). They didn't feel scary, just loud and annoying and I didn't care for the fact that they floated around. Didn't do anything for me.