The Press Box - Ep. 272: ‘Achievement Oriented’ - 'Horizon Zero Dawn,' 'Resident Evil 7,' and Video Game Phobias

Episode Date: March 3, 2017

The Ringer's Ben Lindbergh and Jason Concepcion have a spoiler-free chat about the newly released PS4 exclusive 'Horizon Zero Dawn,' discussing its obvious influences, how it tweaks the open-world formula, and whether games have gotten too long (1:00). Then they bring on Kotaku editor Luke Plunkett to talk about his aborted attempt to play 'Resident Evil 7' and try to pinpoint what combination of in-game mechanics and hangups inside their own psyches makes some video games so scary (24:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode is brought to you by The Ringer NFL show. This week is the NFL Combine, and our football experts are live from Indianapolis breaking down everything you need to know. You can subscribe to The Ringer NFL show at iTunes.com slash The Ringer or wherever you get podcasts. And if you're listening to this episode on Channel 33, we have some excellent, long-awaited news. A lot of people have asked, and now we can answer, yes, you can subscribe to achievement-oriented on its own podcast feed. Search for it wherever you get podcasts, subscribe, and please remember to rate and review. us. It helps us out. Hello and welcome to Achievement-oriented the Ringer's official gaming podcast. I am Jason Sipsion, a staff writer at the Ringer, and hunkered down in his Manhattan apartment with a virulent case of

mono. It's Benjamin Lindberg. If only I could craft an antidote to my illness. I've explored every menu and there's nothing I can do, but wait for it to go away. I'm pretty sure I had mono at one time because all my symptoms were congruent with mono. And so basically I just stayed inside for a few months. Yeah, I am too old to have mono, but I have it anyway. And it actually works out pretty well because giant 60-hour open-world games are coming out every week right now. So I can't go outside anyway. So good timing.

Yes, Horizon Zero Dawn, which came out this week, Benjamin Lindbergh, just minutes ago, breathlessly DM'd me, Big things happening. I think I know what Zero Dawn was. It took me, I don't know how many hours I've put into this game, but enough that it feels like it should be over, just kind of my internal clock that tells me how close I am to the end of a video game. But my clock is off because I went into the menu, worked at the completion percentage, and it says 36.12%, which, by the way, if your completion percentage,

goes out to two decimal places. I feel like that's a bad sign. That means there's too much stuff to do in your game. Anyway, I'm enjoying it. We're going to talk about Horizon Zero Dawn because we've both been playing it. That'll be the first half of this episode. Later in the episode, we're going to talk to Luke Plunkett from Kotaku about Resident Evil 7 and about being scared of video games. I freely admit I am a video game wuss. So is Luke. We're going to have him on to talk about what scares us in video games and why they scare us in different ways. than other entertainment media. And we should say that we've unlocked a new area of our personal podcast map.

We're progressing up the skill tree. We have our own channel now. Lots of people have asked us if they could subscribe to Achievement Oriented. Now they can. You can find us on iTunes. You can find us on Twitter at AchievementPod where we'll tweet out all the episodes and what we're planning to talk to. And I don't know, maybe you'll make some jokes.

You're good at Twitter. You should follow us there for updates. Subscribe on iTunes and rate and review us so that other people know it's a good show and they should listen to it. Please, before they cancel us. Right. And we're going to talk about Zelda and Switch next week. My Switch is arriving tonight. It is out for delivery right now.

I'm tracking the delivery information. No worse feeling. Yeah. So I'm madly trying to finish Horizon Zero done in time to start Zelda. that's probably not going to happen, but we'll talk about that next week. But first, Horizon, Zero Done. What do you think? I like it a lot.

I like it a lot. It's very similar to many other games that I also like a lot. Yeah. And it's a strange game in that anytime there's kind of like this anti-technological message in a video game, it feels very much like an aurorobros or whatever that mystical creature is that eats its own tail. But I like this game a lot. The graphics are absolutely beautiful. I guess the criticisms I would have are that it's so sprawling.

I wish some of the features were a little bit more focused, a little more crafted, some of the hunting things, maybe some of the mechanics in the way that the combat takes place. Other than that, the tutorial, like we've been talking about long campaigns. The tutorial felt like it went on for like two hours. At least, I think. It's almost a completely different game. When you start this game, it's like a very long. linear, very focused, plot-driven adventure.

You play as Aloi, who when you start the game is a six-year-old and she gets older as you progress. But it's initially a very small scope game and you're just exploring the parameters of this world. And it's almost a Jolin Ellie relationship with you and this guy named Rust. And after that tutorial that sort of introduces you to this world, the game pulls back. and zooms out and things get enormous and it feels like a different game. And I didn't mind the tutorial. I didn't mind having my handheld a little bit at the beginning and being gradually introduced to this world. Because we should say just to set things up, this is a game developed by Gorilla Games,

the makers of many a Killzone game. What a plot twist this is. Yeah, what a left turn. Quite a departure. And yeah, Killzone is a first-person shooter series. is it's sort of technically proficient but creatively uninspired. I've played a bunch of them. I finish them and almost instantly forgot them.

And I don't think that's going to be the case with Horizon. So this sort of fits into the Ubisoft, open world, collect things, explore things, unlock the map kind of model. I don't love the open world name because we've been playing open world games going back decades. But this sort of Ubisoft model, there are a lot of things. this game that will remind you of other games. And the first time I saw screenshots of this game, I thought, oh, wow, that looks like enslaved Odyssey to the West, which was a really great last-gen game about a post-apocalyptic future where you're battling robots and it's kind of a two-person

adventure. It's a young red-headed woman and this beefy guy. And that's sort of what Horizon Zero Don is when you start. And the mechanics of the game will remind you of all of those open world games. So Eloy moves like Nathan Drake, she can hop and climb everything, you unlock the map in a kind of shadows of Mordor Assassin's Creed sense and you progress and you gradually move on to bigger and bigger areas. And Far Cry Primal you've mentioned to me is a big touchstone here. A lot of this game has reminded you of that. But I will say that for all the things that it reminds me of and all of the stories, it's clearly insubstained. inspired by and some of the plot twists you'll see coming just because we've seen similar beats in other games and stories before.

I never really thought, oh, that game did this thing better than Horizon. I usually thought, this is better, or this is just as good as it was, or this is an interesting new spin on that kind of mechanic. I will say I was, I was ready to hate the lore and hate the story, and I don't. It's as, you know, it feels like, you know, it's, you get. kind of cynical playing video games like so much. But after a while, just the way that the story allows you to kind of access these deeper layers of the mystery that unveil more information about the world, it's quite entrancing. You know, like there's the way the game mechanically

doles out these mysteries to you is really effective. I didn't want to like it as much as I did. And I really like it. Yeah. And we won't spoil anything. This game has only been out for a few days. So you can listen without worry, but you're right. It's just a progression of mysteries you start out wondering who is this person. She's banished from her tribe. And so is her companion. What did they do to get banished? Who are her parents?

And then gradually the scope expands. And you wonder, how did this world come to be like this? What happened to the old civilization whose bones are sort of scattered all over the environment? And it's an exploration game. It's also a game with a really, I think, well-implemented combat system. And that's one of the highlights of this game for me is the landscape is littered with these mechanical creatures that resemble dinosaurs or beasts of various sorts. And so you hunt them and it's almost a monster hunter kind of style thing where you can analyze them and you can see what their weaknesses are. and every beast you encounter has a different weak point,

and you can take them down in different ways. And so as you traverse this environment, which is beautiful, by the way, and we'll get to that in a second, but you constantly encounter these creatures, and you have to determine how you're going to approach them. Every battle plays out differently. You can do a stealth approach. You can just run in gun or run in bow and arrow, really,

or you can do it tactically. you'll come across these creatures attacking each other. It just feels very organic. And as you go, you keep unlocking skills and you can approach battles in different ways. And I don't know that even as far as I am into the game, I have fully mastered the combat system because there are a lot of wrinkles to it. And you'll switch weapons and you'll kind of buff your stats basically by shocking a creature or setting it on fire. And then you'll do a secondary attack and weaken it further. and then you'll move in for the kill, but it can be exhilarating at times.

I've had some boss battles that I just barely escaped from, and Pulse was pounding at the conclusion. Yeah, for me, the combat, I mean, like I'm picky about combat. I think for me, the combat, it is quite good. The criticisms I would have are the criticism I would have of any third-person game that features a very mobile character and that sometimes you just jump into things that you don't know or there, don't know where they are because you're trying to dodge this gigantic dinosaur that's that's bearing down on you. I will say one thing I really enjoy is I think

the stealth features of this game are wonderful. Some of them are a little, it's a little ridiculous that you can like at times, uh, stealth kill a dinosaur like right next to its dinosaur buddy and the other dinosaur like has no idea what just happened. But the graphics and the way that kind of works together with the stealth mechanic, you crouch in this high grass and the grass blows, you know, in the winds with this kind of reactive weather patterns. And you can almost feel the stalks of like this high grass like on your skin. It's like it is just fantastic. Like sometimes I'll just sit there and just watch these dinosaurs,

especially at night when their lights kind of pick up the particles and the fog in the night air. It's just an amazing game to look at it. I mean, you could just stare at it for a long time. It's like this game, you know, World at War and I guess, Uncharted Forts. Some of those breathtaking graphics in games that I've seen in a while. It's amazing games to look at. Yeah, definitely.

We talked in our stealth episode about my distaste for that genre or my unease with it. And basically, I just want to have clear audio visual feedback about whether I am hidden, whether I'm being detected. And this game does really well with that. You always know whether you are being sneaky or not. And you're right. It's when we talked about Battlefield 1, we were raving about the smoke effects and the fog effects. And it's the same thing here where there will just be these hazes that move in or you'll see the moon shining through the clouds.

And it'll just be this moment that really makes you stop and appreciate it. And this game almost makes me happy that there's a photo mode. I never take photos in any video game. I never really take photos in real life for that matter. but I almost wanted to in this game just because it's kind of a combination of the technical feat, which I think in the last Killzone game, Kill Zone Shadowfall, there were really varied environments and you'd go from like an ice environment to a jungle environment. And they really carried that over into this game where the map is enormous.

But if you go to a high point, you can see. Yeah. So far you can see if you're in a desert environment, you can see snow cap mountains in the distance. or you can see a forest in the distance, and you know that you can walk to those things, and it won't take that long. Like, I don't know what's going on geologically in this world, but you move from one climate to another very quickly. And later in the game, I think you find out why that is.

But just visually, it's striking. It really makes it feel like a vibrant world. One thing I really enjoyed, and it's a small thing, but it's these kind of small things makes you wonder why this hasn't been done or why this isn't done more honest. often is you can adjust the HUD. You can totally customize it to where, you know, you can make it so that information appears when it's needed, either when you, let's say you're going to switch weapons or switch items or when a quest is activated.

So most of the time, you can have a very, very clean screen, very clean look just staring at this, at nature, whatever landscape you're looking at. It's really immersive and it's really, really cool. I wish more games had stuff like that. Yeah. There's crafting in this game. which usually like there's no phrase. Yeah, there's no phrase you can say to drive me away more quickly than crafting.

Either in video games or in real life, in real life, I start thinking about glue sticks and scissors and paper mache and I run screaming. And it's the same in video games, but I don't find that painful at all in Horizon. It's really just sort of a means of making you aware of what your supplies are and you'll need to replenish your ammunition, but it's not a complicated process. You don't have to really go into many menus every time you can just pull up one button and hold it and it will craft new arrows or whatever. It's pretty painless. So it sort of makes you conscious of what you're carrying and you have to prepare for fights, but it's not at all in-depth system like you'd find in some

fully fledged RPGs that would probably put me off. Yeah, I'm waiting for that game that really gets crafting. I mean, this is like the simplified version of crafting, right? It gives you the shows you the ingredients, what you need to make a particular thing. Everything is clearly marked in the world what it is. Every time you kill a robot dinosaur, gives you certain resources, and you can use those as you wish. There are vendors scattered throughout the world that you can buy stuff from if you need to do that. But I'm waiting for a game to really get crafting right in the sense of what it would be like in real life to be like, I'm going to make an arrow. So like you can just snap a twig like off any tree and some of them are different sizes and like and where you could really improvise and put stuff together in ways where it might work.

It might not work and you need to figure it out. I hope that happens one day. That's just me. That's an aside. That's just me speaking out loud. I usually do hate crafting as well. But this is, they make it as they make it as simple as it can possibly be in this game. Yeah.

And if you're wary of diving into this thing because you've been playing other. games like it and you know it's going to take all your time and you've just had enough of these mechanics. I just think there's enough originality here that you won't mind it. It's a fresh take on all of those things. So if you're sick of climbing towers in shadows of mortar or Assassin's Creed to unlock parts of the map and there are 30 of them on every section of the map, well, in this game, there are really only a handful and they're not just static towers. They are giant brontosaurus like dinosaurs that you have to scale in different ways. And it's a new challenge every time. And it's much better looking and it's much more dynamic. And that's just an example of

how this game kind of takes those conventions, but puts a new fresh coat of paint on it so that you don't feel like you're playing the same old thing. And if you're tired of the same gruff action hero protagonist, Aloi is a refreshing change. She is a very capable, independent young woman. This is a world populated by people of every race and color and creed. So just in terms of the protagonists you're spending all this time with, it's a nice change from the silent male assassin model. And the collectibles are not out of hand. I don't feel pressured. I mean, there are collectibles that I'm not even aware of, really. Yeah, I'd say that I'm not aware of probably 98% of the collectibles. I think I have two or three

maybe. And that's okay. And the game doesn't really force that on you. it's not going to be like collecting feathers or whatever in Assassin's Creed where they're just littered everywhere and they're cluttering the map. Like they're there. You can go exploring for them. There's always kind of a clear payoff for collecting those things. Like you know why you're going to get them. There's some, the game sort of helpfully divides all of your chores into errands and main quests and side quests so that you know whether something is actually important or whether you can just let it slide and what's going to progress the story and what isn't. And so you always know, like, well, I can go hunting for this thing and I will get this item or this

weapon and maybe that will be worth it. Whereas in other games, you're collecting things just sort of hoping that there's a cool payoff at the end and there usually isn't and you're mad at yourself as soon as you move on to the next game that you compulsively spent all that time collecting those things for no reason. So I never feel like I'm doing something just out of obligation in this game. It's driven by a curiosity. I want to find out more about the world. And I do find it more compelling when I'm just out in the wilderness on my own, exploring the ruins of the ancient civilization or encountering new creatures. When you're in the cities and you're fighting humans or you're doing human-driven stories

that are kind of tangential to the main plot and the mysteries, that can drag a bit, I find. But that's when you really feel like you're, okay, I've done this. is what I've done before. It's really when you're when you're out in the wild and the dinosaurs are grazing, I guess, why they graze. I'm not quite sure, but they do graze. You know, and that's when the game is just really, really cool. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm still really enjoying and I'm definitely going to finish this game and would recommend it to anyone. And there's some repetition in the mission types. You know, they're sort of go here and kill this and report back and there are these telltale Batman game style investigations of crime

scenes where you're tracking people who fled from a campsite over and over. And so it reuses those things to a certain extent. But on the whole, I have not felt really a lull throughout my time with this game. And our problem is just that games are too long. Games are too long. Games are too long. This is a problem. This game is so, for freaking long. It is. But we have to draw a distinction, I think, between games that are too long for us because they don't fit into our lives and because there are other games we want to play and games that are just padded so that you feel like you're getting the same amount of game in a much longer game. I don't feel that way with this. I don't feel like the experience is being artificially extended to pad the playtime. There is just a ton of stuff to see and a ton of content. And it's all pretty compelling. And so I guess the problem is really just the stage of life and career and the release schedule right now where I know that Zelda is looming as I'm trying to finish this game. And Ghost Recon is coming out.

Ghost Recon. Yeah. I mean, I'm getting emails from Ubisoft PR about, you know, massive open world responsive environment. And I'm just like, oh, not another one. how am I ever going to find time for this? So that's our problem, I guess. Like if we were at a different stage of life where we had more free time and maybe less disposable income and we knew that we were going to have a ton of time to play a game and that maybe

we could only afford one game, this would be a bounty. We could play this game for weeks. And now I kind of want the same. I basically want less bang for my buck. Like I want the same experience, but less of it, which... I want AAA graphics, AAA mechanics, this kind of well-crafted progression system. But I want it in a four to six-hour story, if that's possible. Yeah.

And maybe a multiplayer thing, but it's not like super important because I have my multiplayer games. Yeah, it's like I wish that would happen. Yeah. And I don't know if that makes economic sense for developers if you're going to go to all the trouble of making this engine and designing these creatures and building this world. Obviously, you want to fill it up with stuff. And other people who want a really long game will complain if they spend $60 on a AAA game and then they're finished in five hours, whereas that's kind of what I crave.

But again, that's our problem, I think, more so than Horizon's problem. Here's an interesting thought problem. Could you, is it possible to finish, let's say, every AAA slash popular medium indie game that is released in a in a single year is it possible to fit not to 100 percent but just like the main quests like the year witcher was released i think what else came out yeah like could you have finished all of witcher and and metal gear and you know like did you finish final fantasy no i've been waiting i've been waiting because they're updating it and they're tweaking it constantly which gives me an excuse to wait like maybe if i wait it'll be a better experience but that's just that's my rationalization

for why I don't have to finish that right now and I can move on to something else. So I don't think you could while having a life and a career. I don't think you could do it. Stop playing basketball for a little while, guys. Yeah. Stop doing everything else. Get mono. Yeah.

Get mono. Stop produce. Stop the world. Stop the internet until we can finish Horizon Zero Dawn. I'm at 18%. Yeah. I don't know how many hours I've sunk into this thing. but I think I'm more than halfway through it, at least not in terms of completion percentage,

but in terms of plot. But I'm looking forward to the rest. I'm still compelled to play. I'm going to grind down the main missions this weekend. Life is not long enough. It is not. All right. This segment is long enough now.

We can stop talking about Horizon Zero done. Again, we're both liking it. If you have a PS4, that's the only option to play this game currently. So if you have one, we recommend it. And we will be right back after a quick break to talk to Luke Plunkett about being afraid. Some people still don't get podcasts. What's out there and how to listen. You can help change that with one click.

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All right. So we are back and we are joined now by Luke Plunkett, Kotaku editor and self-proclaimed video game coward. Hello, Luke. Hi, guys. How's it going? It's going okay. And you wrote a couple of years ago in a piece of Kotaku that sometimes you feel like you're the only person on the internet who literally cannot play a scary video game. And you are not.

Let me assure you, you are talking to at least one other such person right now. And I wanted to explore the dimensions of your video game fear because I know that you were recently attempting to play Resident Evil 7. So you are a braver man than I just are making the attempt. I think attempt is being very generous for how far I got in that game before I threw it out the window. Wait, how far did you get? You got in the house. I got in the house. I got to the part where the dad cuts your leg off and then you kind of stitch it.

that's not bad and I was like no that's it that's that's I'm done this is good this is good but what made you think that you could do it because I didn't even I know I can't play Resident Evil 7 I was not even going to make the attempt but you tried do you just periodically see if you have developed a backbone or what is it I've never found Resident Evil games scary like I love Resident Evil 4 but that was like an action game it's like a shooter and so I'm like, that's fine. Resident Evil 5 was also a shooter. I'll be fine. This is fine. I didn't play six, but I heard it was terrible. So this is fine. I'll just play Resident Evil. It's first person. It'll be a shooter. I'm fine. This is fine. And then I'm about 15 minutes into it.

and I started thinking, I'm not fine at all. I'm not fine. There's lots of dark spaces and noises coming out of it and everything's really slow and they're doing camera tricks that are designed to scare the crap out of me. And yeah, so I'm quite proud of myself I got as far as I did. I didn't bail at that point because that point itself was that scary, but it was just sort of, I can see where this is going. This is, this is not for me. I'm going to go and play something else. So what have you tried to cope with this fear? Because your colleague, Kirk Hamilton, wrote a list of tips for people playing Resident Evil 7 or horror games in general for people who are scared by those games to get by. And you tweeted a picture of yourself playing basically

your setup in broad daylight. So what are you? workarounds, how do you try to trick yourself into playing one of these games? I don't play these games. That's how I, that's how I, that's how I, that's about the extent of it. I found none of that stuff works for me. I think the thing that I found writing that piece, well, writing that piece originally for alien isolation, because I had a similar problem with that game is it doesn't matter if I've got the sound turned down, if I've got the lights on, if the windows open, what time of that sort of mattered because video games are sort of so especially those kind of first person games they're so immersive that I kind of tune out the external factors anyway so none of that sort

of stuff ever seemed to work for me so I don't cope I don't try and cope I just accept I have personal limitations and I play video games accordingly where did this particular phobia originate was there a moment was there a game where you were like me oh man I can't I can't do scary games or was it did you start with the movies? I don't watch horror movies, so it's related. And I think one of the things of sort of

being in the job that I'm in now and sort of in a position to sort of try and put my feelings down on papers sort of help me self-diagnose some of my issues with horror stuff. And I think what I wrote in the alien isolation and Resident Evil post was that I just don't get that. A lot of people I know sort of get that rush,

that's sort of this sort of euphoric feeling from watching a horror movie. you're playing a horror game where there's some body chemical thing going on where they'll feel scared and then they'll get this rush of adrenaline and then that'll make them feel great and exciting and stuff. And I just never get that. I get the dread and I get the sort of negative side effects and I never get the payoff. I never get the, yeah, this is great. I just get the bad stuff and it really sucks. The first time I noticed it sort of really noticed it was Half-Life. There's a sequence, not the whole game, there's just one part of Half-Life where you have to

jump under the water and there's a and there's that you know piranha shark thing sort of and the water's really cloudy so you can't see it and and eventually just comes out of nowhere and you know can kill you in a couple of bites and that used to that I had serious problems getting past that part in the game and that's what I's that's the first thing I can remember you know sort of feeling like oh man I'm having serious bodily issues finishing finishing a video game doing this point and that that sort of that similar feeling has kind like Assassin's Creed four I had the exact same problem with the diving sequences where you go underwater and there's sharks. I couldn't do it. I don't really have like a phobia of sharks, but there's something about the way they, the way the camera

works in those sort of situations and how something's coming out at you from nowhere and sort of leaving you on the edge of your seat the whole time. I was like, nope, can't do this. So I actually would sometimes get my wife to help me do the diving parts of those games. Because I'm like, I would just hide in a wreck until I ran out of air because I just couldn't do it. It strikes me now that there are a number of sequences and probably in some very famous games that I now wonder if you could have done. Did you ever, did you play Halo? Did you do, what about the flood level on Halo? Yeah, the flood, I didn't mind the flood. That's a bit different. That's sort of really

frantic. It's kind of the difference between alien and aliens is sort of how I, and you're heavily armed the whole time. Yeah, they're just sort of coming out. You relentlessly. There's nothing sort of really unknown and scary about that. I'm sure there'll be a psychologist listening to this somewhere diagnosing me as having a fear of the unknown, because it's always something coming out of me from somewhere I'm not expecting. But yeah, the flood were fine. I'm trying to think of other notable sort of big games or I've had those issues. And I really think it's the Assassin's Creed Sharks and the Half-Life Shark thing are probably the two. What about fear? the first fear had some notable jump scares and that like really scary little girl.

I didn't play it. I've only played one fear game and I can't remember whether there's the second or the third. But that was super corny. Like, oh, that wasn't like, you know, that's like. Okay, what about, what about Firewatch? Because there's kind of, did you play Firewatch this year? I did. Yeah, I reviewed, I reviewed Firewatch for.

There's a few, there's this kind of vibe that happens there where you're wondering, maybe there's a killer loose or maybe they're going to think you're the killer or is it a Yeah, that's a... It's just like very vulnerable feeling. That was, yeah, I see what you mean, because that's definitely something I felt when I was playing the game. You get this really sort of creeping sense of dread. Like, is this going to open up and go somewhere unexpected and strange,

which, you know, spoilers, ultimately it doesn't. But skip five seconds about that bit. And then I never had a problem with that, though, I guess for the same reason, because that wasn't something just coming. You know, it's not like you're walking down the steps of the watchtower and suddenly a bear jumps out from underneath you and bites a leg off or something. That was something sort of more of a narrative slow burn than sort of a more action-based

sort of instant thing that might instantly kill me at any time. Yeah, it's difficult to classify exactly what this is then, because it's not necessarily just cases where the game is trying to scare you, because you're describing some cases that people probably wouldn't describe as scary, or they're not horror games, certainly. they're just sort of tense situations or situations where you aren't completely in control or you don't know exactly what's about to befall you. And I feel the same thing when I play. Like I won't even try to play a game like Resident Evil 7.

But even if I'm playing something that isn't scary on the surface, there will be some sequence that makes me uneasy. And it's hard to see it coming. And it's kind of hard to describe exactly what fits the parameters of something that will. Scammy or not? It makes you wonder if everybody has their own little niche fears and uncertainties, like, are there people playing sports games or strategy games, you know, or dating sims? And each one of those genres may unexpectedly have its own sort of unexpected fear or something that it's preying upon psychological or you that really sort of freaks you out and makes you sort of go, oh, wow, I can't play this because it's bringing up bad memories or it's, it's tweaking something

in me that I really don't like and I feel uncomfortable about this. I'm going to it down, even though it's just a brain training puzzle game or a sports management scene or something that's seemingly harmless. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to, I mean, do you think that the medium makes it better or worse? Because in video games, at least you have the illusion of control. You could just walk into a corner of a room or something and stop whatever is happening, usually.

I guess if you're watching a scary movie, you could close your eyes or peek through your fingers or something. but you can't control it in the same way, but maybe in a video game, it's really just the illusion of control and you can't entirely escape whatever the scary situation is. So does the immersion and the fact that you are controlling the character make it worse, or do you not distinguish between games and movies or books or whatever? I guess it does, because now that I'm thinking about, I think part of the thing that I hate about the sequences that I hate in particular is that threat, where if I'm watching a movie, it's a movie, it's a linear piece,

of external entertainment. I can compartmentalize it. Like you said, you can close your eyes, you can walk out of the room, whatever, and it's going to continue on its rails, and you can come back and it's going to be doing that. A game, sort of, especially most games, where you're investing, you have a character who has health,

and if that health reaches a certain point, you know, you're dead or you have to restart or whatever. And so, it's that sense of added threat and danger that a game provides might be what's making it more scary than just watching some more passive form of entertainment, where if I'm feeling personally threatened, And like, oh man, if I die here, I'm going to have to go back to a checkpoint. I'm going to have to sit through that cutscene again. Or, you know, I am going to have to sit through the first five minutes of this really terrifying boss battle or sequence again to get to the next five minutes where I keep dying, which does not sound like something I want to do at all. Yeah. So it's really a testament to the power of video gaming then that we are so scared playing them because if it weren't such an immersive experience, then we could disengage from it more easily. And we could make our way through these games.

games, but we can't, and that's the power of video games. Or maybe even good, like, maybe even good video game design. Because there's similar, like, if you think of a game like Doom with, you know, the famous monster closets, which, you know, on paper, that's the same thing. It's something coming out at you unexpectedly that's going to threaten you. But that's so predictable in Doom. And it's something you're expecting every time you open a door or go around a corner, that it's not, it's never actually scary.

Yeah, right. I played Doom last year. I loved Doom and it was great and it was fun. And I was never scared because like everything you're encountering is some spawn from hell. And that's just what you expect coming in. Yeah, it's just the status quo. It's like this is what I'm going to be doing. I'm not going to open any doors in this video game because every single wrong of them is going to be full of demons from hell who are going to shoot things at me.

And that's fine. But yeah, it's more the ability of a design to sort of be able to create an experience where you, you are not seeing what's coming. And so it's like, fine, I know alien isolation, it's a horror game, but it might still tempt you into, okay, I'm going to walk down this bit, and this bit might be fine or it might not be fine. And it's that uncertainty that is probably testament to the good video game design in itself that might not be games themselves that are scarier,

but a good scary video game is scarier than, you know, a movie or a TV show or something like that. Alien isolation, I think, one of the things that game really did well. and it's a very imperfect game, but I think one of the things that really did well was this feeling of vulnerability where one of the mechanics is the alien shows up and you've just got to hide

and just be extremely quiet and hope it doesn't smell you or whatever sense you somehow as you cower like in a foot locker. What are the things that create that feeling of vulnerability for you in a game? I mean, obviously, isolation is a game that doesn't really have a lot of weapons.

I think Resident Evil is another game where it's like you don't really get a gun until pretty far into it. You know, you're running around with like a hammer and a screwdriver and whatnot. Is it really just a matter of not being able to defend yourself, or is it something about the controls, a clunkiness? Like I noticed in isolation and Resident Evil, there's a kind of clunkiness of the controls that seems like a design element in order to make you feel as if,

feel like you really have a mortal digital body in this game. Yeah, I think that's a massive part of it. It's that combination of, because you think horror movies are the same. Everybody's helpless. It's always a bunch of teenagers in a cabin in the woods. You know, it's never, well, sometimes it is if it's a movie like dog soldiers. But most of the time, you know, it's not a group of heavily armed guys with rocket launches and tanks who can blow up the monster in five minutes because that's not a movie.

You know, it's things like the Half Life Shark thing for me, you've got this arsenal of amazing weaponry, but you can't use them underwater. You know, Assassin's Creed, you've got these amazing like acrobatic kill moves and swords and muskets, but again, underwater you can't use them. It's just you sort of swimming awkwardly while you're in the natural environment or something else, which is going to tear you apart.

The body movement sort of adds into that as well is you're not, the thing both of those games do really well is you're not this sort of free, floating, fast sort of camera on legs is it really does make you feel like you have a vulnerable, slow, heavy human body that it's going to take time to sort of duck and, hide and go through a door and whatever because that's what an actual body does. And that's kind of,

those are often the scariest moments where it's, it's not necessarily that you're just running for a door, it's that you're sort of lumbering for a door and you have to, your arm has to actually go out and open it. And as it's opening, the thing behind you is getting closer. And it's, it's a really smart way of sort of adding to that tension that are sort of more traditional, I don't know what you'd call it animation or camera placement or whatever would, would allow. What about the, uh, the max pain baby scene? Do you remember that? One of the dream, the dream speakers in my name of the big. The umbilical, the umbilical called tightrope.

Yeah, I remember that. How could you not? Did that, that, did that frighten you at all? No, that's, see, that stuff, I don't care. Like, that stuff's, that's sort of more traditional, oh, not traditional, but that sort of play on just, oh, here's something creepy, there's babies and blood and stuff. It's like, yeah, whatever. That's just set dressing.

It's, there's nothing, you know, scary or it's threatening. It's not like you, you walk down a dark corridor and then a giant baby starts chasing you from behind. I recall the first time playing that, it's so out of character with the rest of the game that you're really like, what, you know, what is going on? I don't understand what's going. I hear this baby. The hallway is stretching and moving.

I'm not moving right. I can't see you in the hallway. This is what we were saying before about how everybody has, maybe everybody has their own niche fears. Maybe you're just really scared of babies. It might be in. Unexpected babies in the dark. Maybe surprise babies is your, like, secret fear in life. I don't know whether you've seen the Black Mirror episode playtest, and I don't know whether you have attempted to play VR horror or whether you would.

I assume Luke can't wait to play VR hard. Yeah, like, come on, I can't even play Resident Evil with the lights on. I'm definitely not going to put something on my head and be sucked directly into a horror universe. No sex. Like, have you tried VR in any capacity? Like, I'm curious about whether. I've done VR, you know, with a bunch of stuff, but. And does it enhance this feeling at all with a regular game?

Like, would it make you more likely to be scared? Or would it only enhance the fear in a game that would already scare you? Yeah, I know what's going to happen. I can see the road laid out ahead of me. Like, every VR thing I've done has been amazing because it's, you know, even with the limitations of the visuals or whatever, it still sucked me right into being, like even the, you know, the original.

rollercoaster demo for the yeah yeah that like that made me a bit like a bit a bit sick as it dips and stuff because it's it's tricking your eyes into thinking you're actually on so i totally sympathize with those youtube videos of like the old russian dudes falling off their chairs because they're they're doing that demo because they like can't handle it because i'm i felt you know a little ill going down that that's fine i can see what would happen if i played a game like resident evil in and it's like nope i'm not even going to like don't put it near me i don't even want to try this for academic argument's sake i'm just nope nope nope And one of your other colleagues, Gita Jackson, she wrote a piece for Kataku because she has the same sort of phobia and she just did Let's Play's as a way of experiencing Resident Evil 7.

She just watched other people play it on YouTube. And I don't think she found it quite as satisfying an experience as someone who likes a horror game might like actually playing a horror game. But she was able to make it through it. Does that have any appeal to you or do you not see the appeal of watching? someone else play a game that you can't play yourself? I see the appeal if you were invested in the narrative. If I thought, oh, I would love to see what happens to this zombie hillbilly family. I can't wait to see the twists and turns of, you know, who comes out on top and are they actually, you know, is there a twist?

I didn't care in Resident Evil, so I didn't bother. But, you know, I can see if there's a game, like Alien Isolation I watched footage of. Because the thing that really sad to me about that is I love, there's so many things about alien isolation that I loved. I love the world building. I love the attention to detail. in all the sci-fi design. I love that universe. So I thought the opportunity to sort of walk around everything at a ground level was

amazing. And then I just couldn't handle the actual core component of the game. So I didn't actually get to experience much of that. But I've seen through watching, you know, I didn't sit and watch it the whole story, but I have seen other YouTube videos of other parts of isolation where I'm like, oh, man, that was cool. I wish I'd got that far because I could have walked around and press play on that tape player or looked, you know, looked on that piece of poster design.

or something else. So yeah, I can say that. I can, it's not necessarily for me, but I can totally say why other people can sort of soften the blow of horror by living vicariously through someone else's horror. Yeah. What about Minecraft survival mode at night when the monsters come out? Yeah, that's, it's tolerable.

I can handle it. Wow. But there is a level of fear. There is. I think it's. If you've got one is just normal every day, you're walking down the sidewalk. and you expect nothing to happen.

And five is, I have to turn this off now. Where would Minecraft the night cycle be? Oh, probably three and a half? Are we going halves? Can I go halves? Three and a half. It's the video game rating scale. It's three and a half.

It means it's good. Yeah, I think, I don't know what it is. The premise of that is scary because there's the, you know, the sound effects, there's the survival element of it, which is sort of goes back. again to that vulnerability and the legacy of death. There's like a frantic. There's a thing that happens, I think, first few times I played Minecraft and survival

mode like that, where you're just, you see that the sun is setting and you're thinking, I got to build a fortress now. I got to build a shelter. And I got to hide in this hole in the ground. Are they going to kill me? And that, you know, it was exciting. Yeah, it is. It's not scary, though, because they're just boxes.

I think that's what I understand. undermines Minecraft. It gets the sensation there. And then it's like, oh, no, there's noises and forts. And then you actually look out at the zombies. It's like, oh, and these are just boxes. Like, it's fine. So were you totally fear-free, like in the 8-bit era, 16-bit era? Like, was it only when realism achieved a certain level that this fear kicked in? I'm trying to think. I remember the Jurassic Park Super Nintendo game was scary. Intentionally so. Because you know how when you go inside in that game? It's got the Zelda, like, When you go inside, it's that first person mode and it's really constricted.

It gives you that goggle sort of vision, which, you know, I'm self-dagnosing again, but that's the same issue I have with the other games where it's that lack of peripheral vision and something coming out at you from nowhere. That game sort of amplifies it. And it was, you know, it's harmless now. I'd be fine playing it now. But I remember being, you know, a kid and thinking, yeah, this is not cool. I want to get back outside in the sun where the dinosaurs are like cute, like cute cartoon

dinosaurs and I can zap, not ones that are, you know, breathing down the back of my neck every time I turn around a corner. I feel like with me, this complex kind of came from childhood where, like, I was in one of those households where, like, in order to play games, you would have to do 10 other things to, like, get the gaming time. And I never had a TV in my room or anything. So I was, like, constantly sneaking games when I was supposed to be, I don't know, practicing piano or, like, doing extra homework or something.

there was always like something I was supposed to be doing instead. So there was always this meta game where I was like trying to play the game and at the same time listening to see if someone was going to come and catch me playing games when I wasn't supposed to. And so it kind of amplified whatever I was feeling in the game at that time. And I feel like that never completely left me. I was scarred for life. Thanks, Mom. I feel like I feel like you should be lying on a leather couch telling us. Telling it.

As an aside, I think that that childhood meta game of like hiding things from your parents is underrated as like a developmental tool. You know, like hiding illicit materials shows problem solving skills that you're going to need later in life. And I for, I really, I 100% truly believe that. Like learning how to cover your tracks in a household as a child is absolutely needed. needed, needed skills for an adult life. So if someone like, you know, if there's the famous Miyamoto inspiration for Zelda is, you know,

playing outside Barry's house, he's saying other people's inspiration can be making sure their parents never found the cigarettes in the bottom of their underpants. No, but like, you know, like, it's like, as a parent, like you can't, you can't 100% expect a child when you say, like, don't look at bad stuff on the internet to actually do it. But what you're hoping that you're doing, I think, is instilling the feeling that this is, you don't want to be caught looking at bad stuff on the internet. So figure out how no one will ever find out. This would be a good horror game. I think so.

Playing an 11-year-old child in 2017. Like trying to figure out finding browsing. With an iPad, yep. Yeah. Started as a video game podcast, turned into a parenting podcast. You never know what's going to happen here. It's incognito mode. We can collect the royalties from it later.

All right. Luke, you're in Canberra, right? I am, yes. Yeah, speaking of sharks and underwater sequences, I went snorkeling in Canberra once years ago, and I couldn't do it. I had to go back to the boat because, like, the water was so deep, and it was murky, and there are sharks, and I couldn't see. It was like the Great Barrier Reef area.

Oh, okay. Yep. I don't know if you're even still allowed to do that, but at the time you were, I was just like, I could see so deep into the water and it was unclear what lurked there. And it was like half-life and Assassin's Creed in real life. I had to go back to the boat. So beware of the actual water. Yep.

I am. I live safely inland and I go about 10 meters out into the beach every time I go. And that's about it. Well, it's an Australia, it's one of the world's leaders in shark attacks, isn't it? Probably. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't know that, but I'll say short.

There's a lot of water. There's a lot of sharks in that water. We are 100% coastline, so I am 100% confident that there are a lot of sharks out there. All right. You can find Luke on Twitter at Luke Plunkett. I'm glad that we all got to do this group therapy slash counseling session. He has a pussies. We are not alone.

You wait till everyone saying goodbye to slip that in. Thank you. No, I did get scared during Resident Evil, as I mentioned before. I need to stop at one point. Yeah. Well, if you didn't, it wouldn't be working, right? Yeah. That's what it's designed to do.

Just works too well in my case and Luke's case. All right. Thanks, Luke. Thanks, guys. Okay, so that will do it. End of our first episode on our own home on iTunes. Again, we did it. Subscribe if you haven't.

Rate and review. Tell your friends. And we will be back next week. We'll be talking about the switch. I'm waiting for the door. Mr. Mailman, bring me a switch. I'll see you at the top of the tall neck.