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Areym said:
care to elaborate on that? |
Sure...basically, the design of PT was purposely obtuse. You as a player weren't really supposed to know what was going on and what you were supposed to be doing and to go even further, half of the "goals" were just pixel hunting. Now, as a Playable Teaser, which is essentially marketing material, that can work. It gets the player interested in the game and it increases communication on forums and whatnot. But would that be good for a game? It was stated that a lot of the teaser was supposed to be the interactions between players online trying to figure everyhing out and that they expected it to take two weeks for someone to beat it.
That model does not work for a horror game. Its cool at first, and the presentation for PT was great, and you could have fun if you didn't want to go all the way, but a horror game that basically requires you to go onto message boards or hunt for pixels for hours on end would not work (imo). A lot of people complain about when horror games force other NPC on you, breaking the solidarity and aloneness that horror games give you...well PT shoves the entire internet at you. That isn't exactly ideal for immersion. It might work for some experimental social game (maybe on mobile or something), but as a horror game, it breaks the core rules of the genre.
It worked in PT because it was a small chunk and you could see creepy stuff by just walking around for half an hour, but make it bigger or even a part of a bigger experience and it just isn't self contained enough to work. It would need a much more intuitive "goal" system which would lead the player more, because I'll tell you, pixel hunting sucks (see: Metroid: Other M's find the furball or the archaic bullshit of old point and click games) and walkthroughs destroy immersion (I don't know about you, but whenever I'm forced to play a walkthrough, the game loses a little something...).
