Seriously scared the crap out of me.... Even the first part when there are no enemies around, I had no idea that there were no enemies and that whole level freaked me out. Dunwich did not scare me at all except that very first moment you get a flash of the guy before you see the ghoul. I would love more of a survival/horror feel in some of the dungeons, but certainly not all of them.

@ OP

To be scared in a game like oblivion you can't play the character like you are as strong as you are. You have to role play and act like you DO have something to lose. Turn the difficulty up if you can't role play it. Then [censored] gets serious.

It's not just monsters or creatures that make caves etc scary. What i find important aswell is the music/sounds effects. Like say: spiders that blend into the walls and all you hear is scuttling.....Like "what the [censored] is that"....where is it?,sound has a great effect in places like this.

*Edit* "Must be the wind" :biggrin:

Yeah, the no enemies was genius. Also the knocking door....

The first time I saw zombies in Oblivion they had a spook factor. And I loved how the skeletons looked.
Of course, when you see it for the millionth time its not gonna have the same effect.

The way its described this Bleak Falls sounds awesome!
I will certainly enjoy exploring it.

Practice makes perfect, try beating Doom 3 on nightmare mode and suddenly you're a superhero against such encounters - because your first instinct is to fight with whatever is available (cool and collectedly) rather than flee (which is very normal, human behaviour - but not always the correct one ^.^).

The most important practice is actually to familiarize yourself with dying (which isn't very difficult, since game death isn't even the least hazardous to your real health). Once you're past the fear of dying, you'll more likely put yourself in situations that most would presume as suicidal, but are actually less suicidal than what people usually do - because you'll succeed. And then the next encounter comes up, but that's just another notch on your blade. Its success is not related to your previous encounter.

But as I said, practice makes perfect. Failure is, thankfully, not a permanent condition. Well, it is to the people who convince themselves that they're never gonna succeed. But hey, you can't save them all xD

Yeah, those creatures were really fast and deadly, I remember catching a glimpse of a dark shadow moving really fast by the reception area, freaked me out totally. Then there's the loud banging on the door at the top of those stairs, I felt physically and mentally exhausted after completing that level.

I really hope the developers have added some major audio and visual effects to Skyrim's dungeons. (fingers crossed)

oh I don't know, oblivion had it's moments. I remember one time entering an ayleid ruin, in stealth, snuck into a large chamber, could hear a zombie or two, snuck along the edge of the room in the shadows, bow at the ready, suddenly I hear the sound of a hidden door opening, and I'm suddenly attacked from behind by 3 zombies. The wall right behind me had opened up, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

I also like the way they mentioned that there will be more traps in Skyrim dungeons, nothing startles you quite as much as being attacked by something when you're sure that there are no enemies around.

Terrifying aint no dificult just let the player know that he can and will die if he doesn t take care of his pants.
A terrifyting death can be more than just dying.
A deasease that eat you slowly and the cure is extremely dificult.
An anymation of you being eaten if the wolfes/spyders kill you.
Horror is usually more psycological than anything else, and is more eficient IF the game is able to create a bond between hi, and his caracter. IF no bond is created (game fail at imersion and interest at the same time.) then absolutely nothing will be scrary, no matter what.

As has been stated above by several, one of the key factors is save state loading... use self-discipline or a mod to make it so that you can only save once per cell entry, or once per dungeon, once per trip from one interior to the next, etc. (of course, the risk of the game CRASHING is a problem here, but hey...). If you have the prospect of losing a half and hour of progress by facing an enemy or running through a hallway full of traps, you may find it a bit more scarey.

Sound design and more emotions on the NPCs certainly could make things more scary. They said that NPCs will talk more while not stopping what they are doing, so if "good" NPCs are encountered in dark, dangerous caves... better facial expressions, voice acting, and dialogue could go a long way to making it scarier. Ghosts wailing with blood-curdling screams, actual pain and terror in the faces and sounds that NPCs and beasts make when injured and killed, more sickening sounding thuds and slash sounds for combat and traps would all go a long way.

Actually having things be DARK and it being unknown how strong your opponent will be in the pitch completely dark without a REAL light source is a major deal too. I used some mods for OB for darkness and unleveling the game, as well as mods regarding sneak and modified them myself further... and man, it is a LOT scarier when a non-leveled static enemy with no health bar is hiding in the pitch dark (use self-discipline to not overuse life detect because this too makes the game way less scarey). Think about it... if you can't see your enemy, or you can just see a faint outline against some back light, and as you sneak up, if even if you are a master of sneak, you get within 6 feet of your enemy and they may still see you if you are in front of them, so you have to try to flank them or get behind them, and when you hit them... NO HEALTH METER. Couple that with no save states, and you have a much scarier game, I assure you.

And, this thread isn't about this so I don't want to hijack it on this topic, but adding more disturbing imagery and gore to the dungeons would go a long way too. Drained corpses in spider webs, decapitated adventurers next to swinging traps, a bloody mess under a pile of rubble from a cave in, and people trapped in cages awaiting a necromancer or cultists cruel blade weeping as they hang from the ceiling. Now there's some scary for ya.

I always remembered to quickly pack pedal the moment I heard the sound of those sliding rock walls

I can remember entering one Ayleid dungeon full of undead, thought I'd be stealthy and walk slowly across the bridge to get into a better position with my bow, that was untill the bridge crumbled away under my feet and I suddenly found myself unceremoniously dumped into a pit full of zombies and skeletal warriors.

Thanks for that one Mr Ayleid architect, next time build your bridges out of something a little stronger than soft cheese!

I'm not worried about Barrow Wights, I'll just call on old Tom Bombadil, and he'll clear out the lot of them. LOL.

I made it a habbit to only save when going into a dungeon and going out, so there's at least a little penalty to death. Cause there's a penatly, there's a little fear of death, but not a fear of having to go over the last 2 hours of gameplay.

I'm actually pretty good at handling scary moments. It was just those invisible guys were an enemy I didn't see coming a mile away. FEAR had only that one type of enemy for the longest time (excluding those missle launcher bahemoths which didn't come to often and was by no means sneaky), and then boom, some invisible ninja is trying to swipe my head off. Also while I'm talking about FEAR, the blood spatter in that game was rediculous. I remember walking into a lobey of some building and the entire thing was blood. Even the ceiling which was like three or four levels high... The game didn't have the best graphics, I only picked it up on a whim last year and had never heard of it before that, but it knew how to set up an atomosphere.

I think everyone, even a seasoned scary game gamer, will have moments where they go blank and just try to get the hell away from something that's trying to kill them. There will always be people better at handling scary moments, but I dont think anyone's completely impervious if they're really into the game/movie. I know I'll probably get a little nervous if these zombie/goul things we saw in the trailer are smart about surrounding the target like they seemed to be.

One game that focused on the fear factor more than anything else (and did it tremendously well) is Bioshock. Luckily the dev's took some inspiration from it regarding the spells, but I hope they took some more aspects of it...

In Bioshock there was absolutely no consequence dying, if you died you would just return in the nearest Vita Chamber with health and a little eve (which is like magicka in TES).
Thing is, they made you forget about what happens when you die while playing the game, cause, for one thing, it had a lot of depth.
Secondly, I remember the scariest moment (among hundreds of scary moments while playing...) in Bioshock:
There was this staircase that led two floors down. I walked to it and I saw a room flooded with low water (ones that you can walk around on), it had dressing-dolls standing in different places, the room was extremely large and extremely empty besides the water and the dolls (and a window that spread along the northern wall that viewed the city the game is in - Rapture). I went forth and saw a bonus, I thought to myself that it was weird this room is so empty, I turned around and was just about to exit the room, then I noticed something strange, an ice statue of a faceless dancer stood near the exit, it wasn't there before. I looked to the side for a second to inspect the room, I looked back and she was gone. I looked around and there she was standing near the western wall, closer to me. I looked to the exit again and I saw another statue, and the more I looked around they just kept changing places until I got closer to them, looked behind me and then I saw that ice sculpture attacking, a ballet dancer with two very sharp knives. Greatest moment ever, I never met a game with Bioshock originality in horror.

Ofcourse such things won't be in TES games, but I want them to make me forget there's not much consequence to dying.

If they follow suit from Fallout 3's darker tones, (Dunwich building anyone?) then yes, I don't doubt when Bethesda say terrifying they mean bring a spare pair of underwear.

The spiders already scare the bejesus out of me. :yucky:

Yeah, Morrowind did have a few freaky scary places. The lighting and sound effects added to it.
The spider in the Skyrim trailer didn't look scary at all, neither did any of the other places.
There were a few pics of Skyrim on Bethesda's studio wall though that looked creepy.

I never hesitated in Morrowind, as the enemies were slow, stupid and predictable. They could not even never leave the cells they were in.
I just ran through tombs and slayed the undead inhabitants like nothing.

In Oblivion on the other hand, the mere sight of a zombie's tottering walk was creepy. In some dungeons they even surprised me when hidden dorrs were opened and 4 zombies comes out. Even though I knew that they were quite useless and could never hope to kill me, they were at least a little bit terrifying. The same can be said with many other creatures in Oblivion. I guess it's their patrolling and more realistic looks that make me more scared of them than Morrowind's enemies.

EDIT: Also, Oblivion has that eerie dungeon music while Morrowind just continues with the exploration music when you enter a dungeon. The dungeons were also almost always illuminated in Morrowind, while the dungeons in Oblivion were darker and filled with that fog, which added to the creepy-factor.

On that note. Yes. Anything that relates to Aliens or original PC AVP gameplay is a must for a first-person game looking for "the fear factor".



Perfect reference. Doom 3 scared the crap out of me and my cousin. And the crazy thing is...whichever one of us was watching the other one play would actually be MORE terrified. That game knew how to set the atmosphere, and it forced you to experience the immersion, no matter how hard you tried to keep cool.

As for Bleak Falls Barrow, it is described by OXM as having more traps and puzzles, with an Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade vibe. To me, the environmental traps and dangers were always the scariest part of OB's dungeons, aside from facing enemies who you could not beat and having to run for your life. I trust Bethesda in saying it will be scary, but I don't expect it to be as scary as "scary games". Hopefully I will be surprised.

Funny thing is that not only the creatures were slow with every action they took, but so were you that's why it was balanced pretty good to make you still feel scared in some places.

And sorry, Oblivion felt a bit regular to me in this aspect, it didn't feel intense as Morrowind's horror parts.