This was creepy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKSbo0VpURg
Let's just say it starts with "Excuse the gloom..."
Jeez, I still find it creepy, lol
Shares some musical qualities with The Shining - Rocky Mountains: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYrIkJNsNyM
Suspiria also comes to mind as, well, something special http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJUaCAIxSk4

Although, I do prefer the orientation towards general role playing rather than a scare / horror based one.
But still, there is nothing that defines scare / horror as good as music and sound.
Turn off visual and it can still be scary. Turn off music and sound, and you have nothing.

This is probably a result of the "bright and jolly" atmosphere in Oblivion, like "Oh, Look at me, I'm skipping around the enchanted forest. picking flowers and killing goblins.... and there are no more flowers"

the first time i saw one of those faceless sixth house servants was very cool. i like how they progressed and you could see the changes from one stage to another.

This. Morrowind's atmosphere and world was a bit darker than Oblivion's.

Word.


I think it also has to do with the deferent leveling systems.

In Oblivion, dungeons were basically scaled, well light (I like being able to see, but as someone described, they were “glowy”), and you knew right where to go.

In Morrowind, dungeons were dark, you often weren’t sure if you were in even the right place, and if you might run into some enemies who are just way out of your league.

So you just felt a lot more out on your own, down in some ancient hole in the middle of no where.

PS: I loved Oblivion, just sayin...

I agree, maybe they could even hire the map makers from Frictional games too and totally revolutionize dungeon crawling. Who am I kidding, well be skipping through forests filled with deer and flowers while slaying rainbow dragons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M627-obxNzg

check out the trailer above -> thats just dripping with the kind of creepiness I'm hoping to see. He doesnt know whats behind the door, but he doesnt wait to find out either -> he just legs it. Would love to be so scared in some situations I whimp out completely and leave. Lighting, not knowning what awaits around the next corner, and sound effects all go a long way to building up the tension. Darkness that even your torch struggles to cut through and background noises such as screams, coupled with tension building music would create a truly engaging scare experience

If all of skyrim where like this trailer I would be truly terrified lol

Half of the reason why Morrowind's 6th House bases were creepier than Oblivion's dungeons was the lighting, as many have mentioned.

I think RobotMilk noted the other half of the difference, where you quickly learned in OB that there was nothing "out of your league" anywhere in the game. As a result, after the first couple of hours of play, nothing was really "scary" anymore. MW was different.

After a while, in MW, I knew where almost all of the spawn points were in the more settled areas, so I could see at a glance whether or not there was anything there. In fresh places, though, the element of tension was palpable, because whatever was there might be relatively harmless, or it might rip you apart in seconds. The "not knowing" was what kept it interesting. In OB, with everything scaled to your level, it didn't really matter if there was something ahead or not, you were still at least "semi-safe". I noted that in FO3, there was at least the possibility of encounters with nastier things than usual, and the random wanderings of the spawns meant that you might not find them exactly where you expected, which contributed to the sense of unease and tension. A higher number of spawn points, with a lower possibility of things spawing at each, would make things far slower to become "routine", because even if you spotted something where you expected it, there might be another something else nearby that you don't know about.

The creatures themselves contribute to the difference in tension and fear, mainly based on the "unknown". In MW, my first Level 1 character encountered some sort of miniature dinosaur while travelling from Seyda Neen to Balmora. I felt very intimidated by it, and took all sorts of precautions to sneak around it at a distance. Later, I learned that it was a tame Guar. The strange collection of Nix Hounds, Netch, Khagouti, Alits, various Kwama, and assorted Corprus creatures were all unfamiliar, and elicited a tense and fearful response when I first encountered them. I won't even go into Cliffracers. Some were deadly threats, and some were totally harmless if left alone. At first, you didn't know, and it was scary. In OB, after meeting the first few "familiar" real or standard fantasy creatures such as rats, wolves, and even trolls, it became pretty evident that the game wasn't going to "surprise" you.

Another thing about fear, not really touched on, is related to quest, specifically the quest marker. I think the removal of the quest marker would add a lot more suspense, especially during quests where you need to dungeon crawl and find a specific NPC to kill. It got boring, since it would tell you exactly where they are. I want to not know what is coming up around the next corner and this along with music and sounds, etc would really help it out.

If you want a scary dungeon in oblivion check out EBROCCA in shivering isles.

turn the brightness down on your TV so you need a torch. Its just epic.

The Shivering Isles were overall far more scary than Oblivion...

Well you know what is also scary is the random dungeon sound they had in TESII Daggerfall. I was playing Daggerfall list night again and went into Scourg Barrow in the Dragontail Mountains to find the King of Worms, and hearing those zombies moan down the hall but not knowing where they were was freaking me out, which was cool.

Or the random sounds of doors opening or closing, footsteps, wind blowing, creaking noises, scratches, water drops.... sounds like those need to be in dungeons as well as in certain exterior cells, like forests where you would hear and see leaves falling, wind whistling, wolves howling in the distance, owls hooting. Noises and sounds in a game can GREATLY enhance its scariness.

I had some scary moments in Oblivion. I have my surround sound set up and I'm running through a dungeon (the xbox version had dark dungeons when on the HD setting but the nights are still a little too bright) and all of a sudden you hear that blood curdling scream from the Wraiths behind you. That [censored] always gets to me lol.

I agree that the quest marker should be removed from quests that the quest giver doesn't give you a specific location. This happened on a few quests in Oblivion but some quests had the marker pointing to the item which wasn't needed. I think the quest marker should remain in the game but only point to a general area and not pointing to a specific npc walking down a road. I mean really...how do you know he is walking down the road right then on your map. But the quest marker makes sense on quests where the person says "Go to this cave here on your map" and then you mark it on your map and you know where to go now but it shouldn't appear on your compass.

To me the only game that has ever actually caused me any emotional reaction in terms of a frightened thrilled state was raven holm in half life 2. All other games I've played either a. lack the fundamentals of what is scary i.e. oblivion (sorry) or b. they are so gory and over done that they are no longer scary to me because the just become comical i.e. RE, L4D, mad world, ext.

Putting my finger on what exactly was so scary about raven holm to me is hard to say, but I think it has to do with while I could always kill the hoards of zombies, like any other game, I didn't fully want to because they were still innocent people controlled by head crabs who would cry out while you killed them. This creates a true feeling of helplessness as both of your only options lead to a bad outcome.

That looked awesome, and scary as hell, I agree. However, if I want to be scared, I go play a scare based game, like the one you showed. Should TES have elements from the dark? Yes, I think so. But not necessarily being based too much on the scare factor. I prefer TES to be "a little of all" than try to be "most of all". It's still the "general roleplaying" aspect that attracts me to the game.