From one of my students, a blog-based presentation on music in horror games.
Regardless, safety in ARG’s may not necessarily diminish the game’s terror-effects.
Many horror movies and games are based upon the principles of Freud’s theory of The Uncanny, or what makes something scary (Helene Cixous, a literary critic, gives an advanced yet interesting overview of the topic). ”The Uncanny,” can include subjects such as haunted houses, ghosts, dolls, ‘animatrons,’ etc., and Allyssa discusses this further in her Gaming Culture Presentation. For instance, in the Konami game Silent Hill 2 (2001), the presence of a ‘double’ is a very uncanny concept because a double is familiar yet strange. Something is just… off.
There’s something wrong with Maria…In the following clip, the main character, James, meets Maria, a double of his deceased wife, Mary.
In the following clip, the main character, James, meets Maria, a double of his deceased wife, Mary. There is something uncanny about “Maria”… isn’t there?
In more recent years, movies and Literature aren’t the only media in which “The Uncanny” can be seen. Art forms, as some would say, video games like Silent Hill belong in the horror genre as much as do movies like The Exorcist and Psycho. The cultural acceptance of video games as transmitters and interactive analyzers of the most horrifying aspects of human life have become prominent in games like Silent Hill.
