Recently there have been a handful of previews for Shinji Mikami's new survival horror game The Evil Within. There have been very mixed reactions, with most critics commenting on how the game seems to mix classic survival aspects with a lot of scripted scene shifting that almost feels like an entirely different game. One preview very specifically mentioned not liking how he was unable to fully explore an area after the game decided to whisk him away to some other location once he hit a specific trigger. These types of comments made me think about a film that many consider to be the greatest example of horror fiction ever created, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.Bare with me as I explain what it is that makes The Shining such a masterful piece of horror.

There have obviously been dozens, if not hundreds of interpretations of The Shining over the years. What makes the film so great, though, is that it actively defies any and every attempt to explain it. No matter how you try to explain any aspect of it, there will be at least one scene, or one line that contradicts that theory. To give an example, almost everyone believes by the end of the film that Danny's finger friend Tony is some sort of supernatural entity. The main argument for this is that if Tony did not exist then how would Dick (the black chef that Danny speaks to at the beginning of the film) know that the family was in trouble? The thing is that people merely assume that Dick knows the family is in trouble. At no point in time does Dick actually claim he is trying to rescue the family. People tend to assume he is hiding his psychic link from people, but not once does Dick actually admit to having any sort of link with Danny, and he is killed as soon as he gets to the hotel. Therefore the entire supernatural element of the film can be explained away very simply by saying that there is never anything beyond a hint that anything supernatural is occurring in the hotel. The conclusions audiences draw from the film are based on similar sequences in other pieces of fiction. Kubrick uses those assumptions to draw the audience into making possibly false conclusions.

Another famous example are the twins seen throughout the film. Many assume these twins are the ghosts of the murdered daughters mentioned earlier in the film, but again this is Kubrick using people's expectations against them. The murdered daughters are very specifically mentioned as being different ages. Therefore they could not be twins. Virtually everything you think you know about The Shining can be deconstructed in this way. Did Jack nearly strangle his son to death? Plenty of people can point to very specific reasons why he did or didn't. Yet every single one of those reasons on both sides of the argument come from assumptions people make that are never confirmed or denied in the film itself.

It isn't only the story that is filled with contradictions upon closer inspection. The very hotel the movie takes place in makes no sense whatsoever from a purely physical perspective. Even the most cursory examination of the possible layout of the hotel shows a building that defies the realms of physical possibility. Rooms seem to overlap one another. Hallways lead to nowhere. In the opening of the film guests come and go from the shot to and from halls and rooms that simply can't exist. And even when you think you have something figured out, Kubrick will purposefully place a room in a spot that is so obviously incorrect that it simply cannot be a mistake. The Torrance's room, for example, somehow has a Window leading to the front of the hotel when the door that leads into the room is off a hallway that seems to be in the back of the hotel. Many claim that it is a goof that there is snow outside the window yet no snow is shown from the inside at the end of the film(this is even listed under the goofs section on IMDB). This is not a mistake. It is Kubrick's way of making something that does not make sense make even less sense.

Maybe the scene that most defies explanation is the scene where Jack is locked in a pantry at the end of the film. Some say that this scene is the undeniable confirmation that someone or something else exists in the hotel beyond Jack and his family. Yet the room he is locked in is a room that doesn't seem possible. At the beginning of the film Dick shows the family the pantry in the kitchen and this pantry's door is located on the corner of the room. Yet the pantry Jack is locked in at the end (a different pantry) is located on the exact same corner. The door is just on a different wall. So the pantry he is locked in, again, cannot actually exist. There is simply no way to explain this climactic scene. Kubrick seems to have ended the film intentionally with a scene that defies every explanation of the film one could come up with up to this point.

So what does all this have to do with games and The Evil Within? Well in a game players expect a set of rules that remain largely unbroken throughout the course of the game. If something works once then it should work again. They expect a map of a location to not only make sense, but be accurate and useful as well. Yet the scariest thing for most people is the fear of the unknown. It is the basis behind religion, behind science. We as a species demand to understand the world around us. We want an explanation. We want an answer, and we would prefer some sort of nonsensical magic to no explanation at all. And games, even horror ones, tend to give us this information. And for good reason. Pacing is the most important aspect of a horror film or horror game. And pacing is ruined entirely if the player cannot figure out what to do or where to go. And that right there is the basis for why horror games seemingly have to fail. To be truly scary a game must not follow its own rules. Yet by not following its own rules the game will almost certainly cause a player to lose his way, therefore ruining the tension and pacing that are so important to horror stories.

I don't know how to solve this problem as it is a problem that seems inherent to the ways games are made. But I would be interested to see a developer successfully break the rules of a game consistently without hindering the pacing.

You can, in fact, come up with different ways to implement the same game mechanics. Hello, Half-Life 2, which even includes the famous Ravenholm example. "Unexpectedness" is probably what you're looking for here.

I'm not a horror aficionado but it seems like you misunderstand what makes something scary. Yes, we fear the unknown, but we don't fear unknown game mechanics and we sure as hell don't fear breaking rules.

Er, I'd say pacing is pretty important across most genres and isn't restricted to horror. Getting stuck on a puzzle or combat scenario in a puzzle/action game can ruin it just as much as it can a horror game. Plus, you seem to be ignoring all of the beloved horror games out there with your comment of ''And that right there is the basis for why horror games seemingly have to fail'', as if no horror game has actually in fact 'succeeded'.

As for the complaints referring to how you may accidentally be forced into the next area without any opportunity to return, I think that works to the game's favour. The game's world is supposed be a nightmarish and unpredictable one, and given that horror games are meant to induce a feeling of vulnerability in the player, having one accidentally move you onto a new area without having explored the previous location you were in and cleaning it of its supplies is brilliant. Plus, it'll force you to adapt -- which as I've mentioned in the past is what I consider to be a primary gameplay element of survival horror.

I also like from what I'm hearing about a type of enemy that'll sporadically show up to chase you -- an enemy that is in fact invulnerable at that. Which I'm sure is also going to be divisive, too :P But hey, that's great! Because that's what survival horror is supposed to be. It's not a mass-market appeal ''Everybody's a winner!'' sort of sub-genre; it's supposed to be brutal and hardcore. But that said, the game will have multiple difficulty settings so, I'm sure it's not going to be completely impenetrable or anything like that. It's apparently much slower than RE4 at that; a lot more animation priority with regards to firing speed & reloading ect., though of course the game may also feature an upgrades tree.

Frankly the more I've been hearing about this game the more excited I get... Though that excitement is a double-edged sword of course, and I'm still really uneasy as to whether it'll be able to deliver on my increasingly high expectations. I'm trying to reign my excitement as much as I can and it's part of why I've been intentionally trying to ignore a lot of the video content out there... but, man this game's got me good. Still, I'm expecting this game to get a lot of mixed review scores in any case. Really curious to see what Jim Sterling'll think of it most importantly, as regarding horror games he seems like the one who shares my tastes. I wonder who'll be reviewing it for GB, if anyone. I guess it would pretty much have to be between Alex or Patrick at this point.

hmmmmm you know, I know what you saying, but I do think a great deal of this is really some things the writers cannot tell about their own experences at the preview event. How they might find the PR people annoying, or how they keep seeing bugs and a PR handler tells them "don't mention that." The process of getting a preview and managing with PR not to offend them. Because Evil Within is still somewhat confusing idea "it's the new Resident Evil 4" or "it's like Outlast".

But yeah, I know what you mean using the Shinning reference, because using that as a preview could easily reacted as poor storytelling compared to the over 30 years of analysis of the films. Also, not everyone likes the same thing in horror, my sister and her husband adore the new Paranormal Activity films because A. They love renovating older homes, so these films are somewhat furniture and design ideas for them and B. they have a new baby and are getting cheap thrills out of..... not me, I love horror when it's like Vincent Price in Abominable Dr Phibes or Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee Hammer horror films or seeing Gremlins puppets. I have a quota of puppets, effects work, busty ladies and hammy actors over the top.

Horror is so subjective.

@yummylee: You are absolutely right about pacing, but I think it is especially important in a horror game compared to other games. Since horror is all about creating a specific feeling, it's especially important to keep the level of tension high. Wandering around lost sucks in every game, but I don't think it ruins the experience nearly as much as it can with horror. Mind you there are some other examples of games where getting lost or stuck can really ruin things. Highly scripted action games always end up having at least one sequence ruined for me when I can't figure out what to do and keep dying over and over.

I agree with you about teleporting people around without letting them explore an area. I think that is a great way to keep people on their toes and not let them get into a groove. The enemy that chases you I'm sure will work just as well as it does in Amnesia or Outlast. I guess there have been a lot of acclaimed horror games over the years but the vast majority of them focus on cheap jump scares not the deeper psychological horror that defines the best pieces of horror fiction. And the games that do focus on those elements like Silent Hill tend to overdo things. They mistake gore and disturbing imagery for disturbing story telling. I have been terrified by games before, mainly Frictional's stuff and the games inspired by them, but they are games that are horrifying in the moment. They aren't the type of horror that sticks with you long after the lights turn on. Those are the types of horror stories I think games are missing.

@believer258: I'm not sure I'm following you with the Half Life 2 comment. Ravenholm is a bit scary simply due to the sound design and art direction but Half Life 2 isn't a horror game and the Ravenholm level doesn't do any of the things I was talking about. It's an incredible level, mind you, but I don't see what you are getting at exactly.

Man this is what I'm hoping for the most. I haven't been scared by a game or a movie in a long time, and I love games that make you feel helpless, because that's truly fighting, not being able to do anything other than running. With games like resident evil 6(as fun as they were ignoring the glaring issues), no enemy was truly indestructible, hell even the giant mech/zombie/nemesis-knock-off, who chased you for a good majority of a single campaign, could be hurt by fists all of a sudden....

Well, it's been a while, and I've read the book, seen the miniseries, and watched the movie (and actually liked the movie the least of the 3, and found it the least scary.) I'm pretty sure Dick tells Danny about "the shine" and knows about it because he also has it. If he doesn't do that in the movie, he definitely does in the book.

I'm pretty sure that every single issue you bring up about the film is addressed in the book, and frankly, most of them seem to be caused by the limitations of the medium. The one thing that really sets the film apart from the other two versions of the story is that it opts to trade out Jack's redemptive arc in favor of nihilism, which can be scary in its own way, I suppose.

Anyway, I agree that the best horror games are ones that feel mysterious even after completion. The original Silent Hill continued to scare me for years because I just couldn't make sense of it. There's also lots of impossible architecture and the "normal" world/otherworld transitions were endlessly unnerving.

And while I didn't think Alan Wake itself was particularly scary, the ending was EXACTLY the kind of end that I want from a horror game. It's not immediately apparent what's happened (Mr. Scratch is introduced in like the last fucking minute of the game!), but it does seem to adhere to some internal logic. The subsequent DLCs ruined that ending of course.

It's funny you mention Silent Hill, because of all the games I've played Silent Hill 2 became the one that came closest to a 'Shining-like experience' to me. The gore was just part of that world you as a player was trapped in and I even have a hard time deciding which part of the world was more disturbing; the other world with many demons, rust, blood and chains or the abandoned town.

For me Outlast and Amnesia felt like a more 'cheap' horror experience, while SH2 really altered my mood overall when I played it. Even after I put down the controller and turned on the lights (yea, I play those games like that...) I felt kind of down and miserable.
But I totally agree horror games could be so much better and deeper. I also have a feeling that in the case of The Evil Within the game really will shine when you play it as a whole instead of just the pieces that were shown to the press (at least I hope this is the case!).