Scriptscares
There's a sequence fairly early in the Marine's campaign in AvP 2010 where you go to open a door and surprise! there's an Alien waiting on the other side, thirsting for blood. Here's what I did the very first time I got to this sequence:
I took my hands away from the controls, leaned back into my chair with my arms crossed, and while my character desperately scrabbled to survive I thought to myself BORED.
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This is perfectly representative of my typical response to attempted scriptscares. Generally, it is obvious that a scriptscare is a scriptscare rather than a genuine moment of danger, which is to say absolutely nothing will come of it even if I literally take my hands away from the controls, and therefore there is nothing to be afraid of.
Scriptscares are one of the more blatant examples of video games attempting to imitate movies and in the process undercutting themselves. In a movie, having a character nearly get grabbed and eaten by the monster is tense and frightening -assuming you're already invested and other bare minimum competency stuff- because holy crap that was a close call.
In a video game, though, there is a clear and obvious distinction between Gameplay (ie The Stuff That Has Actual Consequences) and Everything Else. (ie The Window Dressing) In the case of AvP 2010's scriptscare above, the process of opening that particular door was a sequence that took control out of my hands, and due to the standardization of what 'your character is under your control' looks like I knew throughout the entire sequence that I was in no danger of being given back control anytime soon. Since I was not in control and the game is obviously not going to kill me off for advancing the damn plot, I was in no danger. The game was attempting an illusion of danger, but not only was it an illusion but it was an incompetent illusion hinging on the player being completely oblivious to pretty much everything.
By contrast, Dead Space has its own 'you open the door' scriptscare, and it's actually capable of working even on an experience player who's been through the game a few times before: you open a door, and right on the other side is an Exploder, which promptly leaps into the ceiling and vanishes. You're not actually in any danger -unless maybe it's possible to kill the Exploder and take damage from the explosion?- but this isn't immediately obvious. You've got an enemy that's right in your face, you're in full control of your character, and it's an enemy that is extremely dangerous to have in your face, so you've been trained by the game to be alarmed if an Exploder is anywhere near that close to you. Unless you've got memorized the specific door the Exploder spawns behind, or alternatively have memorized the fact that there's no case in the entire game of a 'legitimate' Exploder-on-other-side-of-door spawn, this is actually quite likely to scare you because there's zero indication that you aren't actually in real danger.
I'm personally of the opinion that scriptscares are always inferior to arranging for the gameplay to be meaningfully threatening/frightening, but if a game is going to bother at all it's vitally important it arranges for such a scriptscare to be as close to indistinguishable from an actual gameplay close call as possible, or else it's easy for even a first-time player to be completely unruffled, boredly waiting for the game to let them get back to playing already.
I took my hands away from the controls, leaned back into my chair with my arms crossed, and while my character desperately scrabbled to survive I thought to myself BORED.
----------------------------------------------
This is perfectly representative of my typical response to attempted scriptscares. Generally, it is obvious that a scriptscare is a scriptscare rather than a genuine moment of danger, which is to say absolutely nothing will come of it even if I literally take my hands away from the controls, and therefore there is nothing to be afraid of.
Scriptscares are one of the more blatant examples of video games attempting to imitate movies and in the process undercutting themselves. In a movie, having a character nearly get grabbed and eaten by the monster is tense and frightening -assuming you're already invested and other bare minimum competency stuff- because holy crap that was a close call.
In a video game, though, there is a clear and obvious distinction between Gameplay (ie The Stuff That Has Actual Consequences) and Everything Else. (ie The Window Dressing) In the case of AvP 2010's scriptscare above, the process of opening that particular door was a sequence that took control out of my hands, and due to the standardization of what 'your character is under your control' looks like I knew throughout the entire sequence that I was in no danger of being given back control anytime soon. Since I was not in control and the game is obviously not going to kill me off for advancing the damn plot, I was in no danger. The game was attempting an illusion of danger, but not only was it an illusion but it was an incompetent illusion hinging on the player being completely oblivious to pretty much everything.
By contrast, Dead Space has its own 'you open the door' scriptscare, and it's actually capable of working even on an experience player who's been through the game a few times before: you open a door, and right on the other side is an Exploder, which promptly leaps into the ceiling and vanishes. You're not actually in any danger -unless maybe it's possible to kill the Exploder and take damage from the explosion?- but this isn't immediately obvious. You've got an enemy that's right in your face, you're in full control of your character, and it's an enemy that is extremely dangerous to have in your face, so you've been trained by the game to be alarmed if an Exploder is anywhere near that close to you. Unless you've got memorized the specific door the Exploder spawns behind, or alternatively have memorized the fact that there's no case in the entire game of a 'legitimate' Exploder-on-other-side-of-door spawn, this is actually quite likely to scare you because there's zero indication that you aren't actually in real danger.
I'm personally of the opinion that scriptscares are always inferior to arranging for the gameplay to be meaningfully threatening/frightening, but if a game is going to bother at all it's vitally important it arranges for such a scriptscare to be as close to indistinguishable from an actual gameplay close call as possible, or else it's easy for even a first-time player to be completely unruffled, boredly waiting for the game to let them get back to playing already.
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