#primal instinctual fear is installed in us for a reason

[ptsd-tiger]

“your anxiety is lying to you”

ahem..

[indigozeal]

Remothered, the one-time Clock Tower vaporware remake turned giallo-esque horror game from NightCry artist Chris Darril, launches in early access tomorrow in a two-thirds-complete state (meaning, you won't be able to play through the whole story).  I was part of the beta a few months ago, and I thought I'd share my impressions of what I played before tomorrow's quasi-release.  The game's promising and gets some things very right, but there are problems, some of which may prove a barrier to mass-market acceptance.

Before I start here, I want to say that it's an accomplishment that there's enough of a game here to fuel a substantive discussion.  Longtime Clock Tower fans might remember the origins of Remothered over ten years ago as a straight remake of the first CT, featuring rough 3D graphics straight out of an FPS mod and a Jennifer with bowling-ball tits.  Darril was keen on remaking Clock Tower, though, and pursued his idea through a couple drastic revisions: a 2D, straight-to-the-plane remake with memorable magazine-collage graphics and more extreme gore, and what was presumably a more modern remake featuring multiple imaginatively-designed stalkers in a Haunting Ground vein, promoted solely with detailed art from Darril (who is a professional video game illustrator).  These ideas, however, never progressed beyond trailers or concept art (with its third incarnation not even producing a screenshot), and being such a bald remake, the project always had the spectre of copyright smackdowns hanging over its head  -  even the third version, which was allegedly a unique title, merely changed the names Schmennifer Shmimpson-style.  Combine the wheel-spinning with Darril's weird style of communication  -  always through third parties who should not have been in the PR biz, giving conflicting information as to the status of development and the IP's ownership  -  and there was no reason to expect anything to come of this start-and-stop endeavor.  But Remothered has resurfaced, fully reborn, and that Darril persisted and grew from a fan developer to a professional to shape his remake concept into an original idea and get it to market is encouraging.

That said: from what I experienced in the beta demo, I don't know if I could play this game to completion.  (And I don't mean that in an "I'm too scared to continue" way  -  though the game is very tense and scary.)

Let me start with something good: the look of the environments.  Given Darril's background, art was always a strong point of the various Remothered projects, and the mansion in which the story takes place looks really great.  It nails an aesthetic you don't often see in video games: an old, lived-in grunge.  (This is as opposed to the pure-filth grunge of Resident Evil 7, a game to which Remothered will receive many comparisons.)  The outdoor gardens are predictably, grandiosely overgrown, gorgeous and giallo-esque in their unbridled lushness yet speaking to decay.  The interior is convincingly old and neglected in the way of fallen wealth  -  the furniture is ornate but old-fashioned, with a musty museum quality of things that were previously treasured but aren't used or tended to on a regular basis anymore.  The environments are dank in the manner of a once-grand environment that no longer is populated enough to require proper illumination, and there's a clutter that denotes both accumulated wealth and disuse.  

I'd also like to single out for praise the design of the Red Nun stalker, an element justifiably carried over from Remothered's previous incarnation.  She has a lurid, dramatic presence that instantly announces itself as giallo and is more than strong enough on which to hang a horror title.

A problem on the art side: the faces look somewhat stiff and weird.  Rosemary's face did, at least, in the beta, and while it's impressive that Darril's been able to get as far as he did with the faces on an indie budget, he still has a way to go to compete with the modern standard for face technology and expressiveness -  and this is not an area in which audiences are forgiving.  (I remember Run Button criticizing Mia's face from RE7 as fake-looking, for example, and that's near the current cutting edge of realism.)  And the title screen, the first thing you see of the game after the studio logos, is a big close-up of Rosemary's face.  Again: this factor doesn't matter as much to me personally.  I can see this, though, being a big stumbling block for the game.

(Also: while Dr. Fenton's incidental voice acting is very good (the actor is having a lot of fun), the pacing of dialogue between characters is remarkably stilted (in a very Argento way, but: despite his influence, the man has a limited audience), which adds to the "unnatural human" feel. )

Another problem is the game system.  It's a combination of Clock Tower elements: the "find disposable weapons to ward off stalker attacks temporarily" system from 2 with (apparently) the change-ups in stalkers for each level of later installments and the "move, or don't move, your cursor to hide successfully" thing from NightCry.  It also adds, though, a number of original mechanics, mostly involving how you and your stalker track each other.  The game makes extensive use of stereo sound to clue you as to your stalker's location  -  there's an early sequence, for example, where you're stuck in a bathroom and are expected to gauge by the volume and direction of the stalker's jabberings when he's left the adjoining bedroom and it's safe to sneak out.  Stalkers can detect you using similar methods, however, so you have to use care in your movements: don't make too many footsteps on bare floor in a row, for example, or he'll hear you.  (Carpets, conversely, can cover your footsteps.)  It's very smart, and very tense.

A number of choices detract from this, though.  First, there's the sheer number of actions available to the player at any time: you can run, crouch, place a diversion item (taken with you from the environment here instead of being usable only at hotspots like traditional CT), throw a diversion item, and try to use a stabbing item (separate from diversion items, which are like teacups and stuff you can throw).  Typing that out, it doesn't seem like much, but it proved rather overwhelming for me.  Horror games, with their focus on primal fears, are in great part about instinctual reaction: they need simple controls.

(And speaking of controls, a related gripe: movement is, naturally, mapped to the L stick, but to crouch, you depress the L stick.  That seems intuitive, but when you're trying to move your character quickly (y'know, like in a horror game), it's easy to make movements that the controller registers as depressing the stick.  As a result, I spent a good amount of time during chases trying to run away but going into crouch and creeping at a snail's pace.)

Second, while the environmental-tracking gimmicks are very tense and smart, the game, disappointingly, doesn't always play by its own rules.  Once, for example, I thought I had successfully escaped the starting bathroom/bedroom early enough to get a head start on my pursuer, only to have him materialize in front of me Jason-like on the first-floor landing as I was going down the stairs.  That ain't fair; the stalking system is so good and tense on its own terms that it shouldn't need to cheat.  (This incident might have been just beta jitters, though; I hope it was.)

Also, while gameplay is very tense, there's no let-up to that tension.  Once chasing had started, there was no point in what I played of Remothered where I was not being actively hunted, and  -  for me, at least  -  that was detrimental to the game.  Clock Tower depended on a rise and fall of tension, periods where you were free to explore punctuated by chases where you had to drop what you were doing and focus on eluding your pursuer.  The tension in the exploration segments slowly builds as the possibility that your explorations of your environment might trigger an encounter with the killer  rises higher and higher  -  then comes to a head when the killer does appear and you have to find a way to elude them, then subsides when they are, for the moment, thwarted.  Hitting a single high note of sustained tension for a half-hour, 45 minutes, an hour is too draining, too much of a barrier; it's wearying to have to be constantly vigilant, constantly creeping around.  There's no release, and it's not tense and fun but annoying and unpleasant.

Which brings me to another problem with Remothered: it's unpleasant.  This sounds like an odd, illegitimate complaint to lodge against a horror game, but there is a difference between horror and disgust.  For one, Remothered is much more invested in gore than I am personally.  In the game's early fail states, I would again and again watch Rosemary's skull get cleaved open like a cantaloupe; in later stages, the stalker makes to put out Rosemary's eyes with his thumbs before, again, busting open her brain cavity.  Giallo is a huge, obvious influence on Remothered, and grand guignol deaths are a hallmark of that genre (though I'll note that they're usually big, isolated setpieces meant to have emotional significance in the story; bringing the same spectacle to ad nauseam game overs threatens to make its impact overwhelming or fatigued).  This might all, though, be far from home for Clock Tower fans, as those games actually weren't all that bloody.  

Then there are other accoutrements, like the appearance of a prominent parent-child incest subplot before the first chapter is up, or the first stalker shrieking "you stupid BITCH!!!" in unpleasantly shrill tones constantly throughout the chases.  Yeah, I know: oh, man, look at this nut, doesn't want the villains to do anything villainous!  But with games, the player is continually facing the question: do I want to keep spending time in this world?  Are intrigue, mystery, and tension carrying the day, or are the skeevy elements taking over?  Before, I would've really pushed for, say, a supergreatfriend run of Remothered.  After playing, though, I just don't think it's suited to a "fun" horror game reaction run.  Then again, people love RE7, so what do I know.  

(To get on another tangent, though: RE7 has a lot of humor & humanity (the behavior of the conceited anchor guy in the demo; Jack's lines & voice acting) that defuses the tension & impact of the exploitation material in a good way.  Not to the point where I'd be able to stomach the worst of what's going on firsthand, but it has a positive effect.  That's not really present in what I played of Remothered.)

Also, a word about the PR.  I'm on the mailing list, and the missives from Darril's home office have, thankfully, been much more polished than previously.  They do, however, have an element of carnival-barker to them.  In a way, communication is much clearer now (given that it's actually more or less straight from Darril himself, though there's still a level of remove), but in another way, the hard-sell approach taken makes me feel as if he's trying to put something over on me.  That's not an approach this project needs, particularly given its previous history of bad information, copyright-dodging, and starts/restarts.  (Darril is also pushing hard for Remothered to be a trilogy: hold your horses, friendo.)

That's pretty much it from me.  Again, a two-thirds-complete beta of the game releases tomorrow.  I'm glad for Darril that he got to this point; I might not choose to take a front seat to it.