The ultimate scare. . . - by Lady Taffer
jimjack on 10/8/2006 at 18:45
Quote Posted by TheNightTerror
Are you kidding me? I barely flinched my first time through, and I'm just a wimpy little girl. ;)
What? Not even one jumpy adrenalized moment? I ran through that level like a scared little girl ..the second time :o Did my nerves in again.
TheNightTerror on 10/8/2006 at 19:20
I didn't even really jump. :o I knew the mission was supposed to be pretty damn creepy, so I was ready for anything they could've thrown at me. :o I just braced myself and went in. If I hadn't known anything about the Cradle, it might've gotten a few screams out of me. ;)
bobo on 29/8/2006 at 02:32
The Cradle got the hair up on the back of my neck more than once, but the first real good scare was in that old ship in the harbour. I had no idea it was crawling with undead (must have been an off night) until one of them went wheezing by at the end of a long corridor. That combined with the creeking and rattling of the old boat just floored me. I jumped back and the headphones went flying. I had to cool off and ease back into it real slow. I'm replaying the game again and am just about there . . .
ercles on 29/8/2006 at 23:23
Quote Posted by bobo
The Cradle got the hair up on the back of my neck more than once, but the first real good scare was in that old ship in the harbour. I had no idea it was crawling with undead (must have been an off night) until one of them went wheezing by at the end of a long corridor. That combined with the creeking and rattling of the old boat just floored me. I jumped back and the headphones went flying. I had to cool off and ease back into it real slow. I'm replaying the game again and am just about there . . .
Just about every NPC was yelling and screaming about the undead in the harbour. How did you miss that?
Holywhippet on 30/8/2006 at 01:57
There was a trick that I tried in the cradle which made me jump when it failed. The load screen tips tell you that hitting an oil patch with a first arrow will lead to the oil starting on fire. I figured the patients look like they are covered in rags so it would ignite them and kill them. I tried it with that patient who just stays in his room. It didn't work. He slipped in the oil patch and might have gotten singed by the fire but he just got back up and proceeded to whack at me.
jimjack on 2/9/2006 at 17:00
I laid out mines and had the patients come after me. It worked quite well. The problem I had was not being able to get enough vials of holy water. Where in fact do you find them?
Cardel on 5/9/2006 at 16:05
Hammerite Cathedral, if you want to steal them. Otherwise most Shopkeepers have them, I think.
Poison Ivy on 5/9/2006 at 20:17
There used to be a thread about what would make the Cradle scarier, but I can't find it... Well, I've just thought of something. It would've completely freaked me out if in the 'present' version of the Cradle, starting as early in the mission as the cellar through which you enter, you would hear sounds...
For example, just before you round a corner you would suddenly hear footsteps right on the other side of it... audible enough to be real. Yet in reality there would be no one there.... But I can imagine more than enough players dashing for cover at the sound of someone approaching, and then standing there, in meager shadow, with pounding heart, wondering why nobody had appeared....
It would only make it scarier in my opinion. As before, by the time you enter the Inner Cradle you would come to believe that there are only sounds without actual opponents, and then BOOM! The puppets, whose footsteps you would probably also take as the ambience at first. And throughout the whole mission (or the present part, at least) you'd never know if the approaching footsteps are part of the ambience or the puppets...
And something like doors slamming shut behind you would also have been extremely cool...
Quote:
The second scariest thing for me was the sound you hear when you go into the lobby of the Inner Cradle: those clock ticking noises are just maddening, and sometimes it sounds like the clocks will speed up and then slow down or it sounds like two different clock noises competing with each other and it messes with my head and freaks me out. . the sound of a clock ticking in a scary environment speeds up my adrenaline, raises my fear level and keeps me constantly on edge. . .
Believe it or not, my first thought upon hearing the clocks was 'bomb'. :D
Lady Taffer on 12/9/2006 at 06:17
That's a pretty good idea, actually . . .more creepy noises.:wot:
I don't scare easily, but I react strongly to auditory stimuli in most scary situations, for some reason. When I watched The Ring, for example, it's not scary at all when I think back on it. . except for those sounds you hear when Naomi Watts-her-face's character plays the video. Those creepy high-pitched repetitive sounds. . .seriously, the last time I saw The Ring with some friends I had to put on headphones and listen to music whenever those sounds came on. I was just too scared of them.
ercles on 12/9/2006 at 08:23
Quote Posted by Lady Taffer
That's a pretty good idea, actually . . .more creepy noises.:wot:
I don't scare easily, but I react strongly to auditory stimuli in most scary situations, for some reason. When I watched The Ring, for example, it's not scary at all when I think back on it. . except for those sounds you hear when Naomi Watts-her-face's character plays the video. Those creepy high-pitched repetitive sounds. . .seriously, the last time I saw The Ring with some friends I had to put on headphones and listen to music whenever those sounds came on. I was just too scared of them.
It's not exactly ground breaking that people are highly responsive at music in films and other media. Stick most horror films on mute (unless you're watching some gore porn like Saw or Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and see what kind of emotional response you get.
The beauty of most great soundscapes is the lack of sound. Look at the origional Psycho (I like to pretend that there was never a sequel), or many Hitchcock films. This movie (like the cradle) got your imagination to work against you, and one way it did this was to have stony silence throughout the most tense bits. Then you have the sudden sound effects for the stabbing. Beautiful. And it was the same in the Cradle. Most of the time the sound was just soft enough to sit at the back of your mind, and was sparse. That meant that when you had the sporadic pattering, or even more so the sudden banging of that infamous door, it scares the bejesus out of you. The scariest part of this level (for me) was when you had no idea what you were in for, or where any of the puppets were. So many moments when I was cowering in a dark corner from absolutely nothing, just goes to show how well made the level was. So no, I don't think that adding any more sound effects would help the scare factor of the game one bit. If anything it would detract.
