Scopophobia
There is no healthbar in real life. There’s no beeping sound when we are near death. Our failing heartbeat isn’t represented by a color and it definitely doesn’t change to ‘red’. We have to rely on our limited senses to guide us through situations, and although we have a few more than the popular five, many people consider the paranormal one to be a ’sixth’ sense. However, digital reality tends to give out such sensors far more often than reality. Sometimes even providing the player with senses that have no reallife counterpart. This becomes extremely handy when fighting elements that cannot regularily be seen. Elements that escape normal perception, but by altering one’s vision become visible. Be warned though, relying on such senses too much can turn against you, and your dependancy will be punished.
In Project Zero, Fatal Frame or simply Zero (depending on which region you are from), players have to search for their missing brother within a mysterious old Japanese mansion. The mansion in question rumored to be the location of a particulary bizarre occult tradition. As in most fiction, such evil places tend to act like a magnet for the supernatural, and it’s for this reason that many souls still linger around the Himuro Mansion. You play as Miku Hanasaki, a young girl searching for her brother, who in turn was searching for his missing mentor: The novelist Takamine Junsei. Takamine was studying the mystery surrounding the Himuro mansion and ventured into it with his editor Koji Ogata and assisstant Tomoe Hirasaka. They weren’t heard from again, and when Mafuyu went in after them and dissappeared as well (as played in the prologue), all hope was placed upon Miku to solve the mystery and break the curse that is keeping the spirits from reaching the peaceful afterlife.
Your only defense against these supernatural entities is the mystic Camera Obscura. By taking photos of the spirits, one can capture their soul and avoid being harmed. Most are passive, only leading you into the mansion or towards clues, but they can suddenly turn hostile when you’ve entered their final resting place. When using the camera obscure, one changes viewpoints: From the normal thirdperson exploration angle to the more personal firstperson angle. You can only take pictures when in firstperson mode, so you’ll always have to face the enemy. This makes combat a far more confronting experience than experienced in other survival horror games. There’s another problem; the ghosts aren’t always directly seen, some float off-screen, some hide in the shadows, some can teleport and some can simply turn invisible. To help you capture those spirits and make viewfinding a far more enjoyable experience, you are equiped with filament which glows up when you are near a ghost and it glows even brigther when you are directly facing the spirit. Facing a spirit directly however, is a whole new kind of scary experience.
Upon entering the dusty dark mansion, Miku is almost instantly greeted by the lingering spirit of Ogata. At first Koji just watches you from the shadows, but as you get closer to the area of his demise, he gets more hostile. Sometimes he even shows up right behind you, creating quite a few jumpscares. When you’ve finally captured his soul, you traverse deeper into the mansion, slowly unraveling the mystery of the sick ritual performed within the mansion: The Strangling Ritual. The practice involves tieing a rope around the neck and each limb, then one tightens the ropes beyond the victim’s extremities, leading to death and dismemberment or the other way around when particulary unlucky. After learning the gruesome details, you’ll be led by the spirit of Takamine’s assistant: Tomoe. She slowly guides you towards her final resting place, eventually assaulting you when you near the waterwheel next to where she died. Luckily your filament indicates her location whenever she’s out of your sight. After you’ve busted Tomoe’s ghost, a cutscene shows a flashback of her getting strangled by a female entity while a shocked (and then still alive) Takamine looks on in horror.
Back in the present, Miku will be confronted with the gentle spirit of Takamine. He slowly guides you towards the Narukami Shrine. To reach the shrine however, one has to leave the mansion and move through the gardens and forest. After the wooded area, you will finally reach a big long staircase with it’s imposing red Shinto gates. The tension slowly builds up as you walk up the giant stairs towards the shrine. Each step becoming more and more suspenseful, (You could even encounter the random JumpScare of a nagging crow) all the while the spirit of Takamine watching you from behind a Shinto Gate in realtime, careful to note if you are still following him. Miku finally reaches the top of the stairs and there stands the Narukami Shrine. You slowly open it’s doors, thinking you are prepared for the confrontation…
The first thing you can’t miss upon entering is the big dark red puddle of blood spread over the Shrine’s floorwork. The game hasn’t shown any of the red ooze so far, so it’s it’s esspecially effective. You move closer towards the altar, perhaps even avoiding standing in the blood. And as you inspect the altar, your filament suddenly lits up! You turn around, but there’s no ghost there even though the filament now glows even brighter. You should be looking right at it. Miku grabs her camera obscura and through the first-person view you explore left to right…nothing. The filament remains bright and you slowly move forward towards the bloody puddle. Passing through it, the filament slowly burns less bright. You turn once again to face the altar and it’s brighter again. Tension grows even higher, the filament informs you there’s something you are not seeing and it’s slightly frustrating and freaky at the same time. It’s at this point that most gamers will get what’s going on and slowly inch their viewfinder upwards in firstperson view. There he hangs; The Tormented ghost of Takamine. He shows his demise; cruxifiction, nailed against the ceiling, the puddle of blood his. He drops down with a scream and the boss battle begins (and quite a difficult one at that).
The build-up to this fight is extremely well-done. Trailing after several ghosts, slowly rising the steps towards the shinto shrine, the confrontation with the bloodpool and then: in-game betrayal. All this time the player has been using the filament as a tool to search for ghosts better, to follow them even when they near invisibility. In the Shinto Shrine however, the tables are turned and the filament actually becomes the source of your worry. It tells you there’s a ghost, but you can’t spot it. It warns you, but without seeing what you are being warned about, things get even more stressful. You know there’s a ghost out there, watching you, but where?
Another thing which makes this scene so succesful is that Takamine’s spirit can only be seen by switching perspectives. It’s impossible to see the ghost by using the normal way of exploration. Only in first-person can you view the ceiling. The notion that such an event (Ghost from above) happens only once in the entire game underlines the genius in this scene. You’ve been conditioned throughout the game to place trust in the filament. You’ve never encountered a ghost coming from above, at most they are floating a bit higher than average. It’s an unique moment even within it’s own series. And it uses perspective-switching (an ability available in many games nowadays) to create a special thrill. It obscures the ghost from one perspective, making sure you use the more personal viewfinder to explore your surroundings. The necessary shift between the open third-person and the more claustrophically framed first-person is remarkably executed.
Perhaps the moment could have been stronger if the fall of the ghost towards your level happened in realtime (imagine Junsei Takamine dropping right towards your screen!), but the moment is already innovative as it is. Perspective-switching has never been used as effective as used here and the stress obtained from the filament is something quite memorable. You know you are being watched, but you simply can’t figure out where it’s coming from. Imagine if you didn’t have the filament, it would have just been a normal scene through which you would stumble until you accidently investigated the ceiling. No tension, nothing. The conditioning of the player to create a dependancy upon a feature is an integral part of the scene.
It’s often thought that healthbars and extra meters reduce the scary elements within a game. But when put to good use, such indicators can actually generate fear by conditioning you to fear their warnings. Knowing you are near death while traversing a mansion is far more frightening than moving through the mansion without knowing how little life you have left. The same goes for the indicators found in (Project) Zero/Fatal Frame. Don’t just think of them as handy, they can create extreme tension as well. And as this moment shows: sometimes the tools you dependent on, scar your mind the most.
PerSpectre
- An element which cannot be seen directly, but can be perceived through other means.
Scopophobia – Fear of being watched
