Half-Life Needs to go back to "Scaring Players" Claims Newell

[Shawn Zipay]

In an interview with Edge magazine, Valve's Gabe Newell remarked that he'd like to see the Half-Life series return to "scaring the player more." He feels as though the series has recently gotten a bit off track with its scares and also hopes to broaden the emotional pallet.

Here is Newell's full response when asked if he felt as though the Half-Life series has matured along with its audience.

"That isn't something we think about except as part of each project needing to respect the fact that simply repeating the past isn't going to have the same impact now as it did then.

"I feel like we've gotten away from genuinely scaring the player more than I'd like, and it's something we need to think about, in addition to broadening the emotional palette we can draw on."

When Edge asked what scares them the most, he had a particularly dark answer: "The death of their children. The fading of their own abilities."

Newell did not mention Episode 3 by name, so only time will tell if the final Episode will indeed bring the scares back to Half-Life.

[K-16]

Re: Half-Life Needs to go back to "Scaring Players" Claims Newell

Interesting how John Carmack suggests the exact opposite for the Doom series, mentioning how monsters hiding in closets is less effective to having players control a hero who is almost guaranteed to win despite the insurmountable odds against him. Still, Ravenholm (HL2) and a giant charging thing (HL2: EP2) is kind of thrilling enough for me. I guess Newell wanted me to feel like I'm desperate to survive and to have no confidence in safety at all times (while maintaining fair play where mistakes can only be done by the player and not the design).

[Unregistered]

Re: Half-Life Needs to go back to "Scaring Players" Claims Newell

I don't remember Half-life ever being scary and this is coming out from a guy who refuses to play any survival horror games; I hate scary. If they do plan to go to the "scaring players" route, I hope they try to avoid those "jump scares" Those kind of things prevents me from exploring the game/level.

[Sintra]

Re: Half-Life Needs to go back to "Scaring Players" Claims Newell

I prefer the alternate atmosphere of halflife: you know everything is fucked, there's little to nothing you can do to make it better and you're kinda like in a wacked up trip through an adventure that wasn't made for you.
It feels like an esoteric experience almost from a third person point of view and I think it would be ruined by following the "lets make everything dark and scary". Not my cup of tea. c|_|