Creep-Out in Video Games.

[Jaimas]

You ever encounter something that ostensibly probably wasn't intended to be much more than creepy or ominous, but wound up really getting to you and shaking you up in a video game? I have, and I'm pretty sure you all have as well. Let's discuss that phenomenon with a few examples of my own to get us started.

Spoiler: Metroid Prime 2 and the Alien

So one time, I was playing Metroid Prime 2 on Gamecube. One interesting thing about the game is that it's easily possible to sequence break several times over if you know what you're doing, and I did, several times getting past an Ingstorm to get to areas one really shouldn't go without the Light Suit in Dark Aether. One time, however, I got quite a scare from a completely unintended source.

I enter a new area, and I see a bizarre shape in the distance, silhouetted against the blackened sky of Dark Aether. It resembled nothing so much as an alien "Gray" from folklore, hovering in the air, featuring a bulbous head as its legs dangled uselessly below it, silently, in the middle distance. It was one of the most creepy and surreal sights ever, and I've tried to draw a general shape of it in MSPaint for your reference:

Thinking: "OK, what the fuck is that thing?!" I switched to my scan visor, only to find, to my surprise, that the creature was already green, indicating it had been scanned. "OK, what the hell?" I thought, and re-scanned it, thinking: "I would remember scanning something that looked like that."

Scan comes back a second later, and it's a Space Pirate. Ain't never seen a pirate like that, though!

But then I noticed it was trying to scan again. Humoring it, I did so, and this time, the scan comes back as a Dark Metroid:

Suddenly, the source of the "Alien" had become clear. What had happened was that a Dark Metroid had attacked and drained a Pirate to death, and was currently slowly floating away, attached to the Pirate's head, adding a further bit of strangeness to the event. I loaded the Dark Beam, cursed my Paranoia, and introduced the thing to a Darkburst whilst I cursed the planet that spawned these fucking things.

Spoiler: Alone in the Dark "ALINE"

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is a survival-horror PS1 game that had some issues but was more-or-less all right given all the other issues with the game. It's not quite as good as Resident Evil or Silent Hill, but it's not remotely bad and has a lot of great moments. One of them, in Aline's scenario, seriously began to fuck with me though. This one's intentionally designed to be creepy, so not so much unintentionality there, but it's still a pretty damned good setup and one worthy of note.

In The New Nightmare, you have a selection of two characters. One is Edward Carnby, a series veteran, but since New Nightmare was intended to be a stand-alone possible reboot, he has no attachment to the previous games. The other character is Aline Cedrac, an Anthropologist. Carnby's scenario focuses mostly on fighting monsters and minor puzzle-solving a-la Resident Evil, whereas Aline's scenario is a more puzzle-oriented and creepier experience where combat is much less viable and handles more like Silent Hill. Aline's scenario is harder, and is the one in which the aforementioned bit of nonsense occurs.

After getting a plot item at some point (a mirror), something odd happens and starts fucking with you. It starts really faintly, and if you're anything like me (I had a big stereo system hooked to my PS1), it's faint enough that you might think it some kind of audio crackle from a faulty wire or something. Then it gets louder and louder, and more and more frequent the closer you get to Judas' room.

At this point if you pay attention, you can actually make out these phantasmal "mouths" popping out of the walls to repeat the "Aline" chanting. The player in the vid doesn't have them audible due to low quality until practically at the end, but this area fucked with me so hard that I was wondering if I was losing it (or if my hardware was going) for almost 10 minutes before I actually saw the little mouth effects and heard the audio. Fucking creepy!

So how about you, Kiwis?

What weirdness and creepiness in video games have you encountered that stuck with you?

 

[c-no]

I can't really think of any good examples but if there is one, I could go with Shadow Tower. Now Shadow Tower is a ps1 game made by From Software that focused on being more atmospheric through a lack of music compared to King's Field. What did creep me out or felt ominous was coming across some monsters that looked creepy for a PS1 game. These ranged from floathing balls of fleshy mouths with eyes that were probably sewn to hearing some ambient sound effect that made one wonder if it's suppose to play at a random interval. A better example of creep-out was STALKER: Call of Pripyat. First time I wander through Pripyat at night was very different from wandering Pripyat in daylight. For one, there are no STALKERS until you choose to stay behind. Second, mutants prowl the desolate and dead city and since it's dark and I lack night-vision, I would be attacked by various mutants before noticing what they were. It didn't help that I had to do a romp through the X-17 lab. One thing that creeped me out the first time within Pripyat was returning to the laundromat after choosing to stay behind. Out of nowhere on the radio, a STALKER says "I don't trust you" which threw me off on account that I never had that happen until then.

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

You ever encounter something that ostensibly probably wasn't intended to be much more than creepy or ominous, but wound up really getting to you and shaking you up in a video game? I have, and I'm pretty sure you all have as well. Let's discuss that phenomenon with a few examples of my own to get us started.

Spoiler: Metroid Prime 2 and the Alien

So one time, I was playing Metroid Prime 2 on Gamecube. One interesting thing about the game is that it's easily possible to sequence break several times over if you know what you're doing, and I did, several times getting past an Ingstorm to get to areas one really shouldn't go without the Light Suit in Dark Aether. One time, however, I got quite a scare from a completely unintended source.

I enter a new area, and I see a bizarre shape in the distance, silhouetted against the blackened sky of Dark Aether. It resembled nothing so much as an alien "Gray" from folklore, hovering in the air, featuring a bulbous head as its legs dangled uselessly below it, silently, in the middle distance. It was one of the most creepy and surreal sights ever, and I've tried to draw a general shape of it in MSPaint for your reference:

Thinking: "OK, what the fuck is that thing?!" I switched to my scan visor, only to find, to my surprise, that the creature was already green, indicating it had been scanned. "OK, what the hell?" I thought, and re-scanned it, thinking: "I would remember scanning something that looked like that."

Scan comes back a second later, and it's a Space Pirate. Ain't never seen a pirate like that, though!

But then I noticed it was trying to scan again. Humoring it, I did so, and this time, the scan comes back as a Dark Metroid:

Suddenly, the source of the "Alien" had become clear. What had happened was that a Dark Metroid had attacked and drained a Pirate to death, and was currently slowly floating away, attached to the Pirate's head, adding a further bit of strangeness to the event. I loaded the Dark Beam, cursed my Paranoia, and introduced the thing to a Darkburst whilst I cursed the planet that spawned these fucking things.

Spoiler: Alone in the Dark "ALINE"

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is a survival-horror PS1 game that had some issues but was more-or-less all right given all the other issues with the game. It's not quite as good as Resident Evil or Silent Hill, but it's not remotely bad and has a lot of great moments. One of them, in Aline's scenario, seriously began to fuck with me though. This one's intentionally designed to be creepy, so not so much unintentionality there, but it's still a pretty damned good setup and one worthy of note.

In The New Nightmare, you have a selection of two characters. One is Edward Carnby, a series veteran, but since New Nightmare was intended to be a stand-alone possible reboot, he has no attachment to the previous games. The other character is Aline Cedrac, an Anthropologist. Carnby's scenario focuses mostly on fighting monsters and minor puzzle-solving a-la Resident Evil, whereas Aline's scenario is a more puzzle-oriented and creepier experience where combat is much less viable and handles more like Silent Hill. Aline's scenario is harder, and is the one in which the aforementioned bit of nonsense occurs.

After getting a plot item at some point (a mirror), something odd happens and starts fucking with you. It starts really faintly, and if you're anything like me (I had a big stereo system hooked to my PS1), it's faint enough that you might think it some kind of audio crackle from a faulty wire or something. Then it gets louder and louder, and more and more frequent the closer you get to Judas' room.

At this point if you pay attention, you can actually make out these phantasmal "mouths" popping out of the walls to repeat the "Aline" chanting. The player in the vid doesn't have them audible due to low quality until practically at the end, but this area fucked with me so hard that I was wondering if I was losing it (or if my hardware was going) for almost 10 minutes before I actually saw the little mouth effects and heard the audio. Fucking creepy!

So how about you, Kiwis?

What weirdness and creepiness in video games have you encountered that stuck with you?

I use to play the original Majora's Mask as a kid at night, and there was so much in the game that legit freaked me the hell out. I know the entire game has a bit of a creep factor to it, but stuff like the moon and the half-Gibdo man weirded me out big time.

 

[I-chi]

Drakengard, the first one, is a relatively well known example of a game that starts off particularly twisted and off color for an action JRPG. Therein you experience the nature of war that unfolds through the eyes of one of the most morally reprehensible protagonists to ever grace the genre, at least as far as video games go. I could go on about the numerous subtler shit that happens throughout the game's chapters, to mention of the optional party members you acquire and what kind of people they are, but that's mostly boldfaced violence and degenerate characterization; where the actually creepy shit starts to happen is around each of the five endings: depending on how you tackled each chapter prior, or what little secrets you found therein, or even what party members you happened to pick up, events align in such a way as to progressively unlock an individual chapter wherein a climax of the sort is achieved. Each of them have a level of infamy for achieving a progressively worse outcome than the last.

Spoiler: This is the beginning of Ending Route 2 of 5

 

[Mimic]

The Reverse Coliseum in Symphony of the Night. I guess it was the atmosphere, but I would hate going through that area when I was younger.

 

[BlueArmedDevil]

Suddenly finding the teddy bear surgery bus in fallout 4.

 

[nyess]

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

The Rugrats game, Search for Reptar, is a reason why sperging nostalgia about nineties cartoons is utterly pointless.

 

[nyess]

And despite me not being much of a fan of the series, anytime I hear about lavender town lore it just creeps me out.

Spoiler

 

[Frenda]

Corpse Party: Blood Covered Repeated Fear is pretty generic in terms of gore but at some point in the game, while walking about, there is faint whispering that sounds like it's coming from behind you (only audible if you have headphones plugged in) and it managed to creep me out enough to make me avoid playing the game with headphones late at night in the dark

 

[Coster]

Deep water in video games. I have no fucking clue why but it bothers me and scares the hell out of me every time.

 

[nyess]

Deep water in video games. I have no fucking clue why but it bothers me and scares the hell out of me every time.

 

[Coster]

The most terrifying post in this thread and I can't rate it horrifying.

That's $20 I'm never getting back.

 

[Clown Doll]

Deep water in video games. I have no fucking clue why but it bothers me and scares the hell out of me every time.

Having to swim in underwater tunnels is incredibly difficult for me, which is why I disliked the Apprehension chapter in Half-Life 1, especially because you have to fight a creepy fish monster in the water.

Out of nowhere on the radio, a STALKER says "I don't trust you" which threw me off on account that I never had that happen until then.

I had a sorta similar experience in the second game, where I was returning to the first trader's bunker in pitch black darkness, and suddenly the merchant's dialogue activated from something like 500 m away.

 

[Coster]

Having to swim in underwater tunnels is incredibly difficult for me, which is why I disliked the Apprehension chapter in Half-Life 1, especially because you have to fight a creepy fish monster in the water.

The Ichthyosaurs. Fuck those things, when I was younger I was terrified of them. My first playthrough of Half-Life was in Half-Life: Source and I straight up noclipped through a good portion of those tunnels just to avoid them.

 

[Bugaboo]

This event still gets me because it's right the fuck out of nowhere and is never explained

The fact they never explain it is what gets me, like wtf

 

[The Fair Lady]

I can't think of anything that's creeped me out too badly, let alone from a game that isn't horror, but here's a recent example:

I was playing through Silent Hill 2 again and was at the Blue Creek apartments. Upon entering room 209, there was a sudden and rather loud whisper. It definitely hadn't happened on my former playthroughs. Spooked and confused, I decided to look it up, and apparently this is a random occurrence. What's more, the whisper isn't clear. People have attempted to make out what it's saying, and come up with multiple possibilities. A majority have agreed that it starts off with "See my dead wife, come home…" Others say it's supposed to be James talking to himself, or that it may have been one of the voice actors absentmindedly mumbling after forgetting to turn off his mic.

In short, there's no answer as to just what the whisper is saying or why it's there at all.

 

[Vorhtbame]

Deep water in video games. I have no fucking clue why but it bothers me and scares the hell out of me every time.

Are you afraid of heights? I suspect that's where I get mine from.

Spoiler: And now, my irrational fear

Okay, I'm powerleveling to admit I play World of Warcraft. None of it really creeps me out: zombies, dark areas, empty and musicless zones, demon-infested hell pits, giant tentacle monsters that whisper to you in backmasked voices...Nothing bugs me, except for this son of a bitch.

This. Thing. The Whale Shark. It was a roaming boss in a zone of Cataclysm. Usually, its mouth is shut, which somehow only makes it worse for me because this monster is like an eldritch abomination to me and that face...

It moves wrong and it looks wrong to me. I can't explain it; it just does. And then Blizzard went and used it for a surprise insta-death event in a later dungeon. And it's also now a boss in the newest expansion.

God damn it, Blizzard.

 

[I-chi]

Oh! I thought of a rather unintentionally creepy one, thanks to @Jaimas for telling me about it beforehand, but then I experienced it myself when I finally got the game. The first Armored Core had a rather simple-on-the-surface mission that involved you plunging into an abandoned laboratory at the request of a corporation in order to recover a capsule that had been lost when an undisclosed disaster struck the complex. Keyword of course being undisclosed; the place is a damn labyrinth that is almost perpetually pitch black due to the game's limitations in draw distance, and your only enemies are unmanned weapons utilized by a security system that was never shut off.

It's quiet.

Disturbingly quiet.

Save for the occasional sound of one of the MTs in the distance, the silence and darkness of the place gives off, by itself, an already intensely unsettling atmosphere. There's no music either to keep you going, only the semi-broken audio feed of the automated emergency broadcast stuck on a perpetual loop.

Of course it goes moderately deeper than that, for anyone who has indulged in Armored Core enough to know a little regarding the lore. Enough to come across the in-canon terminology relating to "Human-PLUS"; suddenly the nature of the laboratory becomes very clear to you the deeper you go, seeing many other broken capsules exactly like the one you're tasked to find, of all different sizes; far, far too many to be for the Ravens who sign up for the experimental process. Almost making you start to think that maybe this company had been engaging in unsolicited research on unwilling subjects...

It wasn't until much later in the series, though, that we're given enough implication to figure out what happened at this facility, and why.

 

[c-no]

Oh! I thought of a rather unintentionally creepy one, thanks to @Jaimas for telling me about it beforehand, but then I experienced it myself when I finally got the game. The first Armored Core had a rather simple-on-the-surface mission that involved you plunging into an abandoned laboratory at the request of a corporation in order to recover a capsule that had been lost when an undisclosed disaster struck the complex. Keyword of course being undisclosed; the place is a damn labyrinth that is almost perpetually pitch black due to the game's limitations in draw distance, and your only enemies are unmanned weapons utilized by a security system that was never shut off.

It's quiet.

Disturbingly quiet.

Save for the occasional sound of one of the MTs in the distance, the silence and darkness of the place gives off, by itself, an already intensely unsettling atmosphere. There's no music either to keep you going, only the semi-broken audio feed of the automated emergency broadcast stuck on a perpetual loop.

Of course it goes moderately deeper than that, for anyone who has indulged in Armored Core enough to know a little regarding the lore. Enough to come across the in-canon terminology relating to "Human-PLUS"; suddenly the nature of the laboratory becomes very clear to you the deeper you go, seeing many other broken capsules exactly like the one you're tasked to find, of all different sizes; far, far too many to be for the Ravens who sign up for the experimental process. Almost making you start to think that maybe this company had been engaging in unsolicited research on unwilling subjects...

It wasn't until much later in the series, though, that we're given enough implication to figure out what happened at this facility, and why.

Hell, that said about Human-PLUS, one could also include (if applicable) the cutscene for when you fail the final mission.

Spoiler: Spoiler: Read at your own risk

In one mission, you fight a Human-PLUS subject. When you beat him, he tells you to watch out. After you destroy either Chrome or Murakumo and their follow up mission, you end up doing a rather banal sounding one: Destroy Floating Mines. You think its simple but it turns out, you're fighting some deadly mechs. Eventually, said fight involves two Nine-Ball AC's. The kicker to all of this: If you fail the mission, you get a cutscene saying you died and info related to you is deleted. It could be chilling since its means you were a threat of some kind. It makes sense with the watch out words that came from the Human-PLUS subject you killed.