The epitome of what I’m trying to refer to is the Playdead games (Limbo and Inside). Dark Souls and BioShock both hit on this idea but not quite so directly. The game BADLAND is also a great example of this, too. The mobile game The Silent Age also did this exceptionally well. Never quite knowing what’s going on, and maybe some tension without release, but again not straight up horror. A feeling of uneasiness is what I’m looking for.
When playing through Inside, there’s never any moments where you’re scared, but you’re never sure what’s going on and there’s always a level of unease. What are all the mindless zombie-like people? Why is everyone hunting the player? What happened to this city? What’s the goal of the character the player controls? What exactly is going on here? That’s what I’m looking for. If you know of any other games which do this, I’d greatly appreciate hearing about them. It’s a very specific niche so I’m not sure how many games do this, but the games that I’ve seen do this tend to be some form of post-disaster or dystopia. I’ve seen some great artwork do this too. Zdzisław Beksiński had done some stuff like this. Some great dystopian novels also do this quite well.
Redfall was a break from their usually fantastic single player immersive Sims.
The dishonored games obviously has the top slot, but prey follows the same type of setup. Then deathloop is similar in presentation but mixes the formula up with some roguelike-style repetition.
Redfall was unfortunately just the death rattle of arkane as their first xbox-involved launch, if developer interviews are to be believed
What made Redfall so bad? I haven’t really heard anything about the game other than that it was a massive disappointment. Is it just that Arkane usually does a fantastic job and so when they didn’t it was perceived as worse than it was? Or is it genuinely a bad game?