Shining a Light On Horror’s Overrated Tool
Imagine, you are dropped in a strange abandoned hospital, claustrophobic halls, eerie creeks of the decaying interior (you hope), your only aid, a flashlight. In many situations like this your only way to escape from the creeping void is light. From Amnesia’s lantern, Phasmophobia’s headlamp, or Outlast’s flashlight, they’ve become synonymous with horror to the point you would be dumbfounded to even consider finding a game that doesn’t have your beacon of hope. Question is why? Why is it so overused in horror games, despite being something that gives hope and guidance?
Overall it’s inclusion is by far a great service in many situations as it offers a deceptive glimmer of hope for the player involved. Simply put it is mostly placed for gameplay purposes as you can’t play a game you can’t see so it serves that purpose just fine. On the other hand though it allows for developers to have a wider array of environments to toy with as now they can place you in pitch black halls, wondering if the next step will reveal a horror or another second of life. We see this environment in many shapes as well making the medium ever expansive from foggy towns to “abandoned” insane asylums.
Like the metaphor, “a double edge sword”, the flashlight does the same as while it helps you play the game it stokes your very psychology. The fear of extinction in Albrecht’s 5 types of primordial fears includes the fear of the dark as our minds have always wandered towards the idea that some unknown force will wipe us out. It has been a fear that lingered with us for a long time to which games like the excellent Silent Hill franchise exploits. As you wander the hills of the warped foggy town you enter a building and yet while being in the comforts of third person, separated from your avatar you still feel claustrophobic. The void surrounding the halls around you as distorted hums of abominations scurry around like rats. It’s that fear that any moment your light will flash onto them, observe them, and then being back in the dark again, wandering, wondering.
That’s why it’s used so much, as much of a gameplay element as it is a horror element, the humble flashlight is one used to amplify that creeping feeling of uneasiness. That feeling that somewhere in the dark is something, hiding, stalking you, just oozes the ambiance of it all. All of that wouldn’t be possible without the flashlight. As overused as it is, it has ingrained itself as a staple of horror videogames and has left us with a path to follow down those pitch black halls, echoing with activity unseen.
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As someone who both loves video games, but also hates horror, horror games have always been a hard area for me to involve myself in, most of my horror game experience comes from the Resident Evil games, and in those games you find much more safety in a gun than a flashlight. But as I am trying to explore more genres of games to play, this is a fun blog to read as it explains why the flashlight can both scare and calm you. It can scare you because you don’t know whats lurking beyond the light, but calms you because you know that for the moment, you are safe, even for just a moment.
ReplyDeleteI’m not scared of the dark, but when it comes to horror games it’s a different story. The darkness and your single source of light does indeed invoke a sense of fear because, like you said, the source of light is your only hope. However, it isn’t the jumpscares that scare me, it’s the environment that sets up the situation for a jumpscare. The flashlight just contributes to the setting. Thanks for posting!
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