Stumbled upon this randomly today and thought it was surprisingly good, especially for the subscriber count. Particularly the bit about the inherent problem of save scumming in stealth games is something I’ve thought about writing about myself, but I guess someone else got there first, as this is pretty much an exact mirror of my thoughts.
Gotta say, the alien in Alien: Isolation is my favorite “guard” in stealth games. That encounter in the medical area really is something.
He touches briefly in the video on the fact that horror games do get around some of the challenges of stealth games, seeing as there is still tension in hiding from a monster.
But honestly, it’s all just a question of immersion, even that. Horror games get much less scary without stakes, and few games implement them well. That’s another good subject for a video essay. The alien in Alien: Isolation becomes much less scary once you realise it’s just a walking reload button. So what if it catches you? You can just try again. Same issue as with most stealth games, only with an added jump scare.
That’s why I think games like Until Dawn have solved the issue of horror game stakes the best. In a regular horror game, the main character can never die before the game is over. That means failure just leads to reloading. In an ensemble game, your poor performance can get people killed and bad things happen, but the story trudges on. That keeps the tension high.
Another way is with some sort of permadeath. Darkwood on hard mode with limited lives is fucking scary. Some sort of stakes is needed for the fear to set in, unless your game produces horror from a different angle (existential, cosmic, psychological, visual body horror etc).
Anyway, I guess I got a bit sidetracked here 😅 I do agree that as far as AI behaviour goes, the alien in Alien: Isolation is an excellent guard!
The paranoia is what makes the alien scary to me. Its footsteps are pretty loud, so you know it’s close by, but you don’t know if it’s going to hop back into a vent or walk into the room you’re in. The alien is also smart enough to prepare ambushes, too. I’ve seen it crouch down and wait for anything passing by.