Utilize multiplayer comfort as an intentional device for inducing terror/fear

It is no secret that all great terrifying experiences intentionally utilize a sense of “normalcy”. The audience’s comfort in that normalcy can then be delibaretly used against them by taking them out of it and into the terror of the experience.

The movie Obsession is a great example of this, (spoilers! if you haven’t watched it, don’t read this paragraph). The scariest scenes in this movie begin very normal (with a tinge of underlying uneaseness! but still mostly normal), so that the movie can snap on a dime and take you out of that comfort. The car scene is a prime example of this, but it’s still a constant throuhghout the whole movie.

DDLC is another great example of this, it makes the player get used to things being normal so it can better twist things to make the player either uncomfrtable or terrified.

Subnautica 2 has such high potential for being able to do this. There is just instrinsic comfort baked into the game as a multiplayer game, there’s no getting around this issue. Being with your friends just makes things a lot less scary / easier to deal with than being alone. And I know S2 was singler-player first developed, but it would be naive to assume that not enough players will be playing multiplayer to warrant thinking about the multiplayer experience in the design philosphy. Especially when such a fear-breaking mechanic gets introduced in playing with your friends.

What I want to suggest is, using the “friend comfort” multiplayer players have against them, similarly to the examples I drew on earlier. This can be done in a lot of ways, and I’m not neccesasarily suggesting a specific way to do it, I’m just suggesting that this design philosphy get incorperated into the game. For example, a leviathan that grabs you and moves you a subsantial distance away in a dark environment, so when you’re traveling with your friends, they lose sight of you and can’t find you. This would work very well with proximity chat, and I think it might even be neccessary as being in call with your friends when something like that happens will be a little bit immersion breaking (like some sort of distance based communications device i think woud work well, but proximity chat isn’t the main thing I’m suggesting since i know it’s already being worked on). Imagine traveling in terrifying deep dark water, but its a little bit less scary as you are traveling with your friend and talking to them via proxim chat. Now imagine how terrifying it would be if they just get snatched away from you into the darkness and all you can hear is their blood curdling screams as well as the agonizing leviathan scream fades away into nothingness. It would be genuinely so scary. And the snap change from comfort to losing that source of comfort really adds to it.

Another thing to think about is with this suggstion, the player markers (letting you see where your friends are by looking around) would need to be revamped. I would maybe make it so that it stops working when you go under a certain depth or something. If you could see exactly where your friend went and how far away they are it will make the player less focused on their environment and more focused on some piece of ui if they want to follow their friend to help them. Instead, maybe making it obvious which direction they went via particles in the water or some feint light, I think would be the better approach.

I really hope you guys take using this design approach into consideration! I think S2 has such potential with this idea but it kinda sucks to see that this integral part of good terror experiences (esp s1!) seems like it wasn’t really being thought of in the design principles, since you can just see where your friends are and how far away they are at all times and since proximity chat wasn’t initially going to be added. Have a good one, thanks for reading! :)