Som utgivare, hur gör man egentligen för att ge den samlade spelpressen den fräckaste spelupplevelsen? Jo, förslagsvis tvingar man iväg journalisterna till en plats som påminner om miljöerna i spelet och i Man of Medans fall blev vår brittiska kollega Sam inföst på en mörk båt någonstans i Hamburg. En förhandstitt på alltsammans kommer att komma ut inom några dagar, men tills dess kan vi bjuda på en intervju med Robert Craig (Art Director) och James Scalpello (Marketing Director) där de snackar om hur de har tänkt kring att bygga kvalitativa skräckscener i det första spelet i The Dark Pictures-antologin:
"I think the one important thing about scares is there's not just one formula. You have to kind of look at every scare in isolation and figure out what you're trying to do, and really go into detail and test that. So we kind of did that. We have scare meetings, we talk about a bunch of them and figure out what's working and what's not."
"One thing, for example, is misdirection. You want to make them think it's about something in the scene and then surprise, it's actually something else that's either gonna jump in or pop in at you. In terms of cinematography there's so many ways to do that. There's a lot of reference out there, and I think it's important not to fall too far into formula and just go with something like big and bright that jumps in the screen. It's kind of about the buildup to it sometimes, it's about that anticipation as much as anything, you know."
"One thing we can do that's quite interesting is we can add the element of agency and control that you can't do in the movie. You're always the passenger in the movie, kind of watching, but we can go 'come into this creepy new room on a ship' and then you've got control back, like do I really want to move forward here?"
"We don't just rely on jumpscares as well, there's a whole lot of other things. And then jumpscares are pretty hard to put together as well, because you have to set the scene, and almost misdirect [...]."
Intervjun ser du i sin helhet här nedan: