![]() In the finished game, players step into the shoes of Miles Upshur, an intrepid journalist who receives an anonymous tip about illegal human experimentation going on at a private psychiatric hospital. This hits so much harder after hours of first-person terror. ![]() This led to the creation of an independent studio which would end up pioneering the “mid-budget indie game” – independently produced titles with enough production value to feasibly compete with AAA projects.Īnd when your company is trying to craft low-budget experiences that can stand toe-to-toe with mainstream productions, what better genre to borrow from than found-footage horror? Taking inspiration from games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent and films like the Vicious Brothers’ Grave Encounters (a horror flick that simulates a ghost-hunting show gone wrong as the cast and crew become trapped in an abandoned mental hospital with a mind of its own), it was decided that the studio’s debut game would be a night-vision-heavy scare-fest of the first-person variety. The story of Outlast actually begins years before the game was even in development, with Red Barrels co-founders David Chateauneuf, Hugo Dallaire and Philippe Morin working for EA and Ubisoft and finding themselves frustrated with mainstream gaming studios’ reluctance to finance new single-player IPs. While it can be argued that titles like Michigan: Report from Hell and even Slender incorporate elements of found-footage into their mechanics, the closest thing to a non-FMV game that fully commits to the diegetic POV horror experience is Red Barrels’ infamous hide-and-seek simulator, Outlast.Īnd with the game currently celebrating its tenth anniversary, I thought that this might be a good time to look back on how the title does such a great job of translating found-footage thrills to an interactive medium. That’s why I find it baffling that so few developers have managed to take advantage of the similarities between these two mediums when coming up with new horror experiences. Funnily enough, this is the same reason why horror is such a great fit for videogames, with the added interactivity making it easier to feel like you’re in danger alongside the protagonists instead of simply watching them from afar. ![]() ![]() Even the harshest critics of found-footage have to admit that the sub-genre excels when immersing viewers directly into the horrors of a scary story instead of having them be passive observers. ![]()
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