Frictional Games are still releasing clues via Twitter for their upcoming Amnesia: Rebirth. But even then, we still don’t know much about the game, or just what kind of horror experience will be in store for players. And while they’re still staying mum about the details, in an interview with Gamespot, Frictional Games creative director Thomas Grip talks about how Amnesia: Rebirth will explore a “different kind of horror”.
For starters, the team didn’t expect the whole Let’s Play phenomenon to take hold and turn what was supposed to be an introspective game into a “let’s watch people react to scary stuff” sort of experience. As a result, the team is hoping to convey a deeper horror experience this time around.
“We could have just gone, ‘Oh, let’s take this let’s play thing that started with Amnesia and run with that,’” says Grip. “But that doesn’t feel like what we wanted to do. There are a bunch of things that we thought that people liked with [Amnesia: The Dark Descent] and then there’s a bunch of stuff that we felt we could do better and there’s a bunch of stuff that we learned from SOMA and we also felt like we wanted to put all of that together.”
“So we wanted to give that another shot,” Grip said. “Not the exact same subject matter, but make something where horror is not just on this very short-term time scale of just seeing a monster and being scared, but something that grows over time.” As a result, Amnesia: Rebirth will take a similar storytelling approach to SOMA. “The strongest connection between Rebirth and SOMA is that we try to put players into a persona, into a situation, and we spend a lot of time just convincing them that [they] should take this situation that [they’re] in seriously,” he said.
The interview delves further into Rebirth‘s other themes, such as survival, as well as the narrative differences between it and its predecessor. Changes that Grip hopes is remembered for being more than “your typical jump scare, spook-fest.” Definitely do check it out.
Amnesia: Rebirth is expected to be out later this year on Steam and PlayStation 4. And, as mentioned, here’s another one of those teasers.