Perfecting Survival Horror #

I think the games that have had the most consistent impact on me in the past have been survival horror games. But what makes a survival horror game perfect?

A survival horror game transcends the genre when it uses horror elements to effectively enhance its non-horror message. Here are some examples:

System Shock 2, Half Life and Half Life 2, Portal and Portal 2, Fallout 3, MGS2 & 3. I would consider all these to be games that have themes beyond “escape” or “survival”, and the elements of horror in these games support these non-horror themes.

In theory, the horror in these games awakens a primal sense of danger in the player, and that fear galvanizes the existing themes of the story and makes them more memorable and impactful.

I can point to any of these games and tell you the exact beats where horror supports the overall message, but let’s start with my poster child, Fallout 3.

Bethesda’s Best Horror Game #

Super Duper Mart. The Capital Wasteland. The DC Ruins. Trainquility Lane. Vault 87. The Dunwich Building.

These are some of the scariest locations in the game, and most of them fall on the main quest line, meaning you have to move through them to progress.

Let’s pause and unpack this. If you were to get stuck in any of those places, you’d have a uniquely awful experience. You could be:

1. Enslaved by sadomasochist serial killers whacked out of their minds on drugs.
2. Poisoned with radiation, slowly melting your skin and turning you into a literal zombie.
3. Crushed by the brutal, ceaseless violence of super mutant insurrectionists.
4. Trapped in a computer simulation, to be psychlogically tortured forever.
5. Mutated into a Cronenburg-esque, body-horror flesh monster.
6. Sacrificed to an unknowable entity of cosmic malice.

When it comes to awful ways to die, you’re spoiled for choice in Fallout 3. But these gruesome places aren’t just there for giggles. Every horrorifying encounter in Fallout 3 enhances the game’s themes:

Survival as Character Arc #

War never changes. Survival of the fittest. Tribalism. Society is brittle. History repeats itself. These are some of the themes of Fallout 3.

At the beginning of the game, your character is incredibly weak. At low levels, the world is providing very real threats to your existence behind every wrecked automobile shell and collapsed building.

This is made worse because it’s ONLY YOU out there in combat. Be honest, for most of your first playthrough of Fallout 3, you probably didn’t have Jericho or Dog Meat backing you up.

However, at higher levels, the tide starts to turn. Suddenly the gang of super mutants attacking Bigtown is a mild inconveinance, not a skin-of-your-teeth, save-scumming victory. Even threats like Death Claws and Super Mutant Behemouths become manageable when you have plasma weapons and power armor.

You can even befriend the world’s unstoppable force, super mutant Fawkes, but only AFTER you’ve crept through the rusted, infected carbon copy of your childhood home, Vault 87.

Contrast that with sequel New Vegas, where most players easily found Boone in Novac, the game’s third peaceful settlement. Most of us probably kept the dead-shot body guard all the way until the Hoover Dam. Maybe that’s why New Vegas didn’t feel as threatening.

The design of Fallout 3 requires the player to get stronger over time, but only by doing hard things. By combating legions of ghouls in abandoned office buildings and subway tunnels across the territory, your character toughens up. Your progression is earned the hard way.

The only reprieve is returning to a settlement like Rivet City or Megaton to sell off the scrap you’ve collected, so you can buy more ammo or a better gun.

This cycle of combat and calm happens continuously for the whole game, and before you know it, you have adapted to this new grotesque world.

As you continue to play, and willingly dive into a new hell of another optional Vault, you realize that something inside you is different now. You used to be terrified of these dark places.

Your in-game character isn’t the only thing that’s leveled up. Despite the body horror and vintage sci-fi aesthetic, war never changed. But you did.

Final Thoughts #

There is obviously a lot of crossover between the post apocalyptic and horror genres, going back all the way to the book Alas, Babylon. And in some ways, post apocolytic is a subset of survival horror.

But my concept of the perfect survival horror game requires more than simple adherence to the genre. Fallout 3 bends the genre to its message, and that is a level of craft that may be overlooked or forgotten by modern audiences, and definitely doesn’t get enough credit.

Ask any Bethesda fan which modern Fallout experience they prefer, and most will probably say New Vegas. I love New Vegas, but it doesn’t affect me on a deeply personal level like Fallout 3 does.

I believe the reason is that Fallout 3 offers a truly menacing challenge, and therefore, an opportunity for personal growth outside the game.

You can also find similar experiences aboard the Von Braun, in Ravenholm, and inside Big Shell, but the Capital Wasteland sets a new standard. Fallout 3 is and will remain the G.O.A.T. of survival horror.