Surreal moments and visuals in games

[bartholen_v1legacy]

As per the title. I decided to limit the topic to these two specifically, because I felt surrealism in gaming in general was too broad a topic, and would only lead to angry debates over whether something was surrealist or not.

I'm making this thread having recently played the Old Hunters DC of Bloodborne. The main game is already packed with warped imagery, but there was something in the Old Hunters that was even better.

Spoiler: Spoilered just in case

When you arrive in the Fishin Hamlet, you're suddenly on a seashore, when just previously you were atop a massively high clocktower. If you look down into the water, you will see all of Yharnam submerged. It was a very striking image, and one of the best dream-like images I've seen in gaming ever.

The entrance to the Rom the Spider boss fight was also very striking. You jump into the water, and then... you're at another lake! It was a bit similar to the Four Kings boss fight in Dark Souls that also had you jumping into the unknown.

Ni No Kuni was mostly a straightforward JRPG, but in Shadar's castle there were a couple of strange moments. The part where the camera suddenly starts turning so that you're walking on the ceiling was one.

Your picks?

 

[Fox12]

I always liked the weird nature of Silent Hill 2. One of my favorite bits is where you descend down into the depths of silent hill, at the bottom of a rediculously long staircase. You should literally be beneath the lake. You can hear ambient noises, and the fog horns of a boat, which you later discover is from a sunken ship. Afterwards you tumble down black pits, and find yourself in a... Prison. When you finally finish, you end up on the back docks by the lake. I also like the part where you go to the hotel, and the door rooms lead to random places in the building. Impossible space is fascinating.

Bloodborne is definitely one of the best examples ever. The trippiest part for me was taking the carriage to cainhurst castle, and turning around and seeing the dead horses and destroyed carriage. The statues and ghosts of dead aristocrats, and the servents, were pretty trippy too.

Spec-OPs: The Line had some of the best, since you expected it too just be a modern military shooter. Instead it was a horror game. At the beginning there's a scene where you see Dubai, and the city is impossibly beautiful. It clashes harshly with the landscape, creating a kind of heaven/hell look. Later on you open fire on enemy combatants, and they turn into mannequins, implying that all of the enemies you've fought may have been in you own mind. It's a nice touch that it begins grounded in reality, and just gets weirder as you go.

 

[ffronw]

There's a mission in Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide where you have to head into a wizard's tower. It starts out pretty straightforward, but then you find yourself in a make of bookcases where the floor is sometimes on the ceiling. When you finally think you're escaping that, there's a flash of light, and you're outside, on a remote vista, crossing a rickety rope bridge as rats attack. Once you make it across, you see a tower to go inside, and then the illusion vanishes.

It gets commonplace quickly, but the first time it happens, it's a real shock.

 

[Silvanus]

The end of the prison section in SH2, after you've been descending for an eternity through holes in the ground, getting deeper and deeper and deeper underground... and then you open a door, and you're outside again.

Inside the moon in Majora's Mask, as well, watching kids wearing masks of the game's antagonists dancing around a tree, and there in the middle is a kid with Majora's Mask, all alone, uninvited.

EDIT:

I always liked the weird nature of Silent Hill 2. One of my favorite bits is where you descend down into the depths of silent hill, at the bottom of a rediculously long staircase. You should literally be beneath the lake. You can hear ambient noises, and the fog horns of a boat, which you later discover is from a sunken ship. Afterwards you tumble down black pits, and find yourself in a... Prison. When you finally finish, you end up on the back docks by the lake.

Damn! Someone beat me to it. That'll teach me to post before reading.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The massive head in SH4 is an old favorite, especially because it goes completely unaddressed by the characters (or the game).

Spoiler

 

[Cycloptomese]

At least a dozen moments from my first playthrough of Portal. I've never been a big puzzle gamer, but that game totally transcended its genre. Wrapping your head around that game mechanic was awesome. Particularly while going in having no knowledge of the game at all. I remember the first time I saw myself in a portal over there on that wall. That game was amazing.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Everything in Kentucky Route Zero. Because, well, yeah, the game sort of speaks for itself on that. Especially the Bureau Of Reclaimed Spaces made me have a reaction like that.

The Stanley Parable has multiple of those "Wait a second..." bits as well. The 'unfinished' levels that suddenly pop up, the way the entire thing loops, it's the weirdest.

Antichamber screws with your mind like that as well. And then some. I've only seen bits and it's waiting for me in my Steam library, but I'm almost afraid to start it. It looks like an M.C. Escher sketch in game form.

The weird-ass rpg LISA has some extremely odd, surreal moments as well. Next to all the disturbing shit that's already going around in that game.

 

[The Madman]

World of Warcraft had the amazing Karazhan which I absolutely loved in so many ways. The bosses, the music, the visuals, and the way the the visuals get more and more surreal as you climb the tower. Still my favourite instance from any MMO I've played.

Visually it's hard to describe if you haven't played it. Karazhan is a wizards tower, as seems to be pretty popular in this topic. Starts out simple... sorta. Looks smallish from outside but you go inside and it's huge, alright fair enough. Starts out with some broody 'haunted house' sorta vibes complete with a ballroom filled with dancing ghosts and a massive opera house. Then you keep going higher up the tower and it starts getting stranger. The walls are falling apart and drifting into empty space, the music is changing into something more surreal, and then finally you go through this one doorway at the very peak of the tower and you're in an entirely different dimension with just that doorway behind you, facing a boss that for the time felt epic as hell. I still remember some of his boss quotes:

"All realities, all dimensions are open to me!"

That was Blizzards level design team at its absolute best. Admitedly I don't play WOW anymore so I haven't played the latest stuff, but from when I did still play it remained their best piece of work by far.

 

[CaitSeith]

In Bloodborne, the first time I saw the Nightmare Headstone. It's a broken tombstone, but the inside isn't made of solid rock. Instead you can see blood and... veins? WTF is this thing!? It got even better in the Nightmare Frontier, which is full of those gross things (along with a bizarre looking landscape).

 

[Chaosian]

I'm going to go with the ending to Metro 2033.
Visual unlike anything else in the game aside, it's just a very geometrically strange sequence. The last level in particular, "Ethereal" features geometry that changes depending on where you're looking / what direction you're walking, as well as ends with a path that forms as you run forward. Very cool stuff, I always thought.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Far Cry 3 shroom sequences plus others were quite interesting and fun.

Most console Zelda titles some lovely crazy bits, sort of its charm really, fighting dark link(which Bloodborne's Rom the vacuous spider feels like a homage too). Majora's Mask intro and outro also.

Metro 2033, a couple of memorable scenes there that are also spooky.

*Sudden sadness* P.T. Ahh, that was a fine experience for what it was.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Drakengard. Especially when you start getting to the endings. Cannibal space babies ahoy!

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

The staircase up to the Vicar Amelia fight in Bloodborne was easily one of my favourites in the game. Seeing the Amygdala statues along the side really tells you 'You really have no idea how far this rabbit hole goes.'

Another of my favourites was the Witches of Hemwick. Having an emaciated, jet black, sickle-wielding creature with huge glowing eyes rise from the ground only to just slowly walk towards you, was probably one of the more horrifying things in that game. It was so far removed from what I was used to from the series. For this very reason, it was a brilliant way of indicating the true nature of the fight to the player. That shit doesn't happen in these games unless something else is going on.

 

[default]

I love dream sequences and surreal experiences, especially if I get to interact with and explore them myself.


The Stanley Parable had some really great moments, as did Bastion. Some of the pathways and events in which the narrator seems to be slowly slipping into insanity or, in the case of Bastion, becoming a malevolent nightmare are great stuff.


I like finding ways to get out of maps and sequence break in games. One of my favourites is from Twilight Princess, where by a very precise series of actions you can find yourself stuck in the version of the game world from the title screen and, if you behave correctly, can take part in a series of wierd disjointed events and battles. There are pathways in that version of Hyrule Field which take you outside the map, as long as you're riding the horse. If you ride around the outside of the world for a while you can see the Hyrule Castle from the skybox kind of bleeds away at the bottom into these long, strange spikes, just hanging there in oblivion.


Marathon Infinity has some levels based around dreams and the player is constantly being flung around to distant corners of the universe by insane AI to creep around claustrophobic, derelict alien installations with little understanding of what is going on. A lot of the terminals you access have strange poetry and stories mixed in with pages of data garbage and glitches.


Spec Ops: The Line had some excellent sequences and imagery. I loved how Dubai just bled away into yawning nothingness below you, surrounded by shifting waterfalls of sand.


I really like surreal geometry though. Things like how pathways are different depending on which angle you approach them from, descending deep into the ground and opening a door to find yourself high in the open air, the ways things are layered upon each other all twisted and convoluted. On that note I really need to get around to finishing Silent Hill 2. The tank controls just turn me off so much unfortunately.

 

[Slenn]

Gosh, the only one that comes to mind off the top of my head is a certain lab found in a true pacifist run of Undertale. There was so much strangeness and twisted visuals in that place. Even the music for this place sounds a little warped.

 

[Totenkreuz]

The massive head in SH4 is an old favorite, especially because it goes completely unaddressed by the characters (or the game).

Spoiler

That... thing... that bloody head scared me like no other game I've played, holy hell, the nightmares! I just bolted for the door when I saw it, both ingame and real life. ;P

For me the most memorable 'surreal' thing I've experienced in a game was probably in "Deadly Premonition" when it finally dawned on me who the main character was speaking to in his imaginable earpiece. Or atleast I hope it classifies as surreal, I have no clue really, hehe.

Cheers.

 

[Barbas]

For me, it was the glitch at the beginning of the first level of Tomb Raider III - if Lara is killed in a particular manner while sliding down the slope, she'll collapse in a heap, then stand back up, slide to the bottom of the slope and repeat the death animation. Creepy-ass game.

Or maybe it'd have to be that moment in the desert mission when you're supposed to leap across a narrow chasm, only to have a giant fighter plane fly out of the corner of the screen and wipe you out in mid-air.

 

[Maximum Bert]

There's a mission in Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide where you have to head into a wizard's tower. It starts out pretty straightforward, but then you find yourself in a make of bookcases where the floor is sometimes on the ceiling. When you finally think you're escaping that, there's a flash of light, and you're outside, on a remote vista, crossing a rickety rope bridge as rats attack. Once you make it across, you see a tower to go inside, and then the illusion vanishes.

It gets commonplace quickly, but the first time it happens, it's a real shock.

The bit I liked was also in the wizards tower (I believe). You enter this massive open room and well nothing surreal about that except every character sees it differently so the Elf (my character when I play) sees a woodland the dwarf sees a stone hallway filled with gold while the bright wizard sees fire and lave everywhere. I just thought it was a real neat touch.

I know there are some games based off surreal images that play with perspective to make platforms to complete the level which I always thought was a great idea but I have never played them to see if they agree with me.

El Shaddai has a very unique art style though. It was really what kept me going in that game just to see what crazy thing would happen next it was just bizzare. I remember in one part being dive bombed by what looked like Swans in showercaps while I have complaints about the game I think they did a wonderful job with the visuals in creating an extremely strange and surreal world.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

Aside mentioned before here SH and Spec Ops:

The dreamnightmare sequences in Max Payne 1 and 2.

Constantine's Mansion in Thief

Spoiler

So many levels in both American McGee's Alice and it's sequel, and Psychonauts. The fact that each of these games happen in people's minds, first two in the one belonging to a very disturbed girl, the latter in heads of not less twisted individuals(the famous Milkman's Conspiracy takes the cake when it comes to surrealism in that game, along with maybe the infamous Meat Circus).

I'd also like to honorary mention Planescape: Torment - though many of it's surreal moments are described by text(one of Sensory Stones, iirc, directly references Kafka's Metamorphosis), the visuals also help set the feeling of a world where border between "real" and "unreal" is blurred as ever.

 

[Halla Burrica]

Well there was this part in the Point Lookout dlc for Fallout 3. As part of a side-quest you have to digest a special plant to become a full fledged member of a cult who obey the hologram of a brain in a jar in order to save someones daughter (it's a long story). The plant turns out to contain some hallucinogenic materials though, and soon everything goes balls to the wall crazy with exploding bottles that make baby noises, Vault-Boy figures that pop up giving you odd and a bit unsettling messages, gravity switching up and down and suddenly saws and needles go up and down through ground. I also like what happens after the trip, when you find out what was going on while you were high as a kite, and turns what seemed like a fun distraction into something horrifying.

Alice: Madness Returns really has some striking surrealist art as well. You do after all play inside the mind of an insane person who is sort of trapped between a childs and a grownups state of mind, which brings a sort of darker undercurrent into what could otherwise have been a fun-looking style, a juxtaposition between cynical reality and naive fantasy. It's imagery is dark, disturbing and downright unsettling at times (there were actually a couple of time when I didn't feel I had the stomach for it and had to quit), in a subtle way that makes you feel like you need a shower afterwards. Surrealism done right.

Also I guess Hotline Miami itself is like a really, really bad acid trip you get after watching too many 80's flicks.