Megalophobia in Games

what comes to mind when you think of a horror game I'd wager a couple of things came to mind namely jump scares atmosphere the dark these would all be valid descriptions of a typical horror game we've all pretty much gotten used to these very basic attributes and while they do work me along with many others have become almost desensitized to it I've seen scary characters jump at my screen I've walked through spooky atmosphere I've experienced the darkness these things no longer scare me I've been so numbed by the constant overuse of this basic Trinity of traits that I don't even care anymore this homogeneity has made the experience of playing horror games at least for me a lot more boring when Games should be the best medium for fright fear in games has the potential to be so much scarier than in movies or books yet I feel the majority of horror games sell themselves short I want to see unique horror experience experiences that make me afraid in a way I haven't seen yet megalophobia the fear of big things is a fear that would seem unexpected for games to utilize yet it seems that every time a game manages to truly capture how scary the huge can be it's always League scarier than any basic cookie cut or horror game games that break the boundaries of traditionality games that make me feel scared simply by existing in them the utility room is one such game developed by Le El Marsden the utility room is an indie game that I shouldn't talk about it feels irresponsible to write about the experience I had playing this game because it's not something I feel that words can capture and I know it sounds cliche but I'm serious there is no way I can describe the feeling of playing this game in words for the sake of this video I'll attempt to anyways the utility room is a VR game for one VR can do a weird thing when it comes to games like the utility room you aren't just just exploring a world on a computer you exist in it which makes the horror aspects much more prevalent the basic idea of the utility room is this at the edge of the universe lies the utility room a sort of back rooms to the universe where all the heavy lifting takes place there have been no work incidents in 13.8 billion years you are arriving as a tourist don't do anything foolish that is the first thing you are told in the utility room that intro is something to analyze though it brings up a lot of questions what does a back room to the universe even look like well the game at first starts out very cavey it's almost underwhelming this is the generator of the universe are you kidding just a bunch of caves but this feeling doesn't last long a little later on into your exploration you come across a view that shows you what a true back room to the universe looks like this view is truly where the game begins you see things in the distance a large Peak what appears to be a castle both of them seemingly large but the true scale can never be figured out because there's nothing to compare it to the structure could be a couple hundred or a couple thousand miles away from me and if it were that far it would have to be gigantic to be seen from where I am unlike in real life there is no size limit here anything is possible this is the place that runs the universe how can anybody decide on the scale of any peak in this vast mountain range part of the terror I felt playing the utility room involved me looking at something vast and not being able to see the end of it or looking at an object in the distance and not being able to gauge the distance it is from me based on the size you are a hum sized creature in a world made for Giants I couldn't help but feel like an ant in this colossal World each structure in this pillar section like a blade of grass 10 or 20 times the size of me and I was in an endless garden and ant residing in it the distances I could travel in months being traveled in seconds by any one of the mammoth inhabitants of the universal background the main inhabitants of the utility room are large Moi heads that don't do anything but move around they're all nearly as large as the landscape itself the middle section of the game has you slowly making your way to a large pendulum every level you're slightly closer though judging by the distance our characters likely traveled years in between these loading screens as hopelessly as an ant attempting to walk across a country you don't matter in the utility room your presence is never acknowledged by anything that lives in the space nor can you have an effect on anything giving the megalophobia aspects of this game even more of a kick not only is everything around me so big that I could never in a millennium make any progress if I walk around such a space but the contents of the world seem meaningless I mean yeah sure this is literally what makes the universe run but I I couldn't help but feel like nothing had a point to it does that mountain have anything to do with how the universe functions or how about whatever this thing is that is one way you could look at the utility room but another more unsettling feeling I get from this game is a feeling of ignorance like I'm too mortal to understand the functions going on here like a toddler attempting to understand the conversations of an adult or attempting to discern the purpose of the Machinery in a Geer painting ignorance for the forces truly at play here once you reach the pendulum for the first time ever you are recognized your presence affects the world previously the moai heads wouldn't care about you not acknowledging you at all or simply careening past with no regard for you being in their way but now what is coming straight for you it seems to have noticed you but in the confusion it ends up colliding with the pendulum and for lack of a better term dying you can't help but feel like you caused this the feeling of killing a god a thing so much larger and more important than you falling to its knees because of your actions like the opening text said this place has stayed tranquil for 13.8 billion years since time itself began and look what you've done it feels like you've ruptured the very fabric of the universe the utility room isn't a horror game but the sheer size of everything and the consequences of what you just did make me think otherwise the feeling that me such an insignificant being was able to do something so significant is what makes the horror of the utility room the feeling that I'm messing with something so much bigger than myself both metaphorically and literally but I still get the feeling that even something so big to me will likely not have an effect on anything there are an uncountable amount of these giant moai heads I get the feeling that the gears of the universe will run all the same despite such a Monumental event from my perspective just another disturbance in an otherwise undisturbed back closet of reality a foreign World tranquil until my arrival speaking of foreign worlds whenever discussions of The Game subnotica come up it's usually always related to thalassophobia the fear of the ocean which makes sense subnotica is a survival game set on an alien ocean covered planet of course the fear of the sea is the first fear people think of when talking about this game but I've never seen much discussion on the megalophobia aspects of subnotica which is weird because they definitely are there there's actually a completely separate phobia for the fear of big things underwater called and get ready for this megalohydrothalassophobia please fire whoever made that name I think subnotica is probably one of the only games that could properly represent such a fear subnotica is ripe with so many aspects that make it so scary for anybody with theophobia or megalophobia the game starts with you ejecting from a gigantic ship called the Aurora as soon as you get out it blows up you can tell the explosions vast even through your small window once you get out you see the remnants of this enormous ship that once housed your small Escape pod it is immense so colossal in size you can see it anywhere on the map and it's not a part of the Sky Box either it changes depending on what perspective you look at it from not even 30 seconds in and we're already pretty much jump scared by the sight of something massive this only continues of course it starts out fine the sea creatures aren't huge the ocean isn't that deep but the further you go away from the life pod the deeper the water is and the bigger the creatures you're forced to go down further dive down deeper for better materials I don't scare very easily in horror games but looking down into the ocean knowing I'm far away from my life pod the only safe place I have in this world and not being able to see the bottom or even worse seeing a pitch black abyss is one of those things that makes me Crown subnotica over any traditional horror game I've ever played the environments especially further out are just so huge how far certain regions descend the vastness of underwater caves and Ravines all of this mixed in with the fact that this is underwater with creatures whose sizes are unknowable and you can color me surprised that more people don't talk about the megalophobia aspects of this game underwater caves especially are so vast that sometimes you can't even see the other side of it the occasional abandoned human settlement is dwarfed by the sheer magnitude and murkiness of the environment around it the grand Reef environment in this underwater cave is especially terrifying you rarely ever see the entire thing at once it's simply too big but probably the most powerful example of megalophobia and probably the most powerful moment I've had playing subnotica was exploring one of the many vast underwater caves and coming across [Music] this a decayed corpse of a once absolutely colossal being you already see big sea creatures in subnotica but these remains are a reminder of just how much you don't know that no matter how much you explore the sea there are things out there you can't explain or ever hope to find these remains stretch on for so long and he feels so small swimming around it the head is larger than a football field each of the many many ribs being the size of apartment buildings the fossil nicknamed the gargantuan Leviathan is 1 and 1/2 kilm or a mile in length this is a rendition of what it could have looked like when it was alive I have so many questions what did this thing eat where did it live what did it hunt what hunted it I won't say what I'm about to say is a fact because it's from a Reddit comment a historically great place for valid sources but according to this guy the creature's skull is that of a pack Hunter not an apex predator as the commenter points out the severed skull of the Beast indicates it had been in a fight and lost the thought of that makes me shudder we can never know our own oceans and similarly in subnotica we can never know the beasts that lay in places we cannot see that's not to say that the sea creatures that you can't see are an ABS absolutely terrifying you encounter some large life forms pretty early on like the reefback which while don't pose a threat are gigantic so much so they carry actual Reefs on their backs hence the name but the reef back is harmless other creatures are not going around subnotica you can sometimes stumble across large snake-like creatures called ghost leviathans they are just as terrifying as they sound while not as mind-bendingly large as the gargantuan Lev ithan these things can get up to a respectable 200 ft at least as babies if you explore a little too far into the dead zone then you'll have The Misfortune of meeting the adult ghost leviathans at nearly double the size of the baby leviathans the ghost Leviathan as an adult is around 350 ft or 105 M about the size of a 30 story skyscraper seeing this monster next to small ship or seeing it easily overtake you in speed due to its much larger size is just so unsettling it gives me a feeling of thalassophobia sure but I would also equally say it gives me a sense of megalophobia knowing how big the thing is and the sounds these creatures make only make them more intimidating the low pitched somewhat unsettling humming of the reefbacks or the horrifying hissing of the ghost leviathans you hear Over The Dead Zone you get the feeling that whatever is making these sounds SS is much bigger than you could imagine any sea creature on Earth being subnotica is one of the scariest games I've ever played and it's done all of that without even being a horror game but I really think megalophobia or more specifically Hydro thaso Megalo whatever is an even better way to describe the fear and the way I feel not just about the world of subnautica but the creatures that inhabit it whether that be the dead ones or the ones that killed them this all makes subnotica in my opinion the scariest non horror game I have ever played another genre of nonh horror games that give me that same kind of feeling are space simulator games space is the one thing that's often a trigger for people myself included for megalophobia more specifically planets Stars black holes any celestial bodies really so it should come as no surprise that space games are some of the most hauntingly terrifying things someone with megalophobia could play astr megalophobia phobia much like Hydro thaso I'm not even going to bother with this anymore is a hypers specific branch of megalophobia the fear of large objects in space there are multiple Space games that absolutely take the cake in terrifying me but I'm only going to talk about one of them in this video because I think it sticks out no man's sky is a game that is comes to making you terrified of the huge no man's sky has no competition when you fly through no man's Sky there is a feeling seeing large planets in the distance or mining on the rings of a planet far bigger than Earth there's a certain Solitude to No Man's Sky which only elevates the megalophobia aspects much like the utility room these planets are big for the sake of being big none of this was intentional all of this is just here and with the game being pretty much infinite with 18 quillion planets it would take about 585 billion years for you to explore and see every planet in this game it makes sense then that a lot of these colossal beasts remain unexplored hell I discovered two never-before seen planets just by getting this footage these planets are massive they seem like they have to be important monumentality commands respect yet in the grand scheme of things these PL are insignificant there are two planets in no man's sky for every grain of sand on earth that's including deserts beaches and the sand in the ocean to think that these planets these great behemoths in the grand scheme of the universe of no man sky are no bigger than half a grain of sand but these planets are still immense in size I'm genuinely freaked out every time I step on a moon that's a little too close to its host planet and said planet taking up half the sky in a menacing Monumental stance commanding respect and fear for anyone who dare gaze at it yet it exists as a mere Speck in the hugeness of the entire map of No Man's Sky 585 billion years to explore all of it looking at a large planet is one thing but looking at that same Planet knowing 18 quintilian others exist in a meaningless expanse of substantial insignificance makes the is 10 times worse alongside this no man's Sky also has several large living things the sandworm being my favorite don't let the name confuse you this thing is anything but small sometimes on a radioactive Planet you might come across an enormous worm shoot from out of the ground fill the sky and its monumentality and go right back down to where it came from as big as it is you can't help but compare it to the rest of No Man's Sky universe and realize how insignificant it is no man's sky is so big that it feels small every planet is half a grain of sand and it feels that way especially with the procedural generation these planets quite literally have no human touch both in the context of the game and its development much like in real life every planet in the 256 galaxies of No Man's sky is just another Speck in infinity and I think in a way that makes it even bigger Megalo IIA is the fear of large objects not exactly a fear of scale but the extent of No Man's sky world always makes me second guess this definition a speck in Infinity that's what you are in no man's sky on the complete opposite of the spectrum you have not dormant Giants in an infinite void but rather very much not dormant Giants boss fights are a staple of games but I found that whenever I'd rank my favorite boss fights in games there was always one consistent pattern it all came down to size unlike the Giants of the utility room or no man's Sky these Giants are hostile making them even more scary you can look away from a planet or a floating Moy but you can't look away from a boss fight if it truly scares you spoilers here for Doom eternal's ending although it's kind of hard to spoil Doom but skip to this Tim stamp if you want to the icon of sin is a boss the game has been building up to since the start its immense size hinted at throughout the entire game until the release in one of the coolest boss intros I've ever seen now is the time to fight spe as it was [Music] WR the boss fight itself is also metal as hell you go from taking off chunks of its armor until you get all the way down to its flesh the Beast goes out as cool as it comes in shaking the entire screen and presumably the foundations of buildings in his departure I love every aspect of this boss and although fragmenting him bit by bit is somewhat basic the simple fact that he's just really big sells him as a boss you've been fighting big demons for the entire game if the icon of sin was just another larger demon variant with more health and attacks I don't think the ending of doometernal would still be in my mind but I remembered it even all these years later when making this video another game with a similar boss fight is ultra kill the corpse of King Minos is a fairly simple boss fight and pales in difficulty when compared to other bosses it's only about a minute long yet it's so memorable The Corpse's weak point is its eyes and he uses his hands to attack you in large sluggish movements seemingly being so clumsy you can easily Parry his punches back at him that is until he takes his eyes off and moves into the second phase where the parasites hiding inside of it reveal themselves as I said earlier the corpse of King MOS isn't a particularly memorable boss yet its size makes it so compelling of course we can't talk about large boss fights without talking about likely the most famous example of a large boss fight in a game or multiple in this case Shadow of the Colossus is a game that's bold it dares to ask the question what if everything was really big and it executes on this seemingly simple premise very effectively for starters the world of Shadow of the Colossus completely dwarfs our small player character named wander the camera is purposely wide reflecting the size of the world speaking of the world the Forbidden land the setting of Shadow of the Colossus is a vast and desolate expanse endless Plains towering Cliffs and ancient runs stretching as far as the eye can see this world design gives me such a feeling of isolation I feel like I'm nowhere near anything or anyone and I'm not the thing that I could most contribute to this besides the visuals of the landscape is the Eerie silence save for the occasional gust of wind distant Cry of a hawk or the sound of your H's Hooves the land is De void of sound which helps make the opening still one of my favorites in any game you start out in the wilderness trees surrounding you wander rides through nature for a good minute until eventually a large structure is found when you step through you see the vastness of this world for the first time a world filled with beautiful nature a desert various Cliffs as well as that an architecturally questionable Bridge stretches on for what seems like miles this opening is a great way of communicating the type of game Shadow of the Colossus is it almost foreshadows the foes you'll have to face in your journey there are a total of 16 colosi and as the name suggests they are all huge there's a reason this game is hailed as being one of the best ever made if a single large boss fight in Doom Eternal made the ending memorable imagine how influential a game with 16 of those must be but unlike Doom Eternal or Ultra kills more hands-off approach to boss fights that is you're just sitting in an arena with the boss in front of you in Colossus you get up close and personal with the colossi you quite literally have to climb them to hit their weak points out of the 16 I have a couple of favorites fail lanks is by far the biggest out of all the colosi it shows itself in such a cool way what would you expect from a flying Beast presumably that it would be in the sky but failen is introduced in let's just say a different way hopping out of the ground at first you think it's going to be some wormlike boss that tunnels under the ground you stand on but it is so gargantuan that it takes a couple of seconds to realize it isn't jumping out of the ground but flying out of the ground like the other colosi the way to beat him is to climb on him but not only are you climbing on this Mammoth creature but you're also in the air most of the fight and you also have to deal with him tunneling underground every once in a while the way it dies is even cooler than that creating a mini Sandstorm from its immense body hitting the ground from the air another one I like is hydris going back to the fear of big things underwater hydris is a boss fight I find genuinely scary the colossi up to this point have all been pretty neat but just like in subnotica I can't deal with big things underwater hydris is a giant underwater electric snake I think that description speaks for itself drowning is something you haven't really thought about up to this point besides one other pretty insignificant instance the boss fight itself is also pretty hard having to balance finding hydra's weak points with not drowning I both love and hate the concept of one of the colossi being underwater I love it because it's a good idea I hate it because it's absolutely terrifying to fight which only makes it cooler but then there's the opposite of a large boss instead of a gigantic monster you have to face in a long battle sparring with a beast much different than you and still coming out on top you have a quieter megalophobia somewhat like no man's sky or the utility room a type of huge that commands Respect by the sheer size alone with no present hostility in that way I see this kind of megalophobia in games as an even bigger scare for someone with megalophobia you're not focused on the icon of sin's size and doom maternal you're ripping and tearing after all you don't have time to look over at the icon of sin and see how big he is you're focused on a million different things in this boss fight and fear for the size of your opponent is not one of them but in a game like halflife 2 the [Music] megalophobia a tower far larger than any use we can come up for it appears in front of you which only cements the fact that the builders didn't have human goals in mind it's so intimidating and it very quickly characterizes just how far the combine are ahead of humanity while also unmistakably clarifying their goals The Citadel which is the name of the tower silently communicates a message that the combine tries to preach throughout the entire game you are just our subjects like comparing a human to an ape the largest building we've ever built is the Burch Khalifa in Dubai and yet the Citadel is three times the size of it literally being so high up that it goes past the clouds and the top isn't even visible it is 1 and 1/2 miles tall even if you didn't think about all of these things consciously when first seeing it I bet you did unconsciously especially throughout the game all of this importance communic at by the size alone a way of legitimizing the rule of the combine by making the things they make so big compared to our own Creations that they don't even compare the reveal of the Citadel is even more shocking in halflife Alex the fact that it's in VR makes it an even cooler reveal with the screen slowly fading into it being under construction with all of these wires all leading up to a structure that you can never tell the true distance of because it's just so darn big yet another way of legitimizing the rule of the combine and showing how ahead they are compared to humanity I just adore the way that halflife 2 and Alex tell visual stories Alex more than two just because it's in VR instead of telling you how far the combine is beyond our species it shows you and of course the best most universally understood and respected way to show this is size all of the games I've mentioned in this video are megalophobia in the same way the utility room contains meaningless seeming structures and entities yet meaningful in a way that we could never understand all communicated by size subnotica lets you know how hostile this world is with your encounters with huge sea creatures as well as your interactions with the unknown no man's sky is so vast and the planet it contains are so big that the entire universe of it ends up being meaningless in in a way that makes it feel like these planets are long dead gargantuan husks Shadow of the Colossus puts emphasis on the fear of the huge by not the colossa you face but the world itself halflife 2 uses megalophobia to legitimize the rule of an extraterrestrial threat to humanity that's why the concept of megalophobia in a game intrigues me so much megalophobia can be looked at in so many different ways and I think video games are one of the best ways to do that the huge is respected as much as it is feared and that's why me someone with light yet still apparent megalophobia still enjoys a lot of these games if anything my megalophobia makes me enjoy them more because for some people The Citadel is just a structure the planets in Nomad sky are just one in 18 quadrillion who cares how big it is me I care and I find that to be almost a gift megalophobia in a game can be looked on as a bad time for anyone with this irrational fear but if you ask me I want more of it give me more vastness in games give me more infinite seeming structures give me more monsters larger than I can comprehend and scare the hell out of me with it I'll be waiting and to you the viewer play more games about the huge play subnotica play the utility room instead of a regular horror game you might discover a fear you never knew you [Music] had

Channel: Cresendex

Views: 906,240

Keywords: Megalophobia, Phobia, Fear, Games, Game, Video game, Subnautica, No mans sky, Space, Shadow of the colossus, DOOM Eternal, Half-Life 2, Half-life, Half life 2, Half life, Half-Life Alyx, Half Life Alyx, space, outer space, cosmos, stars, video essay, big, informative, educational

Id: kBRy9MoRWxA

Length: 29min 48sec (1788 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 14 2024