TRUE darkness has never been tried! And maybe that's a good thing?

[Eyestabber]

How many games have you guys played where darkness (the absence of light, not evil or edginess) is a real in-game mechanic that you have to play around? The overwhelming majority of games feature only "fake darkness" meaning it's just cosmetic and you can see just fine without a torch. I remember in Hordes of the Underdark darkvision was important in the early game, but not so much later on. In fact, despite supporting darkvision from the first version, I barely remember NWN modules making much use of it. Darkest Dungeon and Tainted Grail: Conquest have darkness mechanics, the later being one of my favorite examples of "darkness" doing something other than (finish) ******* up my eyeballs.

I believe real darkness is an unpopular mechanic for a variety of reasons. Take the Witcher series, for example. You have the Cat's Eye potion in the game, but only the very first witcher made use of that mechanic. In W3 the potion is only good for ******* up your colors and in W2 its effect is the same as raising your monitor's brightness level. Most FPS games will give you NVG at some point...and you can see just fine without them.

So how does HQ feel about darkness mechanics? Do they add a meaningful layer of gameplay or is it just free eyestabbing? Discuss!

[logincrash]

Darkness isn't fun because you don't have the majority of other senses (other than sound) that would compensate for the loss of sight. You can't carefully feel your way around and you just end up ******* up, falling down, running into walls, etc. That's not fun at all.

[rusty_shackleford]

There's a zone in everquest that has high level undead mobs spawn at night, during the day it's a bunch of low level mobs. It being memorable enough to come to me when I was thinking about this must be worth something. Which isn't technically darkness but related to night time, I suppose.

Otherwise, I suspect a handful of roguelikes that are escaping me at the moment probably do this well.

[rusty_shackleford]

Oh, right, Solasta. Just made humans feel completely gimped because you had an accuracy penalty 80% of the time when other races didn't.

[Norfleet]

How many games have you guys played where darkness (the absence of light, not evil or edginess) is a real in-game mechanic that you have to play around?

It's pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

[anvi]

Early Everquest each race had unique pros and cons. Dark Elves could Hide and they had Ultravision so could see in the dark. And their home zones were all dark. Erudites and Humans got better stats but no ultravision and they were basically blind at night. You could buy a torth or kill a wisp which dropped a lightstone. Some classes could summon a lightstone too. You really had to equip it or it was just too dark to see.

Not sure how but it changed over time. They added tech to improve the engine but it kinda harmed the game. You probably couldn't control Gamma originally so that's why it was so dark. As soon as you have a gamma slider it ruins the whole thing. Also most zones had thick fog, mostly because graphics cards couldn't display long distances with lots of objects. Some of the open plains were clear but there's not many trees there. Some forest type zones had thick fog so you could only see about 20 feet ahead. They later added a draw distance option so you can now see the far end of all zones no matter where you are... It ruins the sense of scale and things.

I liked the darkness thing though. I didn't like having to hold a torch or something I played you have to relight your torch often, that was a PITA. But I like the idea of it sometimes being dark unless you light the place up with a spell.

[rusty_shackleford]

Wartales makes heavy use of darkness. When in the tombs, enemies lurk in the dark and ambush you. Torches help.

[anvi]

There's a zone in everquest that has high level undead mobs spawn at night, during the day it's a bunch of low level mobs. It being memorable enough to come to me when I was thinking about this must be worth something. Which isn't technically darkness but related to night time, I suppose.

Otherwise, I suspect a handful of roguelikes that are escaping me at the moment probably do this well.

I remember that too, Kithicor Forest, creepy zone. They didn't have that in the game at first. So I got used to running through there with no worries. Then they added it with a patch. At night time (8pm game time I think), undead spawn all over the zone. High level ones too and raid mobs and stuff. I used to forget and hit auto run, come back to all hell chasing me.

[Oyster Sauce]

I like setting up torches/glowsticks in games like Terraria, Minecraft, or DRG.

[SpellSword]

Thief The Dark Project.png

Thief II The Metal Age.png

[LemonDemonGirl]

Uhh Shadow Curse mechanics in BG3

[Vergil]

Everyone who installed a total darkness nighttime mod for a Bethesda game never seemed to enjoy it and ended up doing all sorts of autistic exploits and bizarre little rituals to circumvent it.

Unless the game has special mechanics for night or time sensitive quests just making half of the game time an unplayable mess that you will stand in a corner and use a wait feature to fast forward to day is a ******** waste of time.

[J-12]

Splinter Cell and Riddick (for a very short time in the first game, i think) had the true-dark shadows tied to the gameplay that were fun novelty, at least for their time.

There was also this one indie game "The Messenger" that had that one map where all you can see is literally a black screen, it was full of insta-death pits and traps, you not meant to pass it as soon as you find it but you do need to return to it much later in the game with certain item, but there is achivement for going trough without it.

[fork]

Dragon's Dogma's nights are pretty dark.
Doom 3 (original) required you to choose between flashlight and weapon.
Dark Souls (Tomb of Giants) and Dark Souls 2 (Gutter) were also dark af.

I like true darkness when it impacts atmosphere and gameplay in certain ways.
And games with nights as bright as a megacity make me want to stop playing (unless the setting is a megacity).

Edit:
Other games that come to mind are Tormented Souls, Withering Rooms and Hollow Knight.
Doom also has pitch black sections.

[Norfleet]

The main problem with using visual darkness, as opposed to mechanical darkness, is that if you make the game simply VISUALLY dark, you're just forcing the player to adjust the monitor settings to play the game at all, because monitors are utterly incapable of rendering realistic darkness. When you see in REAL darkness, your vision operates more in the near-infrared spectrum, so you can see the NIR outlines and profiles of objects. Monitors have no ability to show anything in this range so nothing at all is seen. This effectively makes the game unplayable under those conditions without tricks like gamma-shift hacking and night-vision-mode. The game hasn't become more mechanically interesting, just visually ****.

Mechanical darkness, on the other hand, is something the player directly interacts with as a game mechanic, trying not to get eaten by a grue.

[aimlesshealer]

Don't Starve has a monster which kills you quickly if you're ever caught in darkness (the game even lists your cause of death as "eaten by a grue"). You can't see in the dark at all.
Minecraft is truly dark, but I enjoyed it a lot more with the DynamicLights mod, which allows you to explore without littering the environment with torches. Plonking down a torch every 10 steps takes me out of it.
I recall areas of Subnautica being quite dark as well. I used to park my minisub with the headlights on so I could see what I was doing.
Marathon also features lots of pitch black rooms which can hide enemies completely until they start firing at you. Being a super cyborg you'd think you'd have night vision or at least a flashlight, but no... James Sunderland has better night vision than you. It's funny, but adds a lot to the atmosphere and affects how you approach things.

I love darkness in games, but only when it feels like it's enveloping you. It's a different feeling from darkness as a sanity mechanic like in Amnesia: the Dark Descent or Sunless Sea, or darkness as an annoying vision debuff like in Oblivion or KCD. I think it has something to do with proprioception.

[Tweed]

There's a zone in everquest that has high level undead mobs spawn at night, during the day it's a bunch of low level mobs. It being memorable enough to come to me when I was thinking about this must be worth something. Which isn't technically darkness but related to night time, I suppose.

Otherwise, I suspect a handful of roguelikes that are escaping me at the moment probably do this well.

You forgot to mention how being a human sucked dicks in old EQ because you couldn't see **** at night. Being a dark elf was a huge advantage and humans clamored to get their hands on greater lightstones as soon as they could to have any kind of light source. The problem was how all the light nodes used to be pre-baked into the world so some areas were better lit than others no matter how good your light source was.

Unless of course, you had ultravision.

[J1M]

How many games have you guys played where darkness (the absence of light, not evil or edginess) is a real in-game mechanic that you have to play around? The overwhelming majority of games feature only "fake darkness" meaning it's just cosmetic and you can see just fine without a torch. I remember in Hordes of the Underdark darkvision was important in the early game, but not so much later on. In fact, despite supporting darkvision from the first version, I barely remember NWN modules making much use of it. Darkest Dungeon and Tainted Grail: Conquest have darkness mechanics, the later being one of my favorite examples of "darkness" doing something other than (finish) ******* up my eyeballs. I can tell real darkness is an unpopular mechanic for a variety of reasons. Take the Witcher series, for example. You have the Cat's Eye potion in the game, but only the very first witcher made use of that mechanic. In W3 the potion is only good for ******* up your colors and in W2 its effect is the same as raising your monitor's brightness level. Most FPS games will give you NVG at some point...and you can see just fine without them.

So how does HQ feel about darkness mechanics? Do they add a meaningful layer of gameplay or is it just free eyestabbing? Discuss!

There's one maze in Zelda: Breath of the Wild that is pitch black and you have to rely on things like setting fire to the environment or carrying a torch to see. (But you can't hold a torch and a weapon at the same time.)

PS: I consider that maze to be a top 5 moment in the game.

[anvi]

I was gonna mention Thief.

If you are going to make a game with good day/night and light sources, then you may as well go all the way and let the player control it in a meaningful way. Not just make it brighter for yourself, but shoot out light sources and then you can sneak past enemies. And they use lights to try and find you.

[TKVNC]

Morrowind has the Halls of Penumbra in Bloodmoon.

It's a little annoying, but nothing that magic can't solve.

[Eyestabber]

Dark Souls (Tomb of Giants) and Dark Souls 2 (Gutter) were also dark af.

Tomb of Giants was real darkness, but it was a one-off bit. Now DS2 is an interesting case because I remember E3 footage of the game where torches were clearly needed in most dungeons, but then the release version came and suddenly the dark wasn't nearly as dark anymore. Which, to me, is a good change since going back and forth between a torch and a shield sounds like a huge pain in the ***.

[gerey]

Dying Light places a big emphasis on lack of light. If you're caught outside a safe zone at night you will face much more aggressive zombies, as well as more powerful variants that only come out at night.

Gloomwood and Fincher are two games that take heavy inspiration from Thief - both have a light gem equivalent and (certain parts of) levels can get very dark.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent also placed a lot of emphasis on darkness - the deeper into the castle you go, the darker the levels get, and the more you have to rely on your lantern, but enemies are also attracted to it, so there are parts of the game where you have to sneak around in complete darkness, which lowers your sanity and leads to hallucinations. I don't know if it counts, though, since your character can adapt to the low light conditions somewhat.

Same applies to all other Amnesia games, though the Bunker is the one that takes advantage of the light/dark mechanic the most. Your wind-up flashlight makes noise if you use it, the creature usually only comes out when it's dark, so keeping the bunker generator fueled up is critical in exploring the map, and if the fuel runs out you have to navigate the map in near total darkness, with the stalker prowling around.

Exanima actually forces you to pick between using a torch of a shield/weapon in certain parts of the game.

Alien vs Predator in the marine campaign had a lot of pitch black sections where flares and gunfire were the only surefire way to see anything.

Condemned 1 and 2 also had very dark sections where your only source of light was the flashlight.

[Tangerine]

I play Doom 3 without a flashlight.

[Nemesis]

Darkness and the player's use of it to sneak around were core mechanics in the original Splinter Cell trilogy.

[rusty_shackleford]

RPG thread

[DagothGeas5]

Don't Starve and Minecraft came to mind as well to mention, but my go-to darkness (though it is only in a few set areas) would be what I am experiencing in Wizardry VI. There are no torches to circumvent it also, just feeling around blindly (*OUCH*) and count your steps. I don't believe I have played any other game that has something like this and I am surprised it is not a mechanic in more games as it makes discovery and exploration incredibly rewarding when you continue to feel around and then your character manages to step forward, then on like this until, for one example, I encountered a door that opened into light. There are many moments like this (though only one with a door) and I have to say I cheered out loud when my exploration was rewarded, truly a lot of fun, at least for me!

[A Chinese opium den]

Its not an rpg, but Rust has the truest darkness of any game I've played. Its indescribably hard to see in the dark without a torch in that game.

[Oyster Sauce]

Its not an rpg, but Rust has the truest darkness of any game I've played. Its indescribably hard to see in the dark without a torch in that game.

I remember stumbling into some hoodlums in the pitch black and having a fight where you could only see people when they fired due to the muzzle flash. Spooky.

[fork]

Now DS2 is an interesting case because I remember E3 footage of the game where torches were clearly needed in most dungeons, but then the release version came and suddenly the dark wasn't nearly as dark anymore. Which, to me, is a good change since going back and forth between a torch and a shield sounds like a huge pain in the ***.

Yeah, having that mechanic in most of the dungeons would've been bad, but I really enjoyed exploring and lighting all the torches in the Gutter.

RPG thread

Bit unfortunate really, since it's an interesting topic but most games utilizing darkness in interesting ways are not RPGs.

[Element]

The main problem with using visual darkness, as opposed to mechanical darkness, is that if you make the game simply VISUALLY dark, you're just forcing the player to adjust the monitor settings to play the game at all, because monitors are utterly incapable of rendering realistic darkness. When you see in REAL darkness, your vision operates more in the near-infrared spectrum, so you can see the NIR outlines and profiles of objects. Monitors have no ability to show anything in this range so nothing at all is seen.

Couldn't that be fixed with a simple screenspace shader though? Something like ssao, but emitting a very faint glow instead.