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Chapter 20
I stood in the centre of the test room, the blank walls were lit like Galileo’s desktop. I could see him animating “Mawvis” as She was now temporarily called. He clicked build and I tried my best not to shut my eyes, I’d learned nothing was worse than closing your eyes to a blank room and opening them to Mawvis staring right at you.
I still couldn’t help myself from a spasmodic recoil when she popped into existence in front of me. “Why do I have to do this?”
“Because it amuses me.” He said.
“You can be a real dick Leo.” I said. Suddenly, her eyes swivelled. I could see the blood red insides of her eye-lids briefly. I turned away. “You dick, when did you put them in”
“When I found out about the word ‘palpebral’. It means relating to eyelids. I’m still looking for a sentence where I can use it without just explaining what it means.” I hesitated before walking round her sharp legs, they were more pole like now, knuckled in that way spiders have.
“Can you take them out, they are fucking gross.”
“No, no. You see they wanted horror, didn’t they? Palpebral detail Alan, that’s a good source of horror as you can see.” I could imagine his smugness. “Besides, I was on the butler playthrough, so I never got to see her to check myself.” Galileo preferred the butler; the narrative choices were almost exactly what he wished he was like. “Callum get in here a minute”, He must be calling Callum Forester the art assistant into the development room. Callum was by far a better artist than Galileo but what he had in technical skills he lacked in creative imagination. Galileo was the head, Callum the hands. It worked well, they’d started collaborating on a side project a few months ago but gave up when they realised it was crunch.
“What’s up boss?” I was doing my best to focus on the innocuous conversation. Helps to remember that she is not going to suddenly start devouring me. She is just some bouncing lights in a box. That’s the genius of this damn project, “Medium is the message” Galileo had said in his pitch to the bosses. He was right, everything so far in the Inverse was jump scares and fantasy rpgs. No one really made AAA Thrillers. They wanted something like Dark Souls but he gave them a mix of Dante’s inferno and Fawlty Towers. Making the medium the message, that really puts the fear in you. Knowing that the story is in a simulation, that you don’t know if your character is simulated, that the very simulation itself comes alive to terrorises you in visceral detail. I shook a little, clearing away the cobwebs. In fairness, no one is going to enjoy this game. It’s too close to home, too grotesque and dark. Galileo wanted to be cult though, he said cult would work better in this medium. This was his Evil Dead. That’s why he’d dubbed this a single A title, he’d bartered his way down to less staff for more creative freedom. Undeniably, his approach to interactive narrative in an immersive environment was just genius. He knew that having people stop to read through options and decided which phrase they wanted to say would only serve to break any form on flow that might occur. To remedy this, he created the emotion hud. As psychology was a key point in the game the player had to maintain the character’s sanity. This was always a negotiation of internalising and externalising agency and emotion, it was so simple and yet really, really cool. Three bars; happy, sad, angry was all it took for the player to drive the narrative. Whenever conversations occurred they occurred naturally in real-time. The player adjusted the character’s response to what thye were hearing, you could be part angry part sad, or you could max all three. The system underneath would then apply these to either unique dialogue or dialogue that was essentially a form of factor analysis. In doing so, the generic script elements could be shaded dynamically with adjectives and adverbs that correlated with the emotions.
“Callum, I’ve got two things to tell you.”
“Right-ho then boss.”
“You’re dead and I hate you. So, start adding a different companion. Frost is straight-up annoying, straight as a fucking badger in a turbine.”
“Okay, guess if I was in a turbine I’d be annoyed as well. Still though that hurts. He a little too much? I tried pushing the boat out a bit. What you are thinking then boss?” Callum didn’t mind the criticism, he knew if he got it good enough it would go in. I finished checking her shape, it seemed fine.
“Looks good Leo.” I said in the direction of the camera. “I don’t see any holes”.
“One sec, just animating her scuttle around the walls. I dunno yet, I’m not against the character in general but if we want nerd chic we have to make him less….less….desperate otherwise he’s too big a pansy” I heard him tap a click a couple of times. Mawvis suddenly disappeared from my view but I could feel her presence behind me. She was designed that way, it’d take him a minute to move her. I tried to turn to face her, but I got the barest glimpse of her fangs at my shoulder. I shut my eyes and waited. “Tell me when she’s in place.”
“Yeah, you’re good you wimp.” I opened my eyes to see the underside of her coarse abdomen half a foot from my face. Her legs began to curl around me, the slow jerking movements that somehow managed to be terrifying because you felt the sharp notes of the violin in the back of your head. She spun crazily as he repositioned her top towards me now. I couldn’t have been more thankful, I hated this thing from the first moment he showed it to me. He and Callum were especially proud of their work, she was every part a nightmare and those eyes haunted into you. Moist black, beady orbs slightly oval so she had a recognisable gaze, they were of course now surrounded by parleperous wrinkles. “Scuttling her up now”
She began to move hurriedly in the air. Her oddly elongated midriff rose up towards me slightly and the top of her disfigured head arched back to reveal the gaping maw with sickly lips over dark spine shaped teeth. I hated the human structure to what was entirely an arachnid head, the contorted lines made her so disconcerting. Even at this odd angle her procedures made her gaze always looking me dead in the eyes, that was part of her terror. You always felt her watching you even when you couldn’t see her. The latter levels are a real mindfuck when she starts coming after the detective. When he goes in with the firelighters before the last fight, and she’s following him down the halls. God, that really got my heart pumping. “Looks alright”.
“We finalising that then?”
“Yeah, she’s good.” I turned to exit the room, I heard something like some tin foil dragged on the floor, I checked my shoe for whatever it was but there was nothing there. I looked back up and instantly felt her behind me, the fangs slowly started to creep either-side of my neck. I knew her head was open above me, looming just above my crown. I saw two tendrils jaggedly reaching around my sides eagerly feeling their way to claw me in. I went to turn; my heart was cold. She made no effort to move away and so I slowly turned into her. Her mouth dangles frothy, stringy saliva and her gums were putrid with crevasses of missing flesh and liver spots of black oozing cysts. I looked up to her eyes, they excitedly moved down to meet my gaze. She seemed to smile but that must’ve been my imagination. I didn’t feel anything but suddenly the world went black.
I still couldn’t help myself from a spasmodic recoil when she popped into existence in front of me. “Why do I have to do this?”
“Because it amuses me.” He said.
“You can be a real dick Leo.” I said. Suddenly, her eyes swivelled. I could see the blood red insides of her eye-lids briefly. I turned away. “You dick, when did you put them in”
“When I found out about the word ‘palpebral’. It means relating to eyelids. I’m still looking for a sentence where I can use it without just explaining what it means.” I hesitated before walking round her sharp legs, they were more pole like now, knuckled in that way spiders have.
“Can you take them out, they are fucking gross.”
“No, no. You see they wanted horror, didn’t they? Palpebral detail Alan, that’s a good source of horror as you can see.” I could imagine his smugness. “Besides, I was on the butler playthrough, so I never got to see her to check myself.” Galileo preferred the butler; the narrative choices were almost exactly what he wished he was like. “Callum get in here a minute”, He must be calling Callum Forester the art assistant into the development room. Callum was by far a better artist than Galileo but what he had in technical skills he lacked in creative imagination. Galileo was the head, Callum the hands. It worked well, they’d started collaborating on a side project a few months ago but gave up when they realised it was crunch.
“What’s up boss?” I was doing my best to focus on the innocuous conversation. Helps to remember that she is not going to suddenly start devouring me. She is just some bouncing lights in a box. That’s the genius of this damn project, “Medium is the message” Galileo had said in his pitch to the bosses. He was right, everything so far in the Inverse was jump scares and fantasy rpgs. No one really made AAA Thrillers. They wanted something like Dark Souls but he gave them a mix of Dante’s inferno and Fawlty Towers. Making the medium the message, that really puts the fear in you. Knowing that the story is in a simulation, that you don’t know if your character is simulated, that the very simulation itself comes alive to terrorises you in visceral detail. I shook a little, clearing away the cobwebs. In fairness, no one is going to enjoy this game. It’s too close to home, too grotesque and dark. Galileo wanted to be cult though, he said cult would work better in this medium. This was his Evil Dead. That’s why he’d dubbed this a single A title, he’d bartered his way down to less staff for more creative freedom. Undeniably, his approach to interactive narrative in an immersive environment was just genius. He knew that having people stop to read through options and decided which phrase they wanted to say would only serve to break any form on flow that might occur. To remedy this, he created the emotion hud. As psychology was a key point in the game the player had to maintain the character’s sanity. This was always a negotiation of internalising and externalising agency and emotion, it was so simple and yet really, really cool. Three bars; happy, sad, angry was all it took for the player to drive the narrative. Whenever conversations occurred they occurred naturally in real-time. The player adjusted the character’s response to what thye were hearing, you could be part angry part sad, or you could max all three. The system underneath would then apply these to either unique dialogue or dialogue that was essentially a form of factor analysis. In doing so, the generic script elements could be shaded dynamically with adjectives and adverbs that correlated with the emotions.
“Callum, I’ve got two things to tell you.”
“Right-ho then boss.”
“You’re dead and I hate you. So, start adding a different companion. Frost is straight-up annoying, straight as a fucking badger in a turbine.”
“Okay, guess if I was in a turbine I’d be annoyed as well. Still though that hurts. He a little too much? I tried pushing the boat out a bit. What you are thinking then boss?” Callum didn’t mind the criticism, he knew if he got it good enough it would go in. I finished checking her shape, it seemed fine.
“Looks good Leo.” I said in the direction of the camera. “I don’t see any holes”.
“One sec, just animating her scuttle around the walls. I dunno yet, I’m not against the character in general but if we want nerd chic we have to make him less….less….desperate otherwise he’s too big a pansy” I heard him tap a click a couple of times. Mawvis suddenly disappeared from my view but I could feel her presence behind me. She was designed that way, it’d take him a minute to move her. I tried to turn to face her, but I got the barest glimpse of her fangs at my shoulder. I shut my eyes and waited. “Tell me when she’s in place.”
“Yeah, you’re good you wimp.” I opened my eyes to see the underside of her coarse abdomen half a foot from my face. Her legs began to curl around me, the slow jerking movements that somehow managed to be terrifying because you felt the sharp notes of the violin in the back of your head. She spun crazily as he repositioned her top towards me now. I couldn’t have been more thankful, I hated this thing from the first moment he showed it to me. He and Callum were especially proud of their work, she was every part a nightmare and those eyes haunted into you. Moist black, beady orbs slightly oval so she had a recognisable gaze, they were of course now surrounded by parleperous wrinkles. “Scuttling her up now”
She began to move hurriedly in the air. Her oddly elongated midriff rose up towards me slightly and the top of her disfigured head arched back to reveal the gaping maw with sickly lips over dark spine shaped teeth. I hated the human structure to what was entirely an arachnid head, the contorted lines made her so disconcerting. Even at this odd angle her procedures made her gaze always looking me dead in the eyes, that was part of her terror. You always felt her watching you even when you couldn’t see her. The latter levels are a real mindfuck when she starts coming after the detective. When he goes in with the firelighters before the last fight, and she’s following him down the halls. God, that really got my heart pumping. “Looks alright”.
“We finalising that then?”
“Yeah, she’s good.” I turned to exit the room, I heard something like some tin foil dragged on the floor, I checked my shoe for whatever it was but there was nothing there. I looked back up and instantly felt her behind me, the fangs slowly started to creep either-side of my neck. I knew her head was open above me, looming just above my crown. I saw two tendrils jaggedly reaching around my sides eagerly feeling their way to claw me in. I went to turn; my heart was cold. She made no effort to move away and so I slowly turned into her. Her mouth dangles frothy, stringy saliva and her gums were putrid with crevasses of missing flesh and liver spots of black oozing cysts. I looked up to her eyes, they excitedly moved down to meet my gaze. She seemed to smile but that must’ve been my imagination. I didn’t feel anything but suddenly the world went black.