A new horror game, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead has just been announced, and fans are already wondering how the game will incorporate real-world sound into its gameplay.
Since the inclusion of built-in microphones and speakers on controllers back in the PS4 and Xbox One console generation, games have been able to take advantage of the natural sounds around a player. In Alien Isolation if you’re too noisy whilst playing, the Xenomorph can be alerted to your presence.
Until Dawn had a similar feature where you had to hold your controller as still as possible while hiding from Wendigos. Move too much and your character would stumble, causing the folk horror creatures to swarm you.
Over on Reddit, fans want the game in VR with the microphone forcible turned on, so the aliens can find you if you’re making too much noise in real life. Over on YouTube, people are hoping the game has co-op and proximity voice chat. That’s a feature that’s been more prevelant in multiplayer games recently and would work well in a game where you have to be as quiet as possible. Keeping the volume down whilst also planning out your moves would be tricky, but rewarding.
One commenter wrote: “Hope there is a sound detection like Don’t Scream,” a Steam horror game released last year that requires you to explore a creepy forest. It’s full of jumpscares and if you scream, it restarts the game, forcing you to go through it all over again.
“Hopefully they have some of those ‘use your mic to pick up noises’ mechanic,” wrote another hopeful fan. It would certainly feel like a missed opportunity if the game didn’t do this.
In other news, horror studio Blumhouse is launching a video game production studio.