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2015 Level of Moisture in the Air

Title: Level of Moisture in the Air

Folklore Type: memorate, folkloresque

Contents:

"[Siliconera] From ghosts appearing out of rippling water to the feel of droplets running down your body, water’s played an important element in all kinds of horror scenes, but it’s always been difficult to depict in video-game graphics. During our experimentation this time, we saw some pretty good prospects for making this happen, so we agreed to give it a shot and got to work with Koei Tecmo Games.

MS: A lot of it was because the Wii U made it technically feasible.

The reason we went with water this time, though, comes down to my personal experiences. I think it was around 2008, but I was in Los Angeles in the summer, and the experience made me really feel like “I doubt I’d run into any ghosts around here”. Then, when I went back to Japan and immersed myself in the kind of summer humidity you only see in Japan, it made me realize once again how much of a necessary element it was. I think there needs to be a level of moisture in the air in order for ghosts to appear. If the humidity’s high, it feels like you’re surrounded by something larger than yourself; the boundaries between you and the rest of the world grow ambiguous, and I realized that the water becomes an intermediary that connects you with the unseen.

I wanted to make this game the culmination of the whole series, so I went with water for the theme. For this game, we made sure there was always water onscreen, from the menus onward. We also put in rain, lakes, rivers, fog, and every other kind of element. When your characters get wet, the clothing sticks to their bodies, which we also put in to help bring that feeling of moisture across.

You also have to enter a bath at one point. Water and enclosed boxes are two themes in this game, so we couldn’t have gone without that."

Context:

In this interview excerpt, Shibata discusses using water as a major theme in Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water and how he believes that water plays an important role in allowing ghosts to be visible.

This interview was given ahead of the the European and North American release of Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water for the Nintendo Wii U console in 2015. This is the fifth game in the primary series. The game is later remastered for release to modern consoles and the PC in 2021.

Source Information

Original Source Citation:
Osawa, Toru and Makoto Shibata. "How Fatal Frame's Creator Scares Players and His Real Life Ghost Stories." Siliconera. November, 3, 2015. https://www.siliconera.com/how-fatal-frames-creator-scares-players-and-his-real-life-ghost-stories/.
Source Type: interview
Source URL: https://www.siliconera.com/how-fatal-frames-creator-scares-players-and-his-real-life-ghost-stories/
Date Published: 2015-11-03
Date Collected: 2023-08-03
Associated File Name: Osawa_Makoto-2015-How Fatal Frames Creator Scares Players.pdf
  1. Bibliography-Fatal Frame Collection
  2. 2015-Recreate_the_Atmosphere
  3. 2015-Occult_Spots_Across_Japan