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[Oskuro]

Baron Von Blubba

(If you don't know what it is, turn in your classic gamer card)

• Indestructible
• Hard to Avoid
• Kick-ass Music Cue
• Looks Spooky (In the context of the game)

The really intimidating thing about this monster is the sense of inevitability you get. It is, after all, the game's "Time's Up" mechanic. It will always show up, relentlessly chase you (there is no place it can't go to) and will eventually catch you.

Even worse, if there's another player around, two will show up, one chasing each player. If you think about it, this monster is a metaphorical personification of death in the game's universe.

Most times simple things work best.


Further reading: The 10 Most Terrifying Video Game Enemies of All Time

I curse Sonic's drowning mechanic with my dying breath! 

[GhostBomb]

Ok... I take back what I said at the very start of the thread.  Invincible one hit kill "time's up" enemies are freaking terrifying.  The ones that really stand out to me are the previously mentioned Water Wraith from Pikmin 2 and also that ghost from Spelunky.

[Azure Lazuline]

Tips for any enemies-in-training who want to become more intimidating!

- You need to be bigger than the player. That one's simple.

- You should be invincible to the usual tactic: if the player attacks and the sword just bounces right off with a "ting" sound, that's scary. Or if damage numbers are displayed and they have been steadily climbing into the hundreds throughout the game, at least be strong enough to reduce that to single digits.

- You definitely need a big charge-up animation, possibly for a laser beam. Kirby bosses are good at this. You just know when one is going to fire a giant laser and you need to get the hell out of the way, even if you've never fought that boss before.

- Blow something up before the battle.



- Specific tactic that only really works once per game: make the player weaker for it. Take their powerups somehow, like that section in Zero Mission. You're scared of those pirates because you only have a crappy gun that can't even kill them. It's a variation of point 2, I guess. Works more for game sections than for bosses. (Although, my favorite example is the final boss of Drill Dozer.)

- Opposite of that: the player gets a powerup, but so do you. They get an earth-sized mech, but you grow to the size of the sun. Final boss of Viewtiful Joe 2 comes to mind here, which just builds off how crazy the first game's final boss was.

- You probably need multiple forms, and make each one difficult. A final boss needs more forms than any previous enemy, otherwise the player expects another battle and feels like it was too short/easy.

- Very specific to final bosses with multiple forms: they should get bigger and bigger, but then the final form can be human-sized. Anime does this a lot, especially DBZ. All the power of that huge planet-destroying thing is now condensed into a much smaller space... law of density lets you know it's powerful.

- Most important tip of them all: have an awesome theme song. Like Magus. No intro speech is complete without a theme song.

[kinglake]

Oooh... I thought of one more thing relating to something Azure mentioned about multiple forms.

One of the most intimidating things about a few of the bosses in the original Resident Evil Trilogy was the fact that you can be confident you have killed the boss, exhausting 99% of your ammo and using your last herb and BOOM they pop through the window and you have to fight them again and they are even stronger than before!

In particular i'm thinking of the final bosses.

[ink.inc]

have it kill all your friends

[eyeliner]

Knowing he is coming, and you can't stop him from it.

[Oskuro]

Like the lawyer unit from Civ: Call To Power? A smartly dressed man carrying a suitcase, with the power to completely freeze an entire city, and it's a stealth unit to boot.

I had to build an army of Cyber-Ninjas just to take care of them.

But the point is that the unit shifted the paradigm. I had a sizable army, with my tanks, warships, and the odd unit of pikemen, and a new unit that operated on a different paradigm (stealth unit with economic effects rather than military) terrorized me and almost brought me to my knees.

The lesson here (apart from the value of ninjas) is, again, to push the player out of their comfort zone.

[Miko Galvez]

I disagree with Azure. SA-X was fucking intimidating DESPITE being the same size as you. I think having the enemy share similarities with the player is a factor. Kind of like enemies that can open doors that has just been said.

[Oskuro]

Mirror enemies are intimidating just by their nature. You know what you are capable of, and suddenly are facing your own lethal weaponry.

SA-X, though, had excellent presentation. Whenever she showed up, the scene got creepy, and her slow and deliberate motions made her much more intimidating.

Also, smaller creatures can be scary, very scary. Think facehugger.

[Azure Lazuline]

I disagree with Azure. SA-X was fucking intimidating DESPITE being the same size as you. I think having the enemy share similarities with the player is a factor. Kind of like enemies that can open doors that has just been said.

Yeah, they're just all general rules, it's not like one enemy can have all of them! SA-X follows points 2 (invincible to normal shots), 3 (big charge-up animation), 4 (blow something up beforehand; SA-X absolutely loves this), 5 (make the player weaker), and 9 (music change). So you can't disagree THAT much, 5 out of 9 is pretty good!

[DustyDrake]

One thing SA-X also does is be avoidable (or appear to be).
Sounds kinda weird, but it's true.
That moment when the screen darkens and you get this circle of light around SA-X, you know to stay out of it's way.
Then, you get dropped right in front of it.

[Oskuro]

It's not weird. It's scarier to face something when you still have the choice to run away in fear, you know, the fight or flight instinct. If there is no choice for flight, there is only fight left, so it is somewhat easier to face something you can't back up from.

[sodap]

Intimidation is using fear to alter behavior, in this case player's behavior.

The thing is giving the player the illusion that the enemy is very powerful, be it through personal experience (ie the player has already fought the enemy and knows it's powerful) or speculation (ie suggesting that power to the player). An intimidating enemy is either powerful, or has been marked as such by ingame text, visual design, whatever. That will make the player fear the consequences of facing that enemy, altering his behavior.

Actually, I'm going to add into that: it's not only about power, maybe the enemy can do something annoying like awful sounds or not letting the player move, or something like that. For example those zombies in ocarina of time. That makes the player want to avoid the enemy or if he cant, feel nervous and make mistakes when that intimidating guy is around.

[John Hutchinson]

Knockback, screen shakes, and picking up characters you care about (or you) by the throat (or some other "vunerable" way) can be pretty effective tools for making a boss feel powerful as well.

It sucks pretty bad when an enemy picks up your girlfriend by the throat, throws her across the room, she smacks into a wall, making the whole screen shake, and slides down, totally knocked out. Then, when you get control and try to stop him, you get knocked back all the same.  That makes you really hate him because he feels so powerful and you feel so weak by contrast.  A character like that doesn't have to be "big", per se. He just needs to threaten something you care about and make you feel helpless... and it also gives you a long-term goal.

[TacoBell_Lord]

He must be active, when you look @ Final Fantasy VI - Kefka was always behind the scenes but causing trouble. Making a intimidating enemy is feeding there personality 1st to the player rather then NPCs talking about him/her. Also cheap things like them just destroying things will begin to wear out because we expect for villains to be monsters. There are many themes an antagonist can have, many goals, many ways they can go about it - the cliche "taking over the world" gets a bit strained

[John Hutchinson]

In one of the Wizardry games for ps2, they would announce that Death had appeared in the room, and was chasing you, you never knew when he would just show up, or in what direction he was coming from, I think he was a near-instant kill.  Never been so intimidated before.

That sounds so awesome!

[Miko Galvez]

I disagree with Azure. SA-X was fucking intimidating DESPITE being the same size as you. I think having the enemy share similarities with the player is a factor. Kind of like enemies that can open doors that has just been said.

Yeah, they're just all general rules, it's not like one enemy can have all of them! SA-X follows points 2 (invincible to normal shots), 3 (big charge-up animation), 4 (blow something up beforehand; SA-X absolutely loves this), 5 (make the player weaker), and 9 (music change). So you can't disagree THAT much, 5 out of 9 is pretty good!

I just meant the first point actually. A lot of great points have come from this thread

[Sir Raptor]

- Blow something up before the battle.

I wanted to point something out with that battle. The giant bat is a common boss in the Castlevania series, so crushing it with one hand is less of a "oh, he crushed a bat with his hand" and more of a "holy shit, he just one shotted a boss".

This actually sort of leads to an entirely new way to make an enemy intimidating: take an enemy already known for its intimidation, and decimate it. Put another way, imagine you're playing Silent Hill and you see Pyramid Head hobble round a corner, look over its shoulder, and stumble past without even paying attention to you. What the hell is around that corner that terrifies Pyramid Head?

[J-Snake]

Play the original pc- Far Cry up to the point you fight the first trigens. Witness what makes intimidating enemies: great A.I. + great action-design: sudden long-range deadly attacks = pure excitement

[John Hutchinson]

A lot of great points have come from this thread

Definitely!

This actually sort of leads to an entirely new way to make an enemy intimidating: take an enemy already known for its intimidation, and decimate it. Put another way, imagine you're playing Silent Hill and you see Pyramid Head hobble round a corner, look over its shoulder, and stumble past without even paying attention to you. What the hell is around that corner that terrifies Pyramid Head?

That's a damn-scary mental image right there. Anything that can scare that frightening thing is not something I want lurking around a corner I'm anywhere even remotely near.