Great stuff, this helps me track the historical significance better. Being an example of an early psych horror game instead of just “largely a worse resident evil” is definitely a huge part of this puzzle.
This also fits because I tend to dislike the psych horror games I’ve played, in contrast to the more classic survival horror or action horror stuff.
I love the fixed cameras in re remake 1 and silent hill has some of that but yeah the straight cinematography vs the limited but still frequently moving and pegged to your character camera in sh2 wasn’t nearly as artistically interesting. I did get that it was going for that fear of the unknown.
I’m a fixed camera purist now I feel like we’ve left a lot of artistic potential behind, really wish they’d do a full bore new re game with fixed cam and see what can be done with it now vs 20-30 years ago when it started dying off.
Re2make and 4make were decent but the over the shoulder is eh. 2 is much better at creating a movie like vibe.
I think it’s absolutely a consequence of that trend in horror media. I’m seeing it backwards, it’s very similar to a ton of (what I find to be) schlocky edgy monster designs in bad movies and games that came after because it was ahead of that curve.