I would've loved if there was some meaning to the environments, aside from them just being fansy artsy.
You know, like Beksinski, who grew up in the war ravaged Poland.We can see heavy influence of war, death and religious hypocrisy in his apocaliptic phantasy works. As he was saying, he's been photographing his dreams or rather, id say, nightmares.
Lets take Kafka. His widely known work "The Metamorphosis". One morning he suddenly realised, that he became a large bug, with his family not knowing what to do with him. It is literary his daddy issues. His dad wanted him to become a lawyer, to pursue a career and dissaproved his writing passion. His fears are of being helpless, burden to his family, to displease his father figure . So, he spent his real life on a job he hated, while writing at nights, which became detrimental to his mental health.
Or Silent Hill2, for instance, where each character had his own personal hell. For James walls were everywhere, drapped in dirty white sheets. This is his memories about hospital, where his wife spent her last years and his life has been a literal hell, from which he had no escape, aside killing her. Of course Maria, who was created by his wish, by splicing his dead wife and a local stripper. And she died over and over from the hands of the executor, who symbolises James desire to punish himself for what he did. While for Angela world was in fire , as she burned her house down with her family. Eddys world is gigantic meat freezer, which points to his struggle with obesity and societal reception because of it.
In Silent Hill1 enemies represented Alessas fears, or interests. Like boiler in school basement, which she imagined was a fire breathing monster in her world. Or pterodaktiles and crocodoles, whom she loved to draw in her sketchbook, as we see in her room at the end.
The murderous children were at the school in her nightmare world, while in real world they shunned Alessa for she was different.
So, as i said earlier, the idea is what makes true art.
There were couple of games that integated Beksinsky's style pretty nicely. Like Tormentum Dark Sorrow, which is an adventure game. And The Medium, which is a walking simulator with stealth. Both games take place in otherworlds but none of them explain why they look that way. Although the Medium does have an interesting environments, wich correspond to character's inner worlds. This game could have been a new Silent Hill, if it had gameplay.
