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The most fearsome, frightening monster in any RPG is...

eXalted

Arcane
Joined
Dec 16, 2014
Messages
1,213
Every time I swim deep in the water in a 1st/3rd person RPG.

Generally, I dread underwater adventures as well because of the inevitable breathing mechanic. Usually a status bar or a counter that gives a limited amount of time before your characters drown. Very tense.
Especially when you are swimming in an underwater caves and yiu don't know when the next place where you can take a breath will come.
 
Joined
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Messages
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The island of misfit mascots
Roguelikes are the scariest since a tough monster will make you start over and not just restart (if you can't run away, at least).

Ogre Mages are always scary early on in ADOM - they cast invisibility so you can't see them, and they cast quite damaging ice bolts. But from where they cast the attack spell, you can judge their current position. They do walk around you constantly instead of sitting still, though.

Werewolf Lords are another possible early threat - they're much faster than most PCs, and summon more wolves, sometimes even more werewolves, to their side. This often makes running away impossible. They also hit very hard with their melee attack.

Tower of Elemental Flames and the Ancient Chaos Wyrm in it are probably the most exciting setpiece fight, you can never be 100% sure you make it unless you grind a lot.

But now when I think of it, when I played enough, it wasn't frightening to meet these guys so much. Just a welcome, exciting challenge. With time you learn that not even stat draining monsters are such a big deal in the long run.

For me, the most tense times in ADOM are when you're about to pop open a crypt/greater crypt. Usually, encountering those things is a boon - one monster type, so put on the right gear and you've got a reasonably safe way of getting a metric fucktonne of exp and (more importantly) 1-3 artifacts. It can bump up a solid, marginally over-powerful character into one that's powerful enough to start thinking about taking on the optional super-bosses and special victory conditions.

And then sometimes you open one up, and it's full of greater undead / greater chaos / greater dragons, and you're fucked.
 

Johannes

Arcane
Joined
Nov 20, 2010
Messages
10,487
Location
casting coach
Roguelikes are the scariest since a tough monster will make you start over and not just restart (if you can't run away, at least).

Ogre Mages are always scary early on in ADOM - they cast invisibility so you can't see them, and they cast quite damaging ice bolts. But from where they cast the attack spell, you can judge their current position. They do walk around you constantly instead of sitting still, though.

Werewolf Lords are another possible early threat - they're much faster than most PCs, and summon more wolves, sometimes even more werewolves, to their side. This often makes running away impossible. They also hit very hard with their melee attack.

Tower of Elemental Flames and the Ancient Chaos Wyrm in it are probably the most exciting setpiece fight, you can never be 100% sure you make it unless you grind a lot.

But now when I think of it, when I played enough, it wasn't frightening to meet these guys so much. Just a welcome, exciting challenge. With time you learn that not even stat draining monsters are such a big deal in the long run.

For me, the most tense times in ADOM are when you're about to pop open a crypt/greater crypt. Usually, encountering those things is a boon - one monster type, so put on the right gear and you've got a reasonably safe way of getting a metric fucktonne of exp and (more importantly) 1-3 artifacts. It can bump up a solid, marginally over-powerful character into one that's powerful enough to start thinking about taking on the optional super-bosses and special victory conditions.

And then sometimes you open one up, and it's full of greater undead / greater chaos / greater dragons, and you're fucked.
At that point in the game you're sure to have a Wand of Monster Detection + Item Detection to see what's in there both monster- and artifact wise. And even if you just go in there blind, at that point in the game running away is very easy.
 

Mr. Pink

Travelling Gourmand, Crab Specialist
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I'm terrified of Beholders for no good reason
latest
 

Konjad

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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The virus in Pathologic. You can't see it, but you know it's everywhere. It's deadly but you don't really know you're in danger until you're already infected.

10x better than any monster.

MUAJu.jpg
 

Alienman

Retro-Fascist
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Ghouls from the first Risen. You even get to meet one early if you join the Don. "Hey, nameless hero one of our men disappeared in that cave over there. Why don't you go and take a look?"

That AOE attack. R.I.P Nameless hero.

latest
 

Carrion

Arcane
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Lost in Necropolis
Generally, I dread underwater adventures as well because of the inevitable breathing mechanic. Usually a status bar or a counter that gives a limited amount of time before your characters drown. Very tense.
Underwater areas are scary as they really put you into a vulnerable state. Water is of course a hostile environment to begin with, as simply staying in there for too long is enough to kill you. Your movement is seriously slowed down, you can't see shit, and the threat can come from any direction, even directly underneath you. In a fight you will be at a serious disadvantage, not being able to utilize your usual movement patterns (and possibly some of your weapons), facing an enemy that can probably move a lot faster than you can, and of course having to take the precious oxygen into account at all times. In short, underwater areas will take you far away from your comfort zone, and facing even weak underwater beasts can be a lot more stressful than taking on a dragon or some other powerful but rather familiar monster that you can fight on your own terms.
 

Epsilon

Cipher
Joined
Jul 11, 2009
Messages
428
Todd Howard. It's destroyed more experiences than I care to admit, than any other monster in role playing games. And it's made me fear for the future of multiple universes.
 

sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,661
I thought Deathclaws were particularly frightening. Their 3D rep in the later games also scared me. The first time I saw one in Fallout 3 I was walking around the edge of a rock formation and it was doing the same and we sorta bumped into each other. Scared the daylights outta me.

The dogmen were frightening in a gameplay-sense in NEO Scavenger. Got into some epic fights with them, including one time where one tripped me down as I tried to flee, I rolled over and put a bullet through its eye as it closed in for the kill. Few games can produce genuine intensity out of such simple aesthetics. To add, a lot of the fights in NEO Scavenger are kinda scary and frightening, particularly in the early game. Even a random vagabond can be fearsome as you brain each other with flashlights and frying pans.
 

Jaesun

Fabulous Ex-Moderator
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MCA
I have to agree. Those Dogmen in NEO Scavenger when I first came across them scared the fucking shit out of me (as I learned how fucking nasty they are). Every time I would happen upon one of them (at low levels) I was like FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RUN AWAY!!

Good times. :cool:
 

eXalted

Arcane
Joined
Dec 16, 2014
Messages
1,213
Underwater areas are scary as they really put you into a vulnerable state. Water is of course a hostile environment to begin with, as simply staying in there for too long is enough to kill you. Your movement is seriously slowed down, you can't see shit, and the threat can come from any direction, even directly underneath you. In a fight you will be at a serious disadvantage, not being able to utilize your usual movement patterns (and possibly some of your weapons), facing an enemy that can probably move a lot faster than you can, and of course having to take the precious oxygen into account at all times. In short, underwater areas will take you far away from your comfort zone, and facing even weak underwater beasts can be a lot more stressful than taking on a dragon or some other powerful but rather familiar monster that you can fight on your own terms.
Yeah, just a fish with sharp teeth is enough. It is not even needed to be some kind of gargantuan monster.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Yeah, just a fish with sharp teeth is enough. It is not even needed to be some kind of gargantuan monster.
Morrowind dropped the ball on this. Letting you fight the Dreugh and shit mean swimming ain't no big deal.
 
Self-Ejected

Lurker King

Self-Ejected
The Real Fanboy
Joined
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Messages
1,865,419
Deathclaws will be on everybody lists:

latest



Agathoth from Age of Decadence will tear you apart and mentally rape you:

hcLc9CQ.jpg



If you consider FFVII a RPG, and a machine a monster, you can include Emerald Weapon:

FFVII_Emerald_Laser_2.png
 
Last edited:

NotAGolfer

Arcane
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Joined
Dec 1, 2013
Messages
2,527
Location
Land of Bier and Bratwurst
Divinity: Original Sin 2
The most frightening monster? Of course this one here:

puqHzbL.jpg


I call it my inner compulsive looter.
It made me check all the containers in Twitcher 3 even though there was nothing worthwhile to be found in them (you don't really need alchemy recipes if you don't make a build around alchemy).
I just cannot resist the urge to loot.
:negative:
 

Fargus

Arcane
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
2,349
Location
Moscow
Come to think of it... this bitch from Arx Fatalis was really terrifying.

BlackBeast.png


Fast. You can't kill it with weapons. It can kill you in 2-3 hits. The only option is to run.

Dwarf Kingdom felt like first Alien movie because of it. Fuck this thing.
 

Jazz_

Arcane
Joined
Jun 13, 2016
Messages
1,069
Location
Sea of Ubiquity
Every time I swim deep in the water in a 1st/3rd person RPG. Knowing that every moment a giant fish or a predatory water monster can jump from somewhere while I am surrounded by water... Fuck that.

I have no problems swimming in real life, but in real life there isn't all kind of shit living underwater while you are near the beach or in a swimming pool.

Have you ever tried to go in the open sea in Far Cry? That was by far the most scary thing I have ever experienced in a game. The sound the oxigen mask does, the limited visibility, and the fact that you know there are sharks swimming in there somewhere, the psychological fear from the anticipation was heavy for me. Getting killed by one eventually was somewhat less scary than swimming around.
 

eXalted

Arcane
Joined
Dec 16, 2014
Messages
1,213
Have you ever tried to go in the open sea in Far Cry? That was by far the most scary thing I have ever experienced in a game. The sound the oxigen mask does, the limited visibility, and the fact that you know there are sharks swimming in there somewhere, the psychological fear from the anticipation was heavy for me. Getting killed by one eventually was somewhat less scary than swimming around.
Fuck that, man. I ain't trying it.

Slightly offtopic but this reminds me of when a game allows me to "explore" the region out of the bonds of the map - be it a sea, an outter space in a game like Freelancer, desert, or similar. The voidness and emptiness of it all is soul crushing.
 

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