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Out of Sight
Horror from a New Perspective - Out of Sight Interview with The Gang
We caught up with Per Hallros and Patrick Berglind to talk all about this fresh take on the puzzle, horror formula.
Audio transcription
"Hello everyone and welcome back to Gamereactor. Today I have a really exciting interview for you because I'm here with not just one member of the gang, but two members.
I'm here with creator and director Per Halros and also executive producer Patrick Berglin to talk all about the upcoming atmospheric horror game, Out of Sight.
Now Out of Sight is a really unusual game for the simple reason that it doesn't just utilise first person, but it utilises second person perspectives, which is something we don't really ever see used in video games all too often."
"So with that being the case guys, let's talk a little bit about the inspiration behind Out of Sight.
Were there any games or creative works that inspired you to want to make this game?
Yeah, definitely. So one of the biggest inspirations for Out of Sight thematically is the Little Nightmare games.
We love the vulnerability of the characters, like a small character in a big scary world."
"But the actual mechanics and everything that goes into the game is other inspirations of course, very different ones.
It's a racing game called San Francisco Driver.
I think Omar Per is saying in terms of vulnerability, it's the sort of anti-power fantasy, if that makes sense.
To a degree, of course, it's a power fantasy, small degrees, as you're trying to overcome some sort of dangers."
"But in terms of the focus is that you need to be very vulnerable.
And that's been one of the core pillars that we've been working towards throughout the development.
And tell me a little bit about the story as well.
So obviously it revolves around a young girl who has lost her sight."
"But what else can we expect to happen in the story, in the narrative of Out of Sight?
So starting off in the game, you're kind of just waking up one night, not really knowing why you're there.
But it's very clear that the girl doesn't want to be in this house wherever she is kept.
So you know that your goal is to escape, right?
And as you move further and further into the game, you get to realize why you're there."
"Who's keeping you captive and why you need to escape so badly.
And maybe what's been going on in the house before.
Yeah, there's one thing that's different from this night though.
I think we should mention, I think for those of you who have played the demo will notice."
"The main difference of this night is that you can see for the first time in a very long time.
Yeah.
So that's what sort of kicks off the, yes, I can finally sort of escape this.
My sort of disability."
"I can see again.
Let's go.
Let's use that to actually try and escape.
And the reason you can see is because all of a sudden you can see from the eyes of your teddy bear instead of your own eyes."
"Which is sort of the twist of the game.
Not the twist of the game. Well, yes.
Mechanics.
Mechanics of the game.
So tell me then, what made you want to develop a game that utilizes both a first and a second person perspective?
It really started from coming up with like, what is second person perspective?
And then we did some research like how that could behave in a game."
"And we came up with this solution where you have a detached, where your eyes are in a different character.
And then it became a very strong connection between these characters.
Where, oh, but I want to bring the camera with me for my eyes, right?
So how that kind of became like a natural transition to have the first person part where you carry it in your arms."
"And then put it down to becoming the second person perspective.
You are watching yourself through someone else's eyes.
Yeah.
Also, I think, I mean, the concept of 2D games, the concept of, in this case, 3D games."
"And instead of going way ahead of the curve and doing something radical in terms of mechanics that's super way ahead, right?
Taking aspects and just tweaking those and perfecting those are a bit more interesting, at least to us.
Than being like, let's do a 4D game with smelling controls or something.
That's a bit far out, maybe."
"But I think that aspect of like, I mean, second person, I can put down my camera.
That's quite easy, if that makes sense, concept-wise.
But then perfecting that into gameplay has been a big challenge.
I think we succeeded."
"But it's also interesting.
It's something that everyone can sort of almost, hmm, this is an interesting take, interesting perspective, no pun intended, on the game.
So I think that is really interesting to us.
And that's the way we want to do stuff."
"So, yeah.
I can just add, like, a lot of the stuff that we found when researching is kind of like the old Resident Evil games.
We have static cameras, almost like CCTV cameras, watching a character and then moving statically.
But then we were really intrigued by the thought of, okay, but what if that camera is a whole other character?
And that's when you get the collaboration or the transition between first and second person perspectives."
"Yeah, yeah.
I can go on and say more stuff.
I was just about to ask, actually, in regards to the second person perspective thing.
I can imagine it poses some more unique challenges that perhaps other developers don't have to experience."
"You know, being able to sort of almost look behind the curtain by putting this camera in places that it probably shouldn't be in other times.
So what's that like?
What sort of challenges do you guys have to overcome to make this work?
All of them."
"No, but I think if we talk game development generally, creating a puzzle, per se, just being a puzzle is quite simple, relatively, if that makes sense.
But then giving yourself the limitations on we can only do this, we cannot do that.
How do we create a puzzle that's functional within that sort of framework has been challenging.
It took us a while, if I'm being honest, on perfecting that and finding the formula."
"These are the rules for how we create a puzzle.
But I think we've done a pretty good job.
And I think it's going to be interesting.
And we have a learning curve, and it's going to be a bit more interesting."
"And we have thematic sort of aspects to it.
So I think it fits quite well.
Yeah, we've put a lot of effort into making the detached eyes, the teddy bear, and the relationship feel very natural.
And that's been a big challenge, of course."
"How do you make going back to pick up your eyes feel like a requirement, like something you want to do and not something you have to do?
And how can you use that to your advantage in puzzles, like you're saying, right?
And then it's just a big challenge because the player can run around almost freely.
So how do you make sure the player knows where they are?
And how do you make sure that they don't lose themselves in their vicinity?
And how do you make sure that you always see what you need to see when you're solving puzzles, right?
How can we make the level so that the player understands what they can interact with and how they can execute things in the level mechanics, right?
So it's all vision-based."
"What can we see right now and where do I need to position it so that I can see what I need to see in order to do what I need to do?
Yeah.
Complicated.
Yeah."
"A lot of challenges.
A lot of challenges, yeah.
You mentioned a moment ago about building on the puzzle-solving side of things.
We've talked about the Little Nightmares inspiration."
"We've talked about Resident Evil.
Both of those games have very different ideas of puzzles that they throw at players.
So what kind of puzzles and what kind of challenges can we expect the player to have to overcome in Out of Sight?
It's a very, what do you say, like a single-player cooperative experience."
"You're collaborating a bit with yourself because you're both in control of the teddy bear and the girl.
So it's what I said before.
You need to find angles where you see what you need to see and then find ways for the girls to get there.
And then at the end, you always need to make sure that how do I get the teddy bear with me wherever I end up, right?
Because we need to continue together."
"I can't leave my eyes behind because then I can't see anything in the next level, right?
So the majority of the puzzles are like sight-based in a way, right?
You need to figure out how both characters can get to this position together.
Yeah."
"Also, I mean, one of the things that we should say, and then the question might be raised, why can't I do whatever puzzles I need to do while holding my teddy bear?
You can't because you're holding your teddy bear and then you can't interact with stuff.
So that's also a key aspect."
"It's quite a small girl and the teddy bear is, in comparison, quite big.
So she needs both her hands in order to carry the teddy bear.
So in order to interact with whatever lepers or whatever it might be, pushing stuff and so on and so forth, she needs to put the teddy bear down because she can't do stuff otherwise."
"So that's one of the key things that brought into the game and all the puzzles and stuff.
And you mentioned as well, you know, talking about the Little Nightmares inspiration in comparison.
That's a game that offers some really unsettling and creepy horrors that people have to go through and experience.
What sort of horrors have you lined up for Outer Sight and, you know, sort of terrifying creatures or beings or whatnot that Sophie's going to have to avoid while working her way through the mansion?
Yes."
"I think it's, I would say it's layered.
Does that make sense?
I think we can spoil that.
We don't have that much gore and that kind of aspect."
"But just the fact that you're a young girl and for some reason you are blind.
That reason or that thing might be revealed later in the game.
Why are you blind?
But it's not something that we will show."
"So we have that underlying aspect of why, what's happening here, right?
And we're going to explain that throughout the game, as we're progressing.
But then there's also the aspect of what happens as you're playing and what characters you might encounter.
And those persons, individuals, monsters, or whatever you want to call them, are not pleasant."
"They're not nice.
I would go as far as saying sinister.
Yes.
And I don't want to spoil too much about them because it revolves in the plot and this and that."
"I don't know.
Do you want to say something more or am I forced to stop you guys?
It's okay.
We're definitely leaning more towards the atmospherical aspects to it."
"So, yeah.
It's definitely progressing.
The more you play in the demo, you can see that there is some kind of old lady who is...
Who's there."
"Let's say she's there.
She's there.
We can spoil that.
She's in the game.
Yeah."
"We will show that in a few minutes.
But we are definitely leaning more towards the atmospheric aspects to horror.
Rather than just a bunch of jump scares.
So, yeah."
"It's definitely progressing.
She's there, we can spoil that. She's in the game, the young lady, and she has her reasons which you understand. Yeah, I think we want to keep the most of it under wraps because boiling it is foiling the plot and that's a big integral part of the game, so yeah."
"Now it's mentioned in, I think on the Steam page, that there's a specific quote that says your senses may betray you, which I understand is probably going to be quite an unusual thing to unravel because, I mean, the game is based around sight and Sophie regaining her sight, so how can we expect our senses to betray us as the gameplay advances and as the story unpacks?
So without spoiling too much, of course, you are always connected to your teddy bear, right? That's your eyes, that's who sees for you, but it's a separate character, right? So there might be things happening around in the world which can affect the teddy bear, of course, and in puzzles you need to send it away from you for a while and then what can you see once it's detached from Sophie? So that's something we've utilized a lot throughout the game, is how can we make sure this teddy bear camera has interesting experience for the player?
Yeah, I wasn't really close of saying something. Yeah, we wanted to see it. Yeah, experience it, it's a lot easier. We can have a follow-up interview and then we can talk about it, right?
Sounds good to me. Well, let's talk a little bit about the fact then as well that while the game is known as Out of Sight, it wasn't always known as that. It was previously regarded as unseen. So what led to the name change and why did you want to make the switch?
Long story, but I'm going to try to make it short. This game is based on a school project demo, right? That we made when we were students. Yeah, and that's ages back. That was called Out of Sight."
"As the game got into the gang and however that happened, we can go into that, but we thought at that point in time that it was a lot easier to go for another name as we were going to do a full project. As we went on, we realized maybe not. Let's go for Out of Sight because it's just a lot easier. So even though we like the other name, we figured that, I mean, we called it Out of Sight. That was a really good name. So let's just go back to it. So basically, changing name if we want to see the demo as part of the game development, that was called Out of Sight. Then we changed to Unseen and then, no, let's go back to Out of Sight. So it's simple as that. We wanted to stay true to our roots, right? That's what the core of the project was when it was still a school project for us and it feels great having that name for the full game as well. Yeah, so it's not a hidden story. It's a good reason, if any reason to have one. Let's cap off then and let's talk one final question for the both of you. So obviously, Out of Sight is almost here. It's getting very close to launching. Some people may have already experienced a bit of it themselves through the demo that's available. But let's talk then about when that launch eventually comes. What's one part of Out of Sight that you're really excited for people to experience for themselves? Oh, it's hard not spoiling. I would say that I think it's about an hour into the game. You think everything is going rather well and all of a sudden it's not."
"And that moment for playtesters and friends and family who haven't tried it is like very interesting. So just seeing that part is gonna be very interesting to see how people react to it. And I'm not gonna spoil more. But it's about an hour in. You think it's going really well and then all of a sudden maybe it's not. I guess the whole game, right?
Something that's still surprising me as one of the things I love most is this connection between Sophie and the bear and between Teddy. Because that's so potent when you always need to collaborate and you always need to go back for Teddy and make sure that you are cooperating as you're trying to escape together. And I think that's a very strong feeling that becomes tangible even after you finish with the game. I think that I need to tell that actually because I think that's one of the things that we're proud of everything about the game. But if I have to pick something that I'm a bit more proud of is that I think we managed to create a relation with the Teddy that's basically just your eyes. But you still feel the sort of relation and you can feel that through the character, through Sophie, that she really cares for the teddy bear. And that's, I don't know, seeing that progression throughout the game I think is a nice journey. And it's a bit of happiness in all this sinister sorrow that we sort of experience."
"So that they have each other I think is really beautiful.
Well if you needed any reason to check out the game, which you probably didn't know if you needed any additional reasons, there you have it. Plenty of exciting opportunities to check out this game.
It comes out on May 22nd so relatively soon on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X and S consoles. Again there's a demo that's available that you can check out right now to get an early taster of it. But otherwise yeah, stay tuned for more on Out of Sight and eventually that follow-up interview where we get to spoil all the secrets about the game. But guys, thank you so much for speaking with me today. It's been an absolute pleasure and otherwise we'll see you on the next Game Retro interview. Take care. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye everyone."
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