Opinions on the Liminal Space phenomenon on 3D retro games

[ThirteeTooBeets]

This kind of discussion and phenomenon isn't limited to retro games, but I feel like they're much stronger here.
To preface this I'll explain what I mean by Liminal Space in the scenario that someone reading this whould not be aware of what it is.
Most people online describe liminal spaces as "a place between transitions, someplace that doesn't truly feel real". In recent years this has become very popular amongst internet horror trends, trends that I don't really find scary mind you, most images used to illustrate liminal spaces in real life just look like malls or often populated places after closing hours, they feel empty but not creepy per se.
There's also the added bonus that 90% of the images you find online come from photos taken somewhere in the US, and since I'm not from there it feels more like I'm looking at an empty movie set.
Don't get me wrong, I can see how the emptiness and overall feeling of those places can make someone feel scared, but I want to talk about another kind of liminal space.

The one and only, just needs a bit of furniture and we can make it into something more creepy: an office building​

Now I might be remembering this wrong, but the liminal space craze began around the same time the infamous "Super Mario 64 Iceberg" first appeared on the wider internet, in fact I'll say that it might very well be the first tangible example of the liminal space, since it sparked the discussion of how so many people felt a sensation uneasyness on certain levels that they could only atribute to the liminal space look of some courses.
And this got me thinking, because looking back, I did experience this feeling too...

Wet Dry world in particular was a level most people mentioned making them uneasy, and I can attest that it did that to me as well​

Me and my friends talked about this and I came to a conclusion that I whould like to hear more opinions on. I think this is a phenomenon so prevalent in old 3D games due to the fact that most people who experienced them also lived through the transition between 2D and 3D graphics. With 2D you sort of felt the videogame as this compressed screen that tries to emulate a space where the action takes place, but it still feels like a painting, a fully 2D space. With 3D the scope is bigger, and in your head that space started to feel more "real", because it felt more realistic or at least palpable compared to the 2D space, but console limitations could only render so far. I think that you get those feelings in later SM64 levels bcause is more apparent that they're 3D platforms suspended in a space of nothingness, something that is better hidden in levels like Bob Omb Battlefield due to the architecture of the level hiding that fact better, it feels more like a secluded meadow rather than a bunch of platforms suspended in a box with a jpeg image repeating itself to simulate a background.
In the case of glitches even, when an old 2D game presented any kind of flaw, the visual presentation whould be a mishmas of pixels, in a 3D game it whould often result in the space itself still revealing the geometry and textures, technically it whould be pretty much the same, but visually it whould feel lees like a machine malfunctioning like in the 2D games and more like an actual 3D space showing it's interior workings in a more tangible way, I remember seein a texture glitch when I was a kid and realizing how the levels were just a bunch of blocks with "stickers" placed on top.
Finally I think that to the average little kid, experiencing these 3D worlds is much more immersive atmosphere than if it were 2D, again this whould hit much harder if you were alive to experience the shift to 3D over 2D. They almost feel alive, and thus more personal and confusing to understand in the primitive void that devs tried to hide in older games.
For the same reason I don't think this hits as hard with current games that try to emulate this feeling, because it was accidental back in the day...

A place that personally made me uneasy was Mystic Marsh in Spyro 2. Why so much fog? Are there other islands over the sea horizon?​

I don't know if anything I've been saying makes sense to anyone lol, but I whould like to hear your opinions on it

for reading!

 

[Natsuyasumi]

Wow I never connected the dots on why I didn’t like Wet/Dry world, but that’s totally it! The underground caverns where you get the metal mario power up made me feel the same way.

 

[ThirteeTooBeets]

Wow I never connected the dots on why I didn’t like Wet/Dry world, but that’s totally it! The underground caverns where you get the metal mario power up made me feel the same way.

The caves are very claustrophobic, apparently the intent was to represent a town but Marios scale in size is all wrong, plus the fact that it's underwater and fully abandoned

 

[valosagutas]

This is an interesting concept to think about actually.

I'm not a horror expert, I can't understand what's supposed to be "scary" about it but I can attempt to explain in psychological concepts that also touch upon neurology and biology:

Put it simply, the human brain works in a way that generates a dream even when you are awake. The dream you see is to make whatever you comprehend make sense to you so your brain can ensure a natural flow of processing information without fact checking to ensure survival. The brain is an organ like super computer that's always tasked to decode the unknown, to detect questions to come up with answers. But it doesn't mean the brain perfectly understands. What you understand depends on your active genes, your personality, your chemical reaction and your knowledge.

For example, what your eye actually see is an upside-down image of what you see but you don't see it that way. Because of the sense of gravity we as life forms evolved with, we got "used to" the sense of gravity being the sensation of "down" so we feel like falling. This sense is a very fundamental feeling for us. And because of it when we are supposed to fall down but according to the image of what we see it seems "we don't fall" (you can't fall to sky lol), the brain tries to make sense by inverting the visual you see. Because of it you don't see upside down despite its how the light reflected into your eye.

This was a fundamental example to explain how your brain try to make you believe in what makes sense. Because of it, what doesn't make sense will make you feel fear because your brain will think of questions without answers, it will desperately use your memory for answers then it will try to imagine to come up with answers but this drive for "imagination" actually generates the horror. So your dream turns into a nightmare!!!

This is why the horror genre is filled with what doesn't make sense, rather than what's outside of patterns we're used to. For example, in big cities we get used to it being filled with lots of people. So it would be scary when we wake up one day but we cannot find anyone in a big city. This silence, lack of people, this stillness doesn't make sense. It's not normal!!!

So a way to make something scary is using ordinary ideas in an "it doesn't make sense" way. People walking in creepy unnatural way is scary. Some weird triangle objects everywhere in sky would be scary. People walking on ceiling like it's a normal thing would be scary. However in certain aspects they using generic "monster" designs to make people scary. It doesn't make me scary because I killed lots of ugly sons of a beach to this day lololol.

So why "what doesn't make sense" may not be scary for some is either they like it or it's what they get used to. What makes sense to you also depends on your pattern detection abilities. When a pattern is trivial brain ignores it. So when you are little, the existence of sun may make you scared. But then you will learn no one cares, so you stop caring about it so much sometimes you forget the sun exists despite half of our day it's obviously there.

So in our modern world most people get used to always being with someone. The population of world so increased even small towns are big cities now. Not many reason for people to stay so alone to get used to being alone. They are first with their family, and then school and so on. Then these people would think places without people itself is scary because they get used to being with places that's mostly filled with people.

In video games, weird places that don't even mean anything are used to give a sense of "this place is dangerous" and it can scare people. This is just because this is not what we used to seeing, this is an unknown that makes us scared like why people feel scared in the dark. This unknown can be dangerous!!!!

 

[Graves Ruinwalker]

The idea of liminal space has huge potential in horror games but its used way too much of its atmossphere alone instead creating the horror effectively .

The Dread is constantly there in its way too clean and fake peace . Something to build upon and can be really great .

I mean , abandoned buildings in its ruined form can be creepy but even clean and sterile ones aint really something to call it comfy either .

 

[tenkai star]

This topic has fascinated me since it's inception with the icebergs as you said. Since I was a kid, I got that feeling strongly from the beginning area of Majora's Mask and the OOT beta screenshots I remember from old magazines and websites. I get an uneasy fever dream vibe from these places in a way that only happens from this era of technology.

 

[Dannzy]

I think part of it is how these early games try to approximate reality, but for obvious reasons can't. You can tell what kind of place it is supposed to be and with imagination you can envision a wide world for it to fit in, but they aren't really like the real thing. We are naturally afraid of things that approximate our mundane life but are clearly not the same.

 

[Zerpina]

Zelda: OoT feels like an almost dead world, really even in the finished game, with only a few pockets of Hyrulians left. Honestly, the Kokiri children are more like a last pocket of survivors, if you think about it living off the land, hidden away from monsters.

And as child Link even what 'Life' is there, feeling sparse, even for an N64 game. The main hub, Castletown, feels like with just a few shops, homes, NPCs, and guards. They are the last of a dying race of people, right on the brink of extinction

The whole world of Hyrule in that game just feels empty. I know, obviously, it was due to space limitations of the cartridges. They couldn't have sprawling towns with dozens of NPCs everywhere. But by design, the world feels dead and empty.

 

[aquova]

Now I might be remembering this wrong, but the liminal space craze began around the same time the infamous "Super Mario 64 Iceberg" first appeared on the wider internet

What is this iceberg?

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I always felt like Valve games had these.

 

[ThirteeTooBeets]

What is this iceberg?

The very first Iceberg meme format ever made, as far as I know. Also like half of these are jokes

 

[Dannzy]

That Wario image is such a classic by now haha.