Was chewing the fat with some friends the other night, and the subject drifted to the (un)availability of quality horror-themed games. It’s always been one of the more under-represented of genres out there.
According to my friends, it’s due to heavy content requirements for these types of games, combined with needing a first-person view to draw the player into the world. In short, to maximize the creation of the “fear response” from the player, total immersion was needed.

I’m not convinced.

Although one can’t deny that total immersion raises the bar, there used to be a time when “all we had” was 2D and yet we still had good horror. Perhaps the best example that comes to my mind was the Butcher character created for the Diablo franchise way back when. Perhaps it was because it was 2am during our first encounter, or (more probably) it was because of the backstory and groundwork put into the Butcher character by Blizzard long before the player faced him in the dark catacombs that was his lair. Through several interactions with other characters in the game, the player is able to piece together and form the vision in their mind of how evil the Butcher was, along with his human aide Lazarus who’s people he abandoned hung on meat hooks lining the walls of the Bucher’s lair.