10 Most Terrifying Areas In Non-Horror Games
The worst kind of jump-scare.
The most genuinely unnerving kind of moment in horror is that which takes you by surprise. It's why jump-scares are so often used, and why there are so many monsters you only see in quick flashes while they rip someone's jugular out.
And it's exactly this logic that has games that don't belong to the genre of horror still contain a terrifying area or two. As you aren't expecting to be spooked - and have no idea how long said spooks will last - any frights hit twice as hard as they would otherwise.
This can be oddly hilarious when a game decides to amp its horror for one single area, as afterwards you're left getting tense in otherwise totally normal scenarios, convinced that your nightmarish experience is restarting all over again.
Even years after you finish the game, you'll still have a moment every now and then where you remember the horrors that randomly appeared in an otherwise innocent title, and wonder whether you hallucinated the whole thing.
Except that's what the game wants you to think, dear reader. That's just what it wants you to think.
10. The Abandoned Shack - Skyrim
With the vast majority of Skyrim being the vast open wilderness - or, at worst, a surprisingly spacious cave - the Abandoned Shack stand out as a particularly weird site.
A lone house in the middle of the open wilderness, the weird vibes you immediately get about this area are only made worse by the way you're introduced to it.
Because you will almost definitely first find this area by being kidnapped whilst you're asleep, and brought to the building with zero idea of what is going on. Then you're shown three blindfolded captives, and told one has a contract on them - and you must figure out which and kill them.
Only, you can kill literally any combination of them, and your kidnapper - the Dark Brotherhood member known as Astrid - will still applaud you for showing your proverbial fangs, and offering you a place on the team.
If you weren't trying to find the Brotherhood, however, it's undeniable that you're going to come out of this whole experience just a little bit traumatised.