6 Reasons Why Horror Is Gaming's Most Important Genre

There's something peculiar to horror stories that most people would find difficult to accept in other genres and that has to do with the choices of characters and the types of narrative structures found in Horror.

Horror has a great deal more narrative freedom than other genres. Insofar as the goal of horror is targeting particular emotions of fear and terror, sudden shifts, twists, and more surrealistic, even difficult to comprehend story shifts can be effectively utilised, unsettling players whilst still feeling appropriate to the type of story being told.

Almost every entry in the Silent Hill franchise is a good example of this: for instance, having environments which seemingly do not link into each other logically, hallucinations, and other such illusory elements often crop up in Silent Hill games. There is a certain freedom to introduce such narratively disruptive elements in horror; a freedom which other genres must work an awful lot harder for.

That horror can wilfully introduce elements that do not strictly speaking make sense whilst still maintaining those undercurrents of emotional consistency marks it out as one of the most truly challenging and yet rewarding genres in gaming.