Aesthetic Codes and Lighting

The original Resident Evil is well known for it's pre-rendered environments and obstructing camera angles, leaving the player unknown to what is round the corner until they hear and or see for themselves. From my experience, the static camera angles found in the early Resident Evil games heightened the fear of the unknown and the connection to reality, we can't see round corners in real-life. This emphasised the player/character's vulnerabilities, they are only human just like the player. As noted, "One key way in which survival horror games create their emotional effect is by maintaining a state of player vulnerability, often by suspending the player in a state of incomplete knowledge. The perceptual conditions for this state of vulnerability are enhanced through visual obscurity. Obscurity supports a sense of vulnerability (uncertainty) and is thrilling because it is makes the object of terror indistinct" [1]. 

A scene from Resident Evil 2, Claire is running toward camera, but the player does not know what she is running into. An empty corridor? More enemies? 

The same with this scene. It seems as though the enemies have come from off-screen, how many more are there? Are they close by?

In addition to this, the use of darkness and light in survival horrors can be a tool to amplify the character's vulnerabilities. In Dead Space much of the action takes place inside dimly lit rooms where certain objects and enemies are difficult to make out. Moments when cast shadows dart across walls and short snippets of enemy appearance in the dark make the unknown are much more deadlier place and remind us of the character's loneliness and vulnerability in the face of the overwhelming danger hidden in the shadows. "...in Resident Evil 4, the darkest spaces occur when one is playing Ashley: the character with the fewest resources and greatest vulnerability" [1]. However this has been subverted somewhat in the recent Resident Evil 5 where most of the game takes place in brightly lit, outside areas wheres enemies are clearly visible. But of course this leads to the argument of whether the most recent "survival horror" titles are actually survival horrors at all.

[1] Magy Seif El-Nasr, Simon Niedenthal, Igor Knez, Priya Almeida, Joseph Zupko, Dynamic Lighting for Tension in Games, Volume 7, Issue 1, 2007, retrieved on 23/05/2009.