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Apr. 15th, 2019
The Flaws of Outlast II
Apr. 15th, 2019 02:06 amI would consider Outlast, and its DLC expansion, Outlast: Whistleblower as close to perfect survival horror as it's possible to get. But while the original Outlast was a fun, fresh blend of science fiction horror, religious horror, and bedlam horror, Outlast II takes the dive into full-on religious horror.
Gameplay isn't that notable; you don't automatically regenerate health anymore and instead must find and use bandages to heal, and you can only carry a maximum of five batteries. Night vision is blunted in its effectiveness due to the new enemies being able to use flashlights, and to make up for that, the camcorder now comes with a microphone function that can let you detect and track enemies you can't see past walls or grass. This latter addition could be an incredible expansion if not for the fact that while it will tell you exactly which direction an enemy is relative to you, it won't tell you how close they are. You can end up wildly evading villagers and walking right into them because they produce the same volume level at two feet as they do at twenty feet. Recordings are now done purely at events instead of constantly, and a playback feature of game footage with Blake's commentary is present instead of handwritten notes. Documents have been replaced with photos of notes and papers found throughout the game, to be reviewed on the camcorder whenever the player sees fit.
But as the overall strength of core gameplay is still unchanged and present to Outlast's original standards, they're not what this post is about anyway. Where Outlast II went off the rails (where so much survival horror usually does...) is in its story, which is a shame as the story of the original game and DLC is perfectly cohesive and interesting.
In addition to firmly embracing religious horror, Outlast II also makes a jump from pure survival horror to a blend of survival and psychological horror. The latter of these comes in via game segments that are essentially a combo of flashback and hallucination, based on Blake's time in a Catholic primary school, where he undergoes torment related to memories of late childhood friend Jessica, who was raped and murdered by a teacher there. As the game moves into its later portions, the school segments become increasingly hostile and dramatic, and the hallucinations begin to bleed into Blake's time in reality. Said reality plays out Blake's desperate attempts to navigate Temple Gate, a cult town where murderous villagers kill their children to prevent the Anti-Christ's birth and want Blake and his wife Lynn dead.
So would you like to know how the two parts of the story ultimately tie together?
Oh yeah--they don't.
Yeah, that's the big flaw. Easily the biggest, in fact--there is literally nothing tying the school segments about Jessica and her death to the modern day portions. If Blake had a traumatic past involving muffins and honey jam, those would probably be the subject of his hallucinations. There are essentially two separate stories happening and one is completely irrelevant.
The school segments aren't exactly a huge bundle of intrigue, either. It'll take maybe 1/3 of the game (roughly four or five short "Jessica Junctions") before the player figures out that Jessica was molested by a teacher and was hanged to fake the murder as a suicide. Then there's maybe ten or twelve more junctions to trudge through. The game sets these up as something important that will be prominently explored, which makes you want to figure it out, but after you do so, there's just more tedium and tongue demons for the rest of the game and no real wrap-up.
The ham-fisted unsubtlety of the Jessica Junctions though is sharply contrasted against the other half of the game that plays out in Temple Gate, where virtually nothing is explained at all. The end of the game will see a literal rain of blood and the goddamn apocalypse happen, and the player won't even realize it's not meant to be real in-story unless in the third chapter, they go out of their way to a hidden little alcove and find a note. And by "realize" I mean "go online and look it up, because all it does is mention towers and microwaves".
Want to know the big twist, and the reason for the hallucinations? Murkoff is involved. They're responsible, in their quest to dig into Walrider-y business they shouldn't be digging in, for two towers that broadcast mind-breaking signals that have led to the insanity of Sullivan Knoth, the formation of his New Ezekiel cult, and the schism with the Heretics. They're also the reason for the hallucinations, flashbacks, and tongue demons, via those brain-wrecking signals. You would only figure this out if, after reading that obscure document, you were able to piece together that a very obscure doctor's name from one of the original game's obscure documents was presented in this one. "Murkoff" is never even directly mentioned, nor are any experiments, nor is anything besides goddamn microwaves. It's like all of the detail that should have been present in the main storyline was instead wasted on two hours' worth of you running through school hallways past hanged Jessicas and getting soaked in blood showers.
What the hell was even with all of the focus on blood, anyway? Jessica died via broken neck. There was little if any blood involved in her death to begin with.
I still hope for an Outlast III and I hope that Red Barrels does better next time.
Gameplay isn't that notable; you don't automatically regenerate health anymore and instead must find and use bandages to heal, and you can only carry a maximum of five batteries. Night vision is blunted in its effectiveness due to the new enemies being able to use flashlights, and to make up for that, the camcorder now comes with a microphone function that can let you detect and track enemies you can't see past walls or grass. This latter addition could be an incredible expansion if not for the fact that while it will tell you exactly which direction an enemy is relative to you, it won't tell you how close they are. You can end up wildly evading villagers and walking right into them because they produce the same volume level at two feet as they do at twenty feet. Recordings are now done purely at events instead of constantly, and a playback feature of game footage with Blake's commentary is present instead of handwritten notes. Documents have been replaced with photos of notes and papers found throughout the game, to be reviewed on the camcorder whenever the player sees fit.
But as the overall strength of core gameplay is still unchanged and present to Outlast's original standards, they're not what this post is about anyway. Where Outlast II went off the rails (where so much survival horror usually does...) is in its story, which is a shame as the story of the original game and DLC is perfectly cohesive and interesting.
In addition to firmly embracing religious horror, Outlast II also makes a jump from pure survival horror to a blend of survival and psychological horror. The latter of these comes in via game segments that are essentially a combo of flashback and hallucination, based on Blake's time in a Catholic primary school, where he undergoes torment related to memories of late childhood friend Jessica, who was raped and murdered by a teacher there. As the game moves into its later portions, the school segments become increasingly hostile and dramatic, and the hallucinations begin to bleed into Blake's time in reality. Said reality plays out Blake's desperate attempts to navigate Temple Gate, a cult town where murderous villagers kill their children to prevent the Anti-Christ's birth and want Blake and his wife Lynn dead.
So would you like to know how the two parts of the story ultimately tie together?
Oh yeah--they don't.
Yeah, that's the big flaw. Easily the biggest, in fact--there is literally nothing tying the school segments about Jessica and her death to the modern day portions. If Blake had a traumatic past involving muffins and honey jam, those would probably be the subject of his hallucinations. There are essentially two separate stories happening and one is completely irrelevant.
The school segments aren't exactly a huge bundle of intrigue, either. It'll take maybe 1/3 of the game (roughly four or five short "Jessica Junctions") before the player figures out that Jessica was molested by a teacher and was hanged to fake the murder as a suicide. Then there's maybe ten or twelve more junctions to trudge through. The game sets these up as something important that will be prominently explored, which makes you want to figure it out, but after you do so, there's just more tedium and tongue demons for the rest of the game and no real wrap-up.
The ham-fisted unsubtlety of the Jessica Junctions though is sharply contrasted against the other half of the game that plays out in Temple Gate, where virtually nothing is explained at all. The end of the game will see a literal rain of blood and the goddamn apocalypse happen, and the player won't even realize it's not meant to be real in-story unless in the third chapter, they go out of their way to a hidden little alcove and find a note. And by "realize" I mean "go online and look it up, because all it does is mention towers and microwaves".
Want to know the big twist, and the reason for the hallucinations? Murkoff is involved. They're responsible, in their quest to dig into Walrider-y business they shouldn't be digging in, for two towers that broadcast mind-breaking signals that have led to the insanity of Sullivan Knoth, the formation of his New Ezekiel cult, and the schism with the Heretics. They're also the reason for the hallucinations, flashbacks, and tongue demons, via those brain-wrecking signals. You would only figure this out if, after reading that obscure document, you were able to piece together that a very obscure doctor's name from one of the original game's obscure documents was presented in this one. "Murkoff" is never even directly mentioned, nor are any experiments, nor is anything besides goddamn microwaves. It's like all of the detail that should have been present in the main storyline was instead wasted on two hours' worth of you running through school hallways past hanged Jessicas and getting soaked in blood showers.
What the hell was even with all of the focus on blood, anyway? Jessica died via broken neck. There was little if any blood involved in her death to begin with.
I still hope for an Outlast III and I hope that Red Barrels does better next time.