History is known cases of a successful transmission of the game series from some developers to another. So, Professionals from Professionals from Telltale Games. Or take, for example, Katauri Interactive With their concern for orphaned King’s Bounty – also, until a certain point, it turned out quite good.
So the very fact of attracting new developers to create a second game from the series Amnesia does not say anything yet. Moreover, the authors of Amnesia: The Dark Descent from Frictional Games And they themselves did not completely eliminate the process, and the successors of their business picked up clearly healess. Incredibly beautiful, poetic and bold, in the idea “Game without a gameplay” called Dear Esther – the work of developers from developers The Chinese Room. True, horror in the portfolio of creators Amnesia: a Machine for Pigs There was still no. It remains to find out how much the “frightening” experience prevented developers from creating a quality product.
Recording devices come across to us on the road constantly. From the heard we can understand that Oswald spoke very pessimistic about the fate of the world and generally loved to quarrel. Before his house was filled with a nightmare.
Father and children
The peculiarity of the plot of the introductory is that part of it was presented only in official announcements from the developers, whom we could familiarize ourselves before the release of the game. So, exclusively from there we could find out that our main character after traveling to Mexico lay in a fever for three months and saw a certain strange car in delirment, the appointment of which was not clear to him.
A Machine for Pigs It opens with an awakening in the role of an nameless for the time being of a protagonist, which is not known for practically nothing – even there is no appearance, because the game uses a first -person view. Closer to the end of the passage, we will learn that the hero, it turns out, is called Oswald. Initially, we only understand that a person, obviously, male wakes up in his own bed and, not hearing the voices of his children, immediately decides that they were lost somewhere. Naturally, our ward goes to look for offspring. And he had two of them – a boy and … a boy. Their name is Edwin and Enoch.
In the process of searching, Oswald every now and then sees literally around the corner of the kids, hears their voices and many more sounds that lead to thought that something was wrong in the hero’s giant mansion. It is dark everywhere, and neither dim table lamps, nor lit candles in candelabra can provide sufficient lighting of the room, furnished not without a claim for luxury. For some reason, all beds are located in metal cells-either so that the sleeping owners and guests do not run away, or so that someone unpleasant does not attack them. The floor is shaking every now and then, roys, which are several in the house, play by themselves, everywhere is the pouring either wine or blood. Finally, at some point, the phone calls in one of the rooms, and the voice broadcasts from the speaker literally the following: “The great fruit of an eagle cactus, help us!”
The great fruit of an eagle cactus
Probably authors from The Chinese Room They counted too seriously on the education of the players. Probably, they also counted too naively on the erudition of translators. But the fact remains: the phrase about Orlin Cactus has already managed to become a meme, and not at all because the firms are shaking from it.
The notorious “great fruit of an eagle cactus” is not a nonsense of the frightened Payot of the developers, as you might think, but a hint and good fellows lesson. The priests of the bloodthirsty Aztecs called the “precious arbitrary fruit of the cactus” the human heart, which during the sacrifices (also human, clear stump) should be pulled out of the chest of a living sacrifice and solemnly burned. Without opening too much about the plot, we will only say that this phrase sounds for a reason and later “shoots” like that very rifle on that very wall Chekhov.
Pictures in the Mandus house can suddenly be transparent … on the one hand. Now, for example, we are considering the bathroom through the innocent – at first glance – a picture on the wall. It is a pity that the living swimwear in the world of Amnesia is not expected.
Note that the further statements of the mysterious “telephone terrorist” do not sound so psychedelic and not so funny. Gradually, we find out that the owner of a strange real estate with ghosts has a surname – a mandus – and that his children seemed to be trapped inside a mysterious car, sabotted by an unknown pest. So now Oswald, led by the votes of children and periodic calls from a stranger-volume, must get to the core of the device, fix it and start so that Edwin and Enoch can be released.
And the mandus goes – where to go? – goes through his entire weird house with a bunch of secret rooms (including for peeping after people in the bathroom). Finally gets to the car, continues to move down, as if this descent leads to hell, and in the end recalls himself that it would be better not to remember at all.
Ensherly non -grace
Comparison with the underworld appeared here not by chance. Apparently, the developers really wanted to draw a parallel with the “divine comedy” of the old man Dante: each next location, each next “circle” is more disgusting and darker than the previous one.
Why are we not saying “worse”? Because – this is the paradox! – Although the story told The Chinese Room, It can well argue by the degree of nightmare with creations Lovecraft And King, The game process is more likely atmosphere than terrible.
We no longer need to take care of the preservation of the hero’s mind. If poor Daniel – the protagonist The Dark Descent – fainted and fought at the sight of monsters, was afraid of the dark and constantly strove to go crazy, then Oswald is much more stable. He has problems with reason, but these problems do not affect the game mechanics. The hero’s dark premises do not scare, because in his hands it is an eternal lantern, to which, apparently, an equally eternal battery is attached. Both the house and the plant are electrified-in the courtyard of 1899, which, by the way, is very important from the point of view of the plot. Drowning and oil hunting, which were always lacked in the first Amnesia, was a thing of the past.
But what to talk about at all, if we do not really have an inventory! A separate hot key is provided for the lantern, and the items with which we have to interact are more or less direct proximity to the point where they must be applied. Wear the found batteries, wheels and handles from the valves are simply in the hands – in front of you, holding the left mouse button. Not too convenient, but “casual”, a lot more “more casual” than in the previous part.
Not only Oswald children have plush bears. The inconsolable father can also get out with Mishka if he wants.
I twist-wrap, I want to go to the other side
Simplifications affected not only https://chronojump.org/pages/how-no-verification-casinos-influence-gender-equality_1.html the interface, but also the essence of the gameplay. If The Dark Descent was a cross of Survival Horror and traditional adventure, then A Machine for Pigs – This is such Dear Esther with some interactive elements. For the most part, we just walk, explore, pull for everything that twitches, twists everything that is spinning, and somehow suddenly comes out that this is enough to promote. Sometimes you have to look into the “Notes of a Madman” – something like a diary, thanks to which we can get acquainted with the thoughts of the hero. Usually, among these thoughts, quite unambiguous instructions are contained or at least very transparent hints that it is worth looking for, where it can be found and what to do with the found.
The measured rhythm of passage in combination with a constantly functioning lantern and narrative tone of the hero’s entries prevents us from feeling our vulnerability and defenselessness truly acute. Anyway, as acute as we felt it in The Dark Descent. Despite the fact that Oswald, like Daniel, does not carry any weapons with him, our new character is not a helpless, driven, lost victim, but a completely capable subject who fell into strange and in places frightening circumstances. In some places scary, not terrible to trembling in the knees.
It is possible that a decrease in a degree of nightmare is not so much the result of inept handling of the material as a conscious decision The Chinese Room. The local “monster” leads to this thought. The game presents only three varieties of monsters, and they do not cause horror, not even disgust, but a nicer pity. In addition, it is very difficult to get scared when the appearance of the enemy nearby is preceded by a meaningful flash of the lantern and other surrounding sources of light. By the way, they rarely have to hide – monsters mostly go slowly, do not kill far from immediately. And death in A Machine for Pigs – The phenomenon is conditional, because in most cases, death is fraught only with a brief darkening, after which we come to our senses, and very often – just at the point where we had to be in order to advance on the plot.
I definitely saw the door here!
But this is the thing: contrary to “providing”, suspicious interactivity, weak and not at all terrible monsters, somewhere by the middle of the game we feel completely inside the delusional world of the new Amnesia. We get used to the role of Oswald Mandus to the intestines and begin to feel more than fear. Of the many small details, insignificant at first glance, an atmosphere of anxiety and the taste of the irreality of what is happening, which bothers and pushes forward, is created.
Let’s say the main character’s house is slightly modified. These metamorphoses are initially almost invisible, but at some point the player will certainly turn out-and suddenly he sees instead of the door he just opened, the wall.
Or take, for example, strange painted masks in the form of pork heads. At first they are perceived as an element of decor – of course, a man went to Mexico, brought souvenirs from there. But then, when we begin to find them in the most inappropriate places, they seem to know either madness, or the non -sunsembles of those things and events that surround us. Whether this whole phantasmagoric house with a bizarre mechanism did not seem to the hero? Are we really there where we are, or is it all the dying nonsense of a person dying from the fever?
Soundtrack was very wisely used. Most of the game passes almost in silence. “Almost” because some kind of grunts are constantly heard: either a child’s laughter, then a pork squeal, then a creak and grinding the car. Music is rarely turned on and therefore attracts attention. When the character enters the usual, even in some way a cozy room and suddenly, at a decent volume, hears a motive in the style of “slightly conquered classical aria”, this impresses.
However, perhaps the most powerful impression is the story that we eventually tell us. You have to collect it into pieces from diary records scattered there and the HEMs, documents, letters. Not necessarily we will find them all – you can easily pass by a few pieces of mosaic. Fortunately, this will not affect the final plot result too much. From Amnesia: a Machine for Pigs It turned out a kind of allegorical parable with philosophical subtext and a wide field for interpretations. Moreover, the degree of density and fat content of this philosophical subtext will directly depend on the player’s erudition – on the amount of read, felt and thought out until a collision with the game.
With graphics, things are much more unambiguously and less rainbow. Picture – Monument to the middle of the two thousandth years. Since The Dark Descent, nothing or practically nothing has changed in this regard, but even then the visual incarnation could not put the project in a plus. The most unpleasant thing is that from prolonged peeping into a dark granide screen, eyes are seriously tired.
According to the official version, the mandus is the owner of a meat processing plant. Residents of the surrounding territories, apparently, cannot stand this enterprise – it spreads a very specific smell.
Gentlemen from The Chinese Room And Frictional Games They themselves spoiled the “raspberry” a little, when for many months they fed us with fairy tales about “Horror, which the light did not see”. In fact Amnesia: a Machine for Pigs It is worth perceiving not so much as a new “amnesia” as an independent project. Then this game, built on difficult and multidimensional history, looks like something interesting and very organic.
Pros: A beautiful plot with philosophical subtext;Drawing atmosphere.
Cons: a controversial approach to interactivity;not too high intensity of fear.