marblepony

[salem-metal]

just finished listening to the end, so far and OH MY GOD that went way beyond what i thought it was gonna be holy shit

medicine for the dead was robbed of being a single before the album, love at first listen for that one, but what takes the cake for my absolute die hard favorite track is ABSOLUTELY yen, i love it so so so much

[cryptid-crusader]

Alright here it is. The Outlast 2 rant nobody asked for. There are spoilers, if you care to read. Also, a lot of mention of sexual/child abuse, so if that really gets you please don’t read (and also don’t play the game).

Alright, so I finished Outlast 2 yesterday and I’m just really... disappointed. 

I feel like I should say this beforehand, I didn’t hate the game. I just really love Outlast 1, and was expecting the same quality scares and story from this game. But, you know how that goes.

Let’s start.

The game in it’s entirely relied FAR to heavily on shock imagery. Like, waaaaaaay too much. To the point where 90% of the game wasn’t even all that scary, it was just disgusting or made you very uncomfortable. Now, I’m not saying shock imagery in horror games is bad, hell, Outlast 1 had plenty of that, it’s just when your game is basically entirely like that... Surprise, it becomes very un-shocking and not so much scary as just really uncomfortable. :/ The first time you see a pile of dead babies, it’s intense and unsettling, scary even. So is the next time. But the next? And the next? And then you have to read about all the baby murder, and here people talk about the baby murder... It just gets worn out.

A vast majority of the game I just felt... Gross... Or felt really sad for the people in the game. Rape and disturbing sexual themes is a HUGE part of this game, which brings me to my next complaint. It is just. Too. Much. All the women in the town are basically getting horribly sexually assaulted. You see it. You read it. You hear it. You experience it everywhere in the game. Blake, the character you play as, even gets raped at a point in game, and though it’s brief, you still have to go through it. And then to top it all of, you experience it through a child. Though you don’t see or hear that part happening, you know it’s going to, and the whole time you feel just fucking awful and nasty (at least I did). Is that horror? Yes, but not necessarily something that should be in a horror game, especially in such large fucking doses. It is so unnecessary, and again, more than being “scary” just left me feeling all around bad, gross, and uncomfortable.

Another thing that really pissed me off was the character Papa Knopf, who was a dreadful sack of shit cult leader and main villain of the game. You really fucking hated this guy, and in that sense, he was a good villain. Throughout the whole game you get hounded, mutilated, attacked, and nearly killed countless times by this dudes people, and you see all the fucked up horrible things he does to everyone in this town (you know, all the RAPE AND BABY MURDER THAT IS FUCKING ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE). Like, this fucking dude is sexually assaulting all the women in the village, giving them syphilis (which they then give to their husbands) and then throwing them deep in the mountains to suffer and die horribly because what is happening is not his fault, it’s a “sign from God” that God wants them to suffer (while Knopf himself gets medicine from the outside world, something he strictly bans). So, he’s the fucking worst, and I really looked forward to a Walrider type scene with Chris Walker, where he just get’s fucking ripped apart... but it doesn’t happen. In the end, he just slits his neck and ends his own life. It’s frustrating, and very unsatisfying.

The game revolves around a biblical theme, and I honestly did enjoy near the end when all the bible-foretold-Armageddon type events were happening, I thought that was really cool. What I didn’t like was how easily it was to miss huge chunks of the story because they are scattered on notes that are in the most random af places. Outlast 1 did the same sort of thing with files, but all the files were in pretty easy to find areas, and a vast majority (if not all of them) were in locations you could gather them without being hunted at some point, so you had a chance of getting the whole story. Not in Outlast 2. I mainly bring this up because I didn’t end up picking up an important note detailing that that big ass tower that none of the people in the village knew what it was or where it came from, was sending out signals fucking everyone’s brains up and that it was a Murkoff owned building. I put two and two together about it being owned by Murkoff, but I had no clue that is messed with peoples minds. I just figured Blake finally lost it because of all the fucked up shit he was seeing. But it definitely helps explain why their chopper crashed, all the people in the town are so messed up, and the fact he was experiencing biblical atrocities. The fact that I missed it so easily is just kind of bad design (and I am someone who thoroughly inspects every nook and cranny in games).

And that brings me to the ending of the game. Now, I know they wanted to leave things “open ended” so people could come to their own assumptions, but there is leaving things open ended and then just not fucking explaining things, which is what outlast 2 did. There is a big discussion over Lynn’s baby, and her quote as she is dying saying “there is nothing there”. A lot of people think she was referring to heaven and hell not existing, which I can get on board with, except for that fact that the whole game really nails in the whole biblical stuff (lol Jesus joke), and if all these crazy occurrences can happen (Lynn having immaculate conception being one of them), then I feel like it makes more sense to just have the baby not exist, have it be the thing that isn’t there (at least that’s how I see it). But the point is this, it’s just kind of lackluster after all the shit you just fucking suffered through. Does this baby exist? If it does, then how could Lynn get pregnant and give birth so quickly without it being a miracle from god, and then saying there is no god? And if it doesn’t exist and everyone is all crazy and hallucinating from the ~evil tower rays~ (which is what I feel) then nothing is really accomplished. I mean, nothing is really accomplished anyway because Blake dies (I guess) a few minutes later, along with everyone in the town. In a flash of bright light. That’s it. The end. It was incredibly anticlimactic.

But as stated above, I didn’t hate it. In fact some parts I really liked. I felt overall the mechanics were better. I liked how filming stuff was actually important and not to just to mainly use your camera to see in the dark (though I have to admit, filming some of the stuff was kind of tedious, or a pain to capture). And while overall I felt the Outlast 1 villains and chase sequences were much more horrifying and legitimately scary, Outlast 2 had it’s fair share of terrifying moments. My favorites being Val’s heretics (the ones without eyes and all the twigs on their heads). Though their noises got a little obnoxious, they were pretty damn horrifying and spooked me pretty bad. I also like Marta a lot. She played the Chris Walker type role, in that she was a constant threat following you throughout the game. Walker as a whole was a better villain in my opinion, but Marta just looked so damn cool. The first time you see her, impossibly tall, stalking from the shadows? Badass and truly terrifying. I also really loved the school scenes. They did a good job of keeping me guessing with Jessica’s story, and the atmosphere of the school was chilling and unsettling. The monster in the school was really rad too.

Alright here is the TLDR:

So, overall, Outlast 1 is much better. Scarier, more consistent and has a more quality story, better villains/chase sequences, and just all around much scarier. I think I probably speak for a lot of people when I say that I wish 2 tied in more to 1, but it it what it is. And again, I didn’t hate Outlast 2 and it wasn’t a bad game, it just has a lot to improve on. And they REALLY NEEDS TO TONE DOWN ON ALL THE HORRIBLE SEXUAL MUTILATION STUFF CHRIST WE GET IT CALM DOWN.

... This was a lot longer than I thought it would be. Forgive me. Thanks for reading if you did!!!