They Tried to Bury Their Sins: The Complete F.E.A.R. Timeline

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Acceptable Losses podcast, where Kiriath sets forth with ruining my day and yours with something that will totally not parallel the real world. Right, Kiryoth?

To be fair, this one I was gonna say it doesn't parallel it at all. That's not true. Hopefully, doesn't parallel it too much. Oh I don't like that.

I don't like that. That's that's that's not what okay. All right, sure. Fine, lovely. We just we just love that. We just love that. You know what I actually love though? The merch that we have over at orchid8.com. You should check it out. Wonderful array of you like insert word here, right? Shirts, there's coins, there's wall scrolls, there's weeb for Lincoln.

Check it out in the description, link on the screen, orchidate.com. Kury out where else can they get quality acceptable losses content?

Well, you know what? Funnily enough, the thing that I love just as much as the merch is the Patreon, which is patreon.com slash acceptable losses. Oh, so clean. Where you can get episodes a week early, you can get Patreon exclusive episodes, you get early access. Yeah, that's what I just said. Wow, what happened there?

It's it's a good time. You should head over, it's brilliant, and it's in a link down below. Oh my god, I bottled it so bad.

Man, that was that was Kingdom Hearts right there, dude.

That was simple and clean. That was atrocious. Right before we started recording, I immediately attacked DK for not starting the right starting his recording at the same time as us. And that that wasn't even a real bottle. And I just I got served karma hot. It's called getting godsmacked, brother.

That's getting godsmacked.

The Patreon content is infinitely better than that shill for it. So just rest easy. Uh the actual content itself, grand. My ability to tell you about it, abysmal. I mean, it's better that way though, right? It's better. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Check out the Patreon.

We shouldn't have just said that and nothing else. All right. Alright. I've got something tasty for you today. Very tasty. We're gonna talk about fear. Not the concept of fear or the dictionary definition. No. We're gonna talk about first encounter assault recon, which is not the worst kind of you know, building out the acronym from the from the shortened version that I've ever seen.

Yeah, not the worst ever.

So I I I have I've I've heard of the game. I have seen like the the packaging for the game, and I was always like, I wonder what they're abbreviating fear for. I wonder what that actually stands for. And already, question answered, episode success. See you next time on acceptable losses, everyone. Roll the music.

Sure, shortest app of all time. Question answered, don't need any more, off we go. I will say I uh I played the first game, very good, thoroughly enjoyable. The multiplayer, also excellent. I'm 99.9% sure the multiplayer was the one where you could take the uh like the rapid fire stake launcher and pin people to walls.

That was extremely enjoyable. The second game, not as good as the first. And the third we're we're we're gonna get to the third when we when we get to it. But uh in terms of gameplay itself, not great.

It it might be because I haven't had breakfast yet and it's early, but when you're like, oh yeah, just take the steak launcher, I was like, Why are we chucking meat at people? And then you said like stake them to the wall, and I was like, Ooh. I don't know if I should share this inside thought, but it's kind of funny, so I'm gonna go ahead and make an absolute ass of myself.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean that's also is that what the cover of the game looks like? Yeah, it is. I I must have seen like two or three because I remember it in like bright yellow, uh, the words fear.

I think I think the uh I think the covers, because that's the director's edition, I think, yeah, the the sort of original release was very fiery and yellowy and had a a bit of a an a just a sort of flame feel around the girl in the middle.

I might be thinking of a different game, but I remember like a game that had a guy with like this uh yellow faceplate on, sort of futuristic looking, and I I thought I remember fear being like um in like scratch hatching haze. Oh, maybe. Maybe I have the wrong damn game in my mind.

I don't know what Haze stands for. I can't help you there. How brother escape. I don't know. Uh it's probably not that.

I don't know how you nailed that, Shy, but you are a hundred percent I thought it was I thought it was Hayes. This is exactly the cover I thought um that that was exactly the cover I thought was fear. In my brain, that was the cover of fear. That's crazy.

I mean that is crazy. That that that's quite different. I never played either of them. I seem to remember it. It's it's not it's not good.

But you know what is good. This quote Shy said my brain is beyond help, and uh you heard it here first, chat. Uh Shy acknowledges that I have a brain.

We're just we're just winning today. It's a first, it's a it's on record, it's undeniable. Quick screen discord as well.

Um okay, so this is the quote that Kirioth has given me for fear. They tried to bury their sins, but instead planted the seeds of their doom. A war is coming. I've seen it in my dreams. Fires sweeping over the earth, bodies in the streets, cities turned to dust, retaliation. Gorsh. That's it's hardcore, right?

I was gonna say that is not cheery, fun, happy times at all.

Pretty full on. Pretty full on that quote. So the uh the early 2000s were a very prominent time for first-person shooters, and each one was vying to become the gold standard of the genre. Many would focus on the wars of old or future wars, and would feature a very cookie-cutter story that was meant for broad appeal.

But not all of these shooters fit that mold, and some would violently break it and create a truly unique atmosphere. In 2005, Fear was released and its inspirations weren't just modern war films, but also Japanese horror films like Juan, Ringu, and Pulse. The game would be filled with horror tribes like jump scares, but it would also be complemented with a truly dark story of military corruption, government experimentation, and the exploitation of a girl who existed as a conduit for nothing more than potential military gains for a nation struggling during a war.

Yay.

A few parallels there, maybe.

Maybe a little bit. Now, this uh this franchise has been dormant mainline game-wise since 2011, not including the multiplayer game in 2014, which has resulted in the story ending without much resolution. So today, Unacceptable Losses, we are going to go over the entirety of the Fear franchise. Now, specifically, we're going over what has been dubbed the monolith timeline, which includes the three mainline games, the comic series and the live-action Alma interviews.

The monolith timeline excludes the DLCs release for the first game, as the second game completely retcons them.

Ooh. You don't love to hear when a game completely retcons itself, something happened in production that's just it It very much felt like that they did the DLCs and then it was successful enough that someone went, We should just make a sequel, and someone else went, uh I mean, I'm not really happy with what we did story-wise there, so should we just ignore it?

It's like, yeah, okay, fine.

Let's just carry on. Yeah. Feels kind of like a um uh what was the movie after Last Jedi where it was like, hey, let's completely retcon everything that happened in Last Jedi and try to make it into a film, and it's like, well, I mean, you did, and it is a film.

Um it technically exists, and that's the best we can say for it. Yes. Yeah. So lovely, lovely. Now, unlike other video game series that we've covered on the channel, we're going to go over things in a timeline manner for maximum impact as well. The fear games are heavily reliant on flashbacks, and the repetitive nature of them throughout the games would cause so much back and forth that it would just result in whiplash if we did that right now.

Um, obviously, going over it in a timeline manner immediately reveals some of the secrets that you would find while exploring the games, but Possum is pretty it's pretty certain that doing it in this manner will give it more impact and will give a grim undercurrent for the events of the games. Uh also, for the sake of narrative simplicity, some events in the main games are shuffled around a bit for the sake of telling the story better.

It's so reliant on like you're walking down a corridor, flash of horrible memory. It's out of order with everything else. Fun to experience while you're playing the game. Probably not so great if you're trying to listen to a podcast that is also going to cover the narrative elements. It was just way too much.

Yeah, that that'd be that'd be a little tough. It's like, oh yeah, first you see random flashback of time you don't remember, and yeah, it's probably narratively a little easier to just do it in chronological order. 100%.

Oh man, it's not it's not you know what? That screenshot, it's not aged the worst for 2005. Yeah, yeah.

Well, 2005 looks pretty good, actually.

It's it's fine.

Yeah. I would have guessed that that was like 2009 or something. So that's not awful.

I tell you what, I tell you what hasn't aged well. The final boss fight of the second game will get there, but oh my god.

That's my thought you were gonna say me. I was like, Yeah, I haven't aged well. Oh god, it's 2021.

It's true, I just didn't want to say it out loud. Anyway, fuck you. Like fuck oh no, I thought you were saying that I was gonna say that about myself.

Oh, oh. I was like, you saying that about me? I'll find you, Carrie.

Even even for our stands, I feel like going into this and being like, oh, you get DK's aged like shit.

He's aged like fucking cheese. Jeez.

He's aging like milk over here, this guy, lumpy ass bitch.

So our story today begins in the 1950s during a particularly ripe time when it came to military contractors within the United States. One of these companies would approach the US government with a proposition, land development. Fairport, a large city on the east coast of the US, was fairly derelict in many aspects, and the Auburn district was once a sought after developmental district that was now pretty much dormant.

This company was interested in a particular location in this district, not because of what was on the surface, but what was underneath it. An old abandoned military complex that was just out of the prying eyes of anyone looking to obstruct their work.

Oh boy, yeah. Yeah, you you love the military complexes that are nice and hidden, and yeah. Mm-hmm.

Well, this facility would become known as the origin facility. Which even I don't care what you're doing down there. Yeah. You could be trying to, you know, create hardy crops to withstand illnesses or diseases. You s you start that in the origin facility, and I'm assuming that you are creating monsters.

I'm sorry, but I just am. Uh yeah.

Uh corn that you can grow anywhere, that's a that's a different episode of uh acceptable losses. That's a whole different episode. It's a Liam Nisa movie.

For some reason, my registered means he went to Taken, but that's not that's not in any way helpful.

That's not that's uh that's a well, I mean that could be that could be one too, but anyway, go ahead. What you've stolen my corn, I'm gonna come and I'm gonna come and murder you for it.

Um in 1964, this contractor would settle on an official name and it would be known as the Armacham Technology Corporation or ATC. And now, with several years of development under their belts, they'd begin to sign contracts. Initially they were focused on medical research and aerospace tech, but they would get a huge boost thanks to the rapidly developing Cold War.

In a public sense, they were a biotech facility, but under the surface, they were attempting to help the US win this conflict with some questionable ethics and experimental tech that was highly dangerous.

How else do you win the war? Come on. A lot of imagery today will be man pointing uh guns uh at stuff with really shitty console PO. Thanks for the heads up, Sha.

It's the best way to experience a story. We all know this. Their uh internal focus was on things like genetic experimentation as well as the enhancement of the mind, and they sought to solve a problem the military was facing, which was communication. The idea of rapid coordination during deployments in places like Vietnam were difficult, and they envisioned a future where this would no longer be an issue.

Their leadership believed that they could make the perfect army one that could be controlled from a singular point without the necessity of radio, comms, or other easily interceptable devices. In their eyes, a psychically controlled army was the way of the future, but other contracts needed to be taken up in order to accomplish this goal.

In 1973, the ATC would work on an initiative called Project Icarus, which was done jointly with NASA. The premise of this project was to study the impact outer space had on the human body in a prolonged sense. NASA wanted to figure out a way to preserve bone density during periods of microgravity and potential stasis, and the experiments conducted were brutal.

Oh great, cool, love that. Subjects would be strapped down to tables for months at a time and fed just enough to maintain a desired weight in hopes to focus on the bone deterioration during stagnation. Unfortunately, despite rigorous testing, a solution with these test subjects was not found. Oh that is that is a that is a bad start to anything, because I'm assuming that most of them, even if they were volunteers at the start, would be not so keen when they were strapped down and fed intravenously for the first week.

At that point, you're probably thinking, actually, I'm gonna opt out.

I don't think I'm in for the rest of this. And it doesn't matter because you're strapped to a table. So even if you're like, hey guys, uh I'm not good for this anymore, uh let me go. It's too late. It's way too late for that. But I thought man, they did it intravenously, they couldn't even be like, yeah, take a take a bite of your hamburger or something.

Like, not even real food. Just give them like an IV.

Oh, that sucks.

I mean, that also prevents people from going on hunger strike. Like if they try and starve themselves to get out of the situation, well, they can't.

True, but like can can we work our way up to that point where it's like, oh, here's solid real food that you can look forward to. And it's like, no, mom, I don't want to eat. Fine, intravenously it is.

I mean, if they're starting, if they are starting with strapping people to tables for like months at a time, I don't think they care about what people prefer to eat. I'm just I'm just gonna throw it out there.

You know, you you might be onto something there, Kirieth. You might you you yeah, okay.

Now, further attempts were made in the form of adding a carbon composite surgically to the bones, but this was also unsuccessful on regular human test subjects. Ooh, don't like that wording. Nope. That is that is a that is a rough series of series of words right there. Um They they did more testing, covertly with something else.

Successful clones. Oh, great.

Oh no. I love it when they treat the clones as not actual humans. Oh nothing wrong ever happens when you do that.

You have to admire the sheer trajectory of these guys are not good people, though. Yeah, like they've they've committed hard and they are really It's like they're speedrunning.

Yes, exactly. Uh, it's awful.

Yep, this is this is nice. Okay.

Bad start. Bad start all around. These uh these replicas were used to do more extreme tests, including removing massive portions of the skeletal structures of them and replacing them completely with composite copies. Despite the heinous nature of these tests, they did succeed in more ways than one. Not only did the bones not deteriorate during prolonged stagnation, but the nature of the composite bones allowed these replicas to act faster and more dexterously, exceeding basic human skills in many ways.

One problem though. Though they were physically incredible, they were mentally unwell, and the psychological mess that was left in these replicas proved hard to resolve. Eventually the money dried up, and the external parties, NASA and the Department of Defense, focused elsewhere. The ATC decided to not let these experiments go to waste, however, and kept the subjects under locking key until they would be needed once more.

Oh boy.

Yikes. That sucks. So they've just got a bunch of super clones running around that uh they don't have enough to fund more research on, and these super soldier clones are also mentally very not well. Yeah.

And they just locked them up and just kept them out of the out of the limelight until they were needed again. Yeah.

It's just a series of Oh boy, that's yeah, alright.

Tell me how this completely falls apart.

Um This is where it starts to get worse. So one of the scientists involved was a man named Harlan Wade, and on August 26, 1979, his wife Elizabeth would have a child named Alma. And as Harlan became more and more prominent with ATC, Alma became less and less stable. Her mental state would deteriorate over the course of three years, and she would suffer horrific bouts of delusions, hysteria, and instability that was seemingly unnatural for a child, and bordered on the psychic.

This is something he did not keep to himself, and the potential that Alma had caught the attention of ATC, and Alma was brought in for further studies, as she could be the key to their long-term goals.

Yeah, shall I uh just put you in a picture of Alma? And uh yeah, she doesn't look very friendly.

Uh she has every right not to be, to be fair, as we go along. Like so over the course of three years, she becomes unstable, and so the ATC are like, this one uh this one's interesting. Let's bring her in and get experimenting. Like, what the hell?

I was gonna say she looks shockingly like that awful young kid on the cover of the fear games, and I'm assuming that it's not a good thing to be.

It's definitely not. Her initial tests, they were wildly successful, and it was very clear that she had telepathic abilities beyond the understanding of the ATC, which meant they needed to study her more intensely. The ATC were relentless in figuring out how and the why when it came to her abilities, and it reached a point where they really didn't view her as a child and instead viewed her as an initiative.

Alma's prolonged time within the facility caused extreme mental strain on her, obviously which resulted in frequent epileptic episodes and hallucinations, but also in her powers growing to be more potent. By the time she was the age of six, her abilities allowed her to do things like coherent telepathic communication and psychically projecting herself long distances.

I mean, even even just with that, a six-year-old being able to just project herself long distances, so some poor sod is just mind their own business, washing their car, and there is a six-year-old kid just appearing in front of her.

Like what the Yeah. Yeah, imagine that appearing in front of you as you're just like, oh yeah, just do do do do washing my car, and then bam! Creepy little girl with orange eyes. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

Oh god, it's rough. It's real rough. As she grew older, she grew more hostile to those who were attending to her. No way! Most like most valid crash out of all time. Definitely. Resulting in many of the doctors in the facility out acting with outright hostility towards her, only for her to immediately throw it back at them.

Her rebellious nature would culminate in her intentionally failing tests in the hopes they might let her out of the facility. She was bored and ultimately a kid, and she wanted to not spend her days in a padded cell being experimented on. Her intentional failures of the test didn't cause any shift or halting in the experimentation on her, so she opted to do something else.

Using her abilities, she would begin to psychically manipulate those around her. She would force scientists to have nightmares and visions whilst also forcing them to have uncontrolled mood swings and paranoia.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, this is okay. So realistically, if they had just treated her as if she was actually a little girl and let her, you know, do normal little girl things, chances are she never goes Louie Kablooey and is the the focal point of this entire game series.

Things might have been significantly less horrific, yeah.

Cool. I think fucking assholes.

In this case, they 100% get the evil scientist name. 100% Yeah. It was believed at the time that she was fully capable of doing far worse things, but her childlike naivety is the only thing that prevented her from fully manifesting awful stuff and potentially killing others. It was decided that in order for the security of those within the facility and for the safety of future projects with her, she needed to be sealed away.

Two days before her eighth birthday, Alma was placed into the vault, a fortified and heavily armored device that was strong enough to hold and deflect her abilities deep underneath the ATC facility. Furthermore, she was placed into a medically induced coma so that research could continue on her mind without fear of obstruction.

Oh great. Because you didn't learn your lesson before, let's double down and potentially do even worse things, and I'm sure everything will be fine. See, that's unquestionably awful.

Yep. But I'm afraid the following bit sucks even worse. Oh okay. Alright. So theories about how she got her powers led nowhere as there was no understanding of how the genes of Elizabeth and Harlan could manifest in Alma in this manner, especially since neither of them had any abilities. That being said, Harlan theorized that there was a potential that these traits that Alma had could be traits that would be passed down generationally.

You can you can probably see where this is going, but it it is going in that direction. Harlan and the other scientists would work for seven years to create two genetic prototype features utilizing DNA from Haalin, as well as others that when ready could be implanted into Alma. They theorized that as these prototypes gestated, they would take just enough genetic markers from Alma that they would be potential carriers of her psychic traits.

Just want to remind you, Haalan is her dad. Just I'm just throwing that out there again before we get to this next sentence, um just so that, you know, the listeners remember that this is her father who is doing this to her. The first of these prototypes would be implanted in Alma in 1994. The maths is uh is bad news bears with this one, as Possum puts it, since Alma was born in 1979.

So yeah. Oh that is a whole that is a a whole trickload of yikes on that one. Oh boy uh yeah, that's oh absolutely gross. And uh Alma would ca the way look, the way Parsum has phrased this is a perfectly legitimate way to phrase this, but I will confess when I read this through earlier, I did have a mild reaction to the wording, but it's not Parsons' fault.

You this is a perfectly a what is it, a perfectly cromulant term. Um Alma would carry the baby to term without issue. Technically correct, but uh but in the context of you know how old, where she is, who's done it, why, without issue, really got the back of my brain going I'm sorry, without issue. I think you'll find that is a plethora of issues here.

Oh boy. Oh, yeah.

But in terms of like medically carrying a child to tome, it's a perfectly legitimate phrase. It's just it's just it's yeah, it oh that's no good.

That's not mmm.

I'm gonna I'm I'm also gonna say at this point that like from essentially like the next couple of sentences onwards, I would I would go so far as to say that almost all of the rest of the games, barring a specific instance, can be categorized as kind of justified crash-out. Not all of it, not all of it, but you can see how the events transpired as they did, right?

So Yep, yep, yep, yep. With the evil scientist being very evil scientist to Alma, yep, yep, this is this this feels like it is yeah, the the the fallout from this seems justified and well-earned for the scientists. Yeah.

However, when they induced birth, Alma awoke and realized that her father was taking the child away from her. She would scream for him to give the child back before she was sedated again. Unfortunately, this child was seemingly a failure, but would nonetheless be observed more on that later. Uh for now, the focus would shift onto the second fetus.

What a horrible sentence in this context.

I don't like the more on this later part when you are like, oh yeah, the baby was seen as a failure. More on this later. Onto the second fetus. Oh boy. Woo, this so oh.

It's really it's really horrible, isn't it? Like it's really It's not great.

It's not great. Nope.

I don't like any of that. Any of those words that you just said, they are words and they and they they they form a real sentence that I understand and I hate all of it, and I I I fear it's not great. That's just no.

Should be the tag for the game.

It's not great. The uh the next year, Alma would be removed in preparation for the second child, and again she would carry the child to term. This time she would remain dormant as the child was born, and unlike the first one, this one immediately showed psychic potential, proving the theory to be valid.

The child would be separated from Alma and raised in a separate part of the facility, unaware of his mother or his sibling, and he would be given the name Paxton Fettle.

Why? Why b Paxton Fettle? That might be the most evil thing these scientists have done.

Paxton You didn't even give the kid a chance to be normal.

What the hell? Of all the names. Like I'd I'd I'm not trying to be judgmental if your name is indeed Paxton Fettel, but it I don't know. There's something not pleasing about that combination of words. I don't know what it is. There's just something about it. Um Paxton would be trained alongside his sibling, despite the two not being aware of their relationship, of course, uh, in the art of military commander at a young age, and the tests were brutal for both of them.

We won't go over this training too much, and it will come back later, but the biggest takeaway was that Paxton just kept proving that the project was a success. So much so that there wasn't necessarily a need for Alma to have another child in the eyes of the ATC. She would, however, be kept alive, sedated, and sealed in the event that something happened to Paxton.

Boy, that's oof oof. Old Harlan is definitely not winning any dad of the year rewards.

Yeah, no, there's definitely he's not drinking out of a number one dad cup. Uh take that cup off him and smash it. He'd just not deserve that.

You know. Oh boy, that's that's a spicy meatball. Jesus. Though Paxton never met Elmer, he grew up somehow connected to her, and her presence was with him during his childhood, despite him not realizing who she was. This would change when Paxton turned ten, and a catastrophic event would change everything.

Hell yeah.

I'm all in favor of the catastrophic event, to be honest. All right, yeah. As long as it kills the scientists, because fuck them. Oh man. With just the most rusty of knives. Daylight with dull knives.

That's what we're after. Mm-hmm. In an incident known as the synchronicity event, Paxton was overwhelmed with negative psychic energy that was filtered to him from his comatose mother, and it resulted in him going on a horrific and violent rampage. Let's go Paxton. Let's go, Paxton. Let's go. He would kill seven Project Origin staff members with his thoughts, and the incident only stopped thanks to a series of tranquilizers, merely causing him in a state of rage.

The corporation would conclude that Alma was responsible for this, and that somehow she was able to breach the vault, meaning that she was a liability that needed to be terminated. These these people are it's un it's in it's incredible how well written they are in terms of you are you have to hate them.

You simply do.

unknown Yeah.

There can't be anyone that's a big fan of the scientists in the fear franchise, right? There's no way. Surely not. Surely this horrific rampage isn't our fault. I mean, which after everything we've done.

You'll sat there going, the ATC and Haaland did nothing wrong. You should be on a list. I don't know what list it is, but you should be on one. Mm-hmm. And they should lock you in a padded cell. A hundred percent. Alma would be removed from her life support systems within the vault, forcing her to eventually die in her prison.

It took six days for her to pass, but even though her heart stopped and Paxton returned to normal, her psychic signature remained as if it was haunting the facility that had tormented her for her entire life. The termination of Alma resulted in the end of Project Origin, and the Origin facility would be sealed up along with Paxton Fettle.

The residents of Fairport would slowly and oddly become sick, and those who were closest to the Auburn district where the Origin Facility was located experienced headaches and hallucinations. Many would abandon this area altogether and the facility would slowly rust.

Ooh God. So so they when they locked it, they locked it up with Paxton still inside, even though none of this is Paxton's fault. They were just like, nah, we're locking you in there too. We're gonna sedate you, lock everything up, and then just yeah, eventually you'll starve to death. Type a oh boy. Oh boy, oh, that's uh it's it's it's rough.

It's rough. That sucks. Fuck these scientists, every last one. Just awful all around.

Oh my god. Despite this, Paxton was still a success, and even though Haaland stressed that the projects shouldn't be revisited in any capacity, ATC remained adamant that they could gain something from it.

Of course, of course. Uh also Shy said, I don't know, they they did pretty well for the stock prices, DK. Think of the shareholders. Oh, that's uh isn't that always the reasoning for man-made horrors beyond comprehension? Oh, come on, like, you know. I I hate to boss baby this into an avatar quote, but that's when uh he's trying to explain why it's okay to genocide the people.

It's like, oh sure, Jake, uh genociding the local populace looks bad on paper, but you know the one thing shareholders hate worse than bad press? It's a bad quarterly statement. Yeah. And then this feels very much like that.

Yeah. Sure. 250,000 dead, but the line goes up.

Yeah. We made a lot of money. We might have genocided a planet of uh local uh humanoids, but eh we got all the unobtanium, it's fine.

We we got the horrible psychic ghost. That's what we wanted, right? I'm sorry, what now? Um In 2009, uh the ATC would launch Project Perseus, which was essentially a part two to Project Origin. This was more focused on Paxton himself, and it was an attempt to see if he was able to actually control replicas all at once with his mind.

This would be done in the old ATC cloning facilities, and this would help Paxton hone his powers. The perfecting of these replica soldiers would result in the establishment of the replica forces in 2017, and Paxton's success at connecting himself to them proved to be a worthwhile endeavour and a potential huge investment for the United States military.

Unfortunately for the ATC, this success would prove to be their downfall, and the events of the past would haunt them in unspeakable ways. Paxton was successful, but his training was not easy, especially due to him developing psychological issues of his own. No shit. He would have horrible dreams where he was tearing people apart with his hands and eating their flesh.

The ATC would learn of these dreams, but their own investigations would prove to be fruitless. The ATC was also busy keeping their options open, especially when it came to something else, finding a new Alma. Project Paragon was a separate and parallel initiative they were running alongside Project Perseus, and was directly involved within the schools of Fairport, specifically Wade Elementary School, which was secretly owned by the ACC.

Oh man, I just bo there's there are not enough fuck you'd give here.

Setups to first person shooters go. The one for fear is absolutely batshit in how dark and gross and just all around terrific it is.

Oh yeah, this oh I d I don't like any of it.

Yes, this is a nice thing. It it does it still gets worse. So covertly covertly, the ATC was testing and conditioning children in this school, as well as slipping them chemical enhancers in order to see if one or more of these children may show a potential similar to Alma. Those who showed more potential would be kept in the programme, and those who didn't would be drugged with chemicals that would force them to experience amnesia.

This should not surprise us, but the vast majority of these children suffered severe psychological trauma, but a few proved to have extreme promise. They would be spirited away into a separate facility where their potential abilities could be sharpened and weaponized.

Oh boy, that's uh yeah, it oh oof. I don't I don't like it here. I don't it's I don't much I don't much like this. I it's rough. Yeah, I don't this is I hope there's a stage in fear where you just get to go just rampage on these scientists in just the most commonally horrific way possible.

I I see you've got the new stake launcher. I I have. Let me show you.

Um We build industrial complex on child abuse. That is indeed what they are doing, and it's aww. Were you expecting it to be this bad? I'm assuming Nope, I was I was not. Um well apparently I thought we were getting a Hayes episode. Uh but when I saw the cover, I was like, oh, this is gonna be like, you know, sort of your typical horror jump scary.

Like we said at the beginning, it kind of looked, it kind of looked like the the cover of the ring a little bit, and like, you know, jump scare first persony deal. And this is awful! Although the ring also isn't great when you're a you know child. Ring was not a yeah, that's also not great. Watch out for that first step.

Well, and you know, it's also not good, so yeah, that's fair.

We we can do a Haze episode, but it'll be another Cthulhu punk type thing.

I I've literally never played it. I just I don't know how my my brain um conflated the two. I genuinely don't know how that happened. I haven't played either one.

I played a little bit of it, I remember almost none of it, but I remember it wasn't good. That's literally all that's literally all I can remember from it, which is you know, I think that probably says quite a lot, doesn't it? Probably does.

Yeah. Yeah.

I remember nothing except disappointment. It's not is not the kind of thing that a game wants to be remembered for.

I am a carnivore, a real meat eater. Oh no, I don't anyway, back to fear.

Back to fear, right? That's what we're doing today.

Yep. Let's let's uh This weaponization project was done with Project Harbinger, which was run by ATC President Genevieve Aristide. The children would be subjected to extreme psychic exposure after having neural amplifiers placed on them. The idea was that an overwhelming amount of psychic energy could result in an awakening, but this actually resulted in the death of many of these children.

But not all of them, as we'll discuss later.

Boy God damn As we'll discuss later, great. Uh oh boy. This sucks. This this fucking sucks.

This sucks, man. Now, the story of the first fear game begins with very little information. In fact, you're thrown immediately into the mire of this setting without much bracing, unless you take a look at the manual of the first game. Even then, the information presented in this manual is exceptionally vague.

So I've got a quote for you here.

You know what sucks is that we probably have listeners right now that are going, what do you mean, look at the manual of a game? What does that even mean, Kiriar? Manual? Like what what did it come with a fucking Word document? What are you talking about? Yeah, back in our day it came with instruction man, little booklets that told you how to play the game.

No tutorials.

It's the same thing as like my kids know that the floppy disk icon is the save button, but they don't know what it came from. They have no idea. That's just what it is. That's the save icon. That's how you save stuff. They don't know that it's based on an actual bit of physical media that used to exist.

They've got no idea.

It's so I think I just have heart palpitations from you telling me that. It's bad. Anyway. What the hell is fear? It stands for first and counter assault and recon. They're supposed to be experts on freaky shit. I love that being in the manual.

You open it up and you're like, what the hell does this even mean? Okay, cool. Well, yeah, there you go. That's what it means. You uh you learn that fear was founded in 2002 and serves as a covert branch of the US Army Special Forces. They deal with threats that are, to put it bluntly, unusual. You see, in the world of fear, threats that are seemingly paranormal have become common enough to justify the formation of a new branch, but the extent is not really clear.

You learn that the character you're going to play was recently inducted into fear as the point man, and his ability to adapt and his reflexes are described in great detail by some higher ups. The year now is 2025, and a group of soldiers moving through some sort of facility led by a man who looks nervous.

The soldiers take down the forces holding this unknown building, and we witness the man kneeling over a dead scientist. Two of the soldiers stand by him as he seemingly eats this man for reasons unknown.

I'm so sorry. What uh What? He was hungry, he was having a snack. I alright. So here here we here we are with uh carnivorous uh fear agents? It's it's the fear agent eating the scientist for no reason.

Well this is the thing. No, no, we see this from a security camera. Oh, okay. This is the briefing of the fear members given by commissioner for kidney betters.

Okay. I I was I was very confused. I was like, wait, the point man is eating the the the uh the he there uh huh? Okay, gotcha. All right.

That would be a crazy intro to the game. Yeah, it's your character. He's just Like chowing down on a scientist.

I was like, holy Jesus.

Okay, thank you for the clarification. Sorry if I misheard, but yeah, that yeah, okay, yep, okay.

No, no, no, no. The the the alarm is is justified, but the clarification was what was one sentence away. Um sorry, sorry I jumped the gun.

My bad.

I don't know. It's it's a fair point of confusion. So yeah, essentially you start out watching this this horrible scene from a security camera, and uh Commissioner Ridney Betters turns to brief the fear members sitting in the room with him. You've got the point man, who is joined by Spencer Jankowski and Jin Sun Quan, and Commissioner Betters outlines the situation for them.

The facility, located in the Auburn district of Fairport, that was attacked, belongs to the Armageddon Corporation. The soldiers that attacked were, believe it or not, clones, and their commander was named Paxton Fettle. Oh hey, Paxton, poor Paxton, he deserved better. He's just locked him in here, you know.

He's back and he's now eating a scientist's while being uh guarded by a couple of replicas. So we we know we know that his whole ripping people apart and eating them premonition was exactly that, and we also now know that his ability to control replicas is pretty solid. Yeah. Given that he's just having them watch over whilst he munches a scientist's face.

Yummers, as the kids say.

Do they? I d I don't know that well they say it. Maybe not in this situation, but they say it.

I'd be alarmed if they said it in this situation. They see that and your first thing you hear is yummers, you'd be like, hmm okay. Paxton might say it. We'll keep an eye on you, shall we? There might be something going on here. The attack on the ATC facility was clearly calculated, but despite taking hostages and holding the facility, no demands have been issued, which makes the entire incident pretty strange.

Fettel obviously has gone rogue, and fear specialties when it comes to dealing with things of this nature make them the perfect organisation to handle this. As Fettel was in the midst of training, there's an implant in his head that he's unaware of, which means that his location is always known. Due to him controlling these replicas, the goal is to take out Fettel directly as fast as possible to sort of unplug the replicas and prevent a long-term assault and potential entrenchment by, you know, quickly shutting them down.

Fear is deployed into the Auburn district as the tracker from Fettle pings in this location, and the point man begins to experience strange things. He sees glass shatter for no reason, doors opening without anyone behind them, and the constant image of a little girl just out of the corner of his eye.

Oof that's I see. Okay. And I'm assuming these are all uh gameplay mechanics as well, and sort of ways to jump scare the player and yeah. Yeah, yeah.

It's been a long time since I played it, but I remember it feeling pretty goddamn constant at the time. It's fair, you know. There's no such thing as a relaxing playthrough of fear, from what I remember. Um she wears a red dress, and when she isn't seen directly, her cries or whispers can be heard. Something is clearly not right here.

Uh walking through the facility's darkened corridors, both Jin and Jankowski remark how it feels like they're being watched, and though encounters with clone troopers, which are remarkably in sync with unparalleled coordination, are a bit frequent, there's an undercurrent here in the facility that isn't right.

Thumbing through laptops and other documents as they explore, it's clear that this facility goes much deeper than aerospace and armaments, and they begin to learn some bits and pieces about the dark history of ATC.

Yeah.

Also, Shy says, Yeah, to remind people all of this in service of a video game where you run through grey corridors and shoot military dudes with machine guns while getting jump scared out of your mind by little girl in the corner of your eye, weird visions and doors slamming open with no one behind them.

Lovely. Yep. It's got everything.

It's a weird combo, but I remember it being very fun in a I hate this game kind of way.

Is is Fear still like did it ever get ported to like Steam or anything like that? You know what? I don't know. Fear too is on Steam.

It doesn't really work.

Oh yeah, Fear Ultimate Shooter Edition is on Steam. Oh well, there you go. Yeah. So if if you all were thinking of playing it, you can. It's a dollar ninety-nine. Oh, I've already got it on Steam. Wait. Damn. I was gonna say you can buy the Fear collection for six dollars.

I mean, that's that's not bad. That's not bad. That's not terrible.

Anyway, I'm I now I'm like, oh I could actually go and play Fear again. Um You could. Oh no. At one point, uh Jankowski and the point man encounter a dead man strapped to a chair, seemingly interrogated to death. Jankowski calls for backup while encouraging you to go to the roof. While up there, Fettle appears seemingly out of nowhere and hits the point man with a board, standing over him as he fades in and out of consciousness.

I've got another another quote for you here.

Alright. The dead man's name was Charles Charles Habegar. I remember him, but are the memories mine or hers? It makes no difference. He deserved to die. They all deserve to die. Now we're talking. The yes let's go.

Oh god, it's it's really rough. Mm-hmm. They did a they did a good job of really making things look gross and gory in this game as well. Love it. So when the point man comes to, Fettle is gone. Like completely. The satellite signal of him seemingly vanished and the search continues, but the visions experienced by Point Man become more jarring.

The fear team is rerouted to the nearby South River wastewater treatment plant, where they meet up with a Delta Force unit in order to lead an assault. The Delta Force team goes first along with Jankowski and Point Man is held up due to the sudden arrival of replica soldiers. The fighting with the soldiers is halted when Point Man experiences a sudden vision of the little girl in a hallway, followed by a catastrophic explosion that throws him outside and knocks him out.

He is awoken by Jin and is immediately sent inside the building as Paxton's signal has suddenly appeared there. Pointman is cursed with more visions, but they frequently become more tied directly to things that Fettle is doing, as though Fettel wants Pointman to see these things. Pointman witnesses many things, including Fettel himself in a padded room, a room where someone is being forced to give up their child, and hallways full of blood.

Yay love that.

Crawling through the depths of the facility, Point Man eventually finds this man seemingly dead, strapped to a chair. As the point man approaches, the man lurches back and says his final words. There you go, I've got I've got his final words for you right here. Alright.

Alma, if Fedel finds her origin. Well Yeah. Ominous. Ominous as hell.

Yeah, just a little bit. Yep, yep, yep, yep. The nature of these final words can barely roll off the dead man's tongue before Point Man gets word that Fear needs to redeploy. The Delta team at the ATC headquarters has gone dark and support is needed urgently. The arrival of Point Man on a Black Hawk helicopter is immediately met with heavy armed resistance as the crew is wiped out, forcing Point Man to clear the now ruined landing pad and infiltrate alone.

Oh boy.

Yeah, this really seems like the game where it's like, oh, where's my team?

I would like to go in with a full armed team.

Rather not A full army, preferably. Mm-hmm. He also receives word during this about Jankowski, who is missing, but not in any way that makes sense. All the bodies of the men he was with were accounted for, but Jankowski is gone, as well as any satellite signal to him. It's as if he has completely vanished.

Pointman makes his way through the corporate offices of the headquarters and is tasked with reconnecting the building to the digital grid so that information can be uploaded and shifted off the servers in an attempt to get more information on what is actually going on, while also salvaging top secret data.

During the process of exploring, Pointman is able to check the phones in the office for voice messages, and two of the ones he listens to changes the pace of the story substantially. And I've got both of those quotes for you here. Alright.

Message one. It's Chuck Hebeggar. I've analyzed the readings, and I'm recommending we suspend Perseus until we can figure out what's causing the synchronization. The patterns are identical to what we saw last time, but obviously the consequences would be a hell of a lot worse. Message two. I got your message.

Maybe you've forgotten that when this happened before, Fedel was only a child, and the fallout of that fuck up was that Origin had to be permanently shut down. This time we're talking about a highly trained military commander with a telepathic link to hundreds of soldiers that don't think for themselves.

If you're worried about being behind schedule now, imagine what'll happen if we end up with a full-scale revolt.

Yeah. Sounds bad, right? That sounds bad. You don't want that. No one wants that happening. Oh wait, it's already happening.

Yeah, I was gonna say, like, it's no does anything good happen? There's no good here. Uh unless, you know, except maybe the point man braining any scientist he finds, you know, that's probably good. I mean, a lot of scientists get offed.

So good. In terms of in terms of like, yeah, that that that's that's maybe the only good inverted commas things that comes out of this entire story. I'm not gonna lie.

Um the scientist being like, oh yeah, let's let's let's let's implant two children in Alma. Oh it's it's pretty bleak over all this. Let's experiment on a on a on a school on children again. Let's just how about we just how about we just you know um what is it, order five or uh uh X Inact Scenario 5.

Inact scenario five, that's the one yeah. Fuck these guys, Jesus Christ.

It really it is really a case of everyone involved basically went should should we have some form of basic morality? No, we don't want any of that. No, no. Moral what never even heard of the word losers. Oh, you don't want to hurt children. What are you? A fucking nerd? Get out. Like it's just just horrible, callous attitude from everyone.

Literally every person. Absolutely crazy. Whatever is happening now is something that has happened before, it turns out. And uh it turns out there is a good reason why the Delta Force team had gone dark. They had been brutally massacred to the point where there are no corpses, just blood. Oh. Great. Love it.

Crazy. It is here where Point Man encounters a man named Aldous Bishop who works at the ATC and is strapped to a chair. He states that the actions of the replicas are calculated and that they're looking for two people specifically, a senior researcher named Harlan Wade and his daughter, Alice Wade. It's clear that with this knowledge that Fettle really knows his stuff about the senior management and research team within the ATC, and it's likely that these researches are a key to the specific thing that he is looking for within the organisation.

The Delta Force team is sent in to extract Bishop to safety, but as the point man brings him to the extraction point, a member of the ATC security forces kills Bishop.

Oh no. Wow, that's a that that screenshot is just wild shit to look on his Oh no. It's not the best looking screenshot. No. That is uh yeah, that is a dated screenshot if I've ever seen one. Oh man.

I to be fair, I do feel a bit bad for Point Man because you know, up until like he's essentially just been dispatched to help with an armed takeover of some facility he knows nothing about, and the whole time he's getting absolutely blitzed with nightmare visions and his finding out that this this you know the ATC is in fact a horror organization that's done awful things.

He's just like, we got dispatched because it was weird. What the fuck is all of this? Why are we having to be here?

What the hell is going on?

Yeah.

We just saved this guy. Sadly, Armacham doesn't want any witnesses. Yeah, I bet they don't.

I bet they don't. Oh now, the point man is between a rock and a hard place because not only are the replicas a direct problem, but ATC's interest in protecting itself and its secrets have resulted in them acting out in a cover-up. Pointman fights through the ATC forces as best as possible, and he catches wind that Fettle is indeed heading that way to get the members of the Wade family, which means he needs to act fast.

Amidst the fighting between ATC's forces and the replicas, Point Man makes his way to Halan's office and finds that he left Alice a message warning her that Fettle was after her and that she needed to escape. Instead, though, Pointman eventually encounters Alice hiding in Halan's office. She knows where her father's hiding and provides coordinates to his location for fear and Delta Force to potentially extract him before Fettle gets there.

The two escape in an elevator, but a sudden power outage results in the Pointman standing there alone while Alice has gone missing. Because of course. The Point Man makes his way to the roof where he encounters Alice on the other side of a locked door. They both watch as a rescue chopper is shot down, and the resulting explosion causes Alice to panic and flee downstairs into the garage, just as another helicopter lands on the roof to extract them both.

Pointman is extracted, and the destination of the coordinates is a facility affiliated with Project Origin, the above top secret project that was apparently shut down due to Fettle's actions during childhood. On their way there, the helicopter is shot out of the air and the team is severely injured, meaning that Point Man is forced to go into the facility alone.

Of course. Well, why not? Why not? Why not? I do really enjoy the convoluted ways in which the game is like, okay, you should have a team, but you've got to go in alone. Every single time you're gonna have to go in alone.

You must go into the nightmare scenario alone.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We we need to have all the trappings of the FPS experience, but we also need to make sure that being jump scared constantly makes sense. So here's your team, they're all dead now. By yourself. Oh, you got a new team crash. They're all dead now. No, no, no, it's fine. We've got another team of utility.

Oh, just the helicopter, the second helicopter crash.

You're going in alone again. At this point, if you're at the point, man, it's like, hey, just don't send me any reinforcements. I'll I'll I'll just I'll just do it myself. Okay, like Yeah.

unknown Yeah.

At this point, I feel like I'm somehow partially responsible for the death of about half of our forces just by their proximity to me. So just give me a give me a bicycle and I'll get there myself.

Let's not risk anyone else. Just send in regular ammo drops and stuff. I'll I'll be fine. I'll be fine.

Shy. He's in a military shooter. He needs to be aware that the evac helicopter is getting shot down. It just does.

No, come on. In a military shooter, they would never call it a helicopter. It's the evacu. Come on.

Or the chopper. Yeah. You have after all got to get to the chopper. We know this.

Evach Hilo in band. Oh shit, what is that?

Source every military shooter for the past 30 years. Now, while cussing through the derelict facility, Pointman encounters Fettle seemingly at random and he gloats to him, saying that he's captured Alice before vanishing. The infiltration of this facility has caught the attention of ATC, who are trying desperately hard to prevent Point Man from going any further.

As Point Man explores further, he sees Harlan Wade entering a massive vault and sealing the door behind him. A security man named Mapes, and this is legitimately something that Parsum has written into the script. Mapes? Who is Mapes, who is fundamentally the most obnoxious character in the whole fucking first game, I swear to God.

That's I mean it's impressive. Uh he was shot by Haaland before we went inside. Before he went inside, sorry. Is that oh my yo!

Is that Mapes? Okay, I get it. I all I needed to do was see him, and I was like, oh I see. Okay. I understand it now.

I totally I totally forgot what Mapes looks like.

Oh decision. Yeah, that is that is the decision of all time. I think they based him on DK. Wow Shy. That's that's not nice. That's that's fucked up. That's that's harsh. I don't even watch anime anymore, man. It's all hentai now. Wow, Kirioth went there all by himself, by the way. No one prompted Kirioth to go right to anime porn.

That was just all Kiriath all the time by himself.

Don't say it's all me all the time by myself when the context is anime porn. You can't don't put that on me. It's too late. It's out there, man. Too late. Point man goes to the dying mates who tells him that he needs to re-roup out of the door and destroy the place before he lets her out.

Mmm.

So that's not at all concerning, is it? The point man successfully enters the vault himself, and what he sees is horrific. Inside he sees Paxton Fettle in front of an ominously sealed storage chamber, but he's currently kneeling over the body of Alice Wade and eating her. All the while Alma is watching.

Fettle looks to the point man and brings him into a horrific hallucination where he reveals something to him. And I've got another quote for you here.

Alright. You still don't know, do you, what you are, why you're here. What's the first thing you remember? What's your given name? Where were you born? You have no history. You and I were born from the same mother. You must have sensed it. She cannot see in your mind, but perhaps you can see into hers.

A life of walking from one nightmare only to find herself deep in another. I will set her free. Is uh you know what? Uh I'm not gonna jump the gun with questions. Why don't you go ahead and tell me what happens next, Kirioth? Okay.

In the uh in the fury and terror of this hallucination, the point man successfully kills Paxton Fettle, seemingly putting an end to the replica threat. The point man then finds Harlan Wade in the control room of the facility, initiating a release sequence for the entire chamber. He's racked with guilt over what happened to his daughter.

I'm gonna I'm just gonna I'm gonna pull possum up on the wording on that one. I don't think what happened to his daughter is the right phrasing. I meant to change that earlier. But she didn't now we're all confused. It's not what happened to her, it's what he did to her. He actively participated. What happened is a passive interpretation.

Yeah, possum, you fucking hack.

That's that's so harsh for what such a small thing.

They want to destroy her, but I think she suffered enough. We put her in there two days before her eighth birthday. She died six days after we pulled the plug. This is how it ends.

I mean you know, the dude had free will. It's absolutely something that he fully. Helped with. So limited sympathy for Haal and Wade on my part, I'll be honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fair. That's fair. The sealed vault opens, revealing the spectral form of Alma that contorts into her as an emaciated adult.

Oh. Great. Local girl simply too angry to die. Well, if you're Alma, you can see that.

Like, that's that's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She oh my god, I'd forgotten what she looks like. Emmaciated indeed.

That is yep, oh brother. Extremely upsetting. Yeah. She uh sorry, this line it made me laugh the first time, it's gonna make me laugh again. She she immediately liquefies her father before turning her attention to the point, man.

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. You get what you deserve. You get what you fucking deserve. It's a shame that it's the liquefying was probably very quick, and I feel like he should have really felt it. Oh god.

Brutal. A brutal end. All your skin and flesh just liquefy off you.

unknown Yeah, fuck him.

I mean it's fair. Absolutely fair. Man got turned into environmental storytelling skeleton the skyrocket.

More than he deserves.

The point man is attempting desperately to trigger a meltdown of this place, but the mere presence of Alma results in horrific shadow entities manifesting as well as the memories of the point man's birth being forced into his mind. I mean, it's so Jesus Christ. No one, no one. Humans are not built to remember their own birth.

We're just not made for it. There's just no way.

Aren't there some people with photographic memories that genuinely remember their birth? Is that true? I'm pretty sure that's true, right?

That can't be true, can it? I suppose that's like viscerally upsetting to me. I don't know why.

I'm pretty sure I've heard of people remembering being born, says AI. Oh, okay. Well maybe I'm full of shit then. I don't know. I could have sworn I've heard of some people with like I don't know. Yeah, like I said, maybe I'm just the one full of shit here today. Wouldn't be the first time, probably won't be the last time.

I'll be honest, I I'm I'm in a weird way, I'm glad you're wrong. I don't know whether it's because I can't picture stuff in my head, but the idea of having a photographic memory so good that you could remember like the coming out of the womb of your own birth is absolutely there's something existentially horrible about that to me, but I don't really know why.

Um Point Man fights through Alma's visions before successfully escaping to the surface. The detonation is catastrophic, and the blast not only knocks him out but also flattens the entire area and takes many unsuspecting civilian lives because it always has to get worse. We know this.

Well, you know, to make an armor you gotta crack a few eggs. It happens.

The point man comes to and is taken away on a helicopter. Don't worry. Don't worry.

You mean the HE?

Helicopter? The Hilo, sorry, the Evac Hilo. We're good. He's on the helicopter alongside Jin. And as they leave and observe the mushroom cloud, Jin asks what happened to Alma before the helicopter suddenly loses power and the spectral image of Alma attempts to climb into the cabin.

Yeah, we're back, baby.

Yay, Alma's back.

What's that helicopter number four?

Stop sending in healers, just send a truck or something, man. Come well, all trucks don't fare much better in in these settings either.

So Oh, that is that is a heavy uh chopper casualty rate. Yeah, man.

How many people have died in helicopter crashes in fear?

It's crazy. Oh god. We'll come back to what happened with this later, but what's important is that after the credits of the first game, the following phone call is heard. And I can quote for you.

Senator, it's Genevieve Ar Aristide. That's what I said, yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to assure you that the origin situation has been resolved, but so much for discretion. It was unavoidable. There is some good news, however, the first prototype was a complete success. Bum bum bum.

Oh dear. Guess who hasn't learned their lesson?

Everybody literally everybody, everyone. No one has learned a goddamn thing. Great. Love it. Hooray for Huggies. Jesus.

Speaking of which, we were now moving into fear two. So 30 minutes before the destruction of the origin facility, a Delta IV squad named Dark Signal. I don't know if cringe or cool. I don't know.

Not sure. Uh depends how they look and how successful they are. You can overcome a lot of cringe if you have enough aura, right?

If they're if they are the best of the best, it's no longer cringe. If they're really shit and all die immediately, it's cringe.

And if they have really sick armor and weapons, you know, fair.

Dark signal pretty cool.

To be honest, it also just sounds like a generic EDI like EDM artist. That's that's that's kind of the feeling that I'm getting from it.

It's white man, techie lady, and black man. So the usual for early 2000s. Yeah, okay, dark signal kind of lame then. So cringe. We're going cringe.

We're going cringe. Yep, yep. They were deployed to President Genevieve's penthouse. It was led by first sergeant Cedric Griffin and included a sergeant named Michael Beckett. Their mission was a protective custody order for the president, but the true nature of this mission was unknown to them and was part of an intricate game of 4D chess.

You see, remember a bit ago we talked about Project Harbinger and the fact that some of these specially trained kids survived? Well, some of them found their way into specified groups unbeknownst to them, such as Dark Signal. President Genevieve was being targeted by the ATC board and was aware they would attempt to silence her and erase all the evidence of what occurred, so in a panic, she would put in the call for this mission in order to finish the job.

Her goal was to get Becker and his squad together so they could be lured into a secure place so that Project Harbinger could be completed and all these soldiers could be properly activated. Oh. Oh sure. Oh sure. You know what's better than one unstable psychic lunatic who's decided to overtake your top secret facility?

Make sure an army of them.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's just a phenomenal idea. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Totally legit reaction from Genevieve.

Nobody learns their lessons here. Truly. Everybody's just, oh Jesus Christ.

Welcome to fear. Everyone fucking sucks. Yeah. That's it. Jesus. Except for poor Point man. It's not his fault.

Yeah.

You know, he's just doing he's just trying to do his job. It's not his fault. He's the child of a girl who was experimented on in horrible, torturous ways and is now too angry to die. That's just one of those things, you know? It's this is it's like stubbing your toe. It just it happened. It's just one of those things.

So true. Beckett's team would fight through the opposing Black Ops forces as well as a multitude of strange visions in order to meet up with Aristide, but upon their arrival the detonation of the origin reactor would flatten the entire area and knock the squad out. Fading in and out of consciousness, Beckett would hear the president telling her men to get them aboard before Beckett and his crew would be dragged to a chopper.

No, please, no, not the heel, please, please, this never ends well. Your protagonist, sir, John Specops. Got you. Typical protag. Okay.

Oh. Beckett would awake in a hospital room strapped to a gurney while a not so confident doctor was performing some kind of surgery on him. Beckett was being fitted with psychic amplifiers along his spine and his brainstem in order to enhance his reflexes, but all the while he is just terrorized by visions of Alma.

Eventually he fully comes to and finds himself with the rest of his crew deep within the hospital. The facility is then attacked by the ATC cleanup crew and the group needs to escape. As Beckett finds his way out, he encounters a member of his squad, Red Jankowski, who was torn apart by a surgical machine.

Before dying, Jankowski asks Beckett if he can hear it and says they have to help her before he dies.

Yep, that's you this that's fear for you, I guess.

Yeah, yeah. The uh the fight to the surface is made increasingly hard due to the reactivation of once dormant replica troops, as well as an unexpected series of assaults from Alma. Beckett is radioed by a man that goes by the name Snake Fist, who tells it's uh that's still a bad name. Even always later.

Terrible name. Snakes don't have fists. It just doesn't make any sense. You don't even have hands.

Don't even have arms, man. Come on. Call yourself like Snake Coil or Snake Fang or Snake Poison or Venom or something like Snake Fist? What are you stupid?

I don't remember enough of this game to know if this happened. I'm assuming it didn't because tonally it would be something of a whiplash from everything that happens. But if Beckett was like, why sorry, why are you called snake fist? You are aware snakes have like a full conversation, a full like that doesn't even make any sense.

It's because I grab snakes with my fist.

Hoorah! Right? Oh god, it is ugly. It really is ugly. I've forgotten how like oddly blown out and brown a lot of it was, you know? Yeah, that's not the best. God, and the mech designs were really shit as well, I remember that too.

Well, it is it is a very typical mech design. It's like, oh yeah, you've got big arms and feet and a glass canopy. It's like, okay, sure. It's just it's just boring. Yeah. Boring.

Mm-hmm.

Very, very status quo. You know. Yeah, either yellow or brown. Um Snake Fist tells him that Almer is drawn to Beckett due to the energy he's emitting, because he's had surgical enhancements, and he believes Almer is trying to absorb him and is also controlling the replicas. During this time, Beckett learns of Project Harbinger and learns that those who failed the project weren't truly gone and exist in the form of abominations.

Oh great. Phenomenal. It's just uh it makes everything those scientists did so much worse.

It's uh yeah, it's it's literally just one shit ass decision after another.

Oh great.

Really impressive. Yes, and as as Shai points out, they they were they were children as well. So yeah.

Yep, they were children that were just tossed aside, right? Because they failed the experiments and now that's what they are.

Yeah, when they were they when they were dumped with chemicals unknowingly, they failed to turn into psychic powerhouses, so fuck 'em, is uh I believe the ATC's policy. So that's Yep.

Yeah, that that yeah, yeah, that's that sucks. In game, they even do children's style drawings and blood. Oh no.

I totally forgot about the drawings. Those were properly upsetting. I thought that was a very like I mean, horrible, but in a way, cool way of showing that they never really developed. Yeah, that's not good, but good design, if that's good storytelling, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, good storytelling, but not good. That's uh that sucks. That is that's no good. That's that's no good. That's uh boy, those scientists deserved a rotten hell.

Oh, don't worry, they they they're getting a a proper seeing two. So um Beckett is able to reach the surface and regroup with some of the members of his team, and they receive orders to rush ma to rush to Master Sergeant Griffin's aid. Wow. Uh originally Griffin had moved ahead after hearing reports of a crying woman, and he sought to rescue this individual from whatever trouble she was in.

But it turns out, you're not going to believe this, it was a trick by Alma. No way Oh by the time Beckett and the remaining squad members reach him, it's too late. Using horrific eldritch tentacles, Alma tears him apart. But before he is fully liquefied by her, he begs for Beckett and the others to run and save themselves.

What a lad. What an absolute lad. Getting a last instruction in there before he gets absolutely butchered.

Well boy, that's that's yeah, that's that's all right, cool. Cool story, bro.

Tell it again.

unknown Yeah.

Oh no, this was a horror game.

If only I'd known. Yeah. Beckett and the team move to the nearby Wade Elementary School as they receive word that Snake Fist and the president are there, cutting their way through more nightmares. I smoking Snake Fist every time. Fucking guy. The team are fully separated by Alma, and Beckett is told to make his way to the quote unquote nurse's office in the school.

What a fucking nerd. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's yeah, yeah, yeah. Mick Foley looking. Oh, wait, he does kind of look like Mick Foley, doesn't he? One of his alter egos, yeah.

He never played lame scientist, so that was never one of his personas. Um in the nurse's office, uh, he finds an elevator, which takes him to an un this is this is Beckett, not McFoley, by the way. Um he finds an elevator which takes him to an underground facility. During the descent, Beckett encounters the colonel of the ATC forces and successfully dispatches him during a hand-to-hand scuffle, which results in him grabbing the colonel's own gun and shooting him with it.

Oh. Well, that's nice. Hell of a day for Beckett. Um upon entering the underground facility, Beckett meets Snake Fist, who is a scientist named Terry Halford, who outlines to him what he needs to do. And I've got a hell of a quote here.

Terry Halford. I'll skip the metaphysics and try to keep it as simple as possible. I'm probably giving a cooler voice than he deserves. Sergeant Beckett, Genevieve Arista, did some nasty things to you back at that medical facility. First came the gene splicing operation to link you to Alma. Then she tricked you into getting into the telesthetic attunement chamber, which strengthened the link.

That's why Uma's aware of you and why you're totally pooch screwed unless you can destroy her. Which brings me to the telesthetic amplifier on Still Island. You're not psychically potent enough to resist Alma, so we're gonna plug into a device that will crank up your brainwaves. Sadly, the only device that has enough juice for the job is on Still Island, hidden inside the old nuclear reactor.

You definitely want to go to the old nuclear reactor, don't you? Yeah, otherwise you're totally pooch screwed, brother. Pooch screwed. What an idiot. Honestly. Crazy. Yeah, his name would be fucking Terry, wouldn't it?

Who knew that a guy calls himself snake fist? She's an insufferable dickhead. I know. Yeah. Now he believes that theoretically it will make him powerful enough to stop Alma, but he says theoretically, because Alma's signature has grown a bit sketchy. But he believes that if anyone's head is going to explode, it will be hers and not Beckett's.

He then gives the backstory in Alba, explaining how she was forced to have children and sealed away in a vault left to drown in her own amniotic fluids. Her heart shut down, but her psychic signature didn't. As he says, not many people can refuse to die. He confesses that Harlan Wade was ultimately right about one thing.

We make our own monsters and they will always come back to haunt us. They're still trying to make more though, aren't they? Yeah. Idiots.

They know all that and they're like, yeah, let's make more though, eh?

It's like, are you serious? Are you are you do you listen to yourself?

Insane. Insane work. Before Beckett is able to depart, a replica assassin appears suddenly and decapitates Halford, forcing Beckett to rush out of the facility. Oh, poor Snake Fist. Poor Snakefist, he's gone. That's fine. I was gonna say pour one out. Apparently we're not pouring one out, we're just gonna move right along.

Fuck that. Get on with our lives. Fuck Snake Fist. Snakefist! Snake fist. Uh once he regroups with some of the surviving members of his squad, they go through the evidence and confirm what Halford had said, and they make their way to Still Island. But a violent counterattack causes their APC to crash.

I mean it wasn't a helicopter this time. So at least we know all forms of transport are out.

You just can't walk.

Someone steps on a landmine that for some reason has been deployed, even though it's totally unsuitable for this particular scenario.

If you know the game is 20 hours long, don't get into the evacu at ten hours into the game. Come on.

Everybody knows that, man. They need better media awareness, and by that we mean the media they are in. Beckett watches as one of the men from his squad begins to wander off, and in an attempt to leave no man behind, he rushes after him. Idiot. Pursuing him through the derelict streets and corroded subway systems and deeper into a cargo tunnel.

These cargo tunnels did lead to Still Island, and eventually Beckett makes his way to the chamber that Halford spoke about. As they enter the chamber, the sudden appearance of President Aristide reveals that he fell directly into a trap. The implantations were an intentional means to bait Alma, and this chamber would be a nice place for Alma to be held as a means of leverage against ATC.

And there is a nice quote from old Genevieve there.

You have a date with destiny, Sergeant Beckett. Let's not keep her waiting.

I mean I don't disagree. Um Alma appears violently and launches Aristide out of the way, resulting in her being closer to the control panel. Alma's not interested in the president as her focus is strictly on Beckett and psychically connects to him as the chamber is sealed. Beckett is forced to experience a vision of a horrifically corrupted version of his former squad mate Keegan, who is turned into an eldritch abomination, forcing him to fight in a catastrophic battle.

But something is not right about all of this. During this conflict, Beckett randomly snaps back to the chamber briefly to see that Alma is assaulting him. Oh, oh, great. Lovely. Love that. A very, very specific type of assault, unfortunately. Oh. Oh no. Yep. Yep. So let's see. We are back into a truckload of yikes uh country.

This came to Beckett. Alma appears like this on the right. Oh, that's so so Alma is hot Alma in this one, not hag Alma. Oh how did alright, well, I I okay, whatever.

It's uh I you know what? I will get the final boss fight. We'll we we can we'll finish the app, but then I will link you to the boss fight and we can we can experience it together. Maybe that can be in the app, maybe you can just go up as a random Patreon thing. This is one of the shittest boss fights, I think, in the history of video games.

It is absolute hot garbage. But anyway, um it's really it's really bad. Uh unable to act, he shifts between the conflict and the reality of what Alma is doing. As the climactic battle concludes, Beckett is ripped out of the horrific vision and finds himself sealed inside the device. The device is then unsealed from the outside, and Alma walks up to Beckett, revealing that she's pregnant.

Oh boy, alright. Yep. She takes Beckett's hand and places it on her stomach while the voice of a child whispers, Mummy, before Alma leaves the chamber and walks into what looks to be an apocalyptic landscape. Oh, I see. It's it's a hell of an ending. Yeah, that's very like I'm sorry. What the fuck is all of this?

What is going on?

Yeah. It's a bold choice of the whore idea of depicting assault of sexual nature as a boss fight and a male character no less. That's uh it is a it is a it is a choice of all time.

Um the the the sheer number of question marks is really it's really Yeah it's uh I I was talking to uh to Possum about this earlier because I was like it's actually incredible how bad that final fight is. And Possum said, We want to do a chaotic fight scene that is intercut with sexual assault. What?

Only one issue though. What do you mean only one issue?

It's too in mind.

It's yeah, it's 2009 and we're in the midst of a recession. Um then I said, and those are the only issues? Well, we also don't actually have a plan for the chaotic fight scene, we just feel like something needs to be there to break up the aforementioned sexual assault. Um that sums up that boss fight, I think, pretty well, but we'll watch it afterwards.

Um because dear God.

So that's the end of fit.

Oh boy, that's uh oh boy, am I looking forward to that one? Oh man, what better way to spend my morning?

I mean it's aged so badly that it is closer to being funny than disturbing at this point. Right. Like the the sheer bad idearedness of it is actually incredible. Anyway, that is the end of fear two. So we're left with pregnant Alma walking off into an apocalyptic landscape. Bad times. On to fear three, however.

For the third and final game, we need to cut back to the events immediately after the origin explosion. The helicopter Point Man was on with Jin crashes, obviously, and though Jin and Point Man survive, the presence of Alma shows that they are not safe. Pointman is confronted by visions of his brother as he attempts to flee.

Fettle taunts Pointman and through mocking claps and goading calls him Mother's Little Killing Machine. Big words from a guy who's been eating people this whole time.

Yeah.

Jesus Christ. Bloody take a look in the mirror, Fettle. Let's not be throwing around accusations that aren't anywhere near as bad as what you've been doing this entire time. Yeah. Um His escape through the ruins were cut short as ATC soldiers caught point man and knocked him out. He's been getting knocked out a lot in these games as well.

He sure has. It's not great to be point man. This this guy's gotta have a significant amount of uh of oh what is it? What's the shorthand for like repeated head trauma? I can't remember it. Percussions? Yeah, there's there's a specific there's a specific like shortening thing. You mean like CTE? That's the one.

That's it. Yeah. He's he's gotta be up there for that at this point. He keeps getting smashed in the head over and over and over again. But as he fades out of consciousness, the last thing he hears is next time, maybe you'll listen to your brother. As for Feckel, his spirit clearly remained active after his death, and during the events of the second game, his spirit is furious.

It became clear to him that Alma didn't truly care about him. In fact, she only used him so that she could break free. The carnage that he's witnessing is akin to the apocalyptic conflicts he saw in his dreams, and he needed to be reborn. He would find himself a perfect vessel, a replica soldier designated Foxtrot eight one three.

This unit was deployed to defend a command post that was currently attacked by ATC forces, and the replica would experience visions. He would hear the voice of Fettle who would tell him that he was different than the other units, and that the others were meaningless. When the visions would break free from his mind, Foxtrot 813 would find himself surrounded by bodies.

The other units in his company were indeed useless, because he had just killed every single one of them while being blinded by the vision. Ah cool. Acceptable losses one might say. Now, funnily enough, he would be branded a rogue and was now sought after by the other replica forces.

Yeah.

Really? You don't say Drawn by visions and words from Fettle, the unit would make his way to the epicenter of the explosion through dark tunnels and eventually reach ground zero. There he would find the ruins of Fettle's cell, where Fettle himself would greet him. He would place his hand on the unit's shoulder and call him his brother, and when Foxtrot 813 removed his helmet, it was uncanny.

His face was identical to Fettle's, and he was watched as the vision of Fettle would dissolve before transferring itself into the unit, before he would proudly declare that he was reborn. Good times. Wow.

Real good times.

Alright. Yeah, man. Sick. Cool. And I've got a nice little quote for you there. Mother's expecting again, brother is killing again. All I want for us is to be together. Oh boy. That's uh Yay. Oh that's that's family times. Yay. It's a reunion.

The year is now 2026, and Point Man is held as a prisoner by ATC. It sure is forces. It's it is. Oh god, we've caught up to we've caught up to reality. Um He's being interrogated somewhere in South America, and the ATC forces want to know where Alma is. The interrogation is interrupted when the spectral form of Fettle appears and helps Point Man take out the interrogators.

Possum does point out it would be much cooler if it was, you know, the clone body that he had possessed and such, but whatever, apparently. It's that is that is genuinely a valid piece of criticism. Having him be all like, I am reborn. I'm not going to use this body, but it's nice to have it, I guess.

Wild decision making from the devs there. Um Fettle and Pointman escape and they agree to work together in order to find Alma, but Fettle warns Point Man that Fairport is not the same place anymore. Nine months of carnage and an overwhelming eldritch aura has overwhelmed the place, and the ruins are homes to cultists and freaks.

Those who survived the explosions and the fighting have been driven mad, and as Pointman and Fettle make their way through the residence, they find Jin. They present to them a she presents to them a recording of a man by the name of Michael Beckett, who reveals that Alma is pregnant and is experiencing contractions that are causing psychic resonance.

Great. I mean awesome. It's nine months since she forced herself onto Beckett, and she is going to give birth. Fettle is of the mindset that they need to witness this moment, whereas Pointman believes that it needs to be stopped.

Uh Shy wants to hijack the episode here for a second. She asks, can I make a horrifying message in here to explain to DK how Point and his brother are running around together? Sure, Shy. Absolut Oh boy. Um, okay. Fun fact about Fear 3 it's not a horror game. It's a fucking co-op four-hour action shooter.

However, I still have horrifying quotes for you. Officially, the team's main design principle was to avoid messing too much with the Fear franchise's successful formula of frenetic soldier combat and paranormal horror. However, the then president of Warner Brothers Games, Martin Tremblay, had become a big fan of the Call of Duty games.

Oh there we go. There we go. We had gotten the word from Warner that co-op was hot, so we were making a co-op game. Our response was co-op isn't frightening, co-op isn't scary when you're playing with somebody else. They didn't care because co-op was a buzzword in the industry at the time, and they demanded we make a co-op.

Oh no. By late 2010, many of the staff who had been working on the game for over four years had burnt out. According to level designer Matt Mason, there were many, many months of unofficial crunch before the crunch became official with staff being told they had to work longer hours. Fear 3 received mixed reviews.

Caleb Wilson, Austin of the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote, I would hate to see this entry be the death knell of the franchise. It fucking was.

It's almost like when a successful franchise that has carved out its own niche and provide something that is different to everything else on the market, and then rework it so that it becomes the same as everything else on the market, but worse, because it was never meant to be that in the first place.

Turns out people don't like that shit.

It's shocking, I know. Man, that that might be worse than any horror we've talked about. Is let's take a franchise that has worked and has an established story, but oh, you know what? I I really I'm a big fan of Call of Duty, and co-op is such a big buzzword right now. Let's just force feed it into this game that doesn't require either one, and actually severely is hindered by adding buzzword into oh god, that is uh that might be the worst sin of the episode, dude.

What were absolutely atrocious?

And then just crunching your set, just unofficial crunch and then actual crunch is like, brother, that's the horror story. That's the worst horror I've heard today, because that happened.

Oh Lord. Do you remember how when we did the Dead Space episodes, it was a case of like the third one just not being what the other two were? Like the the personality of the game being kind of stripped out of it. It's literally something that happens over and over again for some reason. Yeah. Where someone just goes, you know, you know what would make this game like more profitable if we fucked with it at like the DNA level and made it fundamentally worse than it should be.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Oh it's recurring and it just shouldn't be. It makes no sense at all. Yeah, it's uh oh boy.

But Call of Duty, huh? Nothing against Call of Duty. I I don't play Call of Duty's. I've heard the next one is relative uh the latest one is relatively not bad as far as the campaign goes, but oh man, that's just what it's such it's such a bad sentence.

The then president had become a big fan of the Call of Duty.

Yeah, as soon as I read that, I was like, oh, here we fucking go.

Oh you could put you could attach that sentence to any existing game franchise outside of I'd say Battlefield or Call of Duty. I'm aware conflating the two will get some people angry, but you get what I mean. And nine times out of ten, what that would mean is the next game in that series is probably going to be shit.

Like regardless of what you apply it to.

I like I like Shy's next comment. Okay, let's go back to paranormal R-word, it's less depressing.

Let's uh yeah, let's go let's go back to uh the two the two uh the two brothers tracking down Michael Beckett to learn more and finding an empty shell of a man instead. Yay, which not surprising in any way. Uh Fettel would probe the mind of this husk and learn of Project Harbinger and would also learn that Beckett was the father of Alma's child.

The probing experience, however, would be fatal for Beckett, who would violently erupt in flames. Oh well, yeah, that sucks. Yep, that's odd. Okay, cool. This revelation would change Fettel's mindset about Alma further. He believed that Alma was not evil and never truly the enemy. Instead, she was a conduit for the evil of another.

Harlan Wade. In order to reach Alma, he believes they need to encounter the true monster of their past. The two return to the facility where they are experimented on as children, and they encounter a manifestation of Harlan Wade, which takes on the identity of the creep. Capital G. Capital Cep that that makes sense.

The entity says that they believe that Almer is innocent, but she is an out-of-croll out of croll? Out of control. That was me, that wasn't possum. Out of control manifestation of rage. Um fair? Yeah, that's that they're all very fair assessments, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm not saying she's done no wrong.

I'm not saying that, but when it comes to someone becoming an out-of-control manifestation of rage, I would suggest kinda not her fault. Like that that you know? Yeah.

Yeah, it can't really hold that part of the whole thing against.

Yeah.

Most people would become that if if they went through what Alma went through. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yep. Uh, it wanted to leave the legacy of gods with the prototypes, but instead it's the legacy of monsters. They are able to overwhelm the manifestation of Haaland and are one close one step closer to finding Alma. And I've got another quote for you here.

Her rage, her pain, her suffering. I feel them all like they were my own. They were my own. He ripped us from her, reduced our family to ashes. She showed me what must be done. He deserved to die. They all deserve to die. And I will continue. Will you? Yees. Yep. Annoyed. Annoyed to say the least.

Yeah, that's a that's a big bucket of crazy.

That is that is that's the family bucket. That's the that's a family-sized bucket of crazy.

Now the divergence here results in two different endings depending on the actions that are done during the game and at the very end. And due to the fact that the fear franchise has hit a wall, it's not clear what the true ending is, so we're gonna talk about both. Both men have a final confrontation as Alma begins to give birth, and Fettle pleads with Point Man for them to stand together and think about this as a family and to not stand by the orders of anyone else.

I mean, you can't be you can't be pulling the family card.

No, not here, not now, dude.

Not here, not now. Technically correct, but what a shit show of a family. Not by any of their doing. But still. Yeah. If the point man opts to destroy his fetal spirit, he does so by shooting him multiple times in the head before approaching Alma. Unfortunately, by the time the point man gets there, it's too late.

Before him is his new brother and Alma's spirit has disappeared. He receives a transmission from Jin that thanks him for what he's done and states that everything seems normal. The point man then picks up the baby and exits the facility. I mean uh Huh mental. Yeah. That that would be the ending. He's just like well, okay, well, I've got the I have the child born of the out-of-control anger ghost that has decimated this area for the last nine months.

Time to take this kid home.

Yeah, like is is is is I I mean, I I is is Point Man just gonna raise the kid as his as his own? I I what the what? Obviously they were hoping for fear four to explain that, but still. Yeah. Unfortunately, uh I become a big fan of call on duty.

Now, if the point man decides to side with Fettle, the spirits of Fettle possesses the point man. Combined as one, the brothers approach Alma and deliver the baby. They take the baby and state that they will raise the baby on their own and will shape them into their perfect servant. He then looks at Alma and says she has something that they need before attacking her and consuming her.

What? So that's that's the uh that's the fetal option. No less batshit. Yeah, those are both horrible endings. They really are. There's no good ending, it's just various shades of bad ending. I would argue that uh in both cases uh when we say bad, it's not just like oh this is bad for the world. I would also suggest that in some ways writing bad as well.

But you know, the third game was not received that well. So there is one there is one final uh quote for you here.

My children, Alma, you were to be my legacy, but you are all monsters Yeah, yeah. And uh and who made them that? Yeah, who who who made them that? Who who indeed? Who could have done this as I stare in the mirror? I think we might know.

I think we might have to do it. Yeah, we might have a crazy fing lunatic.

So uh that's that is that is fear. That's what's left of fear, and uh we will most likely never get a definitive answer to the state of the world, the state of Point Man, or Fettle or Fettle and Point Man together. No idea.

I mean that's not I mean, with the way studios love reviving old games to to make a profit off of old IPs so they don't have to make their own universe, you never know. We we could see a fear uh revival in in the future.

You you don't it might happen. It's it's possible.

We got another Gears of War game, although that's not saying much because Gears of War was always pretty well liked. I don't think Gears of War like properly burned bridges the way that Fear 3 did, though, did it?

No, no, probably not. No, probably not. No, you're not to the same extent anyway. The thing is, the actual like story and background of the Fear series is uh is unrelentingly and brutally sad and upsetting. Oh yeah. Like it's it's it's you know, it's a it's sort of FPS plus horror, which is a cool combo, but the sheer amount of awful loss, terrible decisions, absolute lack of morality or ethics or basic human decency that weaves its way through all of the story is it's some of the most horrible, horrible backdrop to a first person shooter.

I I think that just there is full stop. It's fucking awful all the way through.

Yeah, it's it's pretty bad. Full stop. It is not great. It's oh boy, from start to finish, from game one to game three, it just is unrelenting, awful shit. So yeah, that's that's that's just also Shy says it also has one of the best AI in gaming history. The way enemy soldiers act, move around, communicate is to this day uh awesome in the days when COD enemies pop up like ducks from behind cover and just wait to die.

Oh. Does the enemy AI in this game kind of like roll around and like actively try to get behind you and flank you and like actually do shit instead of just like you said, like the COD enemies that just like, hey, it's me, I'm still here, drops back into cover, pops back up in a in a in interval times, hey, it's me, I'm still here shooting at you, and it's like, alright.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. The AI in Fay was really, really good. Like really good. I'm surprised more companies didn't end up using like that model. Yeah, but they didn't want to copy the good bit. They just wanted to make their own their own shitty Yeah, so true.

Also, that's my point. This is crazy.

Let's just let's just copy everything about COD.

Are you sure about that?

Uh if you want to play modern version of fear, check out Trapang 2. I have heard of this game. I think I've seen you play it before, Shy. Like back in in in the olden days, I feel like I've seen you play this game. It sounds familiar. It's really, really good, very much inspired by fear, has horror, awesome action.

It's fun. Okay. There you go. Check out Trapang 2, everyone. Hashtag not sponsored, but apparently it's a really good game.

I just I just remembered I did I did promise a link to this god-awful boss fight. Oh absolute atrocious mess.

Oh boy. Yeah. Are we actually are we gonna are we gonna are we gonna watch this? Are we gonna end the episode and then watch it and then decide whether or not it actually deserves to be in the episode? That's that's probably that's probably the right call.

It's bad. It's very bad. You know what? Shaq said, I'm not watching it.

You two can. Yeah, that's fair. I'll I'll I'll watch it and I'll get back to you next week about how or or during hey, maybe, maybe in one of the Patreon episodes we'll talk about it.

But yeah, I think the thing is because I made myself watch it again, no, I'm just trying to make everyone else suffer.

Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. I'll still watch it, but let's uh we'll we'll just we'll we'll we'll leave it to your uh imagination. Something, something, yeah. What the fuck? Bioware just got closed? Oh well, that's unfortunate. Oh that's bad. That what oh wow, you know what the headline is, too?

EA shuts down bioware, cancels next mass effect.

They Tried to Bury Their Sins: The Complete F.E.A.R. Timeline

Kapitelklicken springt direkt hin

Shownotes

Transkriptvom Podcast bereitgestellt · Zeitmarken springen hin