Though I don’t believe you can compare horror games with a subjective evaluation of how scary they are to experience, Outlast perhaps is an exception. Outlast took me only a weekend to complete with its DLC whereas it took me years to complete Amnesia: The Dark Descent. This comparison doesn’t provide any evidence as to which game is scarier as there are other factors like the virgin effect, especially to horror games, which can desensitize players through homogenized mechanics. Even death sequences can become a factor due to the disillusion of immersion. However, what this example does display is there is a notable difference by how these games engage players with their fears.
Outlast may be terrifying throughout the whole journey—and it’s certainly an interesting one, if nonsensical—but the tension it creates will quickly wane as its methods to terrify the player become familiar rather than extraordinary feats. Instead of conditioning players to engage with their fears through different situations, Outlast is content to run away from anything that may cause it distress.
Variety is the Spice of Life and the Recipe of Horror
Perhaps it’s no surprise that the greatest moments of Outlast are the one-off sequences such as the introduction, the first encounters of reoccurring enemies, and the notable high points of Trager, Gluskin and the Walrider. These moments, though sparse and varying in effectiveness, offer enough diverse gameplay that they redeem the repetition that is the majority of Outlast. Everything else about the game is a blur of running, hiding in vents and lockers, and following cryptic objectives. It’s this description that tarnishes the quality of many first-person horror games.
This aspect of Outlast is one of its many misunderstood horror elements people tend to gloss over in reviews with vague details on why it was great. When people describe Outlast as “gamifying found-footage horror,” it’s a superficial description; instead of talking about the mechanics they are talking about its presentation. The camera inclusion alone does not gamify found-footage media as it acts merely as a HUD with night-vision. In contrast, RE7 is a game where video tapes are used for puzzles and hidden solutions, which holds far greater merit to gamifying found footage versus Outlast’s battery and recording features. The aspects that do make the game more like a found-footage movie are less original such as the player’s resilience to death, the feeling of being outmatched, the permanency of injuries on the player, and the player’s role as an observer, which together emphasize a greater sense of flight as the interactions created feel more immersive when you barely escape.
If there is anything Outlast should be given praise, however, then it should be how it deals with enemies rather than waiting on arbitrary timers. Outlast certainly wasn’t the first; Amnesia and Penumbra attempted this idea, yet the early Penumbra games gave you combat to cheese enemies and Amnesia relied—to a fault—on timers due to its linear hallways. Other first-person horror games like Dark Corners of the Earth also used this idea, though Outlast feels like the gameplay refinement needed by emphasizing its environments. When levels allow players to interact with the environment rather than running through them to the exit, Outlast reaches its greatest moments of cat-and-mouse gameplay where players feel less like a lab rat in a maze and more like an episode of Tom & Jerry. Unfortunately, these moments are the exception as the level design fluctuates in quality with how much there is to utilize, and players will rely on cheap tactics like running to places where enemies cannot reach them if they have no alternatives.
With a whole asylum of patients suffering from different conditions, it’s a shame that individuality was made a rarity rather than a consistent challenge. As previously mentioned, the first encounters and the unique challenges offer the greatest moments because while the gameplay remains the same there is added unfamiliarity with how each person will react. The game taunts this idea at various intervals, even with non-hostile NPC who threaten players if they make a sound or if they invade their space, and it’s a shame this chemistry was overlooked. Similar to how Alien Isolation can create more dynamic environments by making the Xenomorph kill hostile humans, Outlast could have played with the idea of turning enemies on each other with their AI. This idea almost seems plausible given how many inmates kill one another in the game in scripted sequences, and it seems so obvious I can only think it was meant to happen. Whether it was due to budget or technical limitations, the absurd repetition of most encounters is a hurdle the game never overcomes in its long strides.
Torn Pages from an Asylum of the Mind and Loonies on the Moon
When it comes to the discussion of Outlast’s narrative, I am torn between two minds on its overall quality. On the one hand, the narrative handles itself very realistically as the asylum and its patients, perhaps the game’s greatest characters, are handled with grim authenticity. In addition, the lore is further benefited by the dry notes you find, the mystery surrounding the Walrider project, and the American company behind the scenes. However, the writing quality of the main character, the plot you experience as you play, and the number of symbolic set-pieces border on the absurd.
Unlike many people who take issue with the narrative because of its ending it’s rather the whole experience that bothers me about Outlast. For starters, the main character, Miles Upshur, feels out of place in this world; his motivations and his pedigree as reporter make sense given the allure of uncovering a conspiracy, yet his reactions in notes comes across as a self-aware joker. It’s quite strange when many inmates like Father Martin, Gluskin, Chris Walker and the Twins ooze strong personalities with little inconsistency. Compared to other characters, Upshur displays a contradiction of the type of character he is as the one you read and the one you play are separate personalities.
This schism of quality is also evident with the objectives themselves as they begin reasonably with investigating and escaping, yet they soon meander off into far-fetched objectives like following blood or finding a character who appears hostile. These objectives feel incredibly forced to get players from one shocking scene to the next, which feel like justifications for themselves to make the game more memorable. Some of these moments are subversions for the sake of them, especially horror movie conventions, and others are crude attempts at symbolism without coherent meaning. This is a narrative that really doesn’t know what it wants to say on its themes of religion, science or the supernatural because it muddies the message with its execution. As a result, the quality of the narrative meanders greatly and creates many tone shifts, which further punctuates the ending relying on its subversion of letting players escape the asylum not the way they expected… and then finally getting to leave with its DLC.
Whistling by the Numbers, Troubles by the Score
Now I don’t want to mislead anyone with the last sentence; the ending of Outlast doesn’t feel robbed away to be served as additional content, yet Whistleblower definitely feels like the closure the game needed. This mini-campaign is essentially a mish-mash of the greatest and the worst moments of the gameplay with a narrative that serves as a prequel, a side story and a sequel from a different perspective, the informant to Mike Upshur. It would be nice to say this resolution is the most polished, distilled version of Outlast, but it’s immediately over as soon as the DLC reaches the highest moments of the original. The ending, however, is a goal worth reaching.
Similar to the many subversions of Outlast, the structure of Whistleblower is a reversal of the experience to the campaign. The DLC begins within the confines of the Walrider program where you play as the informant who brings Upshur to the asylum, and you experience his escape to the surface. Although this set-up does wonders with making the game feel different from beginning to end, the number of reused environments with far more obscure level design doesn’t work in its favor. Levels in the main game never felt as misleading as Whistleblower, except for the Courtyard sequences. In comparison to the original, most intended pathways are hidden behind walls with crevices or above doorways towards dead-ends with little telegraphing. Thankfully, these sequences are far more memorable with new threats, and the repetition—while still apparent—feels more appropriate given how quickly players retread old environments.
In contrast to its worst qualities, the best moments of Whistleblower do the game justice by providing higher peaks of quality. Instead of a character who feels contrasted with the game’s world, Waylon Park feels more grounded with the plot. His narrative holds far greater relevance to the lore as well as the traumatic experiences hold more relevance to the simple goal of escaping. This aspect also goes for the new antagonists, the company representative, the cannibal and Gluskin, as they all have more time to feel special rather than throwaway threats. Previous threats like Chris Walker and the Twins also make an appearance, though their moments are far less repetitive than the main game. The whole DLC goes to show how much more gratifying the main game could have become had the enemies been more personal to deal with than homogeneous threats.
Personality, especially player motivations, is perhaps the greatest feat of Whistleblower and it’s what I would describe as the whole experience. The closure itself of reaching the light of dawn and walking away from the asylum after the whole experience is the kind of reflective element the original lacked. Although it has far shorter runtime and far fewer environments than the base game, Whistleblower is more memorable than the original. It may suffer from more faults, but the experience, good and bad, resonates with me more strongly. Perhaps it was from all the time spent being chased around the facility—all the memories of fear, excitement and even a tinge of comedy from its share of problems—yet there was a bitter sweetness to the end like leaving home when I took one last look from the entrance where it all began. Then my thoughts became clearer and I decided to leave.
Among the Unquiet Darkness, Green Light, Minute and Far Away
Outlast is one of those weird cases to assess its merits as a good or bad horror game. The moments of brilliance, though few and fleeting, rival many would-be horror games as the body-horror, the mental breakdown of inmates, and the overall setting are more impressive than its many skin-deep attempts to create fear. If anything, the slow inoculation to create lasting horror makes it antithetical as a horror game, yet the tension throughout makes up for its disappearance. Whether time will be kind to Outlast’s glory as a horror game as it was to Amnesia is difficult to ever know; however, what will always remain timeless are the iconic elements of its memories however blurred and green they may be.
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