Fatal Frame is a wonderful survival horror franchise that left its mark on the genre with a with a unique touch of gameplay utilizing a camera to ‘capture’ the soul of ones foes. It plays on real fears and superstitions of people who believe that a bit of their soul is chipped away when a photo is taken of them. Yet for the series, it’s been half a decade since the last entry. Fatal Frame 5: Maiden of Black Water was released on the Wii U – a system with little support even at the time. To make things even bleaker, FF5 never received a physical copy in the US, locking it to be a digital exclusive that continues to be full-price on the Nintendo eShop. One would think it was was a ghost of a haunted and barren platform.
Though, its fate could’ve been worse in the West. At least it released.. It’s predecessor, on the other hand, was released on the exponentially more popular Wii yet still never came out in English. Instead, fans had to rely on a fan translation – one which seems to have been an exercise in madness to get completed. Since then, the series has been fairly dormant. It’s a shame, as the series is such a unique entry into the world of survival horror, and to many, Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly is one of the scariest games ever made. It’s a statement I’d be inclined to agree with.
Unsurprisingly, it’s clear that the Fatal Frame series struck a chord with a small independent developer in Indonesia known as Digital Happiness. Their first game – DreadOut – was a heartfelt love letter to Fatal Frame fans that harks back to the PS2 era in many ways. The budget of the original game certainly showed. It seemed to straddle the line between PS1 and PS2 generations in terms of scope, graphical fidelity, and design.
It wasn’t pretty, but it didn’t need to be. It had a hefty amount of jank to it, though such a thing is to be expected. Yet it had a lot of heart and soul that evoked the same feeling that the original Fatal Framess did. In fact, you even used a camera to ‘damage’ the malicious spirits that chase you through a school in the middle of the night. While the game was brief, it was incredibly and deliciously atmospheric.
The original DreadOut will always stick out to me as a product of a team that had a clear idea in mind but it simply wasn’t executed as well as they’d hoped. It earned a lot of points with me by scrapping Fatal Frame’s score system (a mechanic that I feel cheapens the horror experience) and it also did away with the need for film as ammo. The latter is understandable given the protagonist, Linda, uses a cheap smartphone in comparison to an ancient camera found in a haunted house ala Fatal Frame.
Additionally, health and healing items are not an issue given the character regenerates after some time. After all, these apparitions can’t physically harm you but they can certainly break you mentally. These apparitions and creatures are based on Indonesian folklore, and I must say it was a treat to learn about some of these dastardly little creatures and dark spirits from a region I’ve had such little knowledge of previously.
At some point after its initial release, Digital Happiness released DLC for DreadOut, though it was eventually spun off into its own game. DreadOut: Keepers of the Dark was more a series of boss fights and split off rooms with small puzzles. While it was a brief excursion, it added some context for the original games ending as well as the reason it took place to begin with. All of this brings us to the recently released sequel: DreadOut 2. To start it off – I haven’t seen such a glow-up in a franchise quite like this.
A shift to Unreal Engine has helped the small development team streamline their processes and expand on their vision as they have been granted far more tools to create something truly unique – and damn, does it show. From the first twenty minutes, it’s easy to see they had an inspired vision and now had the tools to share their nightmare. Right as the game starts up, the lighting system alone shows a beautiful contrast between the areas as you roam around a school late at night.
From the very beginning, everything looks, plays, sounds, and feels worlds better than the original. Linda controls well both in first person and third – the former being used for fighting ghosts with your camera phone and the latter for exploration and physical combat. Again, the lighting really stands out and I applaud the devs for making me feel genuine unease as I slowly opened doors to classrooms I could easily see into.
With nothing but my cell phone equipped and a hefty dose of trepidation, I managed to find my way around the school before eventually encountering my first ghost that had been tormenting a boy. Throughout the exchange with said victim, I quickly learned that the protagonist Linda has been blamed for the events of the original game and suffers ridicule and aggression from the friends of her classmates who didn’t survive the original game.
As I went to go deal with the ghost that had been harassing the boy, the familiar Fatal Frame style of combat came up. Highlight the ghost in your camera’s viewfinder and snap a picture. Easy. No scores or numbers show up on the screen, just a very satisfying ‘snap’ that helps indicate that you’ve done some form of damage. With ghosts quickly whipping all over the screen and screaming at you, the new controls and character movement are most welcome in dealing with these threats.
Within a few more snapped pictures and chasing the ghost through the school grounds, something rather unexpected happened. The ghost simply stopped. Not as in it ceased moving, but in that it ceased its aggression. It surrendered. It apologized. It begged not to be hurt anymore and said it didn’t mean to hurt anyone, it was just scared. Something big frightened it, causing it to go in a frenzy and try to cling onto anyone for help. It didn’t know it was hurting or harassing the poor boy.
Initially, this was a little odd. I’d never spoken to any ghosts beyond the handful of ‘antagonists’ in the original. They were all malicious for their own reasons, yet i twas rarely communicated to me why they were trying to torture me. This event in DreadOut 2 started to add a few elements to the world that indicated that the protagonist Linda was a bit of a known entity in the spirit world after the events of the original game. Not only could she interact with some of these spirits violently, but also peacefully and socially. There were even some references to events in the first, many of which Linda wished to forget.
The story in the original was pretty light, but the callbacks and tie-ins to it really elevated my experience with the second. Even the pseudo-DLC/sequel was referenced. I knew the faces of the people in the memorial photos, I knew the names and recalled how they met their gruesome end, and I felt for Linda as people tried to torture her with bullying as they lashed out in grief upon the sole survivor. It started to give Linda more character as she tried to just get through life, clearly depressed and suffering from survivor’s guilt.
She no longer had any friends and it was now nigh impossible to make them. Her best friend was dead and rather than receive an outpouring of support, Linda only received vitriol and vacant looks as if she were an unwelcome stranger in her own classroom. Before long, as Linda, you’re subject to hauntings from the past crawling their way back to you – and this is where the game brings in its second largest inspiration: Silent Hill.
After a chilling encounter, you’re thrust into a gruesome and distorted version of your school. It’s gross, covered in gore, and soaked in blood and viscera. It’s unsettling, as it should be, but there was something about it that just felt like a pure violation of a once sterile and somewhat welcoming classroom. It felt…wrong. Bodies twisted and skinned lay all over the floor and everything about this world feels like hell and it immediately evokes the ‘Hell’ or ‘Nightmare’ world of the Silent Hill series. Following a brief conversation with the only other seemingly human person in this world, things go sideways before you know it and you immediately learn that your prior means of combat have no real power here.
In the waking world, you can capture the souls of spirits and apparitions as a way to push them back to their own world. Yet now you’re in their world and such methods simply do not work. Your phone cannot capture the souls of these creatures in their world. You’re on their turf now. So, what does work? Well, as these creatures are now physically able to be touched and interacted with, you’re forced to resort to physical violence. Your camera phone, though it’s primary use may be defunct here, does still serve some purpose.
This world is dark, grimy, and disgusting. There’s little light and it’s clear the creatures are accustomed to such darkness. Hence, using the flash on your phone acts as a wide area of effect stun to any monsters that see it, giving you a chance to either slip by them to safety or to swing around them for some brutal backstabbing. With this, DreadOut 2 introduces melee combat into the series in an intriguing way. Given you’re now in the spirit realm, you can interact with these creatures directly and take them head on. Thus, you need to change up your tactics and fight aggressively.
Weapons start off small, perhaps a kitchen knife in the beginning, but they do escalate to bigger and better weapons – each of which has its own set of animations, killing blows, and sense of weight. As you battle, your own blood and that of your enemies splatters upon your clothing, soaking in through and dotting your arms. After each first encounter in a chapter, Linda is a mess of blood and sweat. It felt good to swing these weapons but it was very clear that Linda was no experienced fighter. Her stabs with a knife are messy and repeated while her swings with an axe practically pull her entire body with her. It adds a bit of weight and realism to the gruesome and fantastical world of horror.
On the subject of worlds, the game has a small yet somewhat open world for you to traverse. While it was pitched as a non-linear open world horror game, it certainly doesn’t live up to such a promise. When you’re out in the world, you don’t really have many places to go. It’s more a small hub that stands between you and your next destination. I found that I didn’t have anything to do around town, though I did notice that there were a few side-things in my menu yet I never found the means to activate them. I’m uncertain if they’re bugged or something that will be patched in later.
The town itself, in the day time, is probably the most deadly area in the game due to traffic. Motorcyclists don’t seem to obey the laws and speed on through the city streets. I’ve been hit a time or two and nearly died. Given the way the health mechanic works, I was fine shortly after a brief walk. Tying into health regeneration however, I never found myself dying nor did I ever have any immediate risk of failure during my battles with the ghosts and spirits scattered around. I’m uncertain if its due to balancing issues or if it was a bug, but I only died a few times near the end and that was after some significant hits. The reckless motorcycle riders were the largest threat in the game in my experience.
Taking so little damage did drain some of the tension and horror when I could just tank 5 to 6 hard hits and still be running around fine. While not overdone, there were enough instant-kill events around the area that seemed to make up for it and add back in a sense of danger. Damage to enemies is also quite high, assuming you look around their back Souls-style and get a backstab in. Some enemies take a few of those canned animation finishers, but they certainly do the job and make you invulnerable while pulling off the maneuver. If the game were more deadly, I’d appreciate the few seconds of time to breathe.
While the combat is serviceable and fun in some aspects, it doesn’t do anything too particularly notable aside from the desperation in the animations. Where the game truly shines is all in its atmosphere. The game is dark, creepy, and knows how to make places you were previously comfortable in suddenly unsettling and oppressive. I won’t spoil any of the locations, but returning to a place I once considered ‘safe’ only to find it being drowned in murky water with familiar faces whipping about certainly was rather effective.
Fighting in DreadOut 2 did tend to evoke the feeling of Fatal Frame and Silent Hill, though it didn’t seem to blend the two as smoothly as it could’ve. While I understand the reasoning for only using the camera in the real world and weapons in the spirit world, it would have been nice to have a few extra options available beyond just stunning and swiping. Still, it was fun overall and the combat was a step up from the original. I initially thought they’d shift from the DO1 combat to the DO2 style exclusively, but I learned that the game would bounce you back and forth depending on which realm you were in.
In regards to realms, the game lives and breathes on its style and atmosphere. It shines in gory, nasty hallways that would make Dead Space fans sickly nostalgic while it also ties well into the south Asian towns and forests that make such a lovely backdrop for a chilling ghost story. While the game had some bugs and could use a booster shot to its budget, it operates on charm and intention and it goes quite a long way with both.
DreadOut 2 stands out as an ambitious mixture of two beloved series while also tying in its own original vision. It shows that people do still care about third person horror games, that they do still love about scary ghost stories, and stands to let players know that there is more to horror than just jump scares. It’s about dread, atmosphere, uncertainty, and a healthy does of anxiety and trepidation mixed into one filthy little bucket. Not only is DreadOut 2 a glow-up from its predecessor, it’s also a step up in the world of indie horror games. It looks great, plays well, sounds lovely, and I’ll be damned if its not the bloodiest game I’ve ever played.
I would highly recommend DreadOut 2 to horror fans, especially after a few patches more clearly detail the open world. It has such wondrous charm and atmosphere that seeped right into my skin and gave me goosebumps whenever possible. I hope the game sells well, as we desperately need more games like this in the current gaming landscape. DreadOut 2 is an inspiration to players like myself that a good idea can carry you to the tool you need to share your dream project with the world. As of this writing, I’ve buried myself in Unreal Engine 4 tutorials and documents as I try to make sense of a horror game idea that bounces around in my head.
In a world where Fatal Frame and Silent Hill are absent, DreadOut 2 does its best to try to carry the torch – even if its just a few feet at a time.
