Frictional Games launched Amnesia: The Dark Descent on September 8, 2010. The headquarters are surrounded by virtual terror. A cramped office, some flickering monitors and books placed on the tables, lit only by the vague glimmer of candles marked by occult writings. In sharp contrast to the geometric accuracy of corporate studios, the torture chamber where the testers lie semi-conscious, drowns any thrill or howl through the round shapes and gothic tiles.
It’s hard to imagine the source of terror illustrated in Amnesia without a associating it to studio dedicated to the landscapes of H.P. Lovecraft, like it is said on a Website dedicated to games. The formula with which the multinational producers have decided to inject our veins with supernatural phobias is not new in principle, but is extremely efficient. To this madness, contributes also the lack of immersion and the video clips that dislodge us from a first-person perspective.
A sinister howling breeze is threatening the player when he walks through a massive gothic structure, in the hallways. On the cold stoned floor, a figure announces its revival. We know one thing – that his name is Daniel. The voices thundering into his head, the flashing eyes which are defocused, the walk which is shaken, all that tell us that we are not dealing with a hero in the classic sense of the word.
When you are so physically and mentally unstable, the last thing you need is a journey into the heart of darkness, sewer systems, laboratories and underground tanks with the bad habit of being populated by monsters. Especially when you are unarmed and alone. And if your pulse becomes weaker and weaker, this can’t be good.
Daniel, as Jason Bourne, gets up without an identity. But while Jason Bourne is revealed as a superman fighting for Good, Daniel is definitely not a superman, it can be considered as a fly caught in the spider canvas, struggling to get out and being frightened by everything that it happens, because a growing darker appears with each page of the diary found in the castle where he is.
Dark Descent world tends to be gothic and more archaic than the predominantly industrial landscape from the Penumbra trilogy. Amnesia abuses the darkness, found in a castle whose roots are lost in the mists of history and the player is sent with his though to the demons of ancient Egypt. This is a sort of outlining the interactive story from The Outsider, where most of the topics and reasons were kept intact.
By the end of the game, you still won’t know exaclt if you are serving the Good or you are the most dangerous player hit by amnesia ever seen in a game. In fact, even this issue is left to you. Despite the linear design, the decisions that you take will decide whether all the work as an installer that you perform to solve puzzles culminates with saving the humanity, condemning them to eternal darkness or any other outcome that would be it unladylike to reveal.
Although the journey is interrupted occasionally by brain barriers and morbid traps, like it is presented on the Website related to computer games, Amnesia gives the sense of a continuous adventure, no matter how scared you would be or how many voices you would hear. Something pushes you forward, even though you pass through some hallways that you would want to be the last hallways through which you pass. Even though, after the lights go down and you are scared as hell, you still want to continue.
The events are quite fluid, you have absolutely no reason to stay there, especially as the music also announces the presence of some demonic creatures that saw you from your back. The monsters of Amnesia are more than some animated dangers in your path to victory. They represent the lack of control, the powerlessness in its most acute form. Not only that you cannot fight with them, but if you look in their general direction, you start to get crazy and you reveal yourself no matter how dark the den where you hide is.
One of the main ingredients of this fear lies in the fragility and lack of combative elements that are within Daniel, the only escape is to close the door behind you, which is a temporary respite that never lasts too long, because it does not take too much for the beasts to demolish the wooden barriers.
The feeling that you are followed by something is accentuated by the so-called Shadow, which is always at your heels or by the sequences where the water is hit by invisible forces, so you try to stay suspended in boxes and on bridges, hoping that you will get to the end of the flooded room before you see the loading screen, while your character falls flat in the marsh.
Furthermore, the anxiety does not have clear limits, because the monsters can be anywhere. There are no specific areas where they may appear or certain places that can be considered safe. Each level can be populated by danger, which makes you extremely uncertain when to use the candle (which doesn’t have too much oil) or when to light the candles and torches on the walls with finite resources as well.
If you stay too long in darkness this will emphasizes the collapse of Daniel in dementia, marked by visual and auditory effects, beetles that are in your visual cone or by a wheeze of a dying adventurer.
And although the puzzles are not particularly demanding, a noticeable disadvantage, given by the many possibilities of the physical engine, the heir from the concept from Penumbra, is the fact that you should revisit previous areas if you missed any critical element, situations that push you back into the danger that could have been considered long gone. About this game launched on September 8, 2010, I will write a little bit later.
