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Old 08-24-2014, 10:04 PM   #1
Talon87
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Five Nights at Freddy's


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There appear to be a number of YouTubers, both high and low profile, who are playing this one jumpscare horror game called Five Nights at Freddy's. The spoiler-free premise of the game is as follows: you've been hired by a local pizzeria to be their night watchman. They want you to work the nightshift, from 12am to 6am, for the next five days. Rather than call them a "pizzeria," they're more like a Chuck E. Cheese / Show Biz, one of those children's arcade-pizzeria hybrids with the animatronic mascots and such. So it's a rather large building with a kitchen, a dining room, and so on. It even has a security suite proper for you to monitor the grounds from! So what's the catch? The catch, the player finds out very soon (Day 1), is that there is something very wrong with these animatronic mascots. It's your job to keep them from reaching the security room -- and they do so want to reach it and meet you.

There are more details beyond this, some of which are revealed as the player advances through the days (levels), others of which were apparently not revealed until the game's creator explained things on the wiki. (So sayeth many a YouTube commenter. *shrug*) I don't want to spoil people if they don't want to be spoiled; if you do, I guess what I'll say is "Just go ahead and read the YouTube comments." Most reliable way to spoil yourself on anything, right? There are loads of people asking there what the heck is going on and loads more who are eager to share their findings from the wiki.


I mentioned that the game is currently trending with a lot of Let's Players on YouTube. The one that YouTube recommends when you type in "five nights at freddy's" is Markiplier's. You can catch Part 1 of his playthrough here. I found his playthrough to be generally enjoyable. I don't follow Markiplier but I have seen videos of his before. He seems like a jolly, kind fellow and I think that lends itself well to this video series. He's also very noisy -- always making some sort of noise or comment with his voice -- and I think that that too actually lends itself well to this video series, believe it or not. Normally I hate it when LPers talk incessantly during their playthrus, and for horror games in particular (like Fatal Frame 2, say) I feel like it's ruinous to the atmosphere. But for this specific game, it worked really well. It morphed the series into something very much like voyeur television. So I guess what I'd say is that if you don't like voyeur TV then maybe go look for someone else's playthru. ^^; But if you want to watch a guy get the ever-loving crap scared out of him, then this is a pretty good one.

If you're highly susceptible to jump scares, I'd suggest staying away from this one. As far as its horror is concerned, the game is maybe 5% other, 95% jump scares. If I had to compare this video game with a board game, it would definitely be Perfection by Milton Bradley.
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Old 08-25-2014, 02:16 PM   #2
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Game Grumps are also doing a playthrough with Arin, Suzy and Barry (the three remaining original Grump-related members) if that's more your speed.

EDIT: Barry's reactions are super adorable btw. xd

Last edited by Jerichi; 08-25-2014 at 09:05 PM.
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Old 09-03-2014, 02:46 PM   #3
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This one is pretty damn funny.

If you're not familiar with Phantoml0rd he's primarily a high ranked league of legends player and one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, mainly for his childish sense of humour and his tendency to rage and break his headphones when things don't go his way. I've been following him for a while, he's hilarious.
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Old 09-22-2014, 02:51 PM   #4
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when ur looking at the laptop too long and ur friends come in to help u get dressed

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Old 09-22-2014, 03:28 PM   #5
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So I actually beat FNaF a while back, including the bonus nights on 20/20/20/20. Still enjoy it though, even knowing how to beat it it still scares the crap out of me. Especially when I take way too long trying to find Fazbear himself.
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Old 10-24-2014, 07:52 AM   #6
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So, Matthew Patrick of Game Theory, my Youtube mancrush, has posited this on what Five Nights is really all about. I think it's pretty interesting and the similarities between Five Nights and the incident he discusses are way too numerous to be completely coincidental. What do you guys think?
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Old 10-24-2014, 11:12 AM   #7
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Originally Posted by Son_of_Shadows View Post
So, Matthew Patrick of Game Theory, my Youtube mancrush, has posited this on what Five Nights is really all about. I think it's pretty interesting and the similarities between Five Nights and the incident he discusses are way too numerous to be completely coincidental. What do you guys think?
Really not a big fan of this young man's work. I've seen other videos of his and what he's grossly guilty of is taking a pet theory of his and doing his utmost to find supporting evidence in favor of it. He's very unscientific in this sense, very biased. One of the biggest offenders was his theory that Princess Peach is Rosalina's mother. It's fine if he wants to entertain that fan theory (though I think it's pretty stupid of him to do so), but he made me groan so much with his amateur grasp of genetics that he tried to apply to the Mario characters' stylistically simple designs. "Check out Peach's earlobes! Check out Rosalina's earlobes! THEY'RE THE SAME! QED ROSALINA AND PEACH ARE RELATED!" So much groan, man. So much groan.

But let's give him a fair shake with this new theory of his.

Spoiler: show
Alright, nine minutes in and we've already got our first problem with this guy's approach to game theorizing. Good for him that he does his homework and finds out what minimum wage used to be in the United States at various times. "$3.80 in 1990, $4.25 in 1991, and $5.00 in 1996," he tells us. He's also just finished telling us that the protagonist of Five Nights at Freddy's, after working 30 hours that week (5 nights x 6 hours a night), earns a paycheck of only $120. The Game Theorist explains that this puts the hourly wage at exactly $4.00 an hour. The problem arises when he then says, "So the game seems to take place between 1991 and 1996." Uh, what? No it doesn't. You've just shown us that the only way to make $120 after 30 hours of work was to be paid $4.00 an hour. "Tax," he reminds us. "Um, okay ... " So I'm willing to work with him for a bit here. But then he goes and says it: "The Dunlap story took place in 1993." So it's obvious what's going on here: he started with the Dunlap piece of evidence (1993) and worked backwards to try and find evidence that corroborated his pet theory. He turns a blind eye to facts like:
  • what Dunlap's pay actually was (probably difficult to find, but that doesn't excuse shoddy journalism)
  • how much of a minimum wage salary would even be withheld in 1993, if any at all
  • what the typical entry-level salary was for a Chuck E. Cheese employee in the 1980s and 1990s
  • what the minimum wage was of the state in which Dunlap's crime took place
That last one is the killer. The Game Theorist appears to be working with federal minimum wages. If you look up the history of Colorado's minimum wages, you find that in 1991 it was $3.00 an hour and in 1996 it was $4.65 an hour. These mostly match the federal minimum wages, but they also draw attention to a problem: his claim of $5.00/hr for 1996 is erroneous. As you can see here, federal minimum wage never sat on $5.00 flat. It went from what looks like $4.65 around 1996 or 1997 to around $5.10 or some such around 1998.

His claim that the Golden Freddy corresponds with the sole survivor of the attack? Tenuous but plausible.

His claim that the reason the kitchen's camera is always out is because the kitchen is where the sole survivor worked? Again, tenuous but plausible. I feel like the Game Theorist is doing what he always does -- try to find the evidence in support of his theory without respect to anything else -- but I won't deny either that the coincidences seem to start to add up.

His claims about how the other animatronics match the other victims ... I feel like the Game Theorist realizes himself that he's grasping at straws here but they're straws that seem to conveniently line up with his theory.

His claim that you're the children's killer feels like the sort of thing young conspiracy theorists on internet forums gobble up but isn't really sating this skeptic. He also doesn't seem to want to try for any comparisons between the Freddy killer and Dunlap beyond the superficial "they were both killers." And why not? Because his theory falls apart there.
  • There was no security office in the Dunlap story.
  • Dunlap didn't hide in the security office. He hid in the bathroom.
  • Despite Dunlap hiding in the bathroom, the player never enters the bathroom nor receives any benefits from it.
  • Dunlap used a firearm. The Freddy killer did not. And neither does the player, the night guard.
  • The night guard is given tips from a veteran night guard, suggesting he is a rookie. But Dunlap had a prior employment history with the Chuck E. Cheese he attacked.
And speaking of the veteran night guard -- where does he fit into all of this? The Game Theorist seems to have conveniently omitted him from the comparisons. He's matched up the five murder victims to the five animatronics. He's matched the killer to the player character. But what of the game's veteran night guard? Who is he supposed to be? You can't really double dip and say "he's supposed to be one of the murder victims" because then you have a spillover kid to deal with.

Overall, I think he did a decent job at supporting his case with evidence. In fact, I would say that it's quite possible (if not probable) that the person who made Five Nights at Freddy's is a Coloradoan familiar with the story the Game Theorist references. After all, why a Chuck E. Cheese? Why the number five? Why the dark kitchen camera? So on and so forth. I just wish that he'd examine some of the holes in his theories as well. It feels a little childish that he's afraid of drawing attention to the evidence that works against his theories. He should realize that people are going to spot those problem areas anyway and he should instead take ownership of them. "I'll admit that A throws a wrench in the works. And so does B. And even C a little. But you guys gotta admit that D, E, F, and G sure do seem like an awful lot of coincidences. :o" They do, GT. They do.

I doubt he cares that much to do it, but it would be interesting if he contacted the creators of the works he theorizes about to ask them if he's on the right track with his theories. In cases like the Rosalina-Peach theory, I very much doubt that Nintendo would ever confirm he is right were he right before they unveiled it themselves in a future game. But in the case of Five Nights at Freddy's, who knows? At the very least the creator of the game might be willing to confirm that he is in fact from Colorado or that he had indeed heard of the story before that the GT references.
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Old 11-11-2014, 04:13 AM   #8
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So Five Nights at Freddy's 2 is out and if the first game made you shit yourself the second one is 1000 times more horrifying and suspenseful.
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Old 11-11-2014, 10:06 AM   #9
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I'm fourteen and a half minutes into Markiplier's first episode of FN@F 2. From what I've seen so far ...
  • the animatronics look much less scary than the ones in the first game
  • the game overall feels as scary as if not slightly less scary than the first game
  • I personally am finding it to be substantially less scary, but I think much of that has to do with exposure to the first game coupled with the changes they made to the formula
  • the game seems to be immensely more difficult
Mark did "the impossible" and beat the original game on every setting, even the ones that many thought impossible. Yet he's already lost twice in fourteen minutes to the sequel's first stage. That speaks volumes for not only how different the sequel's formula is (what worked in Game 1 won't work in Game 2) but also for how difficult the sequel is to figure out. Mark's first death? Neither he nor I knew what caused it, with simply far too many variables as yet undetermined. Mark's second death? He was boned by Chica despite doing nothing apparently wrong -- he literally seemed to have no choice but to sit there and wait for Killer B to kill him since he was holding out against a stubborn Killer A (Chica). Once Mark figures out the mechanics of the new game, I'm sure he'll do better. But for right now, Level 1 is kicking his ass about as hard as the original game's final stages. It's pretty nuts.

The new Chica is way, way less scary than the old Chica. Since anyone playing/watching this game is trained to expect jump scares, the fact that her jump scare is a visual downgrade from the original Chica's jump scare is a problem.

The new Bonnie is likewise less scary.

The new character is probably the least scary looking of the bunch. Too far removed from human or anthropomorphic animal faces.

The changes to the game ...

I initially thought that taking away the ability to close doors and replacing it with the Freddie Fazbear mask made the game slightly less scary. However, since Mark's efforts so far have revealed that the mask is a far inferior safety net, I find that opinion changing. There was rarely any psychological terror in closing a door in the first game if you were an expert energy manager. It was a pretty solid safety blanket. The mask on the other hand is like a perverse double-edged sword of a present: sure you buy yourself safety against Threat A, but you also invite danger from Threat B.

The addition of a third location you must check in the security room -- the area right in front of you -- definitely increases the game's difficulty. Not sure that it increases the terror though.

The music box likewise increases the game's difficulty but doesn't seem to add much in the way of terror. It basically feels like the new Pirate Cove.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

On the topic of the Game Theory video that S_o_S linked, it seems the sequel takes a small shit on it: your paycheck in the sequel is only about $100, which would translate to only $4/hr if you assume 5 hours per day x 5 days. Which lines up with the Game Theorist's quoted amount ... but falls $20 short of the first game's paycheck. Can't have it both ways: either you were paid over minimum wage in FN@F 1 (which destabilizes his premise) or else you're somehow being paid beneath minimum wage now.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rooting for Mark to kick the game's ass, but so far it's frustrating to watch him lose and for neither of us to know why he's losing or what it is that he has to do to win.

Last edited by Talon87; 11-11-2014 at 10:11 AM.
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Old 11-11-2014, 10:11 AM   #10
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So, the first night is not even remotely scary in comparison to the rest of the game.

Why? Because on the first night you only have to worry about a grand total of 4 animatronics. On every night AFTER the first, there is a total of 11. And none of them look anywhere near as cute and cuddly as Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, and Toy Freddy.

Also, Mannequin, the one that killed Markiplier the first time, is one of the few ways the game makes sure you're not constantly wearing the mask. The music box that you have to wind up keeps Mannequin busy, and only Mannequin busy. If you forget to wind it, Mannequin will instantly come after you, and ignores the mask.
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Old 11-11-2014, 10:13 AM   #11
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Originally Posted by Sneezey12 View Post
So, the first night is not even remotely scary in comparison to the rest of the game.

Why? Because on the first night you only have to worry about a grand total of 4 animatronics. On every night AFTER the first, there is a total of 11. And none of them look anywhere near as cute and cuddly as Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, and Toy Freddy.
Eleven!? Jesus Christ, the difficulty. That's insane.

Quote:
Also, Mannequin, the one that killed Markiplier the first time, is one of the few ways the game makes sure you're not constantly wearing the mask. The music box that you have to wind up keeps Mannequin busy, and only Mannequin busy. If you forget to wind it, Mannequin will instantly come after you, and ignores the mask.
Well don't explain it. D: I want to figure it out with Mark.

Also, that was his second death, not his first. First death was to Toy Chica.
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Old 11-11-2014, 10:18 AM   #12
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The game itself literally explains it on the intro to the first night. XD
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Old 11-11-2014, 10:30 AM   #13
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The game itself literally explains it on the intro to the first night. XD
1. The game did not say who it worked on. Only that it worked on one specific animatronic.

2. The game did not establish that character as "Mannequin." Mark himself goes on to assume that it is a toy version of a fearsome white animal animatronic we see on a poster along with Old Chica, Old Bonnie, and Old Freddie. But you've now established that it is a character named Mannequin who exists apart from the animals.

So no. No "XD" for you.
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Old 11-11-2014, 11:01 AM   #14
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If it helps at all, his name isn't Mannequin.
Spoiler: show
It's Marionette.
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Old 11-17-2014, 03:08 PM   #15
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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Eleven!? Jesus Christ, the difficulty. That's insane.


Well don't explain it. D: I want to figure it out with Mark.

Also, that was his second death, not his first. First death was to Toy Chica.
Actually there's only 10 for every night beyond night one, except for Night 6, there is indeed an 11th one then.

The other one:
Spoiler: show

Golden Freddy. This one is weird because iirc, you don't put on the Freddy Mask to avoid it, you have to look down at the monitor, which completely throws off the rhythm of 'after you lift up the monitor put on the mask' that the other animatronics would need.


There are a few Easter eggs like last year too:
Spoiler: show

One of them is a bare endoskeleton that wanders around. So far from what I've seen, it's completely harmless and will not wander into The Office.

Then there's Shadow Freddy and Shadow Bonnie. These two, like Golden Freddy in the previous game, will crash your game if you stare at them too long.


Quote:
On the topic of the Game Theory video that S_o_S linked, it seems the sequel takes a small shit on it: your paycheck in the sequel is only about $100, which would translate to only $4/hr if you assume 5 hours per day x 5 days. Which lines up with the Game Theorist's quoted amount ... but falls $20 short of the first game's paycheck. Can't have it both ways: either you were paid over minimum wage in FN@F 1 (which destabilizes his premise) or else you're somehow being paid beneath minimum wage now.
There actually is an explanation for this
DO NOT READ THIS SPOILER UNLESS YOU REALLY WANNA KNOW PLOT:
Spoiler: show

This game is not a sequel at all, but rather a prequel. The old animatronics came from some other pizzeria before coming here. The disappearances of the 5 children and the Bite of '87 both in this game. This is also why Phone Guy is clearly alive despite the fact that the end of the fourth night of the first game he died.



-----------

There's something else I realized too.
Spoiler: show

All those newspaper articles and whatnot are about the previous place, the one in FNAF2. If that's the case then perhaps the pizzeria in 1 is still going strong (well strong-er) even with the haunted animatronics.

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Old 11-17-2014, 08:22 PM   #16
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Actually Golden Freddy can appear on Night 5 as well but is far less frequent.
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Old 11-18-2014, 01:50 PM   #17
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Finished watching Markiplier's playthrough of FN@F 2 the other night. (I thought he said in an early video that it was just a demo? Seems to me like it's the entire game!) So ... thoughts!

Spoiler: show
In the end, I found myself much less scared by FN@F 2 than by FN@F 1. I think it's a combination of factors, like:
  • being used to the jump scares by now
  • the animatronics in FN@F 2 being on either side of the Valley of Unsettlingness (either they were too abstract, like the faceless version of Original Bonnie, or they were too cute, like Toy Chica) while the animatronics in FN@F 1 were right there in the valley at max discomfort (looked real enough to be scary and unnatural enough to also be scary)
  • FN@F 1 having a much realer risk of running out of energy if you didn't play perfectly, which in turn made it so scary when you were down to the final 15% of fuel. Compare this against FN@F 2 where Markiplier almost never ran out of fuel (and I don't recall that he ever did run out of fuel again once he got past Night 3).
That stated, it was of course still a scary game.

Regarding the timeline, it seems pretty clear from Nights 5 and 6 that this is in fact a prequel of some sort. But I don't like that. As two posters together put it, it feels to me like it's the result of one of two things:
  1. FN@F's creator didn't know that he wanted the game to be a prequel until late in development. Before then, he was creating it with the idea in mind that it would be a sequel. This would explain why there are over twice as many animatronics in this game as in the previous game, why the technology of the new (to us) animatronics likewise looks newer, why it seems like the Phone Guy's earlier dialogue (Nights 1 and 2) references the events of FN@F 1, etc.
  2. FN@F's creator intended for the game to be a prequel all along (or at least from early on in development), but the thing is, he also wanted to fool us. So he went out of his way to make us think it was a sequel ... such that when he revealed it was a prequel, it'd be a bigger surprise. This forced design results in the clues that the game is a sequel rather than a prequel being so numerous and so strong as to strain our ability to accept that the game is indeed a prequel. Again, we're talking things like there being twice as many animatronics in this game as in the previous game, why the technology of the new (to us) animatronics likewise looks newer, why it seems like the Phone Guy's earlier dialogue (Nights 1 and 2) references the events of FN@F 1, etc.
I'm not sure which of the two hypotheses is correct, but I bet that one of them is. 'Cause definitely, I feel like this game sends a lot of mixed messages between whether it's a sequel or a prequel, even if in the end the evidence it provides locks in the prequel status. (You just can't argue with the 1987 date on the check, for starters.)

One thing I really don't like about it being a prequel though -- and I think this supports Hypothesis A by quite a bit -- is the existence of the so-called "Mangle." If the pizzeria ended up scrapping the new animatronics, repairing the old ones, and sticking to the old ones, then why is it that the posters in FN@F 2 depict Original Freddy, Original Bonnie, Original Chica, and a fully-assembled Mangle instead of depicting Original Freddy, Original Bonnie, Original Chica, and Original Foxy? A lot of people say that the Mangle is Original Foxy (as in, not FN@F 1's Foxy but rather the timeline's original Foxy) and that the Foxy we saw in FN@F 1 is in fact "Toy Foxy," but I have two problems with that theory. First, FN@F 1 Foxy's design fits in too well with Original Bonnie's and Original Chica's. It doesn't look anywhere near as cute as Toy Chica or Toy Bonnie. Second, why would the pizzeria only do the job three-fourths of the way? That is to say, why would they restore three of the four originals but with the Mangle they said "Fuck it" and stuck with the brown, "new" Foxy instead of going back to the white, feminine one?

All in all, I'm glad to have seen it. It was fun to cheer Mark on. He truly is "the King of Five Nights at Freddy's".

Spoiler: show
I look forward to seeing him take on Custom Mode. I also look forward to him solving the mystery of the Atari-style minigames. (Unless there's nothing to solve and they're just exactly what we've already seen.)

Last edited by Talon87; 11-18-2014 at 01:57 PM.
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Old 03-14-2015, 09:41 AM   #18
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okay well FNAF3 is out and Mark once is again is the king of Five Nights at Freddy's so a few thoughts of my own.
Spoiler: show

The Jumpscares definitely gotten a lot scarier and what's worse is that the least scary jumpscare is the one that kills you. BB and Chica have caught me off guard in my own playthrough. Although I honestly thought that Phantom Freddy was Golden Freddy but nope apparently that's regular Freddy. The only jumpscare that I didn't realize was a jumpscare was the Mangle's. Because I just assumed that that voice just happens every time the Audio error occurs.

Lore spoilers:
Spoiler: show

The lore feels finalized at least. If another FNAF gets made ever again, that'd be fine. The purple guy gets exactly what he deserves by getting stuffed into a suit (bonus points since he stuffed himself into the suit) and the children's souls all move on. I mean Scott didn't write himself into a corner because at the end of it you can see Springtrap behind the Freddy figuring, still in tact but for the most part the story feels completed.

All in all, I really enjoyed this series. What kept me going back to it wasn't the jumpscares, the horror genre or anything like that, what kept me going back was the lore. Say what you will about the games, but I feel like is has a really well built lore surrounding it.
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Old 09-11-2015, 05:12 PM   #19
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Watched Mark play FNAF3 yesterday and today. Thoughts:

Spoiler: show
I thought it was the least scary of the four in the franchise so far. :\ While it's always going to be scarier as a player than as an audience member watching Mark play, even Mark seemed to be unphased by most of it. He was calm and conversational with over half of his killers, the enemy A.I. was easily gamed by Mark (or at least more easily than past ones), and Springtrap's leisurely saunter towards the player earns the award for Least Scary Jumpscare in the history of this franchise. I'm not sure what Scott Cawthon was thinking, but I was promised "the scariest FNAF yet" and instead what I got was the least scary. :\

I felt that the lore additions in 3 were much more confusing than anything in 1 and 2 were. I had a hard time placing the game. Mark kept talking of it like the latest in the timeline, but the Phone Guy's dialogue at times suggested to me that 3 was a prequel even to 2; and then if that was right, a new wrench shows up with the five kids -- are their souls getting release in the present? or are we witnessing an early revenge they obtained against the Purple Guy prior to the events of FNAF1?

If the toy versions of FNAF1's monsters in 2 were stupid, the phantom redesigns of 2's cast in 3 were even dumber. :\ Too shadowy to be as scary. Definite form aids in the horror; a shadow from a bad acid trip is nothing but a shadow.

Mark clearly had no trouble with the game. He coasted through all five stages and even demolished Nightmare Mode in only seventeen unedited minutes, in what I believe was only two lives (one death and then he won). It was hard, sure, but it was also too easy: easier than its predecessors, FNAF3 becomes too easy to be as terrifying as they are.

Cawthon tries to be original here, to make FNAF3 stand on its own two feet, apart from 1 and 2. But it's clear: he's running out of ways to reinvent FNAF1. And FNAF3 is the most boring version yet of the three.

Two episodes into Mark's playthrough of FNAF4. Thoughts:

Spoiler: show
This is it. This is his Mountain of Faith. Scott's been trying to tweak the FNAF formula since Game 2 and has gotten further and further off track of what made the first one so great. But with FNAF4, he goes back to the drawing board, starting with FNAF1 as the template, asks himself, "What should I change?", and does an impeccable job of improving upon the original game's gameplay.

The cast is slimmed back down again. Bonnie left, Chica right, Foxy ahead, and Freddy behind. No more Balloon Boy, no more Mangle, no more ginormous cast of characters. Just four threats and the protagonist. This helps a lot. FNAF2 is too chaotic without an improvement in horror, while 1 and 4 are not only the scariest in the franchise but allow the player to focus on just a few nightmares, making them that much more impactful.

We're back to two doors and Pirate Cove checks. This is a massive improvement over FNAF3 where door checks really weren't a thing anymore and camera "checks" were just strategic cat calls in the proper rooms. (Guided by cameras, yes, usually! But not always. And still pretty tame.) Pirate Cove has been altered to be a third physical door. This is all it really was all along in FNAF1, the one game where the camera really didn't do shit, and so I see it as an upgrade to just make it a door like the other two and scrap the cameras altogether.

There are a crapload of improvements that make FNAF4 arguably the scariest one yet. Just listing then off ...

Scott has made it now where illuminating the doorway is both necessary (FNAF1, FNAF2) and potentially lethal (no game prior!). This provides a HUUUUGE boost to the game's fright factor. By making a security blanket both necessary and deadly, players can't simply opt out of using it but they also have to contend every single time they do use it with the possibility that they're about to trigger a jumpscare.

In FNAF1, you could close both doors but you had limited power. In FNAF4, the trade-off is simple yet effective: doors will stay closed as long as you're there but you can only be by one door at a time and meanwhile you have your back turned to the other, open door. It makes every decision to depart a terrifying one. Are you about to let something in if you leave? Or on the contrary: have you already let something else in by remaining too long? Scott has taken the "battery" idea and transplanted it into something the player controls even more primally. It's great.

The monsters are a touch too absurd(ly overdesigned) to be the best yet imo, but they're an easy 2nd place. It goes Game 1, Game 4, Game 2's Game 1s, Game 2's Game 2s, and finally Game 3 in terms of most scary monsters to least scary monsters.

The difficulty is perhaps the highest it's ever been, judging from Mark's tough time advancing. By Episode 3 of FNAF3 I think he was already to Night 5, whereas here he's just now reached Night 3. That is to say, he's clearing FNAF4 twice as slowly as he did its predecessor. He's having about as hard a time with it as the King of FNAF as he had a hard time with FNAF1 as a novice. Maybe the game's stupidly difficult for newcomers. Maybe it's not and it only offers returning players new challenge. Either way, it offers returning players new challenge. And that was sorely needed.

By the end of 3, I felt that:
Quote:
it's clear: he's running out of ways to reinvent FNAF1.
But with FNAF4, Scott Cawthon's managed to achieve what he set out to do but failed to do with 3 and maybe even failed to do with 2: he's provided a sequel/prequel that does enough different to be fresh, almost all of it an upgrade, and proven that he can still make a FNAF game while keeping things from getting too stale.

We'll see what I think of 4 by game's end. But for now, these are my thoughts!
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