If I had a nickel every time a rather good and genuinely technically innovative game series by Monolith Productions ended up becoming undone by a very odd narrative direction taken by the sequel at its ending, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right? Also, all these years later, I still remember what Noah Caldwell-Gervais had to say on FEAR 2's infamous ending: "It's like they asked three people what's scary about Alma and the first person says, "Because she's relentless!" and the second person says, "Because she's unpredictable!" and then the third person says, "I don't know, man, probably, like...ghost pussy?" and then the producer points to respondent #3 and says, "This guy! This guy gets it!"
The worst part is that they could have actually had their ghostussy without all the gratuitous edgelord nonsense. Too bad very few things in the videogame space not named Silent Hill 2 ever bother to have even a basic level of nuance when touching on the intersection of arousal and fear as a theme... Even though that particular subject has so much richness and depth that could be accessed by simply treating it as something, ANYTHING more than an excuse to milk shock value out of the narrative.
It's generally a daft thing to try and rationalise sci-fi and horror stories, find ways to make them "make sense" but in military terms it does "make sense" Fettle wouldn't have a kill switch or booby trap implanted into his skull. You really don't want the commander of your army to have something like that, for the risk of the enemy finding out about it and exploiting it.
Yeah there's a whole lot in sci-fi that I nod and agree to because it is _wholly_ nonsensical, it adds to the story lol. To an extent I guess. Some stuff jerks me out of my immersion pretty handily.
@@evangardner8960 civilization in Horizon Zero Dawn collapsed due to "author said so, don't question it". And as long as you do, it's fine. But when you start dissecting it taking into account the number and timeline you suddenly figure out that we nowadays with modern tech would have faired far better even if slightly irradiated. The game claims that nukes will not work(they would), that you can't protect robotic units from the swarm for it'll hack them and simultaneously that swarm can't be hacked because it's a robotic unit designed not to allow that and blablabla. Unlike Talanah's questline at least this one can be excused by plot demands and author's ignorance in the matter while the game itself tries to handwave it with "everyone everywhere decided to simultaneously disarm themselves during Clawback era".
As a male survivor of SA but someone who is entirely (and obviously) untrained in literary critique, Fear always struck me as the last flagship series that genuinely tried to reach outside the "comfort" of the American Gaming zeitgeist to tell a horror story that would actually cause emotional impact on a player. Like the classic Lovecraft stories that touched every corner of trauma and not just 'boo-spooky monsters', showing that not only the characters but also the reader (or in this instance the player) are truly powerless in the face of actual horror. The only way to hold on to power being to "stop playing" before the monster shows up. Giving us an entirely different form of existential nightmares and a proper appreciation of our present existence, knowing that one day a power we have no hope of stopping will take this all away from us. The monster is usually just Death itself, but sometimes its an elder god, or a rapey ghost woman. Now the only time any horror gaming experience outside of just jump scares or pornographic gore its comparatively micro-dev indy gaming and/or packed with the Disney messaging of good always defeats evil regardless of the powers at work. Off topic- Congratulations on the growth! You do great work here and the perspective is illuminating, finally locking in a sub to follow along the channel.
When I played the ending of F.E.A.R. 2 I was in absolute shock after I realized what happened... and as you... the sour taste haunted me for a week. I think I was 17 or 18 years old... I never played FEAR 3... dunno, lost interest.
Eu não esperava ver Flávio Machado tão longe no RUclips, adoro seu conteúdo e tudo de bom Flávio 🫶 And yes, this games chills me, especially after realizing what happend on the ending
I am being honest here as a Teen learning about what happened to the Protagonist of FEAR 2 left a very bad taste in my mouth. Which is shocking to say the least. The closest experience that could come second is the Groom scene from Outlast whistleblower even then we escaped
I might be too soft and sensitive, BUT I almost teared up on your rewrite of the second game. It's just waaaaay more effective to have not a "sexy ghost lady in your area" but a manifestation of abuse the protagonist lived through. I'm way to tired of narratives in horror where "this person was a victim of horrible shit and now they are beyond salvation, murder and/or r*pe people, and protagonist who went through less (and therefore - not so 'irredeemably' broken) has to stop them". This rewrite was just what I needed, thank you
Yeah, the whole victim endures unspeakable abuses then becomes the abuser themself is beyond tired. Plus, it’s super victim blamey, which leaves leaves a seriously sour taste in my mouth.
FEAR's atmosphere is astounding in the first two games. It's not always outright scary, but the unsettling vibe that everything in the game is *wrong* crawls into your skin and lives there. It makes every encounter anxiety-inducing, especially the darkened corners of just about every office room and the cast of the fluorescent lights they managed to get *just* right for that sickly, pale-white glow. It's one of my favorite games ever.
Debated with myself for days if I should make this a public comment or not, as I am the kind of man you trigger warn regarding the events and ending of F.E.A.R 2. In the end, well, here I am… this will be a long one. English is a second language, so I invoke ESL if I used the wrong word or messy grammar. So, as a male victim of SA by a female, I can only speak for myself. So let me preface this with the following: *My experience is my own and in no way invalidates anyone else’s feeling or experience. I speak only for myself.* I appreciate the kindness you show by putting up warnings, as it gives people a chance to chose what they’re willing to include in their media consumption. I don’t find fictional depictions of SA a non-trigger, but people should be given the choice. However, when it goes beyond a warning it makes me feel as if all I am is a victim that must be forever sheltered from all things that may remind me of my trauma, and that I am never truly allowed to be anything but a victim. That I’m never allowed to ever get over it, accept it happened, and move on. That feels demeaning and humiliating. I know it comes from a place of kindness, but for me depictions of SA is not what creates the genuine anxiety able to keep me up at night. In fact, confronting it through safe exposure to potential triggers is how most people, including me, overcome fear. Familiarity is the death of horror and all that (and if you’re so ruled by fear that you panic at the thought of it or it randomly coming up unravels you, you’ve got a debilitating phobia and need therapy). I have been exposed to enough that I can handle fictional SA without being that triggered. The genuine trigger for me, is the notion SA has to be brutal and violent “to count”, because its implied on a societal level that guys always consent. In my experience, that is not needed. There was no violence involved in my SA, just social pressure. I am a cis male aromantic demisexual, to anyone not familiar with those labels it means I am male, identify as male, and don’t feel desire to do anything sexual with anyone IRL unless I know them well enough to trust them. It was simply not on my radar when it was sprung on me. I was not taken by force, my non-consent was simply ignored time and time again as she used our friendship as leverage to do it twice. That was the first, second, and only time I have ever been with a girl. I have never been with another girl since, as I have never felt safe or close enough to any woman to want that. So, trying to get this rambling response back on track, the events of F.E.A.R 2 do not really trigger me. Denying my feelings triggers me. Dismissing male victims as only being victims if taken by force or by other men triggers me. Which finally comes to the reason I decided to comment. In terms of triggers, *I this find your rewrite to be the more triggering version.* It’s once again a male aggressor, and only being allowed victimhood as a man if a another man took you by force. For once, a woman was the perpetrator, but that had to be changed because that’s simply not allowed. This “women don’t do SA” really triggers me, in that it makes me angry. *As for the story as is, it obviously still has major problems.* It’s the same damn trope of “victim turned perpetrator” being repeated for the millionth time! If that stupid trope were as true as media depicts, I’d be some sort of sexual menace going around assaulting every blonde girl I could find for revenge, rather than someone deeply distrustful of letting others touch my body and very guarded in who I open up to emotionally. *I wholly agree that Alma should never have been made the perpetrator.* It’s fine to have a guy get graped with a silent G , but it should have been done by Genevieve Aristide, who is repeatedly shown to violate the teams boundaries and disregard Beckett’s consent throughout the game. Were I to rewrite it, Genevieve makes Beckett more and more powerful. Ostensibly, it is stop Alma but in truth she is growing the protagonist’s power to combine with Alma’s frozen eggs. There’s no non-consensual scene where Alma jumps the protagonist or sexualizing of her, she remains a kid or a corpse. The Genevieve later just takes what she needs, while Beckett is unable to resist, and uses the protagonist’s sperm and Alma’s eggs to combine their powers and create something potentially greater, using herself and IVF to become the surrogate mother of Alma and the protagonist’s spooky child. This way they are both violated, both victims, but it is not fetishized. Alma sensed he was in danger of being violated, like she was, so she tried to protect him. But as a traumatized child she could not communicate the danger she perceived to him, and just attacked any she sensed was leading him to the place she kept seeing him get violated in. In F.E.A.R 3 it’s Alma is trying to stop the child from ending up like her, Michael Beckett wants to terminate the pregnancy, and Paxton wants to use the kid for revenge. Pointman still decides if the child is used to facilitate revenge, aborted, or is to be the first of Alma’s line to be given a shot at a normal life. Alma gets her final bloody revenge, her last child is never born, or she gets to see her last child live the life she never had. Either way Alma’s story probably ends here. That, as a male victim of SA, seems more respectful and far less triggering to me than just making the SA come from another man. No repeating “the victim becomes the perpetrator”-trope, still keeping a female perpetrator. Alma gets some closure, and there’s a moral argument to be made for either option in the end around if you give Alma her revenge, respect the male victim’s wishes, or let a potentially even more powerful supernatural child have a shot at a normal life. Anyhow, that’s me sharing my perspective, as a male victim of SA. It’s rarely talked about, especially by male victims, but if you read all this, thank you for taking the time!
i actually think that's pretty fascinating in a way. this sounds a lot better in fact ! btw do you think there should be an ending where both the brothers live ? i was thinking of an ending where pointman gives the baby a chance and paxton decides that he's fine with being a ghost forever or for the rest of his life
@@cappedminer369 Paxton has been driven to canibalism by his mother and the way he was raised, which is why he killed a lot of people. Not great, but then most of the dead just kind of got what they deserved for what they did or helped do to Alma and her sons. 🤷 I'm not sure I see a way where Paxton isn't acting as "Casper the Radicalizing Ghost" on the new kid's shoulder, going all "Yes brother/sister! Zero all the corpos, eat their faces, learn their secrets! Look what they've done to insulin prices, what do you think they do behind closed doors? Eat that man's brain and find out!" 👻😈 I'm not sure that's great for their ability to live a normal life... but it's also few innocent people getting flayed alive. In the end, I think it's best for the kid if Paxton joins Alma in no longer seeking vengeance and letting go, but odds are they'll perhaps both watch over her and be a constant danger to anyone that might be a theat to the kid and he might want to use the kid to make sure no one involved or aware with the project remains alive. 🤔 Personally, I think he should remain for a potential sequel. If he peaces out with Alma, chills out, or becomes even worse really depends on where you'd want to take the next game.
@@probablythedm1669 btw i would probably make extraction point and perseus mandate canon because i think they can fit nicely in the timeline without interrupting the main plot. also one thing to add if i were to remake fear 3 is to give the player an option to kill or spare beckett. if he's coming back maybe he should hate Airistide equally as alma and her sons. even adding his cloaking ability from khans rewritting of fear.
I'm a little late to this. But I fully agree with you on this. Personally it has never happened to me but I'm close with someone who has, they experienced a more manipulative scenario. Boils my blood seeing it disregarded. From a writing perspective I can say it was certainly a fumbled execution. In the end I don't think it right to put myself or anyone in a place to judge or make blanket statements on what can and can't be written about. Ideas are cheap, execution is everything.
So, I think FEAR 2's ending could have worked, but I do think Monolith got a little lost on trying to make Alma a...ahem.... s3x symbol that the idea lost focus. Reframe the entire scene, don't have Alma moaning, have Beckett scream (making the scene have more impact as he's been previously silent the whole time), and try not to show anything. You could have this in the story, but there needs to be a warning at the very start of the game that a depiction of SA is seen from the player perspective. SA is incredibly difficult to tackle as a topic, and more thought should have been put in to this depiction. Edit: So far, I like the rewrite you have going. One thing I'd add to 2 is when Beckett is first cornered by Alma and pinned, it's a version of adult her. One this is angry and visually scary. But then their minds link and she drops Beckett. When Beckett looks back up, its child Alma, tears streaming down her cheeks, looking incredibly upset, sorry even. Before she disappears she tells Beckett, 'I see you'. Humanizing Alma should be something given large consideration as you recognize in the text about her being sympathetic but not forgiven or excused for the SA. Now that we are dumping the SA plot line (at least dumping Alma assaulting Beckett) we can recontextualize Alma to be someone who lashes out but doesn't WANT to hurt people, especially people who have shared trauma. Making her shift form, giving her tears, and saying that she SEES Beckett I think grounds her into what she is, a hurt, scared child who doesn't even know what she's doing most of the time.
I say that if they wanted to be horny, they should have just absolutely committed to the bit and turned the whole plot of the game into some kind of wholesome romantic arc with Alma. No weird SA stuff. No playing up the idea that she's mentally a child. Instead, I think they should have portrayed her as, well, a heavily traumatized adult woman who's been kept in a cage and tortured her entire life, and is initially just overwhelmed by hatred and rage... but over the course of the game gradually develops an emotional rapport with the man sent to kill her. Have the illusion thing and all happen for the majority of the game, lean into the psychic bond thing so they can interact. But let the game end with a consensual scene of Beckett simply accepting her in her true form and giving her emotional relief from all the anger and torment, and being genuinely intimate despite the illusion of conventional attractiveness falling away in the end. Or make it a player choice thing that leads to a subtly better ending if the player decides the psychic thing isn't needed after all.
@@FelisImpurrator I like this idea because it also leans into giving Alma a moment to be human, to be seen and treated like a person. I would change how Fox dies, maybe have Armacham corner him, because I would assume she can see inside his mind, seeing he's a good father to his daughter and she spares him because she doesn't want to be the point of trauma for another little girl. There's some things they could have done to make Alma's sexuality more palatable but they kinda took the Rob Zombie approach of 'push it as far as taste will allow'.
@@Foreseer117As someone who is just genuinely into spooky ghost women, I'm just irritated that literally no one ever writes stories like what I just described instead of going for shock value and unnecessary abuse of "not the fun kind of creepy" tropes. It would have let them lean hard into the "okay, we want this to be weirdly scarousing" thing without any of the thoroughly unnecessary edginess. And it would have led perfectly well into a FEAR 3 where Alma's pregnancy has to be protected. Just would have needed to slightly rewrite Beckett's role and that's... Totally doable. Hell, writing Alma as an adult woman with her own agency could have started as simply as nuking that one line about not realizing her age from orbit. Also, I like that addition you just mentioned a lot.
@@FelisImpurrator Ya there's no a lot of horror that brushes up against positive depictions of arousal and sensuality, which is a shame because that is ripe for exploration. How our fears and desires can mix into this unnerving blend of fear and arousal, it would be an amazingly bold leap in a medium where the fear is so immediate because of it's interactive nature. Like you said some relatively simple changes could have fixed this. A doomed paranormal romance would rule, and on a marketing level advertising a romance scene would no doubt peak curiosity in players. Just make the scene tasteful of course. Fox's death always bugged me. One was as an adult it just seems so horribly tragic that this man is literally ripped out of existence when all signs pointed to him being a loving father. Two Alma should have seen that as a reason to spare him, she would have felt the warmth and love he had for his kid, but they were so determined to make her 'scary' they sacrificed a small moment of potential humanity. When I first realized he was the one with the kid I thought that maybe Alma say he was hurting his daughter but no, there's no evidence Fox did anything wrong. So making his death something else (assuming we had to kill Fox) would have been more consistent with the story.
@@Foreseer117Exactly. Especially since there's way more of that thematic overlap in other mediums like written literature already, but woefully little in videogames. You've got MAYBE Saya no Uta (the original uncut version) and that's the only one off the top of my head that comes close to that vibe. Great story, actually. Doesn't skimp on the horrifying implications while managing to be weirdly sweet and about as wholesome as eldritch horror and gore can get. Unfortunately, around this time in videogame history, I guess many developers were way too deep into the Hollywood culture of only leveraging sexuality in horror as either an exploitation thing or as a puritanical moral lecture. None of that Silent Hill 2 nuance here, fellas! Also seriously I can't gripe enough about how STUPID the line about her not realizing she's an adult is. It completely destroys any sense of narrative cohesion in this character arc... Because then they later have her consciously alter herself to be conventionally attractive in order to seduce Becket. And just. How? How did someone not catch that those two things contradict each other? Removing the edgy crap literally makes the story better by giving Alma more consistent characterization! So would having her spare someone who shows his daughter the love she never received from her own absolute monster of a father. That would have fit with how they'd written Child Alma up to that point, in particular, because isn't she representative of Alma's more innocent and at times even benevolent side? Oh, and if they'd done a straight up romantic arc they could have ended it with Becket and Alma working together to tear through the evil corpo forces in a gigantic, cathartic spectacle that would also have fulfilled the "big dramatic setpiece" thing publishers all wanted. No need to make it a doomed romance, just make it a DOOM romance, if you get my drift. End the game on a high note by giving it a Resident Evil Moment where you personally defeat all the REAL monsters of the story.
I only played F.E.A.R. 3, that was back when I was 14. I didn't play the first 2. When I first saw Becket in a box and using the R-word, I thought it was used figuratively. Only to stumble upon a clip on RUclips and get to know that it wasn't. It left a sour taste in my mouth for days. Glad that I got the spoilers for it, and did not bother playing FEAR 2 as it would've been hard to cope with it. I was dealing with S.H. during that time.
When i was younger i watched my dad play this game series and legit, after the "scene" in the second game, my old man's take away was this. " So, I spent hours getting scared only to get violated by a child in a woman's body? I'm done. "
I fullheartly appreciate the brutal honesty about the end of fear 2 and how personal you became about the subject. Its comforting knowing some people out there do take that kind of messed up thing serious and not just a thing to brush off with therapy and pills and bullshit. To some those so called sollutions dont do shit so hearing someone speak about that kind of subject in a pissed off tone is really comforting and calming at the same time since it shows that they care. Thank you for simply being you and for your honesty, i love your content, the way you do commentary and how you edit the vids. Also i dont comment a lot on videos so i hope its not an issue that i wrote another comment separated from the previous one, i really couldnt help it. I love ur work ur amazing and i love listening to your commentary as whitenoise too. Stay strong and keep doing what you love ❤️🙏
Loved the video, since I do love this series. the only thing I'm not too keen on was in your version you made Becket's abuser a man, which I think making it a woman would have given how much trust he puts into stokes and later his interactions with alma, a bit more gravity. It would also make for a good duality with your stokes, showing how men and women can be both the victims and perpetrators of SA. In your version of the keegan fight his voice could have overlayed with a feminine voice to drive my point before home. The only reason i am bringing this up is because as a US Navy vet I have met many Men and Women who have been victims of SA by other men and women, I myself having almost been a victim of a female perpetrator as well, but my friend saved me from being put into her car. THANK YOU again though for covering this series.
I’ve always wanted to play these games, but I’m sensitive to a lot of the subject matter in them so I greatly appreciate you making a video about them! I get to experience the story without being too overwhelmed by it’s heavy themes
F.E.A.R 2, because women can be stalkers too! But in all seriousness, it kind of makes sense for a child locked in a coma tube for 12 years to seek out any sort of loving connection, and for that to be twisted by the combination of adult urges and childlike ignorance. It's still fucked up six ways to Sunday, but it makes some sense.
Also. I have to add. You know what? That line about Alma not realizing she's an adult woman is incredibly stupid and it objectively makes negative sense. It makes the entire narrative LESS COHESIVE. Because if she's mentally eight, how in the fresh hell would she know to present herself as a conventionally attractive woman to try to seduce Beckett? How? What? Why? Those two things are mutually contradictory! That line serves no purpose but shock value. It should have been removed outright.
If you *really* wanted to reach, you could explain it through the fact that grooming and sexual abuse often causes precocious sexuality in children; one of the signs to watch for is a child who displays flirtatious or sexual behaviour at an age when they shouldn’t even know that exists, let along how to enact that kind of behaviour. But yeah, beyond that it’s quite transparently a relic of a time in gaming culture when the plot came secondary to entertaining the audience (whether that was through scares, horniness, or both).
@@dragonmage7980 Well, the utter lack of any additional context or justification or even satisfying narrative weight to it suggests literally no one thought that far. Personally, I would have found it infinitely hotter to have the protagonist form a consensual and romantic relationship with Alma culminating in a much more intimate scene. Followed by an appropriately bombastic rampage through whatever enemy forces dare to stop two powerful psychics who have, for probably the first time, come within spitting distance of finding peace and healing only to have it threatened again. That way you'd get literally all the good parts. Boinking the hot ghost? Sure. Nothing wrong with being horny. Emotionally satisfying narrative that brings some form of justice for and humanizes Alma while highlighting just who the real monster is (Harlan, it's Harlan, and everyone else in charge of that nightmarish company)? Absolutely. Cathartic revenge fantasy that leans into what they were trying to achieve with the third game and also just pays off with a Resident Evil-style sequence, used for the same effect that series employs masterfully (i.e., releasing a whole game's worth of nerve-wracking tension)? Absolutely. You'd have to compromise on absolutely nothing except pointlessly creepy (and not the good scare kind) plotholes.
@FelisImpurrator Like I said, FEAR as it currently exists is an almost 20-year-old relic from a period in which game design and culture were far less advanced; there wasn’t any thought put in beyond "make the player feel scared/horny/powerful/any other visceral emotion that'll thrill them and keep them playing", because deep, sensitive, and logically coherent narratives at that time were reserved for books, and maybe the odd arthouse movie. Would be nice to get a remake of the trilogy that updates it for more modern sensibilities, but unfortunately that doesn't seem likely.
@@dragonmage7980 I'd kill for a full-on remake that just kind of rewrites the whole story to be a proper feast for monsterfricker types like me. What can I say. I think *true form* Alma is hotter than the fanservice form, that's the kind of consensual smash I would happily yeet 60+ USD at a screen for.
Easy : She read his mind. You see a zombie Alma, Alma looks at you for a sec then change into sexy Alma. She went into your mind, looked at what you'd like to see and did a ctrl+c, ctrl +v. With the fact that she invades everybody's mind all the time and all at the same time, it's not even reaching. In Alma's head :" Why does he keep rejecting me? *looks into your mind* he's scared, what would make him happy to see me? * looks into your mind* can do."
I am so incredibly appreciative and comforted by the gracefulness that you deftly employ to cover such severe topics as you have. As a now man who has been the victim to abuse, it is so incredibly difficult to be treated seriously. It's definitely become less difficult in recent years, but.. thank you. You're fantastic, and I hope that you're at 100K before Christmas. Its not an if, its a when. I'm doing my part!
I have such intense memories of the first game (which I took ages to complete cos the mental stress it caused me was severe), and still feel the utter disappoinment, frustration and anger about where the sequel was heading, to the point that I couldn't even finish the game. Thank you for the walk through and the rewriting of the story, which I absolutely love.
You absolutely deserve how quickly your channel has blown up ^^ The quality of your videos is always top notch, and it's always a treat to see a new one has just dropped.
For those wondering: replica soldiers aren't actual people. They were designed to be incapable of that. They only react to the intention of the one commanding them according to the commands received and the environment around them. On their own they are basically vegetables.
3:56 theres actually a hidden interaction at those double doors. Keep opening and closing them and you'll get radio static, when that happens keep opening and closing them some more and Alma will remove the barrier behind the door, opening the doors as she stands in the corner. Proceed inside and up the stairs and open the double doors at the top and you'll get an audio line of Alma saying "I hate you daddy!" Before then being brought back to reality outside of the locked double doors again. The Dialogue in the office for the shuttering of project origin is still one I remember vividly: "Next message from: Chuck Habiger. It's Chuck Habiger, maybe you've forgotten that when this happened before, fettel was only a child, and the fallout of that fuckup was that origin had to be perminantly shut down. Now we're talking about a highly trained military commander who has a telepathic link to hundreds of soldiers that don't think for themselves. If you're worried about being behind schedule now, imagine what will happen if we end up with a full scale REVOLT." In FEAR 2 the unmasked replica soldiers are the "Variant VI" replicas that are from FEAR 1, as theres an intel item you find stating that all of the version 6 replica stasis pods are to be moved to still island for storage. Theres also something kind of disturbing that I only noticed recently and that is in the "haunted basement" where Alma attempts to seduce you by walking in a seductive manner. I only found this out recently since I was more wary of my surroundings due to all the ghosts than on paying attention to alma moving around behind a mesh fence. Also, am I the only one that picked up on how Snake fists voice seems to morph into Harlan wade's briefly during that monologue before arriving at still island? Another thing pointed out by another youtuber who reviewed FEAR 2 was how the grassy hill with a tree visions is Alma showing you that this ONE SPOT on still island was the only source of solace for her in between all of the experiments. If anyone is interested theres a video that sheds a lot of light on the development hell of Fear 3. It's called Fear: 3 Aftermath-A developer interview documentary, by Dead Domain. The only thing narrative wise that I enjoyed with FEAR 3 was the pointman ending. Where Alma was able to finally have a child and; knowing that it will be in good hands, finally let's herself go, with the final camera angle and music tone showing that it poetically ends where it began (A locked room from the intro cut scene of the first game) For context: Paxton devouring Alma was apparently a plot point from the first FEAR game that was scrapped very late in development (theres apparently voice line files for this). HOLY COW! Once again EXCELLENT job with the whole fanfiction section! HOT DAMN! Since you're good with "the feels" then I would recommend you to play the new wolfenstein games (The old blood, the new order, the new colossus, and youngblood)
The first F.E.A R. is not only just one of my favorite horror games, it's one of my favorite FPS Games. Taking visual cues from classic action movies (notably John Woo films) for the combat. Combined with the military-sci-fi horror, atmosphere and storyline, it remains a favorite of mine. The way the sequel handles 'that', though... Among other things, but that most of all. Really killed my interest in the series. Whenever I recommend it, I always have to make sure to include that you should ONLY play the first game. Your rewritten version is fantastic. The direction Alma goes, the rewriting of Paxton and Pointman's story, the expansion of Beckett's character, the actually sensible handling of uncomfortable subject matter. Moving on from that, congrats on the growth!!! This channel is a favorite of mine for game analysis and I can't wait for more!! It was your channel that got me to pick back up my own rewrite project. Also, listening to you at work makes the time go by way faster.
As someone who never really got into a lot of horror games growing up(I had other interests, but I adore most of the lore that comes with them). I appreciate you taking the time to go over how you would rewrite the story of F.E.A.R. and I love it. It honestly would've been a possibility if everything went in a decently straight line. Love the content and know you have a new subscriber!
The gun play and ai of this game is so good! The way the enemies actually respond to you and where you are with call outs, flanking, grenades when best etc, it was an amazing experience.
See F.e.a.r, Silent Hill and a few others are great examples of games turning teratophobia into teratophilia. When you have people playing horror games in their formative years and the game goes "y'know that monster, it's hot now" really skews your preferences. Great video btw. They certainly could have included the r*pe if they didn't try to fetishize it. Some potential of her trying to take back control over all that was robbed from her. IDK. Didn't they also have a pregnant bust as a preorder/collectors boBTW. So they clearly didn't learn how to portray any on it more tactfully.
They should 100% have just dropped the weird line implying she's mentally an eight-year-old and also just removed the nonconsensual thing, and simply made it a straight up consensual romance (with some cathartic revenge on the side) between Alma and Beckett. If they wanted hot ghost gf that badly they should have committed to hot ghost gf.
WOOOOOOOOOO NEW VID edit: the new last scene (of the second game) you narrated is on heck of a masterpiece, both in the narration and the story you laid out. I was brought to tears.
So random fun facts, apparently (and I found this online so grain of salt and all that) at some point the idea for F.E.A.R. was that each game would be it's own separate mission/incident since the F.E.A.R. team is more or less the military version of the X-Files. Second fun fact, in the PS3 Release of F.E.A.R. you can unlock a small side mission where you play as one of the delta operators that get turned to bloody smears by alma in armacham HQ, the XBOX 360 release had you play as Holiday escorting Bishop, the guy the replica had wired to a bomb, to a helicopter for extraction before ATC security shoots at them killing the guy. Third fun fact, Jin was actually meant to act as the team marksman rather than the forsensics specialist, given some concept art she would have probably wielded a version of the assault rifle but with a scope and probably semi auto (so like the SL-8 the assault rifle is based on.) monolith couldn't actually find anyway for her to work as a sniper however due to the close encounters the game takes place on so they made her into the team's analyst. a remnant of this old idea is that on Jin's model, her gloves have her index fingers be a different color (red) Fun fact the 4th and this one's for F.E.A.R. 2, all of Dark Signal is made of people who could be Psychic commanders (which shows how far Armacham has been on this bullshit) with Stokes being the exception due to Delta Force not allowing women into their ranks, she was more of a comms liason to HQ and not really part of the team (and hence why she took orders from griffin who is a Sargeant while she's actually a higher rank being a Lieuteant) and even funnier, only Becket, Janekowski, Griffin and Fox underwent the psychic surgery at the building that's disguised as Auburn Memorial, Stokes was not of interest, Morales stayed with the APC and Keggan was shot by an ATC goon early on so he got taken to the APC where he and morales managed to dodge the ATC team. infact Keggan didn't get his psychic powers activated by Armacham but instead by Alma, seemingly by accident at that, and Morales has psychic potencial but it's low as fuck so he'd be useless leading troops. Fun Fact 5... ok this one is mostly because I'm a gun nerd so just stick with me on this one. the way Becket reloads the assault rifle is based on the AR-15 (AKA the M16/M4 in the military) manual of arms where he slams a magazine into the gun to make sure it's seated properly and then hits the bolt release with the palm of his hand... except that monolith apparently didn't know where that was with their frankenstein mix of an XM8, an AR-15 with bits of the G36 so Becket just hits the side of the scope on the gun. Fun Fact 6, one thing I like about Fear 3 is a little detail on the main menu, it's of a camera on young point man and fettel but if you look at the corner you'll actually see the time, date and year that's on your pc. I also like how the menu changes as the game goes on showing fettel's drawings on the wall and such. I just have a thing for evolving menus (see Spec Ops The Line for an example). Fun Fact 7, apparently Monolith had their own way to make Fear 3, but gave it to day one studios who had experience with the franchise as they had handled the console ports of F.E.A.R. and then the aforementioned WB shitshow happened and really I can't blame the devs for just disowning the game given the mess it is. One last thing, I actually thought and even just sorta wrote a small remake of Fear 3 simply out of boredom. it did have the co op aspect but the 2nd player was meant to be Becket instead, when talking to a friend we decided on Matthew Mercer as his VA, the Point Man is still mute but like you I was planning on making him more expressive through his body language, the jist of it being the same, 9 months after the events of FEAR 2, Point Man and Becket wind up stuck together trying to stop what's happening. as for how their powers would work I figured Point Man has a longer time using his powers so he could use them for longer while Becket only got them 9 months ago but can more easily highlight enemies and explosives. I would have also used material from Extraction Point, Perseus Mandate and Reborn but with one or two changes. Jin would have survived extraction point but was still stuck in fairport, the 2nd fear team shows up, the player character of that game the Sergeant having gotten a promotion to Lieutenant in between (which is implied to happen at the end of Perseus Mandate anyways), and Paxton is leading the replicas using Foxtrot 813's body. also Morales and Stokes would have been alive (the idea being that Morales found Stokes half dead after not getting any response and didn't get Becket out of the amplifier since.. well he probably has no clue how that works and doesn't wanna blow up Becket's head scanners style by flipping the wrong switch by accident. rather than for some reason starting in Takedown/The Hornet's Nest from the original MW2, the both of them are in an underground facility in fairport itself that gets wrecked due to ghost shenanigans allowing them to escape. it would turn into a massive clusterfuck as the US Military/Delta Force/F.E.A.R. fights Armacham who are killing everyone to avoid any of this from going public, the Replica killing.. everyone, the Creep and other supernatural apparitions killing everyone to make sure the child is born (in this case it's the same idea of the creep being Alma's memories of harlan wade but with an extra that due to her pregnancy the creep more or less took over all ghostly and supernatural shenanigans in Fairport) Point Man and Becket would have their own penultimate boss fights, Point Man fights Paxton in a similar manner 813 did at the end of reborn while Becket would fight his way through experimental super soldiers to kill aristide, who the Armacham board has put in charge of cleaning up the mess caused by her decision to reopen origin which thanks to the info leaked to Dark Signal by snake fist is really fucking over the company as stocks plumet and the US government is looking to investigate them. The Final Boss is the Creep and then they deal with alma, no 2 endings but instead they kill her and the child, Alma, knowing that her father's dead and armacham is more or less gone, smiles as she fades away.
One more thing I forgot and just now remembered. "Point Man" is not actually a callsign, it's actually in military terms the lead of a soldier formation and the first to enter a combat zone (for example a team breaching a room, the first person in is the designated Point Man) also being the one most likely to get wounded or worse due to being the first one in. the FEAR team's prior point man was Jankowski before the Player Point Man wound up designated as that when joining up with FEAR one week prior.
What a well done and concise breakdown of the game series. As an aspiring writer, I particularly enjoyed the final part where you talk about how you'd improve on the story decisions. It gives a lot of discussion value to this critic piece.
I will say this on the Replica in F.E.A.R. 2. The Psychic Commander's aren't micromanaging every little detail of the army; that'd be maddening, incredibly taxing on the mind of the Commander. A more efficient system, however, would be providing overall objectives and goals to the army, as well as on-the-fly mission updates, and letting them use their initiative to carry out that objective. We do see in FEAR 2: Reborn that there are Replica Soldiers serving in a command function, ordering squads to specific locations, giving them smaller sub-objectives that would help in completing the primary objectives. So when Alma took control of them in FEAR 2, she likely broadcast two vague objectives: find Beckett, and kill Armacham. However, due to their vagueness, the Replica Soldiers could very easily misinterpret the 'Find Beckett' order as a terminate order, considering how these guys are soldiers bred for tasks like that. The Replica probably don't even have the capacity to think of anything outside of the lens of military operations, so with Alma broadcasting hilariously vague orders, it was up to Replica Command to interpret those orders and work out strategies to achieve them. So yeah, luckily, they were probably just trying to gun down Beckett because Replica Command interpreted Alma's orders as a Kill Order rather than... that shit.
the rant that starts at 42:05 i agree with 100% and there is no "but bla bla bla" bs to add. i agree that this kind of stuff if done in a game needs to be done more tastefully and with the thought that someone might have suffered this same stuff in mind.
A great video, with a lotta good and proper handling of what was horribly handled subject material. I subbed a while ago, but this video has honestly sold me as an actual subscriber than a passive viewer. I look forward to more of what ya post. You're definitely one of my favorite channels
Not that far in the video bu for the engagement: I enjoyed FEAR for taking the concept of horror and actually giving the player a weapon to defend themselves with. As someone who played many a defenceless protagonist in the horror games I've played prior, it was a definite game changer for me.
God, the FEAR games were a throwback. It's a similar timeframe to one of my perhaps top 5 favourite games, The Darkness. Tons of memories of being unreasonably scared at the former and unreasonably into the latter.
I really love that you stopped to touch on the two distinct versions of Alma present in Extraction Point. It’s something a friend and I discussed a number of times, talking about how young Alma has a kinder, more motherly instinct with Point Man, protecting and guiding him through the levels. While adult Alma is full of rage and hatred, and uses Paxton as a vessel to take revenge on a world that has never shown her kindness.
If F.E.A.R. ever gets a reboot, I hope they watch your video for inspiration. You not only fixed the game's story in my head, but you genuinely improved it so much! Congrats on the sub count! 🎉
Your videos are always great. You frame the story and context so well for whichever games you're talking about. It makes me wonder how a video on Signalis would go.
I honestly don’t hate when an author, producer or developer attempts to depict sexual abuse in a more explicit light. What really squicks me out is how highly fetishized the majority of these scenes are, especially when the abuser is a woman and the victim is a man.
i played the first and third game and never understood how bonkers the story was also, i realy like your channel doing deeper dive into the lore of old games than other channels like josh strife playes or mandalore
The cruelty found in the real world is way scarier than the paranormal. That's why the first game is the scariest since Alma's abuse is too real. But I wish they cut down on the number of child abuse scenes. Did we really need to see him abuse his daughter and sons/grandsons over and over again? Once the number hits the double digits, I'm like _YES, I GET IT! HE'S AN AWFUL MAN!_ There's just too much of it.
Love your video essays, especially the ideas you have for changing the writing. Makes the imagination run wild. Happy 30K at this point, you definitely deserve it!
I'm gonna be completely honest... If the ending of FEAR 2 had A) been consensual and B) involved accepting her "true" body rather than the conventionally attractive illusion version... I would just be completely, unironically, without reservation, into it. They could have written it as a sweet moment of finally giving this poor tortured spooky ghost gal some comfort after the real evils of the place get bullets in their heads, but noooo. Also, yes, I mean consensual consensual, as in "let's just not have that line about her not realizing she's an adult woman, just cut that one". That is literally completely unnecessary.
Quickly becoming one of my comfort channels I worked 11 hours today outside and I feel like I’m dying! But seeing I missed an hour video from you takes the edge off, thanks for existing Jesus Christ I’m happy I didn’t play these when I was a kid/teen shits fucked seems like the gameplay would be fun
I also have a certain gripe in regards to where F.E.A.R as a series went- it's disapointing that it became the Pointman saga, instead of being about F.E.A.R the unit. For me, like for many, F.E.A.R ends on Extraction Point (and I am suprised people like CHarlattan Wonder exist who prefer Perseus Mandate- tastes be tastes, but Mandate was so sht that people speculate it was the reason Monolith axed the expansions being cannon). There are cool sides of 2 and 3, mainly in the new enemy types and interesting way Paxton returns as a playable character, but it even more shows how much of a wasted potential F.E.A.R became. And your rewrites of things are why I love your vids when you go about games that are a disapointment- truth be told I have a similar bug to you if it comes to working on reimaginings of things that disapoint me
I can sorta understand what they were trying to with fear 2s ending. Seeing as Alma is basically feral, she had two children and both were taken from her immediately at birth. So I could see having it be a thing about “this is her choice now and no one will take this one from her.” Thing was it handled well at all, no not in the slightest but I get the attempt. But games are art and there’s a lot of art about this topic so it’s not the thing itself it’s how it was handled. As for the magazine and games media thing. I don’t know what to tell ya. You’d have to criticize the market team and journalists for that.
Recently started watching your vids. I really dig your take on storylines, plot holes, and especially calling out callous/ cruel uses of sensitive topics. The bit at the end where you do a "rewritten version" is pretty cool too.
"there was a lot of anger in this room" holy shit "and then they put her through that process a second time" HOLLY SHIT 19:31 WTH, ok no sleep tonight 32:53 me too Ralph me too 41:46 wtf did I just watch 42:36 PREACH
The first game in my opinion is one of the greatest horror games ever made to this day. It’s still gets me and I wish it had a remake or even a port to fear twos engine. The opening is one of my favorite openings ever and the Distortedscream is my favorite scream of all time
I honestly love your lore/gameplay walkthroughs of games that I would never play. Your editing is top notch and I get why you are upset about some uh "choices" the devs made... never seen it like this, but I agree. Thank you.
I stumbled on your channel via suggested videos, and I'm so glad I did and can understand why your channel is growing so fast. You have a hilarious and delightful style of commentary. Having such fun going through your videos.
I am really glad to have found your channel. With your expectations of your growth being leaped forward, I hope you’re exceptionally chuffed with yourself!
You know, having had a slight interest in the F.E.A.R franchise for years now in a "I'll watch a video reviewing the game" or "I'm gonna watch a shitty summation of the games", its a breath of fresh air to have finally watched a video that I feel actually seems to explain the games well in both gameplay and plot. Er, well, about as fresh of air as finally learning what was ACTUALLY happening in the ending rather than an old dude bro friend of mine saying "Yeah a hot ghost makes babies with you". Jesus, the fact I believed what he said for ages since I never bothered to actually DOUBLE CHECK that claim is embarrassing for myself. So thank you for actually tackling that ending with the reluctance and disgust it deserved in its coverage. Absolutely sickening choice of an ending the devs chose for that game. Keep up the great work Khanlusa, always happy to see your videos pop up in my feed!
I remember the ending entirely because it was the point of which I went. “ oh this is just bullshit.” And turned off the game. It made me realise that the game I had been playing with just a badly made awkward mess imitating something I had loved.
Man, I have so much nostalgia for FEAR1. I never ended up playing 2 or 3 which is a shame, but 1 and Extraction Point were incredible. The gibbing, the slowdown, the guns, the spooky bits. The whole game is amazing.
Dear Khanlusa, your shenanigans are worth all the time we can give you. Your analysis are always deep and enlightening. And god I love your "what I would have done" sections. Keep up ! You are doing a great job !
The first FEAR game was the one that made me love horror games where the answer to what was happening was more terrifying than the horror scenes, to learn the truth here and in Silent Hill leaved me feeling some sort of grief
I hate that when i was a younger guy i didnt quite get what the problem with the second ending was, i mean i felt it was bad but i didnt really understand it. I guess its a case of the "Men", am i right? Bloody hell...
Great, now I've remembered the ending of the second game. That is the most messed up ending to a game I've seen, though not the one that messed me up the most. If only I could wipe those endings from my memory and never have to worry about the memories again.
I just got blasted with nostalgia from the Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines music during the FEAR 3 segment. Gonna need to install that game again now 😂
while i disagree with some things that you said about the inclusion r scene in fear 2, i do think that its disgusting that they made alma a conventionally attractive woman to appeal more to the male "gamer" audience. a lot of men playing the game and seeing the scene of an attractive woman forcing herself on you would just thing "aww hell yeah" because a lot of men are fucking stupid and have never truly felt what its like to have all power removed from you and being completely at the mercy of another individual. keeping her as the dwalking corpse that she really is would have at least made those men uncomfortable which is at least a step in the right direction because in reality it really isnt fun. as a man who has survived sa from a woman (verry similar to what the protagonist experiences in the game) i do think that they could have been much more sensitive with the subject matter like giving you an option to skip it, heavy content warnings and removing the god awful mechanic of fending her off. and making it the whole final sequence is extremely disturbing to say the least, i think that they should have just implied it instead of forcing you to experience it in fucking first person.
It could be argued that THE scene at the end of 2 was intended to be a deeper commentary on not only SA, but how little sympathy male victims get. But you won't find me arguing that, given 1: I haven't actually played or watched the game to see the full context, and 2: that fucking advertising. It doesn't feel as poignant as it could have, and maybe even was intended to be and you rightfully criticised it in this video. Props to you for addressing it as you did, because this isn't the first time I've heard someone talk about this, but it is the first time I've seen it given the weight it clearly deserves.
Amazing video! Recently discovered you through your force unleashed videos and was very impressed with your rewrite of 2. After watching those, prototype, the lust-series and now this you have quickly become one of my favorite content creators on youtube. Cant wait for whats next! Also Becket just straight up gets battle meditation in your rewrite for fear 3 and thats just cool :D
![Stromae, Pomme - “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Visualizer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1F3OGIFnW1k/mqdefault.jpg)
![Stromae, Pomme - “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Visualizer]](/img/tr.png)
"understanding why a character is the way they are does not equal approval of their actions." needs to be put into everyones minds tbh
AH YES. more hour long explanaitions of old games to feed my autism fuled interrests. perfection
Same!
Every day that goes by I am further convinced that I am deeper on the spectrum than I thought.
Now I just feel called out ❤️
@@jib329 you are
you're my friend now, we're having soft tacos later
If I had a nickel every time a rather good and genuinely technically innovative game series by Monolith Productions ended up becoming undone by a very odd narrative direction taken by the sequel at its ending, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?
Also, all these years later, I still remember what Noah Caldwell-Gervais had to say on FEAR 2's infamous ending: "It's like they asked three people what's scary about Alma and the first person says, "Because she's relentless!" and the second person says, "Because she's unpredictable!" and then the third person says, "I don't know, man, probably, like...ghost pussy?" and then the producer points to respondent #3 and says, "This guy! This guy gets it!"
I hate how accurate that feels 😭
A fellow Noah Caldwell-Gervais enjoyer I see. Well met.
The worst part is that they could have actually had their ghostussy without all the gratuitous edgelord nonsense. Too bad very few things in the videogame space not named Silent Hill 2 ever bother to have even a basic level of nuance when touching on the intersection of arousal and fear as a theme... Even though that particular subject has so much richness and depth that could be accessed by simply treating it as something, ANYTHING more than an excuse to milk shock value out of the narrative.
I completely read that in Noah's voice, lol. Good to see the man has fans, love his retrospectives.
@@FelisImpurrator 😭😭😭😭 Ghostussy I hate you for saying that 💀💀💀
"Oh hey, I never touched the F.E.A.R. series, I wonder what its deal was?" - Me, a naive, innocent fool an hour and change ago
It's generally a daft thing to try and rationalise sci-fi and horror stories, find ways to make them "make sense" but in military terms it does "make sense" Fettle wouldn't have a kill switch or booby trap implanted into his skull. You really don't want the commander of your army to have something like that, for the risk of the enemy finding out about it and exploiting it.
That is a valid explanation, thank you.
Yeah there's a whole lot in sci-fi that I nod and agree to because it is _wholly_ nonsensical, it adds to the story lol. To an extent I guess. Some stuff jerks me out of my immersion pretty handily.
This is literally the reason why civilization collapsed in Horizon Zero Dawn.
yeha lol everyone makes fun of the flaw in the death star instantly destroying it
@@evangardner8960 civilization in Horizon Zero Dawn collapsed due to "author said so, don't question it". And as long as you do, it's fine. But when you start dissecting it taking into account the number and timeline you suddenly figure out that we nowadays with modern tech would have faired far better even if slightly irradiated. The game claims that nukes will not work(they would), that you can't protect robotic units from the swarm for it'll hack them and simultaneously that swarm can't be hacked because it's a robotic unit designed not to allow that and blablabla. Unlike Talanah's questline at least this one can be excused by plot demands and author's ignorance in the matter while the game itself tries to handwave it with "everyone everywhere decided to simultaneously disarm themselves during Clawback era".
As a male survivor of SA but someone who is entirely (and obviously) untrained in literary critique, Fear always struck me as the last flagship series that genuinely tried to reach outside the "comfort" of the American Gaming zeitgeist to tell a horror story that would actually cause emotional impact on a player.
Like the classic Lovecraft stories that touched every corner of trauma and not just 'boo-spooky monsters', showing that not only the characters but also the reader (or in this instance the player) are truly powerless in the face of actual horror. The only way to hold on to power being to "stop playing" before the monster shows up. Giving us an entirely different form of existential nightmares and a proper appreciation of our present existence, knowing that one day a power we have no hope of stopping will take this all away from us. The monster is usually just Death itself, but sometimes its an elder god, or a rapey ghost woman.
Now the only time any horror gaming experience outside of just jump scares or pornographic gore its comparatively micro-dev indy gaming and/or packed with the Disney messaging of good always defeats evil regardless of the powers at work.
Off topic- Congratulations on the growth! You do great work here and the perspective is illuminating, finally locking in a sub to follow along the channel.
When I played the ending of F.E.A.R. 2 I was in absolute shock after I realized what happened... and as you... the sour taste haunted me for a week. I think I was 17 or 18 years old... I never played FEAR 3... dunno, lost interest.
Eu não esperava ver Flávio Machado tão longe no RUclips, adoro seu conteúdo e tudo de bom Flávio 🫶
And yes, this games chills me, especially after realizing what happend on the ending
Man, This girl scared me more than any monsters i've seen. Even Dead Space was a smooth sailing
I am being honest here as a Teen learning about what happened to the Protagonist of FEAR 2 left a very bad taste in my mouth. Which is shocking to say the least. The closest experience that could come second is the Groom scene from Outlast whistleblower even then we escaped
Never played fear but read magazines with fear on it.
Also the "I hate it here" makes me snort everytime
I might be too soft and sensitive, BUT
I almost teared up on your rewrite of the second game. It's just waaaaay more effective to have not a "sexy ghost lady in your area" but a manifestation of abuse the protagonist lived through. I'm way to tired of narratives in horror where "this person was a victim of horrible shit and now they are beyond salvation, murder and/or r*pe people, and protagonist who went through less (and therefore - not so 'irredeemably' broken) has to stop them". This rewrite was just what I needed, thank you
Yeah, the whole victim endures unspeakable abuses then becomes the abuser themself is beyond tired. Plus, it’s super victim blamey, which leaves leaves a seriously sour taste in my mouth.
FEAR's atmosphere is astounding in the first two games. It's not always outright scary, but the unsettling vibe that everything in the game is *wrong* crawls into your skin and lives there. It makes every encounter anxiety-inducing, especially the darkened corners of just about every office room and the cast of the fluorescent lights they managed to get *just* right for that sickly, pale-white glow.
It's one of my favorite games ever.
Debated with myself for days if I should make this a public comment or not, as I am the kind of man you trigger warn regarding the events and ending of F.E.A.R 2. In the end, well, here I am… this will be a long one. English is a second language, so I invoke ESL if I used the wrong word or messy grammar.
So, as a male victim of SA by a female, I can only speak for myself. So let me preface this with the following: *My experience is my own and in no way invalidates anyone else’s feeling or experience. I speak only for myself.*
I appreciate the kindness you show by putting up warnings, as it gives people a chance to chose what they’re willing to include in their media consumption. I don’t find fictional depictions of SA a non-trigger, but people should be given the choice.
However, when it goes beyond a warning it makes me feel as if all I am is a victim that must be forever sheltered from all things that may remind me of my trauma, and that I am never truly allowed to be anything but a victim. That I’m never allowed to ever get over it, accept it happened, and move on. That feels demeaning and humiliating.
I know it comes from a place of kindness, but for me depictions of SA is not what creates the genuine anxiety able to keep me up at night. In fact, confronting it through safe exposure to potential triggers is how most people, including me, overcome fear. Familiarity is the death of horror and all that (and if you’re so ruled by fear that you panic at the thought of it or it randomly coming up unravels you, you’ve got a debilitating phobia and need therapy). I have been exposed to enough that I can handle fictional SA without being that triggered.
The genuine trigger for me, is the notion SA has to be brutal and violent “to count”, because its implied on a societal level that guys always consent. In my experience, that is not needed. There was no violence involved in my SA, just social pressure.
I am a cis male aromantic demisexual, to anyone not familiar with those labels it means I am male, identify as male, and don’t feel desire to do anything sexual with anyone IRL unless I know them well enough to trust them. It was simply not on my radar when it was sprung on me.
I was not taken by force, my non-consent was simply ignored time and time again as she used our friendship as leverage to do it twice. That was the first, second, and only time I have ever been with a girl. I have never been with another girl since, as I have never felt safe or close enough to any woman to want that.
So, trying to get this rambling response back on track, the events of F.E.A.R 2 do not really trigger me. Denying my feelings triggers me. Dismissing male victims as only being victims if taken by force or by other men triggers me.
Which finally comes to the reason I decided to comment. In terms of triggers, *I this find your rewrite to be the more triggering version.* It’s once again a male aggressor, and only being allowed victimhood as a man if a another man took you by force. For once, a woman was the perpetrator, but that had to be changed because that’s simply not allowed. This “women don’t do SA” really triggers me, in that it makes me angry.
*As for the story as is, it obviously still has major problems.*
It’s the same damn trope of “victim turned perpetrator” being repeated for the millionth time! If that stupid trope were as true as media depicts, I’d be some sort of sexual menace going around assaulting every blonde girl I could find for revenge, rather than someone deeply distrustful of letting others touch my body and very guarded in who I open up to emotionally.
*I wholly agree that Alma should never have been made the perpetrator.* It’s fine to have a guy get graped with a silent G , but it should have been done by Genevieve Aristide, who is repeatedly shown to violate the teams boundaries and disregard Beckett’s consent throughout the game.
Were I to rewrite it, Genevieve makes Beckett more and more powerful. Ostensibly, it is stop Alma but in truth she is growing the protagonist’s power to combine with Alma’s frozen eggs. There’s no non-consensual scene where Alma jumps the protagonist or sexualizing of her, she remains a kid or a corpse. The Genevieve later just takes what she needs, while Beckett is unable to resist, and uses the protagonist’s sperm and Alma’s eggs to combine their powers and create something potentially greater, using herself and IVF to become the surrogate mother of Alma and the protagonist’s spooky child.
This way they are both violated, both victims, but it is not fetishized. Alma sensed he was in danger of being violated, like she was, so she tried to protect him. But as a traumatized child she could not communicate the danger she perceived to him, and just attacked any she sensed was leading him to the place she kept seeing him get violated in.
In F.E.A.R 3 it’s Alma is trying to stop the child from ending up like her, Michael Beckett wants to terminate the pregnancy, and Paxton wants to use the kid for revenge. Pointman still decides if the child is used to facilitate revenge, aborted, or is to be the first of Alma’s line to be given a shot at a normal life. Alma gets her final bloody revenge, her last child is never born, or she gets to see her last child live the life she never had. Either way Alma’s story probably ends here.
That, as a male victim of SA, seems more respectful and far less triggering to me than just making the SA come from another man. No repeating “the victim becomes the perpetrator”-trope, still keeping a female perpetrator. Alma gets some closure, and there’s a moral argument to be made for either option in the end around if you give Alma her revenge, respect the male victim’s wishes, or let a potentially even more powerful supernatural child have a shot at a normal life.
Anyhow, that’s me sharing my perspective, as a male victim of SA. It’s rarely talked about, especially by male victims, but if you read all this, thank you for taking the time!
i actually think that's pretty fascinating in a way. this sounds a lot better in fact ! btw do you think there should be an ending where both the brothers live ? i was thinking of an ending where pointman gives the baby a chance and paxton decides that he's fine with being a ghost forever or for the rest of his life
@@cappedminer369 Paxton has been driven to canibalism by his mother and the way he was raised, which is why he killed a lot of people. Not great, but then most of the dead just kind of got what they deserved for what they did or helped do to Alma and her sons. 🤷
I'm not sure I see a way where Paxton isn't acting as "Casper the Radicalizing Ghost" on the new kid's shoulder, going all "Yes brother/sister! Zero all the corpos, eat their faces, learn their secrets! Look what they've done to insulin prices, what do you think they do behind closed doors? Eat that man's brain and find out!" 👻😈
I'm not sure that's great for their ability to live a normal life... but it's also few innocent people getting flayed alive.
In the end, I think it's best for the kid if Paxton joins Alma in no longer seeking vengeance and letting go, but odds are they'll perhaps both watch over her and be a constant danger to anyone that might be a theat to the kid and he might want to use the kid to make sure no one involved or aware with the project remains alive. 🤔
Personally, I think he should remain for a potential sequel. If he peaces out with Alma, chills out, or becomes even worse really depends on where you'd want to take the next game.
@@probablythedm1669 btw i would probably make extraction point and perseus mandate canon because i think they can fit nicely in the timeline without interrupting the main plot. also one thing to add if i were to remake fear 3 is to give the player an option to kill or spare beckett. if he's coming back maybe he should hate Airistide equally as alma and her sons. even adding his cloaking ability from khans rewritting of fear.
@@probablythedm1669 😭😭💀💀 look what they've done to the insulin prices
I'm a little late to this. But I fully agree with you on this. Personally it has never happened to me but I'm close with someone who has, they experienced a more manipulative scenario. Boils my blood seeing it disregarded. From a writing perspective I can say it was certainly a fumbled execution. In the end I don't think it right to put myself or anyone in a place to judge or make blanket statements on what can and can't be written about. Ideas are cheap, execution is everything.
So, I think FEAR 2's ending could have worked, but I do think Monolith got a little lost on trying to make Alma a...ahem.... s3x symbol that the idea lost focus. Reframe the entire scene, don't have Alma moaning, have Beckett scream (making the scene have more impact as he's been previously silent the whole time), and try not to show anything. You could have this in the story, but there needs to be a warning at the very start of the game that a depiction of SA is seen from the player perspective. SA is incredibly difficult to tackle as a topic, and more thought should have been put in to this depiction.
Edit: So far, I like the rewrite you have going. One thing I'd add to 2 is when Beckett is first cornered by Alma and pinned, it's a version of adult her. One this is angry and visually scary. But then their minds link and she drops Beckett. When Beckett looks back up, its child Alma, tears streaming down her cheeks, looking incredibly upset, sorry even. Before she disappears she tells Beckett, 'I see you'. Humanizing Alma should be something given large consideration as you recognize in the text about her being sympathetic but not forgiven or excused for the SA. Now that we are dumping the SA plot line (at least dumping Alma assaulting Beckett) we can recontextualize Alma to be someone who lashes out but doesn't WANT to hurt people, especially people who have shared trauma. Making her shift form, giving her tears, and saying that she SEES Beckett I think grounds her into what she is, a hurt, scared child who doesn't even know what she's doing most of the time.
I say that if they wanted to be horny, they should have just absolutely committed to the bit and turned the whole plot of the game into some kind of wholesome romantic arc with Alma. No weird SA stuff. No playing up the idea that she's mentally a child.
Instead, I think they should have portrayed her as, well, a heavily traumatized adult woman who's been kept in a cage and tortured her entire life, and is initially just overwhelmed by hatred and rage... but over the course of the game gradually develops an emotional rapport with the man sent to kill her. Have the illusion thing and all happen for the majority of the game, lean into the psychic bond thing so they can interact. But let the game end with a consensual scene of Beckett simply accepting her in her true form and giving her emotional relief from all the anger and torment, and being genuinely intimate despite the illusion of conventional attractiveness falling away in the end. Or make it a player choice thing that leads to a subtly better ending if the player decides the psychic thing isn't needed after all.
@@FelisImpurrator I like this idea because it also leans into giving Alma a moment to be human, to be seen and treated like a person. I would change how Fox dies, maybe have Armacham corner him, because I would assume she can see inside his mind, seeing he's a good father to his daughter and she spares him because she doesn't want to be the point of trauma for another little girl. There's some things they could have done to make Alma's sexuality more palatable but they kinda took the Rob Zombie approach of 'push it as far as taste will allow'.
@@Foreseer117As someone who is just genuinely into spooky ghost women, I'm just irritated that literally no one ever writes stories like what I just described instead of going for shock value and unnecessary abuse of "not the fun kind of creepy" tropes. It would have let them lean hard into the "okay, we want this to be weirdly scarousing" thing without any of the thoroughly unnecessary edginess. And it would have led perfectly well into a FEAR 3 where Alma's pregnancy has to be protected. Just would have needed to slightly rewrite Beckett's role and that's... Totally doable. Hell, writing Alma as an adult woman with her own agency could have started as simply as nuking that one line about not realizing her age from orbit.
Also, I like that addition you just mentioned a lot.
@@FelisImpurrator Ya there's no a lot of horror that brushes up against positive depictions of arousal and sensuality, which is a shame because that is ripe for exploration. How our fears and desires can mix into this unnerving blend of fear and arousal, it would be an amazingly bold leap in a medium where the fear is so immediate because of it's interactive nature. Like you said some relatively simple changes could have fixed this. A doomed paranormal romance would rule, and on a marketing level advertising a romance scene would no doubt peak curiosity in players. Just make the scene tasteful of course.
Fox's death always bugged me. One was as an adult it just seems so horribly tragic that this man is literally ripped out of existence when all signs pointed to him being a loving father. Two Alma should have seen that as a reason to spare him, she would have felt the warmth and love he had for his kid, but they were so determined to make her 'scary' they sacrificed a small moment of potential humanity. When I first realized he was the one with the kid I thought that maybe Alma say he was hurting his daughter but no, there's no evidence Fox did anything wrong. So making his death something else (assuming we had to kill Fox) would have been more consistent with the story.
@@Foreseer117Exactly. Especially since there's way more of that thematic overlap in other mediums like written literature already, but woefully little in videogames. You've got MAYBE Saya no Uta (the original uncut version) and that's the only one off the top of my head that comes close to that vibe. Great story, actually. Doesn't skimp on the horrifying implications while managing to be weirdly sweet and about as wholesome as eldritch horror and gore can get. Unfortunately, around this time in videogame history, I guess many developers were way too deep into the Hollywood culture of only leveraging sexuality in horror as either an exploitation thing or as a puritanical moral lecture. None of that Silent Hill 2 nuance here, fellas!
Also seriously I can't gripe enough about how STUPID the line about her not realizing she's an adult is. It completely destroys any sense of narrative cohesion in this character arc... Because then they later have her consciously alter herself to be conventionally attractive in order to seduce Becket. And just. How? How did someone not catch that those two things contradict each other? Removing the edgy crap literally makes the story better by giving Alma more consistent characterization! So would having her spare someone who shows his daughter the love she never received from her own absolute monster of a father. That would have fit with how they'd written Child Alma up to that point, in particular, because isn't she representative of Alma's more innocent and at times even benevolent side?
Oh, and if they'd done a straight up romantic arc they could have ended it with Becket and Alma working together to tear through the evil corpo forces in a gigantic, cathartic spectacle that would also have fulfilled the "big dramatic setpiece" thing publishers all wanted. No need to make it a doomed romance, just make it a DOOM romance, if you get my drift. End the game on a high note by giving it a Resident Evil Moment where you personally defeat all the REAL monsters of the story.
Thank you for being as mature and tasteful as always about this subject matter in particular.
Your grace and tact is appreciated.
F.E.A.R. 2 has an ending that made me go out of my chair and drink like i was an old man getting horrible news.
I only played F.E.A.R. 3, that was back when I was 14. I didn't play the first 2. When I first saw Becket in a box and using the R-word, I thought it was used figuratively. Only to stumble upon a clip on RUclips and get to know that it wasn't. It left a sour taste in my mouth for days. Glad that I got the spoilers for it, and did not bother playing FEAR 2 as it would've been hard to cope with it. I was dealing with S.H. during that time.
When i was younger i watched my dad play this game series and legit, after the "scene" in the second game, my old man's take away was this.
" So, I spent hours getting scared only to get violated by a child in a woman's body? I'm done. "
the second game of this series scared the shit out of me as a kid. glad to see that this hasn't changed
I F.E.A.R your uploads, in like a good way
I fullheartly appreciate the brutal honesty about the end of fear 2 and how personal you became about the subject. Its comforting knowing some people out there do take that kind of messed up thing serious and not just a thing to brush off with therapy and pills and bullshit. To some those so called sollutions dont do shit so hearing someone speak about that kind of subject in a pissed off tone is really comforting and calming at the same time since it shows that they care. Thank you for simply being you and for your honesty, i love your content, the way you do commentary and how you edit the vids. Also i dont comment a lot on videos so i hope its not an issue that i wrote another comment separated from the previous one, i really couldnt help it. I love ur work ur amazing and i love listening to your commentary as whitenoise too. Stay strong and keep doing what you love ❤️🙏
Loved the video, since I do love this series. the only thing I'm not too keen on was in your version you made Becket's abuser a man, which I think making it a woman would have given how much trust he puts into stokes and later his interactions with alma, a bit more gravity. It would also make for a good duality with your stokes, showing how men and women can be both the victims and perpetrators of SA. In your version of the keegan fight his voice could have overlayed with a feminine voice to drive my point before home. The only reason i am bringing this up is because as a US Navy vet I have met many Men and Women who have been victims of SA by other men and women, I myself having almost been a victim of a female perpetrator as well, but my friend saved me from being put into her car. THANK YOU again though for covering this series.
That is a very valid point, thank you 🙌
I’ve always wanted to play these games, but I’m sensitive to a lot of the subject matter in them so I greatly appreciate you making a video about them! I get to experience the story without being too overwhelmed by it’s heavy themes
F.E.A.R 2, because women can be stalkers too! But in all seriousness, it kind of makes sense for a child locked in a coma tube for 12 years to seek out any sort of loving connection, and for that to be twisted by the combination of adult urges and childlike ignorance. It's still fucked up six ways to Sunday, but it makes some sense.
Also. I have to add. You know what? That line about Alma not realizing she's an adult woman is incredibly stupid and it objectively makes negative sense. It makes the entire narrative LESS COHESIVE. Because if she's mentally eight, how in the fresh hell would she know to present herself as a conventionally attractive woman to try to seduce Beckett? How? What? Why? Those two things are mutually contradictory! That line serves no purpose but shock value. It should have been removed outright.
If you *really* wanted to reach, you could explain it through the fact that grooming and sexual abuse often causes precocious sexuality in children; one of the signs to watch for is a child who displays flirtatious or sexual behaviour at an age when they shouldn’t even know that exists, let along how to enact that kind of behaviour. But yeah, beyond that it’s quite transparently a relic of a time in gaming culture when the plot came secondary to entertaining the audience (whether that was through scares, horniness, or both).
@@dragonmage7980 Well, the utter lack of any additional context or justification or even satisfying narrative weight to it suggests literally no one thought that far.
Personally, I would have found it infinitely hotter to have the protagonist form a consensual and romantic relationship with Alma culminating in a much more intimate scene. Followed by an appropriately bombastic rampage through whatever enemy forces dare to stop two powerful psychics who have, for probably the first time, come within spitting distance of finding peace and healing only to have it threatened again.
That way you'd get literally all the good parts. Boinking the hot ghost? Sure. Nothing wrong with being horny. Emotionally satisfying narrative that brings some form of justice for and humanizes Alma while highlighting just who the real monster is (Harlan, it's Harlan, and everyone else in charge of that nightmarish company)? Absolutely. Cathartic revenge fantasy that leans into what they were trying to achieve with the third game and also just pays off with a Resident Evil-style sequence, used for the same effect that series employs masterfully (i.e., releasing a whole game's worth of nerve-wracking tension)? Absolutely. You'd have to compromise on absolutely nothing except pointlessly creepy (and not the good scare kind) plotholes.
@FelisImpurrator Like I said, FEAR as it currently exists is an almost 20-year-old relic from a period in which game design and culture were far less advanced; there wasn’t any thought put in beyond "make the player feel scared/horny/powerful/any other visceral emotion that'll thrill them and keep them playing", because deep, sensitive, and logically coherent narratives at that time were reserved for books, and maybe the odd arthouse movie. Would be nice to get a remake of the trilogy that updates it for more modern sensibilities, but unfortunately that doesn't seem likely.
@@dragonmage7980 I'd kill for a full-on remake that just kind of rewrites the whole story to be a proper feast for monsterfricker types like me. What can I say. I think *true form* Alma is hotter than the fanservice form, that's the kind of consensual smash I would happily yeet 60+ USD at a screen for.
Easy : She read his mind. You see a zombie Alma, Alma looks at you for a sec then change into sexy Alma. She went into your mind, looked at what you'd like to see and did a ctrl+c, ctrl +v. With the fact that she invades everybody's mind all the time and all at the same time, it's not even reaching. In Alma's head :" Why does he keep rejecting me? *looks into your mind* he's scared, what would make him happy to see me? * looks into your mind* can do."
I am so incredibly appreciative and comforted by the gracefulness that you deftly employ to cover such severe topics as you have. As a now man who has been the victim to abuse, it is so incredibly difficult to be treated seriously. It's definitely become less difficult in recent years, but.. thank you. You're fantastic, and I hope that you're at 100K before Christmas. Its not an if, its a when. I'm doing my part!
I have such intense memories of the first game (which I took ages to complete cos the mental stress it caused me was severe), and still feel the utter disappoinment, frustration and anger about where the sequel was heading, to the point that I couldn't even finish the game. Thank you for the walk through and the rewriting of the story, which I absolutely love.
You absolutely deserve how quickly your channel has blown up ^^ The quality of your videos is always top notch, and it's always a treat to see a new one has just dropped.
For those wondering: replica soldiers aren't actual people. They were designed to be incapable of that. They only react to the intention of the one commanding them according to the commands received and the environment around them. On their own they are basically vegetables.
Massive congrats on almost quadrupling your sub goal well before time! 🥳👏👏👏👏👏
Now to take in this epic 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿
Aaaand now I want to speedrun my Godot game dev journey so I can start work on Khanlusa's F.E.A.R. Remake Trilogy... ☝🧐
@@GraveReaperCushions I would like to play it if possible
3:56 theres actually a hidden interaction at those double doors. Keep opening and closing them and you'll get radio static, when that happens keep opening and closing them some more and Alma will remove the barrier behind the door, opening the doors as she stands in the corner. Proceed inside and up the stairs and open the double doors at the top and you'll get an audio line of Alma saying "I hate you daddy!" Before then being brought back to reality outside of the locked double doors again.
The Dialogue in the office for the shuttering of project origin is still one I remember vividly: "Next message from: Chuck Habiger. It's Chuck Habiger, maybe you've forgotten that when this happened before, fettel was only a child, and the fallout of that fuckup was that origin had to be perminantly shut down. Now we're talking about a highly trained military commander who has a telepathic link to hundreds of soldiers that don't think for themselves. If you're worried about being behind schedule now, imagine what will happen if we end up with a full scale REVOLT."
In FEAR 2 the unmasked replica soldiers are the "Variant VI" replicas that are from FEAR 1, as theres an intel item you find stating that all of the version 6 replica stasis pods are to be moved to still island for storage. Theres also something kind of disturbing that I only noticed recently and that is in the "haunted basement" where Alma attempts to seduce you by walking in a seductive manner. I only found this out recently since I was more wary of my surroundings due to all the ghosts than on paying attention to alma moving around behind a mesh fence. Also, am I the only one that picked up on how Snake fists voice seems to morph into Harlan wade's briefly during that monologue before arriving at still island? Another thing pointed out by another youtuber who reviewed FEAR 2 was how the grassy hill with a tree visions is Alma showing you that this ONE SPOT on still island was the only source of solace for her in between all of the experiments.
If anyone is interested theres a video that sheds a lot of light on the development hell of Fear 3. It's called Fear: 3 Aftermath-A developer interview documentary, by Dead Domain. The only thing narrative wise that I enjoyed with FEAR 3 was the pointman ending. Where Alma was able to finally have a child and; knowing that it will be in good hands, finally let's herself go, with the final camera angle and music tone showing that it poetically ends where it began (A locked room from the intro cut scene of the first game)
For context: Paxton devouring Alma was apparently a plot point from the first FEAR game that was scrapped very late in development (theres apparently voice line files for this).
HOLY COW! Once again EXCELLENT job with the whole fanfiction section! HOT DAMN!
Since you're good with "the feels" then I would recommend you to play the new wolfenstein games (The old blood, the new order, the new colossus, and youngblood)
Sweet merciful Jesus, I want you're versions of the game now.
Only problem with watching these :P Her ideas are frequently more interesting that what we got.
Yes
The first F.E.A R. is not only just one of my favorite horror games, it's one of my favorite FPS Games. Taking visual cues from classic action movies (notably John Woo films) for the combat.
Combined with the military-sci-fi horror, atmosphere and storyline, it remains a favorite of mine.
The way the sequel handles 'that', though... Among other things, but that most of all. Really killed my interest in the series. Whenever I recommend it, I always have to make sure to include that you should ONLY play the first game.
Your rewritten version is fantastic. The direction Alma goes, the rewriting of Paxton and Pointman's story, the expansion of Beckett's character, the actually sensible handling of uncomfortable subject matter.
Moving on from that, congrats on the growth!!! This channel is a favorite of mine for game analysis and I can't wait for more!! It was your channel that got me to pick back up my own rewrite project. Also, listening to you at work makes the time go by way faster.
so, i just found out about your content and i can say that you're doing an awesome job and deserve so much more views and recognition for it
As someone who never really got into a lot of horror games growing up(I had other interests, but I adore most of the lore that comes with them). I appreciate you taking the time to go over how you would rewrite the story of F.E.A.R. and I love it. It honestly would've been a possibility if everything went in a decently straight line. Love the content and know you have a new subscriber!
5:06 man with the reaction of a GOD ladies and gentlemen
The gun play and ai of this game is so good! The way the enemies actually respond to you and where you are with call outs, flanking, grenades when best etc, it was an amazing experience.
I highly recommend AI and Games' video on it, incidentally.
See F.e.a.r, Silent Hill and a few others are great examples of games turning teratophobia into teratophilia.
When you have people playing horror games in their formative years and the game goes "y'know that monster, it's hot now" really skews your preferences.
Great video btw.
They certainly could have included the r*pe if they didn't try to fetishize it. Some potential of her trying to take back control over all that was robbed from her. IDK.
Didn't they also have a pregnant bust as a preorder/collectors boBTW. So they clearly didn't learn how to portray any on it more tactfully.
I don't know why make monsters so hot Like helena sister in RE6 or the nurse's from silent hill homecoming!
They did and it glowed in the dark. Very weird time 💀💀
They should 100% have just dropped the weird line implying she's mentally an eight-year-old and also just removed the nonconsensual thing, and simply made it a straight up consensual romance (with some cathartic revenge on the side) between Alma and Beckett. If they wanted hot ghost gf that badly they should have committed to hot ghost gf.
@@FelisImpurrator That is also an option. Offers a much more direct reason as to why she is misting people for you.
@@khanlusa Glow in the dark fetus in semitransparent belly: the new Dead Island Riptide dismembered torso of questionable collectors edition statues.
i love this type of 'rewrite fanfic' stuff. your videos are a joy to watch
WOOOOOOOOOO NEW VID
edit: the new last scene (of the second game) you narrated is on heck of a masterpiece, both in the narration and the story you laid out. I was brought to tears.
So random fun facts, apparently (and I found this online so grain of salt and all that) at some point the idea for F.E.A.R. was that each game would be it's own separate mission/incident since the F.E.A.R. team is more or less the military version of the X-Files.
Second fun fact, in the PS3 Release of F.E.A.R. you can unlock a small side mission where you play as one of the delta operators that get turned to bloody smears by alma in armacham HQ, the XBOX 360 release had you play as Holiday escorting Bishop, the guy the replica had wired to a bomb, to a helicopter for extraction before ATC security shoots at them killing the guy.
Third fun fact, Jin was actually meant to act as the team marksman rather than the forsensics specialist, given some concept art she would have probably wielded a version of the assault rifle but with a scope and probably semi auto (so like the SL-8 the assault rifle is based on.) monolith couldn't actually find anyway for her to work as a sniper however due to the close encounters the game takes place on so they made her into the team's analyst. a remnant of this old idea is that on Jin's model, her gloves have her index fingers be a different color (red)
Fun fact the 4th and this one's for F.E.A.R. 2, all of Dark Signal is made of people who could be Psychic commanders (which shows how far Armacham has been on this bullshit) with Stokes being the exception due to Delta Force not allowing women into their ranks, she was more of a comms liason to HQ and not really part of the team (and hence why she took orders from griffin who is a Sargeant while she's actually a higher rank being a Lieuteant) and even funnier, only Becket, Janekowski, Griffin and Fox underwent the psychic surgery at the building that's disguised as Auburn Memorial, Stokes was not of interest, Morales stayed with the APC and Keggan was shot by an ATC goon early on so he got taken to the APC where he and morales managed to dodge the ATC team. infact Keggan didn't get his psychic powers activated by Armacham but instead by Alma, seemingly by accident at that, and Morales has psychic potencial but it's low as fuck so he'd be useless leading troops.
Fun Fact 5... ok this one is mostly because I'm a gun nerd so just stick with me on this one. the way Becket reloads the assault rifle is based on the AR-15 (AKA the M16/M4 in the military) manual of arms where he slams a magazine into the gun to make sure it's seated properly and then hits the bolt release with the palm of his hand... except that monolith apparently didn't know where that was with their frankenstein mix of an XM8, an AR-15 with bits of the G36 so Becket just hits the side of the scope on the gun.
Fun Fact 6, one thing I like about Fear 3 is a little detail on the main menu, it's of a camera on young point man and fettel but if you look at the corner you'll actually see the time, date and year that's on your pc. I also like how the menu changes as the game goes on showing fettel's drawings on the wall and such. I just have a thing for evolving menus (see Spec Ops The Line for an example).
Fun Fact 7, apparently Monolith had their own way to make Fear 3, but gave it to day one studios who had experience with the franchise as they had handled the console ports of F.E.A.R. and then the aforementioned WB shitshow happened and really I can't blame the devs for just disowning the game given the mess it is.
One last thing, I actually thought and even just sorta wrote a small remake of Fear 3 simply out of boredom. it did have the co op aspect but the 2nd player was meant to be Becket instead, when talking to a friend we decided on Matthew Mercer as his VA, the Point Man is still mute but like you I was planning on making him more expressive through his body language, the jist of it being the same, 9 months after the events of FEAR 2, Point Man and Becket wind up stuck together trying to stop what's happening. as for how their powers would work I figured Point Man has a longer time using his powers so he could use them for longer while Becket only got them 9 months ago but can more easily highlight enemies and explosives. I would have also used material from Extraction Point, Perseus Mandate and Reborn but with one or two changes.
Jin would have survived extraction point but was still stuck in fairport, the 2nd fear team shows up, the player character of that game the Sergeant having gotten a promotion to Lieutenant in between (which is implied to happen at the end of Perseus Mandate anyways), and Paxton is leading the replicas using Foxtrot 813's body. also Morales and Stokes would have been alive (the idea being that Morales found Stokes half dead after not getting any response and didn't get Becket out of the amplifier since.. well he probably has no clue how that works and doesn't wanna blow up Becket's head scanners style by flipping the wrong switch by accident.
rather than for some reason starting in Takedown/The Hornet's Nest from the original MW2, the both of them are in an underground facility in fairport itself that gets wrecked due to ghost shenanigans allowing them to escape.
it would turn into a massive clusterfuck as the US Military/Delta Force/F.E.A.R. fights Armacham who are killing everyone to avoid any of this from going public, the Replica killing.. everyone, the Creep and other supernatural apparitions killing everyone to make sure the child is born (in this case it's the same idea of the creep being Alma's memories of harlan wade but with an extra that due to her pregnancy the creep more or less took over all ghostly and supernatural shenanigans in Fairport)
Point Man and Becket would have their own penultimate boss fights, Point Man fights Paxton in a similar manner 813 did at the end of reborn while Becket would fight his way through experimental super soldiers to kill aristide, who the Armacham board has put in charge of cleaning up the mess caused by her decision to reopen origin which thanks to the info leaked to Dark Signal by snake fist is really fucking over the company as stocks plumet and the US government is looking to investigate them.
The Final Boss is the Creep and then they deal with alma, no 2 endings but instead they kill her and the child, Alma, knowing that her father's dead and armacham is more or less gone, smiles as she fades away.
One more thing I forgot and just now remembered. "Point Man" is not actually a callsign, it's actually in military terms the lead of a soldier formation and the first to enter a combat zone (for example a team breaching a room, the first person in is the designated Point Man) also being the one most likely to get wounded or worse due to being the first one in. the FEAR team's prior point man was Jankowski before the Player Point Man wound up designated as that when joining up with FEAR one week prior.
Holy...wow. I never knew I wanted your FEAR 2 rewrite but I want it so bad. Or sci fi with emotional depth. What you had made me tear up a bit
What a well done and concise breakdown of the game series. As an aspiring writer, I particularly enjoyed the final part where you talk about how you'd improve on the story decisions. It gives a lot of discussion value to this critic piece.
You've convinced me to give this a try. I'm going to stop watching this and play this series, I'll be back when I'm finished.
I will say this on the Replica in F.E.A.R. 2.
The Psychic Commander's aren't micromanaging every little detail of the army; that'd be maddening, incredibly taxing on the mind of the Commander. A more efficient system, however, would be providing overall objectives and goals to the army, as well as on-the-fly mission updates, and letting them use their initiative to carry out that objective.
We do see in FEAR 2: Reborn that there are Replica Soldiers serving in a command function, ordering squads to specific locations, giving them smaller sub-objectives that would help in completing the primary objectives.
So when Alma took control of them in FEAR 2, she likely broadcast two vague objectives: find Beckett, and kill Armacham. However, due to their vagueness, the Replica Soldiers could very easily misinterpret the 'Find Beckett' order as a terminate order, considering how these guys are soldiers bred for tasks like that. The Replica probably don't even have the capacity to think of anything outside of the lens of military operations, so with Alma broadcasting hilariously vague orders, it was up to Replica Command to interpret those orders and work out strategies to achieve them.
So yeah, luckily, they were probably just trying to gun down Beckett because Replica Command interpreted Alma's orders as a Kill Order rather than... that shit.
the rant that starts at 42:05 i agree with 100% and there is no "but bla bla bla" bs to add. i agree that this kind of stuff if done in a game needs to be done more tastefully and with the thought that someone might have suffered this same stuff in mind.
A great video, with a lotta good and proper handling of what was horribly handled subject material. I subbed a while ago, but this video has honestly sold me as an actual subscriber than a passive viewer. I look forward to more of what ya post. You're definitely one of my favorite channels
22:30 got me REAL GOOD, thank god my phone didn't hit the ground
man, I have such good memories of playing the first game. simpler times
Not that far in the video bu for the engagement:
I enjoyed FEAR for taking the concept of horror and actually giving the player a weapon to defend themselves with. As someone who played many a defenceless protagonist in the horror games I've played prior, it was a definite game changer for me.
God, the FEAR games were a throwback. It's a similar timeframe to one of my perhaps top 5 favourite games, The Darkness. Tons of memories of being unreasonably scared at the former and unreasonably into the latter.
I really love that you stopped to touch on the two distinct versions of Alma present in Extraction Point. It’s something a friend and I discussed a number of times, talking about how young Alma has a kinder, more motherly instinct with Point Man, protecting and guiding him through the levels. While adult Alma is full of rage and hatred, and uses Paxton as a vessel to take revenge on a world that has never shown her kindness.
If F.E.A.R. ever gets a reboot, I hope they watch your video for inspiration. You not only fixed the game's story in my head, but you genuinely improved it so much!
Congrats on the sub count! 🎉
Proof fan fiction can be better than the source material
I love your commentary, your treatments, and your ideas for what makes for a really engaging plot.
Your videos are always great. You frame the story and context so well for whichever games you're talking about.
It makes me wonder how a video on Signalis would go.
I honestly don’t hate when an author, producer or developer attempts to depict sexual abuse in a more explicit light. What really squicks me out is how highly fetishized the majority of these scenes are, especially when the abuser is a woman and the victim is a man.
i played the first and third game and never understood how bonkers the story was
also, i realy like your channel doing deeper dive into the lore of old games than other channels like josh strife playes or mandalore
The cruelty found in the real world is way scarier than the paranormal. That's why the first game is the scariest since Alma's abuse is too real. But I wish they cut down on the number of child abuse scenes. Did we really need to see him abuse his daughter and sons/grandsons over and over again? Once the number hits the double digits, I'm like _YES, I GET IT! HE'S AN AWFUL MAN!_ There's just too much of it.
Love your video essays, especially the ideas you have for changing the writing. Makes the imagination run wild.
Happy 30K at this point, you definitely deserve it!
Dead Space was for me what FEAR is for you. Cant wait to dive into this one!
Hurray!
I enjoy the content on this channel so much. Your writing always makes me laugh!
man i feel really bad for alma point man and paxton.... wish they had the chance to just chill out and be a family :(
I'm gonna be completely honest... If the ending of FEAR 2 had A) been consensual and B) involved accepting her "true" body rather than the conventionally attractive illusion version... I would just be completely, unironically, without reservation, into it. They could have written it as a sweet moment of finally giving this poor tortured spooky ghost gal some comfort after the real evils of the place get bullets in their heads, but noooo.
Also, yes, I mean consensual consensual, as in "let's just not have that line about her not realizing she's an adult woman, just cut that one". That is literally completely unnecessary.
Quickly becoming one of my comfort channels I worked 11 hours today outside and I feel like I’m dying! But seeing I missed an hour video from you takes the edge off, thanks for existing
Jesus Christ I’m happy I didn’t play these when I was a kid/teen shits fucked seems like the gameplay would be fun
I also have a certain gripe in regards to where F.E.A.R as a series went- it's disapointing that it became the Pointman saga, instead of being about F.E.A.R the unit.
For me, like for many, F.E.A.R ends on Extraction Point (and I am suprised people like CHarlattan Wonder exist who prefer Perseus Mandate- tastes be tastes, but Mandate was so sht that people speculate it was the reason Monolith axed the expansions being cannon).
There are cool sides of 2 and 3, mainly in the new enemy types and interesting way Paxton returns as a playable character, but it even more shows how much of a wasted potential F.E.A.R became.
And your rewrites of things are why I love your vids when you go about games that are a disapointment- truth be told I have a similar bug to you if it comes to working on reimaginings of things that disapoint me
I can sorta understand what they were trying to with fear 2s ending. Seeing as Alma is basically feral, she had two children and both were taken from her immediately at birth. So I could see having it be a thing about “this is her choice now and no one will take this one from her.” Thing was it handled well at all, no not in the slightest but I get the attempt. But games are art and there’s a lot of art about this topic so it’s not the thing itself it’s how it was handled.
As for the magazine and games media thing. I don’t know what to tell ya. You’d have to criticize the market team and journalists for that.
Recently started watching your vids. I really dig your take on storylines, plot holes, and especially calling out callous/ cruel uses of sensitive topics. The bit at the end where you do a "rewritten version" is pretty cool too.
"there was a lot of anger in this room" holy shit "and then they put her through that process a second time" HOLLY SHIT
19:31 WTH, ok no sleep tonight
32:53 me too Ralph me too
41:46 wtf did I just watch
42:36 PREACH
My name being Keegan made some parts of this video really weird for me lmfao. Fantastic work on every part of this.
The first game in my opinion is one of the greatest horror games ever made to this day. It’s still gets me and I wish it had a remake or even a port to fear twos engine.
The opening is one of my favorite openings ever and the Distortedscream is my favorite scream of all time
I honestly love your lore/gameplay walkthroughs of games that I would never play.
Your editing is top notch and I get why you are upset about some uh "choices" the devs made... never seen it like this, but I agree.
Thank you.
27:50
Aristide: "Thats also the idea Lieutenant."
I stumbled on your channel via suggested videos, and I'm so glad I did and can understand why your channel is growing so fast. You have a hilarious and delightful style of commentary. Having such fun going through your videos.
Heck yeah congrats on the 10k, keep up the high effort work!
I am really glad to have found your channel. With your expectations of your growth being leaped forward, I hope you’re exceptionally chuffed with yourself!
Ooooh an hr+ long video? Today is a good day
You know, having had a slight interest in the F.E.A.R franchise for years now in a "I'll watch a video reviewing the game" or "I'm gonna watch a shitty summation of the games", its a breath of fresh air to have finally watched a video that I feel actually seems to explain the games well in both gameplay and plot.
Er, well, about as fresh of air as finally learning what was ACTUALLY happening in the ending rather than an old dude bro friend of mine saying "Yeah a hot ghost makes babies with you". Jesus, the fact I believed what he said for ages since I never bothered to actually DOUBLE CHECK that claim is embarrassing for myself. So thank you for actually tackling that ending with the reluctance and disgust it deserved in its coverage. Absolutely sickening choice of an ending the devs chose for that game.
Keep up the great work Khanlusa, always happy to see your videos pop up in my feed!
I remember the ending entirely because it was the point of which I went. “ oh this is just bullshit.” And turned off the game.
It made me realise that the game I had been playing with just a badly made awkward mess imitating something I had loved.
Man, I have so much nostalgia for FEAR1. I never ended up playing 2 or 3 which is a shame, but 1 and Extraction Point were incredible. The gibbing, the slowdown, the guns, the spooky bits. The whole game is amazing.
Dear Khanlusa, your shenanigans are worth all the time we can give you. Your analysis are always deep and enlightening. And god I love your "what I would have done" sections.
Keep up ! You are doing a great job !
F.E.A.R. 2 conflicts me as a victim myself. I dont think the issue was in the narrative itself, it is in the execution of the finale.
14:25 "I'm not kink-shaming, I'm kink asking why."
crazy game, crazy upload
0:02 haha, coming.
Ok, this game was more messed up than I remembered.
The first FEAR game was the one that made me love horror games where the answer to what was happening was more terrifying than the horror scenes, to learn the truth here and in Silent Hill leaved me feeling some sort of grief
I love your take on how the FEAR trilogy could have played out! Wonderful videos, great commentary, superb channel!
I hate that when i was a younger guy i didnt quite get what the problem with the second ending was, i mean i felt it was bad but i didnt really understand it. I guess its a case of the "Men", am i right? Bloody hell...
32:53 Yassified Alma (I'm so sorry)
😂😭
Great, now I've remembered the ending of the second game. That is the most messed up ending to a game I've seen, though not the one that messed me up the most. If only I could wipe those endings from my memory and never have to worry about the memories again.
Ive only played the first FEAR and its possibly the best 2000's era singleplayer fps ive played
damn, my med reminder popped off when you said to take your meds lol
I just got blasted with nostalgia from the Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines music during the FEAR 3 segment. Gonna need to install that game again now 😂
while i disagree with some things that you said about the inclusion r scene in fear 2, i do think that its disgusting that they made alma a conventionally attractive woman to appeal more to the male "gamer" audience. a lot of men playing the game and seeing the scene of an attractive woman forcing herself on you would just thing "aww hell yeah" because a lot of men are fucking stupid and have never truly felt what its like to have all power removed from you and being completely at the mercy of another individual. keeping her as the dwalking corpse that she really is would have at least made those men uncomfortable which is at least a step in the right direction because in reality it really isnt fun. as a man who has survived sa from a woman (verry similar to what the protagonist experiences in the game) i do think that they could have been much more sensitive with the subject matter like giving you an option to skip it, heavy content warnings and removing the god awful mechanic of fending her off. and making it the whole final sequence is extremely disturbing to say the least, i think that they should have just implied it instead of forcing you to experience it in fucking first person.
I think that becoming obsessed with an unhinged goth girl is an important step in any sapphics journey.
I've never played these but I'm here for it... and the commentary...
You are one of my favourite channels out there ngl, please don't go away lol
Alma is the first contact with the trope "I Can Fix Her!" 😂
It could be argued that THE scene at the end of 2 was intended to be a deeper commentary on not only SA, but how little sympathy male victims get.
But you won't find me arguing that, given 1: I haven't actually played or watched the game to see the full context, and 2: that fucking advertising.
It doesn't feel as poignant as it could have, and maybe even was intended to be and you rightfully criticised it in this video.
Props to you for addressing it as you did, because this isn't the first time I've heard someone talk about this, but it is the first time I've seen it given the weight it clearly deserves.
Amazing video! Recently discovered you through your force unleashed videos and was very impressed with your rewrite of 2. After watching those, prototype, the lust-series and now this you have quickly become one of my favorite content creators on youtube. Cant wait for whats next!
Also Becket just straight up gets battle meditation in your rewrite for fear 3 and thats just cool :D