“Who becomes a beast, frees himself from the pain of being human”
60 years earlier…
When analyzing the present generation, it is impossible not to observe that one of the genres that shone with its own darkness in the 6th Gen, the Survival Horror, is just a cadaverous shadow of what it came to be not so long ago. So popular was it then, that it was not only presented in its purest form – Silent Hill – but its schemes were re-formulated, re-rehearsed –
Project Zero, Eternal Darkness, Rule of Rose, Haunting Ground, Forbidden Siren – present alternatives, elements added and / or playable mechanics somewhat different from the traditional,
in some cases. The power of the current systems made many of us dream of what this would offer to the genre, the possibilities that were opened. But unfortunately, it has not been like that.
Attempts have been made, both by Majors – Dead Space, Silent Hill Homecoming, the future The Evil Within – and by that sector that is becoming increasingly important: the Independent. And it was precisely one of these tiny little developers, with hardly any staff, that the game came perhaps the most terrifying in what we have been generation: Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Published in 2010 for PC, Frictional Games plunged us into a virtual nightmare of pure psychological terror that reminded us of the greats of the genre, but of which I was amazed as managing resources on a much smaller scale,
I managed to put fear into my body -and from the trailers ingame- to anyone who pressed Enter and accepted his challenge; a challenge that began in the
cold corridors of a Prussian castle. A great success of sales, something that has served so that the studio can move forward after the numerous problems that the development of Amnesia went through, the new saga takes a step forward to give us another experience of virtual nightmare.
Our starting point: a bed with bars …
“The world is a machine. A machine for pigs ”
London, at the dawn of a new century and in the middle of the Victorian era. This will be the background that will set the stage for the new Amnesia, subtitled with a strange qualifier that does not leave indifferent the first time you hear it, and which will acquire all its meaning in the game: A Machine for Pigs. Set in the same universe in which the IP moves, the new game – not a sequel –
takes place 60 years after the original, on the New Year’s Day of 1899. Our eyes – we return to the immersive and terrifying 1st Person of the original – they will be those of Oswald Mandus, a rich industrial magnate who returns home after suffering an almost fatal collapse due to a fever caused by a “ disastrous” and tragic expedition to Mexico.
Seriously still feverish, Oswald wakes up months later in a bed with bars, with no idea of what has happened to him during those weeks between the accident and his awakening, although persecuted by a dream that has been repeated throughout his convalescence, a dream that implies a strange machine, whose engine seems to have begun to roar just after Mandus’ awakening.
The tycoon, with the weight of the disease on his head, decides to find out what happened to his life in those months, as well as to understand the keys to what happened in Mexico. This will be the starting point of a story that its creators do not see as a sequel, since it does not follow the same story as the first Amnesia or present the same characters.
