--Father Martin Archimbaud, Outlast
Horror is at its greatest potential potency in gaming, where players, with all of the sensory input of movies and more, actively control a character through environments and past characters that could paralyze someone with fear if the experience was not contained in a virtual world. Outlast amplifies this by keeping players away from offensive weaponry, leaving them with nothing but a sprint mechanic, a night vision-enabled camcorder with a limited battery supply, and the ability to open and close doors, crouch under some objects, or hide in lockers. Released after Amnesia but before a newer wave of non-combat survival horror games like Agony, Outlast is near the absolute top of its subgenre. This heavily atmospheric game sees a character try to escape the Mount Massive Asylum while finding clues about a "Project Walrider." Along the way, the villains and atmosphere make this one of the more intense recent horror games, and the Whistleblower DLC included in Outlast: Bundle of Terror provides strong background for the main game.
Production Values
Outlast stands out as one of the best looking Switch ports of a 2013 game, and an indie game at that! In spite of the seemingly intentional slight bluriness of the camera's night vision, the environments and character models, especially "Chris Walker," the giant enemy featured on the game icon, look generally excellent. Details like how walking through a pool of blood can lead to bloody footprints where the player walks add to the visual atmosphere during breaks from the almost total darkness that envelops most areas. One of the only problems with how the game looks and runs is just the occasional loading screen that freezes and brings up a different screen for several moments. The player's character never actually speaks, but the voice acting is very strong for an indie game, giving some of the antagonists more distinct personalities and even worldviews (Father Archimbaud and Dr. Trager are the best examples of both).
Gameplay
For the entire game, players are in control of a defenseless character whose camera is his greatest tool. Without the camera's night vision, the darkness in most areas of the asylum would be very difficult to navigate, but there are limitations that stop players from constantly relying on night vision. The battery in the camera does not last particularly long if the infrared setting is left on, and the 10 battery maximum means you cannot endlessly accumulate batteries--though restarting a checkpoint does restore the life of the current battery. For example, even if one has drained the eighth battery and could switch it out for the seventh but does not switch it out, dying and resuming from the previous checkpoint will fill the battery meter for the eighth battery again. There is even a brief portion of the game where the character loses the camera and has to explore without any ability to see in deep darkness, though this thankfully does not last long.
The Whistleblower DLC has the same mechanics and style as the main game, both sharing the heightened vulnerability of the player and the same general need to avoid or flee from enemies. The atmosphere that carries over from the core game to Whistleblower is one of the most intense of any horror game, and some of the sequences in Whistleblower are among the most extreme in gaming history. Outlast weaves scientific and religious ideas together in a highly complimentary way as the more notable foes stalk or even sometimes aid the player's character. Whistleblower, however, adds a very specific kind of sexual horror, which helps set it apart from its base game. This is a major reason why Whistleblower deserves to be recognized as one of the most daring DLCs of the genre.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
Investigative journalist Miles Upshur investigates rumors about Mount Massive Asylum, entering despite its seeming disarray. Circumstances quickly trap him inside the expansive building and "variants," former patients who have been tortured, mutilated, or conditioned to become shells of their prior selves, pursue him. After sneaking up on Miles and injecting something into him, a priest suddenly begins offering assistance, guiding him to the upper levels. All the while, a mysterious entity related to a "Project Walrider" makes its presence a source of terror or excitement for those inside the asylum. Father Archimbaud reveres this entity as divine, but it is neither a deity nor an ordinary being.
In Whistleblower, the insider who leaked information about the inhumanity of the Murkoff Corporation's experiments and other abuses is himself subjected to one of the very processes he was trying to expose. Soon, the Walrider brings enough chaos to incidentally lead to the release the whistleblower, who attempts to escape the hellacious asylum to see the cruelty of the Murkoff Corporation exposed.
Intellectual Content
Mental illness, psychiatry, the historical Operation Paperclip, where the United States recruited former Nazi scientists, and the historical Project MK-Ultra, where the CIA tortured people using drugs and other methods in the quest for alleged mind control, are all part of the setup for this game as it eventually explores whether a strange entity wandering Mount Massive Asylum is a separate supernatural being, a hallucination (which can only occur within an immaterial consciousness, so consciousness is not part of nature, just not in the same sense a spirit without a body would be purely supernatural), or something else. "Nothing is supernatural," says a man's voice on a recording played in a macabre theater. This is demonstrably false, as even though the existence of beings like angels and demons cannot be proven or disproven, as neither must exist or not exist by pure logical necessity, things like the laws of logic, an uncaused cause, one's own consciousness, and the metaphysical space matter resides in can all be proven to exist by logical necessity and are immaterial, or supernatural, though the uncaused cause would be closest to what many people think of when they use the word supernatural.
However, it turns out that the mysterious Walrider is the product of nanotechnology and used by the malicious Murkoff Corporation to experiment on patients. The priest Father Martin assumes it to be the true God and restructures his worldview around the Walrider, when it is supposed to be (not that general sensory evidences prove anything more than that one has perceptions) a technological breakthrough that can be controlled by victims tormented to the point of extreme psychological weakness. It is in this context and after being alerted by insider Waylon Park that someone outside the company can finally investigate this oppression. It might not always lead to circumstances as dire as those that befall Waylon Park in Whistleblower, but challenging or exposing company sins can make whistleblowers the target of immense corporate wrath. The depths of the potential cruelty that humans can inflict on each other in the name of business and science if they have the power to do so is yet another major subject that is addressed with great clarity here.
Conclusion
Outlast is one of the best non-combat horror games one could play. The recurring characters and optional notes give it enough lore to even stand tall as the foundation for a thriving horror universe that is ripe for sequels, of which one has already been made. This game and its franchise are not for the faint of heart, but those who can stomach the intensity of the setting and gameplay, which was actually outdone by the intensity of Outlast 2, will find that Outlast does an excellent job of setting up a series while not sacrificing its identity as an individual game, introducing moral and theological ideas in the context of an extreme horror environment, and developing the distinctions between its antagonists despite giving them little time onscreen. Its occasional use of jumpscares never displaces the high emphasis on the player's vulnerability in a menacing atmosphere that is sustained without jumpscares. Outlast and its DLC Whistleblower even maintain superb visual production values after being ported to the Switch. Overall, this is one of the greatest contemporary horror games of the last decade.
Content
1. Violence: Since you cannot fight attackers, only run or hide, there is less opportunity for violence and gore than is presently in many other horror games. Upon getting caught by Chris Walker or finding certain scripted areas, though, there can be graphic imagery like the sight of bloody corpses, living men that have been experimented on to the point of resembling humans only in their general shape, and even severed heads and limbs.
2. Profanity: Words like "fuck" are written multiple times in optional notes.
3. Sexuality: Acts like masturbation and necrophilic sexual behaviors can be observed as one travels through the asylum. In Whistleblower, a male character brutally removes genitalia from other men or attaches additional body parts to them to make them resemble women as he looks for his perfect "wife," intent on having sexual union to produce a child.
4. Nudity: Some of the patients are seen from the front fully nude. The penises of at least two characters are completely visible.
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