2013, and was released on 10 September 2013.Set in London on New Year's Eve, 1899,[5] the focus of the story is Oswald Mandus, a wealthy industrialist, and his relationship with his children.[6] Mandus returns from a "disastrous" expedition to Mexico, where tragedy struck. Hit by fever, Mandus has frequent dreams about a dark machine until he regains consciousness. Little does he know that months have passed, and upon awakening, he hears the roar of an engine and a mysterious machine starts up.[4] Along the way, the player can discover journal entries and audio recordings that shed light on some of the last few months as well as refer to Mandus' writings in his journal about what to do next. This particular mechanic is crucial to understanding the narrative.
The game features several interlocking story lines. Some take place in the past, some in the present, and some are overtly real while some may be imagined.[7]
The game begins when Mandus awakens in his house after recovering from his illness and hears the voices of his twin children, Edwin and Enoch, calling for him. Exploring the house reveals that Mandus' wife Lilibeth died in childbirth and that he had been so busy with his work that he did not spend a lot of time with them. Despite this, Mandus promised Lily that he would take care of their children. Unable to recall the events of the last few months, he sets off on a journey to find them after their almost taunting cries lead him through his now abandoned house.
Mandus is eventually called by a mysterious voice on the telephone who identifies himself as 'the Engineer' and tells Mandus that Edwin and Enoch have been trapped far below them. The 'Machine', he is told, has been sabotaged and flooded and that the only way to save his boys is for Mandus to go into the depths and fix the damage. Unable to remember the purpose of such a Machine or who created it, Mandus is able to slip further and further below the ground after navigating the streets, the church and an old warehouse. During his descent, Mandus comes into contact with the Pigmen, deformed swine-like monstrosities that patrol the depths he descends down. Further calls from the mysterious voice on the phones guide him, saying that his children are in imminent danger from the rising floodwaters of the sabotage.
Without a clue as to who sabotaged the Machine, Mandus finally enters the inner heart of the monstrous contraption as the mysterious voice tells him to reactivate it finally. Doing so however comes at a high cost. As the Machine begins to power back online, Mandus recovers the last of his memories. After he returned from his Mexican expedition, Mandus was consumed with obsession over a vision of the future which gathered notes imply he gained through the power of an Orb. He saw the coming horrors of the 20th Century, both of his children killed at the Battle of the Somme and the suffering of the innocent through death, war and disease. Driven mad by the vision, Mandus decided that he could not allow it to come to pass, and he built the Machine to take people and make the world anew with what it created (hinted to be the Pigmen), coming to think that the world was nothing more than a world of pigs and that they should fit in appearance what they are on the inside. He then killed Edwin and Enoch himself to spare their fate at the Somme, making them the first victims of the Machine. Because of the nature of the Machine and his supposed encounter with an Orb, Mandus' soul was shattered in two. This event created the Engineer, an embodiment of Mandus' mad wish to prevent his visions of war and bloodshed, but it also left Mandus' with no memory of his visions or the Machine. Being incorporeal, the Engineer needed Mandus to activate the Machine, and so it called him, acting as the mysterious voice that guided him throughout his journey.
With nothing to stand in its way, the Machine sends its Pigmen out into the streets of London to round up unsuspecting victims to feed itself with. Mandus, overcome by horror at what is happening as the city descends into chaos and what he has done, realises that he was the initial saboteur and vows to finish what he started by descending once again into the heart of the Machine to kill the Engineer. After destroying crucial parts of it once again, the Engineer tries to reason with Mandus and says that the world would be better off if the Machine is allowed to consume all of London and then the rest of the populace. Knowing that part of his soul caused all of this, Mandus enters the inner chamber and activates a part of the Machine to kill him so that the horror can stop. As the gears stop turning, the Machine's lights powers down, and the voice of the Engineer goes silent, Mandus dies knowing that he has washed his sins clean as year 1900 ticks in.
Characters
- Oswald Mandus - The main protagonist of the game. A British wealthy industrialist and explorer, Mandus is portrayed as someone who is obsessed with his work and the industry that surrounds in at the turn of the century. Mandus returns from an expedition in Mexico in the year 1899 after contracting a fever and loses all memory of the events of the last few months. The calls of his children and rumble of great engines draw him deep into the depths to discover what he has done. Mandus is voiced by Toby Longworth.
- Edwin & Enoch - Twin boys who are Mandus' children. Their mother, Lilibeth, died giving birth to them and the two of them were often looked after by a nanny rather than their father, who was too busy with his work. Despite this, Mandus loves them dearly. The pair of them are often seen throughout the game in brief glimpses, drawing Mandus further into the darkness where their fate is eventually revealed. Both Edwin & Enoch are voiced by Zak Craig.
- The Professor - An associate and worker for the Ministry, the Professor met with Mandus to discuss his plans for the Machine under the guise of it being a meat processing facility that provided food for the poor populace of London. Led into the darkness under false pretenses, Mandus promptly kills him and makes him one of the first victims of the Machine. The Professor is voiced by Mark Roper.
- The Engineer - A fraction of Mandus' soul, implied to have been given a voice and autonomous power by an Orb, the Engineer embodies Mandus' madness and wish to prevent his horrible vision of the 20th century to come to pass. Ruthless in his enacting of taking victims, the Engineer is manipulative to Mandus in order to get what he wants. The Engineer is also voiced by Mark Roper.
- The Machine - The titular device, given consciousness by the Engineer. Though its exact function is left to speculation, most notes in the game hint that it takes the bodies of both humans and pigs and combines them into the monsters of the game.
- Manpigs- The monsters of the game. Serving a similar function to the Servant Grunts and Brutes from The Dark Descent, the Manpigs come in a multitude of forms. They cannot be killed and will hunt for Mandus ruthlessly when he encounters them. Due to the process of their creation, they cause nearby lights to flicker including Mandus' lantern and will be drawn to the light if Mandus looks directly at them.
- Failed experiments – These pig-like creatures flicker in and out of reality, and are much more powerful than the Manpigs. They act as a sort of mini-boss.
- The Kaernk - Kaernks appear in this game, behaving exactly like they did in the first game. The only differences here is that they emit electrical sparks, and are much faster than in their previous appearance.
Gameplay
The game is a survival horror game played from a first-person perspective.[4] Players explore the environments using a lantern, with diary entries and notes providing information on the lost memory of the title character. Some elements of The Dark Descent have been removed, while new elements have been added.[4] One of the reasons for this is to provide a fresh gameplay experience to veteran players of The Dark Descent.[4] The inventory has been removed,[8][9] along with the oil and tinderboxes.[10] Most of the puzzles that occur in the game are based on physically interacting with the environment because of this change. The sanity mechanic of the first game has been removed as well, meaning that the darkness and looking at the creatures no longer causes any drawbacks. Health regenerates whenever a player is damaged after a certain period of time.
The game's level design has been touted as "significantly different" from that of The Dark Descent, with larger areas and outdoor environments included. AI was also adjusted to ensure players are unable to predict enemy behavior based on their experiences with the original game. However, the core of the game remains the same as in The Dark Descent, so as not to disappoint fans who want more of what they loved in the original.[7]
Development
"How come a game meant for Halloween 2012 has been delayed for so long? Originally we thought it would be a short, experimental game set in the universe of Amnesia, but The Chinese Room had a vision that was bigger than that. As their work progressed, the potential for a much greater project emerged. What we ended up with is no longer what we had first imagined, but a fully fledged Amnesia game. A different kind of Amnesia, but definitely not a short experiment."
- Frictional Games on the delay of the game.[11]
In 2010, after the release of The Dark Descent, Frictional Games wanted to further theAmnesia franchise, but had no time for it. Later, they met Dan Pinchbeck of The Chinese Room at GDC Europe 2011, where the plan for the game began to form.[4][10] It was originally intended by The Chinese Room to be a small mod, but it was expanded to a larger scale project when "the two companies realized what could be achieved with a larger game."[10]
Development for the game began in December 2011 at The Chinese Room, while Frictional Games was producing and publishing the title.[4]
The game was originally set to release before Halloween 2012, but was later delayed to early 2013 due to overwhelming response and to meet the expectations. In February 2013 Frictional Games announced a status update about the game in which they announced they would release the game in Q2 2013.[11]
In late May 2013, Jens Nilsson, the co-founder of Frictional Games, stated in a forum post that: "We know we will not make Q2 (2013), we also know when the game will be ready for launch. We have not set the exact day yet. You can however make good use of the weather outside this summer and look forward to gaming with the piggies as the summer comes to an end."[12] Dan Pinchbeck stated, "Frictional's take is, release it when it's done."[10]
In August 2013, The Chinese Room confirmed on their Twitter feed that the final release date for the game was 10 September 2013.[13]The game was available to pre-order since 16 August.[14][15][16]
Marketing
Initially code-named "gameB" by The Chinese Room,[17] the announcement of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs was preceded by a viral marketing and alternate reality game campaign that began when Frictional Games updated their website Next Frictional Game,[18]which has prior been used to announce the first installment, in early 2012. The website featured a heavily blurred image, the Amnesialogo and a caption reading "Something is emerging...".[19][20]
The blurred image was hyperlinked to Google Maps with the search field set as "China".[19][20] The website was later updated with a slightly less blurred image, and hyperlinked to Google Maps with the search field set as "Boreray."[21] It was updated for a second time, with a non-blurred image (a piece of concept art), redirecting to Google Maps with the search field set as 502 2nd Avenue in Seattle.[22]The three hyperlinks were hints towards The Chinese Room's involvement in the game (a previous game by The Chinese Room, Dear Esther, was set on an Hebridean island like Boreray, and the address in Seattle pointed towards a restaurant named 'The Chinese Room').[4][22]
Examination of the site's source code led fans to a webpage that resembled a computer console with usable commands and a countdown. After the expiration of the countdown, a message on the page read "A machine for pigs coming fall two thousand twelve."[23] The game was formally announced via video game blog Joystiq.[4]
On 14 June 2012, the first teaser trailer was released on Frictional Games' YouTube channel.[24][25] It showed various scenes from the game, from industrial settings to more studious rooms. In the final shot, the character wakes up to the sound of an enemy breaking down a door making pig-like grunts and squeals. An unseen creature enters the room, its shadow is cast against the back wall as the player hides under a set of stairs.
On 31 October 2012, to coincide with Halloween, a second trailer was posted on Frictional Games' YouTube channel.[26][27] Many new features were shown, such as the updated lantern and the new voice for the main character. The trailer also shows the protagonist being confronted by one of the enemies in the game.
Reception
| [hide] Reception | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Aggregator | Score |
| GameRankings | 72.46%[29] |
| Metacritic | 72/100[30] |
| Review scores | |
| Publication | Score |
| Edge | 7/10[31] |
| Eurogamer | 7/10[32] |
| Game Informer | 7.75/10[33] |
| GameSpot | 8/10[34] |
| IGN | 8.3/10[35] |
| PC Gamer (US) | 89/100[36] |
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs received mixed to positive reviews from critics. It has an aggregate score of 72.46% on GameRankings[29] and 72/100 on Metacritic.[30] Eurogamer gave A Machine for Pigs a score of 7 out of 10, noting that it "will absolutely keep you fed".[32] GameSpot gave the game a score of 8 out of 10, saying that while it's a "captivating adventure", it is also "a very dark and disturbing one that touches on depressing real-world themes and doles out psychological horror along with monsters and gore".[34] Edgemagazine wrote that "A Machine For Pigs will prove divisive among fans of Frictional Games' much-lauded original".[31] Jim Rossignol of Rock, Paper, Shotgun noted in his review of A Machine for Pigs that it "is a marvellous, revolting, disturbing sequel to Dark Descent".[37]PC Gamer's T.J. Hafer expressed his opinion that A Machine for Pigs adds to the palette ofThe Dark Descent's "helplessness to explore the emotion of fear". Hafer also added that the game "will hold your head underwater until you’re about to drown and then bring you back up for air, again and again".[36] A writer for Game Informer said that The Chinese Room "proves once again that it has wonderful, affecting stories to tell and can create environments that ooze atmosphere", also adding that while having trouble "giving into the scares", it "will still rattle of the faint of heart". He criticized the game however, saying that it is "hard to remain frightened while exploring the factory when you feel like the game is pulling punches".[33] Jim Sterling of Destructoid said that "if you want to be told a vexingly bizarre story presented with a real sense of style, The Chinese Room may have exactly what you want". He also said that "if you're a massive survival horror fan who wants to be made to scream, however, you probably want to stick your snout in someone else's offal".
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