Disappointed with AAMFP

[Jacksendary]

Now, I haven't played it to the end yet, but I kinda think it's sad they removed the sanity feature as well as inventory and the scary of your lantern to go out. With that said, I do think that removing inventory and such does give you more focus on the story and I do like the AAMFP storyline slightly better than ATDD but over all ATDD have a better horror element I'd say

[VaeVictis]

Again, upon reading interviews and such, you'd see that they were toying the mechanics, as in, changing them. They never promised the exact same experience. The mechanics aren't the same because the game emphasizes story instead of survival.

1. Pinchbeck (February 2012): 'Pinchbeck explained that The Chinese Room tried to look at protecting the sense of it being an Amnesia game and really belonging to the design template that was set up by its predecessor'.

2. Pinchbeck (March 2012): 'I think the challenge for us is how do you retain the core kind of experience of playing Amnesia but have some new Inge [sic] going on in there that means you can't just settle in and go 'alright, I know how this works, I've done this before''.

3. Frictional (June 2012): 'Hope you'll enjoy the first peak [sic] at what AAMFP (http://aamfp.com) is shaping up to become'.

4. Pinchbeck (October 2012): ''There’s a definite case of 'don’t fix what isn’t broken''.

5. Pinchbeck (November 2012: 'It’s fairly true to the spirit of the original game'.

6. Pinchbeck (March 2013): 'I think this has ended up more of a natural successor to [Amnesia] Dark Descent than we ever thought it'd be'.

7. Pinchbeck (March 2013): 'Originally, we thought it'd be this halfway point between Dark Descent and Esther, but in a lot of ways, it's much more like Dark Descent'.

6. Pinchbeck (August 2013): 'Our initial hope was to have a game that was a cross between Amnesia and Dear Esther. As the project grew and got to be more than we initially thought it would be, it has turned to be more towards the Amnesia type of game'.

You're still implying that the inventory and and the ability to throw stuff was a critical part of the spirit of the game. But, you are entitled to have your opinion. This argument is going nowhere slowly.

---

The Machine is a living slaughterhouse. When you learn what it is and why it was built, you realize that its movement means death. Sure, it's vague in the beginning, but so is the Shadow in the beginning of TDD (and still is at the end).

Yeah but by the time the player comes across it, the Machine isn't killing anyone. Firstly it's out of operation, and even when the player activates it, the Machine isn't actually doing any killing. The conveyor belts are empty, yet inconsistently there's an occasional torso on the hooks, though the Iron Butler isn't carving anything up. There's also buckets of blood flowing here and there at various intervals, for no apparent reason. But the Machine is otherwise non-functional, and isn't killing anyone.

I'm rather finished trying to argue a moot point.

[Fortigurn]

You're still implying that the inventory and and the ability to throw stuff was a critical part of the spirit of the game.

No I am not. That was not the point of my post. The point of my post was to show that the reason why so many people expected X, was that the developers consistently spoke in such a way as to convince them to expect X. They did so increasingly as the game approached release, telling people it would be more like an Amnesia game than a Dear Esther game. So people expected a game which was more like an Amnesia game than a Dear Esther game. This expectation was the direct result of what they developers told them to expect.

I'm rather finished trying to argue a moot point.

Your point was that the noises made by the Machine indicates it's killing people. But it never kills anyone while the player is in the game.

[Diango12]

@Abraxas The point is not moot, you just refuse to accept that there were players who felt mislead by the marketing campaign for this game. I really don't know what to tell you.

[VaeVictis]

@Abraxas The point is not moot, you just refuse to accept that there were players who felt mislead by the marketing campaign for this game. I really don't know what to tell you.

I was referring to Machine vs. The Shadow argument, not the marketing issue. To feel gypped/misled is your prerogative.

[Cuyir]

On the Shadow versus Machine argument:

Spoiler below!

Fyi, after the London chase scene (when you have to sabotage The Machine) you can see hanged bodies (like how they hang cows and such at slaughterhouses) being taken from somewhere, burned and then moved down the line. By starting it, Mandus went through with his plan of turning everyone into pigmen/women and the already existing beasties went looking for people (ie all of them). Before they (Mandus and The Machine) only kidnapped a few and experimented, making sure their processes worked.

It also seems to be trying to kickstart itself from time to time beforehand, which is a sign that it's somehow sentient. If that's not creepy, I don't know what is. The Machine behaves differently than the Shadow. The Shadow was very Lovecraftian, while The Machine was just all the evil in Mandus (personal interpretation) given ''life''. Both were menacing in their own ways. Personally I stopped thinking about the Shadow a little bit halfway through TDD but I kept thinking about The Machine all throughout AMFP. That moment when I realized that all those slaughterhouse-like processes you kept hearing about were referring to the treatment of humans was chilling.

Personally I wish the Shadow was given a bit more time in-game. It seemed to only serve as a writer's mechanism to force Daniel into the castle

[Alardem]

The Machine is a creepy cosmic horror. First off, it was borne from a mysterious egg found in the ancient ruins of a culture devoted to human sacrifice. Secondly, some of its components appear not to have been made by any mortal man (its reactor explicitly resembles a giant heart) and it clearly possesses a life of its own.

It talks of bleaching the sky and stilling water, and of 'spinning the world wheel' - actions that it never manages to follow up on, but is likely to be capable of. I think of the messages from Justine, which say "Spin the wheel crank the engine" and "The Skinless One is waking", and smile to myself.

[Cuyir]

I probably should have read more on the ''egg'' then haha.

[Kreekakon]

Personally I wish the Shadow was given a bit more time in-game. It seemed to only serve as a writer's mechanism to force Daniel into the castle

This is basically what I take from TDD's dividing of antagonistic forces between Alexander, and the Shadow:

Alexander was the brains behind the evil operation, the minds, the one who taunts our hero, and has the motives that makes him the main villain.

The shadow on the other hand is the mysterious destructive force which we are intently kept in the dark with knowing about it, which is for the better I'm sure. It's meant to be taken as the real source of terror as the main unstoppable yet silently efficient force that hunts you down. It is the supernatural force of might that we are supposed to "truly" fear at our very core as opposed to the twisted atrocities Alexander has done.


In AMFP I feel that they were melding both these roles into on, taking form of the machine. The voice takes on the role of the diabolical mastermind while what he "does", through twisting his gears, and exhausting terrors onto the world fits the role of unstoppable force of nature that we fear at a primal level.

[Cuyir]

Personally I wish the Shadow was given a bit more time in-game. It seemed to only serve as a writer's mechanism to force Daniel into the castle

This is basically what I take from TDD's dividing of antagonistic forces between Alexander, and the Shadow:

Alexander was the brains behind the evil operation, the minds, the one who taunts our hero, and has the motives that makes him the main villain.

The shadow on the other hand is the mysterious destructive force which we are intently kept in the dark with knowing about it, which is for the better I'm sure. It's meant to be taken as the real source of terror as the main unstoppable yet silently efficient force that hunts you down. It is the supernatural force of might that we are supposed to "truly" fear at our very core as opposed to the twisted atrocities Alexander has done.


In AMFP I feel that they were melding both these roles into on, taking form of the machine. The voice takes on the role of the diabolical mastermind while what he "does", through twisting his gears, and exhausting terrors onto the world fits the role of unstoppable force of nature that we fear at a primal level.

Personally I got some Lovecraftian flashbacks to "The Shadow Out Of Time'' (the Shadow being the ancient Flying Polyps and Alexander being part of the Yith) but they never developed it. It just seemed to me like the writer went ''HRRRRRMMMMMM...how do I force Daniel into the Castle and keep prodding him to go deeper? I KNOW." A lost opportunity in my opinion.