You got your grab bag of grindhouse horror archetypes but no sense of direction or purpose to how they interact with the protagonist or set the tone or pace of the game. You could argue that this was intentionally jarring due to the context the protagonist is in and the revelations about what's going on, but I think that's a lazy ass copout that handwaves what's essentially two bad stories bolted together.Ĭult stuff is so nothing that it doesn't seem worth commenting on. There were a couple moments there that were kind of chilling but they really milked it far longer than they needed to and the two narratives clashed together so hard despite the thematic elements that bound them together. You could chop those down by at least 50% and you'd be telling an identical story with less redundancy. The school stuff had potential but they just keep destroying the pacing of the game to essentially relay the same information over and over again, a majority of the time without any threats or meaningful interaction. Just random bullshit ending for the internet to speculate over. It touches on so many themes like religion and child abuse but it doesn't do anything with them and it doesn't resolve them in a meaningful way either. While the first game did the run and hide thing pretty well, I think Outlast 2 needed to add something more to it rather than just double down but with worse level design and chase sequences. I played through the first game and whistleblower 3 or 4 times. I love the art direction and horror in the game to the point where I want to play it again solely for the imagery but I just can't bring myself to do it. The cherry on top is the story isn't even satisfying. Okay, but we never established this as a mechanic prior, and when I die there because I didn't know what to do, that is bad design. Midway through the game you have to mash a button to kick the floor in to hide underground. Buttons that do things at one point and never do it again. Poor use of lighting to guide the player to the next objective, leading to chase sequences ending in frustration and memorization rather than the tense exciting moments they should. My gosh what a frustrating experience Outlast 2 is. I could definitely see the potential for people having wildly different experiences being higher in Outlast 2 thanks to the more open areas, though, so insofar as anyone had a bad time *because* of that, it's understandable that mileage may vary since Outlast 1 was an extremely linear, claustrophobic game by comparison. That being said, it lacked the high highs of something like Whistleblower, and its lowest point was probably in hindsight a bit worse than anything in all of them. I also loved the school stuff, and felt that the game had a steadier presentation or mix of violence and gore with the horror.
#OUTLAST 2 PLOT HOW TO#
For me, though, it was mostly that the levels were larger in general, but the design of those levels very naturally took the player through them even though you constantly felt "lost." It's kind of a masterclass, actually, in how to direct the player through a potentially confusing environment. I'm probably in the minority on this one: I thought Outlast 2 was fantastic, a step above the original in most ways.
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