From Tide to Spine: My Thoughts on ‘Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs’.
Last week, I wrote a blog where I discussed my thoughts on ‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’ and it’s DLC ‘Amnesia: Justine’. I will leave a link of that blog for you to read at your own leisure, preferably before you read this one as I will refer to the previous game a bit throughout this blog and for those in the unknown, bits of this may fly over your head without the forewarned knowledge.
When ‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’ was released almost a decade ago (at the time of typing), it received critical acclaim with consistent praise given for its ominous atmosphere and horror elements. I am not one to shy away from such praise myself, as that was one of many things I waffled on about (see above link). As a cowardly custard who is new to properly experiencing the horror genre in video games, I loved this game's narrative, it’s Lovecraftian influences and morbidly brilliant sound design. All of these things made me scream loudly on more than one occasion as well as the need to piss myself, even though I deliberately avoided the intake in all fluids whilst playing this game. ‘The Dark Descent’ has gone onto many peoples top terrifying games lists, been nominated for a good handful of awards and was also the game that propelled PewDiePie’s career as a YouTuber, a time where filming yourself play video games was still a weird thing to do. Whether that last one is a good thing or not is up to you…
Three years on and a sequel was released titled, ‘Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs’ and whilst I cared not for it at the time, I knew how well ‘The Dark Descent’ had been praised and could imagine how the fans of the first game would have been feeling one of two emotions:
- Excited because a cracking good horror game they loved was getting a sequel.
- Terrified, not just because of what nasties were going to scare them, but the fact that their entire life savings were going to be spent on more toilet paper for intense crying, and underwear for extreme soiling of the ones already owned.
As you may know, ‘Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs’ received good praise from critics, but did not live up to the hype and expectations from everyone else who played it. The general consensus from the fanbase of the Amnesia games is that ‘A Machine for Pigs’ is not as good as it’s predecessor and therefore is a bad game because of it. I will admit that when I first heard about this game from friends and reviewers at the time, it didn’t sound particularly fantastic to me, despite being nominated and winning far more awards than ‘The Dark Descent’.
But that was five years ago, and my appreciation in games have matured in that time and I have to admit I am rather fond of this game, despite its flaws. Hopefully, I can convince you to at the very least give the game a go as I pull it apart and put it back together again.
There are some mild SPOILERS from this point onward. Consider this your warning folks!
In terms of plot, ‘A Machine for Pigs’ is very similar to the plot of ‘The Dark Descent’ to the point where it very nearly the same. You are a very British person, this time called Oswald Mandus, who has Amnesia, who has to make his own dark descent to find his children Edwin and Enoch. Whilst you are entitled to believe that they are alive throughout most of your playthrough, anybody who paid attention to its creepy opening will know very much they are both dead, which ruins a lot of the suspense created as you explore this new environment searching for said children. The game does reveal to you later on that they both very much dead, despite their creepy ‘follow us daddy’ dialogues all the way through and little snippets of their little bodies running along in the dark, but the shock of it is ruined because of its introduction. The sense of mystery in that part of the game’s narrative is pretty much ruined, something the devs for this game would repeat later in their next game in 2015.
This would be a good point to mention that the developers of the game were not Frictional Games (who developed ‘The Dark Descent’) but it was The Chinese Room, who were responsible for ‘Dear Esther’ and would later make ‘Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture’, which is a story-based game, taking place in a small English village whose inhabitants have mysteriously disappeared. Like ‘A Machine for Pigs’, most of the mystery is gone very early on. This one, however, spoils a huge chunk of the story without you even playing the game. All you have to do to spoil things for yourself is read the bloody title! This is a masterclass in how NOT to write a mystery story, just by openings alone. That said, where the rest of mystery lies in how the children die and residents disappear, in their respective titles.
It was worth noting the different developers early on as that explains a lot of the changes made to this game and some of the elements that stayed beside the amnesia and Britain as the location. ‘A Machine for Pigs’ uses the same engine as the previous game (the HPL Engine in case you were interested) and shares a similar look, but with some slight polishing. Like before you are armed with a lantern, which this time does not need oil and you never have to worry about topping it up. You are no longer riddled with a sanity meter either. Both of these removals were criticised by many upon its release, as they made the game less scary. Concerning the lack of sanity meter, I was actually quite grateful that it went. This is one thing I said about the inclusion of a sanity meter in last week’s blog about ‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’:
I don’t like games that tell me how I feel about something. Especially with this game, where it is not needed at all. The street knows how terrified I am playing this game, as they probably hear my girlish screams. I don’t need the game being unsupportive to me as well! — Daniel Mayfair, 2018
Whereas I don’t usually like a game telling me how to feel about something simply because of some arbitrary number, ‘The Dark Descent’ puts a twist on things by discouraging you to look at the monsters as they become aware of your presence and whimpering of Daniel (the ‘protagonist’ of the previous game) and the monsters will run after you and tear you apart, thus adding in some level of mystique to your foes, as you rarely get the chance to look at them. With ‘A Machine for Pigs’, you are free to stare at your porcine makers to your heart’s content, which I actually prefered. For example, towards the end of the Factory Sewers section, you see quite a lot of these pigs from a safe distance. They were sat and standing around a large table, feasting on what I can only presume is human flesh. You explore this are and you find their resting chambers, some playing with children blocks that made me question the origins of the pigs and how they came to be. It should be noted that in any other area of the game, the light from your lantern will get their attention and cause them to attack, so keep that in mind.
Looking at the piggies also causes your lantern to flicker whenever you look at them, which both adds and removes a layer of fear as you are aware of the monster and some level of mystery is removed. In the previous game, you had no idea where the monsters could show up and were constantly checking everywhere for them. Here, you merely have to look at your lantern and see how much it is blinking, which is a bit of a shame really. Granted, you can’t rely solely on this method, as it does flicker during some particular moments of the game when something else spooky is going on. On the ‘Amnesia: Collection’ for the PS4, the flickering lantern causes the light on the controller to blink in time with the lantern, which drains the battery like there is no tomorrow. As you can tell, that little ‘immersion’ annoyed me more than impressed me, especially as the sudden death of my controller resulted in my demise one occasion toward the beginning of my playthrough. If that was the intention, then good on you Chinese Room!
Whilst on the topic of pigs, dehumanisation is the main theme of the game, with the pig motif being done to death. Rather than let the player guess the meaning behind the motif, the game would much rather tell you through every recording, diary entry and conversations between Oswald and The Machine in which you are exploring to ‘save’ your children and avoid pigs. It is a shame, as it is quite a clever motif otherwise. Should you make an effort to read all the documents, listen to the recordings, discover how the pigs came to be and the one thing that connects this game to ‘The Dark Descent’, things will begin to make a bit of sense.
I would recommend going on this scavenger hunt as not only will the game's plot won’t leave you in the dark, but chances are you won’t get bored as there is not a lot to do. The puzzles that I spoke of in the previous blog have all been butchered (pardon the pun) and the most complicated puzzles you have to do is to carry one physics-based object from one room to the next. In fact, almost all the puzzles consist of this, as you no longer have an inventory to collect and combine certain items to use in creative manners to achieve objectives and avoid death for a few seconds longer. Weirdly, I am grateful for this removal, as it was enough on my poor brain worrying about monsters, let alone mild puzzle solving to make me feel bad also.
There was one instance where I fell down some hole in the latter part of the game and as I was falling, I had no idea how I would get out of it. As I touched the ground and took damage, I saw a ladder and knew that I had to throw one of the rocks in this pit with me and dislodge said ladder, as there was a similar puzzle in ‘The Dark Descent’. This thought process happened in a second or so, but the game decided that was too long for me to work out what was going on and displayed a hint prompt telling me how to escape. I did not like this as I initially felt the game was calling me stupid, just like it had done all the way through with its pig metaphors. Perhaps I am easily offended by this and anyone who hadn’t played ‘The Dark Descent’ may have appreciated that, but it was something I remember feeling strongly about and wanted to make note of it.
On the topic of handholding, there are many pig masks around the map that you will probably see on your hunt for your children, that you can’t pick up or interact with. As well as being creepy, it didn’t take me too long to work out that they acted as breadcrumbs to the next part of the story. Again, I did not need the game to tell me where to go, especially how linear the game is. That, and I am a Dark Souls fan. I know the art of exploring my environment to reap as much of the goodies as humanly possible. Again, some players may appreciate this so I can’t be too frustrated at it, unfortunately.
‘A Machine for Pigs’ is far more linear than it’s predecessor and ‘The Dark Descent’ was pretty linear itself. To sum it up crudely, the game’s levels are more a sightseeing tour of weird and creepy Victorian machinery that will occasionally break off into three larger areas where you have to stealth around some piggies if you do not want to die. Whilst atmosphere built by the titular machine sends chills up the spine and the sound of squealing monstrosities resulted in my own squealing of ‘go away, go away, go away, go away’, I realised towards the end of my time with the game how infrequently I was in any real danger. At the time, I was ready to piss out of every orifice at the faintest whiff of pork sausage, but I can now count on one hand how many times I was in a situation where the pigs I could see could actually kill me. One thing I praised ‘The Dark Descent’ for was Frictional Games’ understanding of the less you see of the scary thing, the scarier it is. The Chinese Room teases the pigs constantly through this game and I eventually stopped being frightened of them unless I knew it was in the same room as me and not leaving said room.
Of course, as I was beginning not to be scared by the pigs, there are two late stages in the game where this rule did not apply and I loved it. The first is when the game reaches its climax and hell has broken loose on the streets of Victorian London. A whole manner of pigs are running through the streets, bursting into people’s houses, followed by man, woman and child screaming as these pigs begin the slaughtering of mankind. There are also a couple of pigs who chase after you during this section, seemingly out of nowhere. I believe it is only supposed to be the one pig, but I took a wrong turn and ran into a second piggy that chased me. Some might complain that this level of openness does not really suit the game’s engine (or at least how it has been implemented here) and you are not able to interact with any of the environment and said people. Whilst I understand some degree of criticism, I do not think that level of realism is required here, especially for what is happening in the story. “If the horror of innocents is supposed to horrify me,” Some may ask. “Wouldn’t seeing them before they are murdered might make it frightening?” Perhaps it would, but does that mean people can only be scared by people’s screams if they know them?
The other section I am referring to is right towards the end the game with the Tesla Pig, which you only encounter here as it teleports in and out of existence to places right next to you and chases you down a corridor. No, that is not a lie. It’s design and sudden introduction during this final part of the game, which for a time seems to be the safest part of the game was actually one of the most unpredictable and unpleasantly brilliant.
The soundtrack was composed by The Chinese Room’s in-house composer, Jessica Curry, who won a BAFTA for the music she composed for ‘Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture’. She also hosts her own radio show on Classic FM titled ‘High Score’ where she plays pieces of video game music. I have a lot of respect for her and the positive messages she puts out for the importance of video game music. I liked a lot fo the music from this game, but the music in ‘A Machine for Pigs’ is swamped by creepy metallic soundscapes that are rather unpleasant to listen to on their own, but they work very well within the context of the game, to make you feel that the large machine you explore is very much alive and is plotting the end of the world as we know it.
I have to admit that I find the official soundtrack, as a product that you and I can purchase, to be rather odd. Not only does it contain the music that punctuates certain important points in the story, but all the soundscapes I just mentioned and some of the dialogue that takes place between Oswald and The Machine, Oswald and The Engineer and some of Oswald's self-monologues with spooky reverse reverb are found in the game. Concerning the soundtrack of ‘The Dark Descent’, I said the following:
Some of my favourite audio cues from the game are the many stingers, such as the ones that play when you find a diary entry or, weirdly enough, when a monster is about to show itself. None of these made of their way into the official soundtrack which, as a fan of the game, is a little bit upsetting. That being said, I can understand the professional decision not to do this is, as to release everything you hear would not be a soundtrack per se, but an archive which is not easy to market. —Danile Mayfair, 2018
From this, you can hopefully see that ‘A Machine for Pigs’ soundtrack is more archive than soundtrack. It makes sense, given the little music that is presented and is repeated when certain dialogues take place, so it may have been done to simply pad out the length of the soundtrack. This is just speculation mind you, as I am unsure as to why this has been done and I am unsure how I feel about it. The little music on the soundtrack is simply fantastic and I love every so often listening to the wonderful voice talents in this game…but I don’t really listen to these short snippets of dialogue when I am out and about, only at home when I treat the soundtrack like my own little archive.
It should also be mentioned that if you decide to play this game and listen to the soundtrack before or as you play it (detached from playing the game that is), that some of the tracks on the soundtrack that are actually spoilers, something that Jessica Curry addresses on her Bandcamp page.
*Tracks 47 & 48 should be listened to after completing the game* — Jessica Curry, 2013
Coda
I wish to remind you again that these two games were made by two different companies, each took a different approach to create their horrible stories and worlds. Frictional Games (creators of ‘The Dark Descent’) created a superb game that had a strong emphasis on its horror and suspense, with a good story on the back burner. The Chinese Room (‘A Machine for Pigs’ makers) made a wonderful game that had a very interesting story with horror on its back burner. That’s my take on it anyway. I really do recommend that you play these two games, with this mindset, so you can enjoy each game on its own merits.
If I were to choose one of the Amnesia titles that I enjoyed the most, I would find it very difficult to choose only one, as I enjoyed each one as much as the other for different reasons. Both games scared me in rather different ways. Both games had really engaging stories, but I feel somewhat drawn to ‘A Machine for Pigs’ more, minus the big blunder at the beginning at the game I already mentioned. ‘The Dark Descent’ has better puzzles…if only just.
If I were to rate this game out of 10, I would rate it <<insert pig metaphor here>>/10, as that is just as useful as a proper out of 10 score.
This is, of course, brings me to the end of my two blogs that explore my thoughts and opinions on ‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’, it’s DLC ‘Justine’ and ‘Amnesia: A Machine for Pig’, all played on the ‘Amnesia Collection’ on PS4. I have no idea how they differ from the originals on the PC, but what I do know is that I am done with horror for a while.
For my next blog, there will be no mentioning of pigs…but there will be a lot of sheep! Until then, here is my favourite cue from ‘A Machine for Pigs’, ‘Christ Have Mercy’.
What do you think of this game? Which Amnesia title do prefer? Have you managed to get the platinum for the ‘Amnesia Collection’ on PS4? If not, do you intend to? If so, why do you hate yourself so much? You don’t have to do this you know!
Let’s start a conversation, people!
