Hey guys, hope you are doing good.
So, I finished this game a while back and wanted to give out my opinions about the game. It’s backstory, environment, characters, objectives, the chase phases, and it’s ending.
Trager
Source
This takes place in the 20th century, Leadville, Colorado where another journalist gave a tip about this place to me, Miles Upshur, another journalist. Tasked to find the ins and outs of the mysterious abandoned Asylum. The young journalist fires up his car and sets out for the place. With him was his indispensable tool, his camera that had night vision. The environment contained both lightning and sun set. Both were in the opposite sides of the Asylum portraying a ghastly message. It suggested the end of good and the commencement of grim future. Outside was 2 army vehicles, abandoned as usual. He opens the iron gate to get inside the asylum, through the wooden planks that lifted him to the third story side after vaulting and climbing. He finds a half dead soldier in a spike who suggested him to get the fuck out of the place while he still could. He didn’t listen and being a good journalist he had to get to the bottom of it. Outside was a sick and brute manic who roamed the place in search of a prey, name was Chris Walker. He had many encounters and run-ins with this guy along with many more characters. The place had many types of mad people, pretty obvious as he WAS inside an asylum that was infamous for hosting government secrets and more. But, the main thing that set apart these people from your average mentally I’ll patients was that they were test subjects… for the government’s secret experiments. Some include MK Ultra experiments where the use of electroshock, hallucinogenic drug and sleep deprivation was used on the poor people in an effort to attain mind control but they failed. In this game however, they showed that they had succeeded in attaining one such entity who would be controlled, super powerful, and best of all is that this was an apparition so no one can hurt him. The name of the creature is the Walrider, he is smart, powerful, and would do anything to get what is wants but it had a condition. He needs a host to fully function and not any host would do. He needs a host who meets a certain criteria: a person who would look into the abyss and would still have the optimistic heart. To survive excruciatingly painful torture and still not lose his sanity, and at the end of the day; be a courageous person with a powerful mind and heart. There was one such individual who did meet the criteria, Chris Walker a.k.a Walker, but he was not sane. These were the same requirements that Billy passed when he obtained that ability. Chris Walker and the Walrider go way back. The Walrider was an experiment where the experimenters sought the power of the meta physical in a sense. They were after the ability of mind control through torture and making mad people. They had a poor sod in their clutches who thought that he was ensuring the future treatments of his mother who had died just a few days earlier and so began his trials. He was contained in a life pod and a machine as big as a football stadium was used to keep him alive, he was the real Walrider but his soul was the terroriser who leapt out of him. To contain him Walker killed many potential hosts inside the Asylum. He escapes the patients and lunatics and the walrider until he found the one responsible for all the happenings, Dr. Wernicke. He was the one who created the Walrider. Billy aka Walrider saw the dr/scientist as a father but he was the torturer, experimenter. Talk about a heightened Stockholm syndrome. The scientist further explained how the Walrider had sympathy for the journalist and the only way to end him would most likely kill the journalist as well. That would be to disable the life pod functions through the computer by the main hall where Billy’s body was kept. For that to happen he had to disable the life pod failsafe and then cut off the oxygen supply. The Walrider threw Miles off the 7th storey level where the pipe to disable the functions were. That scene shook him up real good, he barely could walk and see. His camera was cracked by the edge and he still had the determination to do what was right. But after disabling the life pod and Billy was nearing his end.
Just before dying Billy Hope made the Walrider enter into the journalist himself. The long night was over for the Miles as he went outside the place with the Walker and Rider gone, shaking the way. But for him awaited a squadron of swat team who trained their guns on him. Dr. Wernicke asked the Lord for help as the Walrider finally had a body, Miles became the Walrider.
The team fired their weapon leaving him in a pool of blood, his blood and him in the centre. Moments later he rose up from the dead and attacked the group of men along with the Dr. Everybody died and Miles most likely was unleashed upon the world just what Father Martin wanted.
(Taken from my own gameplay)
The character’s description of the place at first glance. There are no guns in the game so there was no point in trying to fight them. The best he could do is run and hide from the lunatics.
You could tell by the signs given off in the early game to turn back but the journalist had to brave the journey.
(The Walrider, nannites)
Father Martin on the other hand was a encouraged and shoved Miles Upsher toward the Walrider as to unleash to the full power of the Walrider in the world. That is why he continuously sabotaged all the equipment and keys for Miles. So that he had to take the rougher route and be more refined as a host for the Walrider. He wanted to play the role of Jesus Christ, selecting Miles as his conveyer of message to the world just like Jesus had Paul. This was why when Miles reached a certain point in the asylum Martin saw that his work was done. So he called Miles to the 3rd floor where he would die like Jesus died and rise again life Jesus rose(according to him).
When the fire was lit he truly understood what it felt to be burned, that he wouldn’t be coming back.
The lunatics were all around, watching as the life went out of the Father’s body, glued to their spot as the Father wanted no hindrances. He wanted to join the divinity and also wanted Miles to the whole world about the asylum, Miles wrote in his notes that he would surely tell the “whole world” when he would get out of the sick place. Chris Walker wanted to foil it but he was killed by the Walrider so the only thing left was for Miles to take in the apparition.
There were mad patients who believed in the father and thought that he was some sort of messiah to the point where they started to pray!
He met the doctor Richard Trager aka Rick after escaping Walker and 2 other unstable patients. Trager was the real antagonist who tortured Miles Upsher in order to know more about the human biology, how pain made people stronger and better. His research was cut short when was crushed underneath an elevator during a vicious chase of him and Miles.
Chris Walker, a mutant looking person who self mutilated himself. He cut off his own lips and nose due to anxiety. I myself did some research and saw that he was an ex-military police. He wanted to keep things in control but Miles was one such person who he failed to control and so he had to pay for it with his life.
Aside from Walker, there were more patients who had done the same. Self mutilation where they cut off their own mouth and nose.
(Dr. Wernicke explaining their work scene)
Dr. Rudolph Wernicke, the person responsible for the creation of the Walrider, little robotic spheres or something similar called nanites. He experimented on the patient named Billy Hope who went on and learned how to fully control the nannites. As they are very small in size they can be seen as an apparition, a black shadow that could be seen when up close or using the camcorder’s night vision, the Walrider. They taught Billy how to manifest in the micro bots: from walking to fighting flying Billy learned it all. These bots are very strong hence they cannot be demolished so easily. He did say to the journalist that in order to end the Walrider he would also have to die, the Walrider needed a host and so he could not live to see after he had done the deed.
This section would cover the setting in the asylum. We can see throughout the game that there were some patients were rooted to a spot, in a wheelchair, bed, or sitting at the edge part above an entrance gate to some who leapt out of nowhere and would scare the shit out of people, I was so I would know 😅. There were some truly bizarre ones who would randomly wander about in the most unconventional areas life outside the window of a 3rd story building, walking by it’s edge. There were multiple scenes where pools of blood, organs, to the self mutilating scenes were witnessed in the game suggesting that they were in their ultimate form of brokenness. There was a fountain of blood, the most awe causing scene by far. So many victim’s blood to make a such a cesspool of blood made the journalist smell iron in the air. “Like putting a penny in one’s mouth” written in Miles’ notes about the fountain. Trails of blood is the most common thing around the asylum showing that dragging a wounded or killed person was an everyday thing, or so it looked for me. I saw that many of the patients were butt-naked. The underground sewage lines were also hectic in the ward sections. I personally hated it as a lunatic chased me all the way after turning on a valve with bare minimum amount of light in the area. My batteries ran out like quarters in an arcade zone. But got through that area after dying 2 times.
The part where I truly felt helpless. This was where my(Miles’) camera fell from the 3rd floor to the 1st floor. I was afraid of the dark as I didn’t want any more jump-scare with my camera’s night vision missing.
Wanted to keep things PG but had to show that these patients were stripped of the social norm and were guided by other mentally ill to “function” the asylum.
The main objective of Miles changed in the middle part where from trying to get more intel about the place led him to wanting to get out of the place. From there again he found some leads to finding more about the asylum’s history and a living scientist who was a testimony to the brutal treatments of the patients to disabling the creature that the scientist and his team had created through some math equations that would allow a person, who would be on the verge of complete madness, be able to control the Walrider through lucid dreaming i.e mind control ability. There were some equations that were told to be the key to turn a person into a nightmare factory as written in Miles’ notes.
The Morphogenic Engine would turn on due to some mathematical lines, an algorithm that would turn them into a lunatic who would have the ability to control The Walrider.
Personally, I was ok the whole time as in my mind I knew that there must be a way out, I can find it, it’s only a matter of time. My friend who accompanied me was the one to freak out as his past trauma of the game was reignited. If you go through all my past game sessions you can see that each time he visited me I streamed it and another friend of our chimed in on stream. I could see his shaking and fear as I was running
away from the deranged patients. He has bad spatial awareness than me so that reacting is normal when coming from him, imagine a 14-year-old playing this game at 2am with zero knowledge about the location. That was what triggered him… after finishing he said that I did great.
I was satisfied with the ending after I got to know more about the game from both my own research and my friend’s knowledge in it. I am psyched to play the DLC Whistleblower as it is sure to contain “hugs” as told by one of my friends. The part after the swat team fire at Miles was where I was confused as to why would they turn on Miles but then I heard the old scientist cry with awe saying that the Miles himself turned into the Walrider. Smacking and crunching of bones was heard after the screen went from red to dark.
I do have Outlast 2 in my library and plan to play it the next time my friend visit me after the DLC content, until then,
