I found this setup uncomfortably easy to get immersed in-the researchers imposing this "therapy" on you speak in a general enough language that I felt it pass through the character I was playing as and peering right into some of the most repressed parts of myself, a level of fear and emotional involvement I was completely unprepared for.Īll of the above comes to a sudden, anti-climactic ending, with you being sucked down a pneumatic tube into one of the saddest social hubs I've ever seen in a game. The first step of this process, as your smoke-spewing therapist loves to remind you, is being broken down, and you enter this world with a believably shattered sense of self. That tonal ambiguity is one of the keys to The Outlast Trials' terror. It's never totally clear if you're someone truly harboring a secretive past, burdened by an undeserved guilt, or are just some everyman getting gaslit to serve as a control subject. The opening level is a a faux plantation manor adorned with animatronic exhibits of the burdens you must be dispossessed of in the "Trials": your youth, your piety, your dreams, all for a chance at rebirth. The Cold War setting and allusions to the disturbingly real MKULTRA and Operation Paperclip programs anchors it to our horrifying reality, with the test chambers you navigate often resembling underground counterparts to those fake cities built to test the effects of nukes, a " Nuketown" if you will. This brand of psychiatric violence really cut through to me in a way that stands very much apart from other horror games.
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