Frictional Games have become a game developer synonymous with the horror genre, but it truly rose to fame with its Amnesia series and the surge in popularity due to Let's Plays on YouTube. Since then, Amnesia has accrued itself a cult following and a total of three entries within its series, and while one of those may have been from a different developer, its legacy remains as prevalent. But while these games share a number of similar narrative beats, mechanics, and themes, each one bears its own unique story, making the games more like cousins than siblings.
With the latest entry Amnesia: Rebirth demonstrating that the series is alive and well in Frictional Games' hands, even in spite of several years' absence, the studio should start to consider reframing the series' overarching narrative to provide a foundation for future games to work from. Until now the games have been able to work independently on their own with the association of the franchise to support them, but moving forward, Amnesia should take advantage of the lore the series has created as well as the current multiverse trend across gaming.
A Shared Story
Between the three current Amnesia games, a web of connections and similarities emerges upon closer inspection. For example, the games share a breadth of mechanics, chief among which is the player's sanity. First popularized by the likes of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, one of Amnesia's core mechanics is the need to avoid witnessing things that might psychologically damage the character. To compliment this, the games' protagonists suffer from amnesia to some extent, true to the series namesake, often a symptom of the feelings of grief, trauma, anxiety, and fear they carry with them and triggered by some horror they attempted to face.
While this alone could allow the series to continue akin to a Dark Pictures-style anthology with tales of protagonists on the brink of madness as they struggle against supernatural horrors, it's Amnesia's deeper application of its lore and mechanics that suggests there's more of a canonical thread underlying the series. Vitae is a chemical seen across all three games, and while its vaguely understood and can only be obtained through torturing others, it is always shown to have life-preserving properties. Given that all three games share this chemical and its abstract, metaphysical nature, implies that there is a greater connection between them all than just the gimmick of memory loss and trauma.
Amnesia's Interdimensional Background
Starting the series, Amnesia: The Dark Descent broke new ground for psychological horror, ultimately revitalizing a genre that had begun to flag. Between the game's novel mechanics and unraveling mystery pieced together through flashbacks and diary entries, it took the player through a story that blended science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Progressing through the game alludes to Alexander being from another dimension, and his efforts to return there is what leads to the events of the game. Little else is shared about what dimension Alexander comes from, how he arrived in the player's dimension, or where the technology to travel across dimensions came from.
Amnesia: Rebirth goes one step further beyond this, however, and introduces a race or people known as "The Gate Builders," who appear to be intimately familiar with interdimensional travel as well as how to best source and use vitae. Rebirth's story follows Tasi as she becomes embroiled in the Gate Builder's affairs when it's revealed that their Empress, turned infertile by the vitae, wants Tasi's child. It would appear that the interdimensional technology seen in The Dark Descent could have come from these Gate Builders, and this could imply that there are more dimensions beyond those seen in The Dark Descent or Rebirth that could be explored.
A future Amnesia entry could therefore take full advantage of this allusion to an interdimensional multiverse, where a story could take advantage of the technology provided by the Gate Builders, or more directly involve the Gate Builders once again. Given that Frictional Games now has an extensive legacy behind it of well-renowned horror games, including its unique game Soma, it remains to be seen if the studio will continue its Amnesia series right away or if it will focus on other projects first.
Amnesia: Rebirth is available for PC and PS4.
