𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐲 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐨𝐧
#𝟏𝟎 𝐀𝐦𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐚: 𝐀 𝐌𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐢𝐠𝐬

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is a bad sequel. Compared to Dark Descent it has no item management, no inventory, less stuff you can interact with in the environment, a significantly shorter run time, and much MUCH simpler puzzles. It took most of the aspects I liked from Dark Descent and threw them all away to make a horror game trapped inside of a walking simulator. Now here’s the real interesting question, why do I like this more then Dark Descent?

Realistically I should be annoyed or even angry that my favorite aspects of DD are missing and have been replaced with the “horror” and narrative of the game primarily. But here’s the thing, DD had an amazingly beautiful and spooky mood and architecture; but besides a few areas near the beginning and last hour of the game I can’t remember the details of each area, and I’m gonna be real here chief I don’t think any of the monster look scary in DD. Now put that into context for AMFP, not only do I love the setting more than DD (turn of the century Victorian London is one of my favorite places in historic storytelling) but I love the architecture and scope of the titular machine.

In DD Brennenburg castle was a joy to get lost in but a huge complacent I still have with it is that after a while the dark cobblestone halls or the bloody dungeons all start looking kinda samey. I’m not saying they look bad on an artistic level but just after more then 7 or so hours of exploring this castle all the areas start bleeding together in my head, and I just finished the game a few weeks ago. In comparison I find the incomprehensive large machine I explore left me with a much more long lasting sense of dread and horror. The sound of the hissing and groning of this machine as I plunged ever deeper into the darkness never failed to unnerve me and make me feel small and insignificant. This machine is so large and wide reaching I left almost like a small insect crawling deeper and deeper into a lovecraftian nightmare. I’m not normally scared of things like gore or monsters or even psychological horror to an extent; no what I’m more afraid of is something I don’t know if you’d call relatable or pathetic but it’s darkness, I know that sounds stupid like yeah no shit everyone is afraid of darkness it's a basic human fear; but I don’t know how to explain it but the darkness is just something that creeps me out. It’s that pitch black nothingness that really gets to me, that sense of anything could be out there, that feeling of hopelessness closing in around you suffocating the last bastion of life before nothing is left, the quiet emptiness; that’s what scares me, DD didn’t really give me that vibe shockley but AMFP absolutely did.
The machine itself is loud, large, and claustrophobic, as you enter the church where your descent begins the quiet night of the london night and the moonline that beamed down upon you disappears, replace with the sounds of firing pistons, grinding gears,, squealing sounds from inhuman monsters, and the hissing of steam from the pips. The longer you descend into a monstrosity of copper and steel the darker it gets, with the only light coming from your lantern reflecting on the hot metal of the machine as everything else is drowned out by the machine, it a literal descent into the man made hell of our protagonist much more so than daniel’s decent in DD.

Maybe I’m on some strong ass copium but idk I just really liked this game man. Sure it’s not a great sequel to DD but honestly I’d love it if this series went the way of what John Carpenter tried to do with the Halloween series after Halloween 2. Instead of each game being a sequel to one another following the same world, lore and monsters, I’d love to see something more like what AMFPs tried to do. Reincorporating some of the same ideas and cour themes from DD but spinning off and making your own thing completely with a new setting, monsters, and story, something like Creepshow or Twilight Zone but for video games. I’m pretty sure an idea like that would never work for video games since gamers are entitled little shits but I think if executed the right way an idea like that has potentially boundless potential, yeah I know there are 2 other sequels in this series that I’m pretty sure fellow in the same world and lore of DD; what with all the lovecraftian orbs and interdimensional ghost bullshit. But I’m serious, an idea like that could potentially be a gold mine of creative ideas to flourish not just for Amnesia.

Atmosphere, sound, music, and presentation are all great here and I'd say better than the Dark Descent. Even the writing (as much as it spews the themes) is good and I'd say an improvement that ends far better and is paced better too. The trade off is it's much more linear and lacking in complexity in the gameplay so no sanity or inventory management. When it comes to "enemy encounters" they're serviceable at best but they lack punch. The real horror comes from the well constructed tension and air that the machinery around you is alive and ominously waits for you to press on. And you will it's very hard to pull yourself away when death lingers but doesn't entirely threaten you because the gameplay isn't constructed to make you feel threatened directly. It feels like the best game of the series in most ways but the gameplay is too lacking and striped back to make it really special.

This game is the pig. We are all the pig.

There are some pretty epic setpieces in the latter half of the game and one epic monster encounter, but otherwise this game is kinda boring and poorly thought out. 99% of the story is in the notes, but they are all paragraphed poorly with a small typeset in the shittiest font possible which resulted in me usually not reading the notes.

The guy literally calls it a "machine for pigs" though, so props for that.

Is this Amnesia: The Dark Descent 2? No.

Is this a (mostly) walking sim that has kind of a bad start but a good ending? Yes.

Are the monster models extremely goofy looking? Also yes.

Kind of a "one step forward, two steps back" deal. The Chinese Room did a pretty stellar job on the writing here, and I found some of the existential horrors of the third act (particularly the Pig Den) to be just as if not more effective at inducing existential dread than some of the peaks of The Dark Descent. The whole central metaphor of the "Machine for Pigs" ended up being quite impressive and thought-provoking after TDD's relatively straightforward story, so I gotta give props where they're due.

But the gameplay has been utterly and disappointingly defanged, and the scares feel repetitive and inert compared to the last game. The lack of a death mechanic robs the game of a lot of tension, and there's only so many times I can see an enemy scurry across the threshold of a room I'm about to enter before it just gets tiring. I actually quite like the atmospherics and designs of the pig men, and the game does pick up once the attack on London starts, but there's a pervasive sense that there are essential pieces missing that would help make this feel more like a proper horror experience. There's a fantastic post-mortem you can find that explains the various mechanics that got left on the cutting room floor (like a sanity meter replacement and more difficult enemy encounters), and I can't help but wish we'd gotten to see that version of the game rather than the limp experience we ended up playing.

Ultimately, I think this is still a worthwhile experience for those that loved the first game and want to see more of this universe, but I also can't blame anyone who finds this to be a disappointing follow up to a modern horror classic.

SPOILERS:

I also have a couple questions about how this lines up with TDD as a sequel, with my main one being: where the hell is the Shadow? The last act all but spells out that Mandus found an orb down in Mexico, but like...isn't the whole deal of the Shadow that it hunts down folks who take the orbs? Wasn't Daniel's entire plight in TDD predicated on him having brought the orb back with him after his expedition? I keep imagining this giant industrial setting being slowly consumed by the Shadow's fleshy trail and can't help but feel a bit cheated.

And how exactly was Magnus getting vitae to make his Compound X for the pig men? The story makes it clear he was grinding up the rich for meat and turning the disabled and disenfranchised into pigs, but how did he even know how to cultivate the amount of vitae necessary to build the massive army he cultivated? There's a note that suggests he managed to get the body of a grunt from Castle Brennenburg for study, but that just makes me wonder how he even knew what went down there. Maybe the Machine consciousness told him? The whole nature of the "soul split" is kind of unclear, so maybe the answer is there and I just didn't pick up on it.

I guess these aren't plot-breaking questions or anything, but the pieces of this game and its predecessor don't fit together as neatly as I'd like. If anyone has answers let me know because I'm going to end up making my brain hurt trying to figure it all out.

i was receptive to a more narrative based Amnesia title where monster encounters and puzzles took a backseat but this one didn't turn out too well. what little bit of both of those elements the game did have was usually so poor that i would've preferred to not have them at all.

monster designs are okay at a glance, potentially better than ones found in The Dark Descent but from a gameplay standpoint it's a miss. if i'm correct, most of the enemies except for one or two near the end that randomly teleport move on a direct patrol/line which makes them a non-factor.

similarly the puzzles here end up being a lot of carrying objects from one room to another then flipping some switches which is a bummer as the last game had some interesting physics based stuff.

i like some of the aesthetics and the story itself is interesting at times but i'll probably never want to actually play this again.

I came into this honestly expecting something pretty terrible, but this game greatly surprised me. Yes it does remove a lot of the staples of amnesia, only really fitting into the series with small bits of The Dark Descents identity thrown in and some slight inclusion of story from the broader universe. The game is also highly linear, with few sections where you have some freedom to run and hide from the monsters. Without any inventory, resource management, or sanity system the gameplay consists mostly of walking, solving pretty basic puzzles, and hiding / running from monsters. Missing the deeper aspects of TDDs gameplay does hurt the game a bit, but it still is enjoyable to play, and personally hiding from the monsters felt more scary as they don't disappear right after you hide every time, which makes them a bit more of a present threat. Though the real joy for me came from the absolutely amazing atmosphere, and the surprisingly rich story told. The voice acting is actually quite great, and is definitely superior to TDD in that regard. The atmosphere creates some incredible environments, and delving deeper and deeper into this sprawling machine as more dark details unfold is a very interesting experience. As a whole the game is less frightening than TDD, and the monsters less threatening overall. But I feel there are still some great scares here, and some sections where tension is really well built. A Machine for Pigs may not surpass TDD, but it does a lot on its own that makes it a worthy experience nonetheless, especially if you want an interesting story that has some good commentary and some Lovecraftian elements