As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!
Run
With added mechanical depth, Frictional Games haven't lost their edge. And you'll soon see why.
The Beast
- Two words: The Beast. A hulking, Body Horror ridden Implacable Man whose nightmarish visage is only outdone by its sheer animalistic brutality and the raw pants-shitting terror it will inflict upon the player, creating an antagonist who might just be one of, if not the single most horrifying monster Frictional has ever created.
- The Beast's design is the stuff of nightmares. Its skin is reddened, sore-covered, and splitting apart in areas, with blackened voids where its eyes should be, talon-like fingernails that give its bony hands an almost insectoid appearance, a bizarrely distended neck and massive, lopsided face with a jaw that runs halfway down the neck and a constantly screaming half-human face, the list goes on and on. For all the world, the Beast looks like the Baby from Resident Evil Village grew up.
- The way it moves is equally freaky, constantly fluttering between brutal simian knuckle walking and running like a big cat with an unreal, impossible grace, somehow managing to keep its massive neck and head completely straight as it charges. All while it's twitching violently like it's on the verge of puking or in incomprehensible pain.
- The noises it makes are basically what would happen if you combined the Servant Grunt's noises with that of the Harvester Ghoul's. And they're not pretty at all, with a constant sickly squelching sound as a backdrop to each, from the most minor of screeches to the most major of roars.
- The music for when this thing both stalks and chases you. Unlike previous games in the series, there's almost no recognizable beat or instruments, just a distorted siren and pounding, which in conjunction with the Terror Meter produces a positively unearthly sound.
- It's very telling that the German POW who wouldn't break under any torture the French soldiers gave him completely breaks down into a sobbing, pleading mess just from being in the bunker with this thing.
- The shrine it turns the Chapel into, which confirms this thing isn't just a mindless animal, but a monster who has just enough intelligence left to creatively murder people and string them around like disgusting art pieces.
- Worst of all? Not only was this godforsaken thing human before, but it was your best friend. And through the notes he left behind, you get an uncomfortably detailed look into how the transformation was for him. Have a read.Lambert: I feel strange myself. Can barely find the words to write. My hands feel so odd. Gnarled, bulbous. Like they don't belong to me. I hesitate to write this but a thought keeps echoing in my head. A thought I must not act on. A bloody thought so seductive. It calls... it calls... it calls....Lambert: Blood on my hands blood on my hands blood on my hands. Their pain. I want more of it.
- Should you escape the Bunker without killing the Beast, you're treated to the ominous sight of it escaping the Bunker alongside you, staring down at you as you lay in the crater... And then running off. What happens after that is left entirely up to the imagination, though considering that the German army is rapidly approaching it, it's safe to say it will be a massacre.
Everything Else
- The bunker itself gives off an eerie feeling right from the getgo, primarily because you wake up just as the Beast's rampage concludes, with dead bodies and blood splatters all over the walls. The claustrophobic, winding halls make you feel like you're being watched by... Something, regardless of what that may or may not be. This is bad enough, but occasionally hearing a gunshot or an explosion reminds you that yes, you are still in the middle of one of the bloodiest wars in human history.
- As per usual in Frictional's games, the lighting never ceases to be a source of pure, unfiltered terror. It is damn-near pitch black all over the place without the lights on, and even when they are on, it's incredibly difficult to see what the hell you're doing or where you're going. That flashlight you're given is woefully ineffective, not to mention loud, so the game is a constant, never-ending stressful stumble through the darkness.
- At a certain point, you'll end up finding a ladder that leads up to a sniper's nest, and for the first time since you started the game, you're finally given a taste of daylight... Only for an enemy sniper's bullet to just barely miss you, forcing you to stay crouched to avoid getting your head blown off.
- The rats. Massive, borderline skinless, and constantly feasting on corpses? Yes please! Investigation reveals that these rats were mutated with the same Harvester mutagen as the ghouls from the previous game, and the results are not pretty.
- Throughout the game, your safe room is, well, a safe haven. You can save, stock up on supplies, and most importantly remain safe from the Beast. That is, until a hole opens up. You know, the same holes the Beast travels through.
- Everything to do with the Roman Tunnels. From the familiar floating rocks, notes that speak of something horrible even before Lambert's transformation, the strange, shadowy figures that follow you, and so on. Oh, and there's an eyeless lunatic with a shotgun down there. And he's a vocal fellow, constantly muttering songs and rhymes that truly show the Sanity Slippage he's undergone, as detailed by the above mentioned notes. Even worse is that unlike previous games, you barely get any more information or get to explore more as to what happened here, giving the tunnels an unknowable feeling to them.
- Perhaps the scariest thing about this insane man is that, should he hear you, he suddenly goes dead silent, cocks his shotgun, and goes on the hunt for you.
- If you fall off the edge in the final segment of the game, you land in a pit, where a very familiar roar sounds off before what appears to be The Shadow of the Orb rushes down and kills you.
- The poor German POW who is trapped in his prison cell may well be worse off than even Henri. He was subjected to Cold-Blooded Torture by one of the French soldiers, then heard as everyone in the bunker was slaughtered by the Beast. He may be safe behind the bars of his cell, but he's bound to his chair, has a bag over his head and is a complete Nervous Wreck at this point. Unfortunately, you have to open the door to his cell since he has a pair of boltcutters in there with him that you eventually need to progress, which also carry some sinister implications as to why they are in the cell in the first place. The Beast will show up and kill him as soon as the cell is open, but you can save his life if you are fast enough, then lock him in again for his own safety after you get the boltcutters. But considering you leave him there all on his own with no food or water, maybe letting him die or killing him yourself is a kinder fate...
- The bodies of other soldiers in the bunker are very, very realistically and horrifically detailed. Ranging from a person who simply bled out to butchered corpses with the flesh from the skulls torn away revealing only the bottom layer of meat and bone or having their face mangled beyond recognition could make a person wonder just how much research Frictional did.
