Trivia / First Encounter Assault Recon

• B-Team Sequel: F.3.A.R. was developed by Day One Studios (now Wargaming Chicago-Baltimore), who had worked with Monolith on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 ports of the first game.
• Dummied Out: This video features some cut dialogue from the Replica soldiers in the first game that indicates originally, the Armacham executive they were looking to capture was actually Harlan Wade. In the final product, it was changed to Norton Mapes.
• Franchise Killer: Though not as abrupt an end as some of their other franchises, given that it got a proper ending, the poor fan reception and mediocre sales of F.3.A.R., the failure of F.E.A.R. Online, and Monolith's success with the Middle-earth series ended any interest in continuing the franchise.
• Hey, It's That Sound!: The sound effect played in the first game when a level finishes loading is the same one first used in No One Lives Forever 2.
• Life Imitates Art: The first game features the Baksha ASP, which was modeled after the TAR-21 and chambered in 7.62x51mm NATO. In 2018, Israel Weapon Industries released the Tavor 7, a Tavor family member chambered in 7.62x51mm.
• Orphaned Reference: Paxton Fettel's ultimate goal being to betray Alma and consume her power to become a god-like being was actually in the initial plot outline of the original F.E.A.R., but this (along with many other plot elements) were ultimately cut for brevity. He finally attempts to do so at the end of F.E.A.R. 3.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Frequent; the only characters to keep the same voice across every appearance, outside of the first game's expansions, are Paxton Fettel (Peter Lurie) and the Replica (Mark Lund).
  • The expansions themselves have one odd example, where Greg Baldwin does not come back to reprise his role as Norton Mapes for a brief appearance in Extraction Point. It's odd because, otherwise, every returning character in either expansion keeps their voices.
  • F.E.A.R. 2 replaces Meg Savlov with Jen Taylor as the voice of Genevieve Aristide, which gets funny when she has multiple conversations across the game with Lt. Keira Stokes, who is also Jen Taylor.
  • F.3.A.R. drops Jin Sun-Kwon's original voice, Susanna Burney, in favor of Kim Mai Guest, while also dropping Grant Goodeve as Harlan Wade.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The first game was meant to have a tutorial level, as well as one fairly late in the game where the player would be in a car having to fend off Replica soldiers on motorcycles.
  • Other members of the F.E.A.R. team would have been people with explicit Psychic Powers aside from the Point Man and his enhanced reflexes: Holiday was a full-fledged member with Psychometry, while Jin was a Friendly Sniper with Super-Senses (her role as a sniper can still be seen in her character design, specifically on her gloves with alternately-colored trigger fingers).
  • There was meant to be a second villain alongside Paxton Fettel named Conrad Krieg, whose role and uniform were given to Fettel after being deleted.
  • Unused sound files in the first game show that Harlan Wade was originally meant to be found fatally wounded in the Armacham office. He would have told the F.E.A.R. team that Paxton Fettel's true motive behind finding Alma was to consume her to gain her power for himself (an idea that would be revisited in F.3.A.R.), while unused animations found in the PC modding tools imply that the player was meant to have a full-on boss fight against Paxton.
  • Beta footage from the 2004 E3 shows a few differences from the finished game, such as Jankowski sticking around long enough for the initial drop into Armacham's headquarters, which would have been much more action-packed (including Jankowski covering the player with a minigun from the helicopter), a version of the SMG with a scope (presumably later split off into the ASP rifle), a more dynamic animation for the jumping kick (including the camera tilting off to the side), a rearranged version of the first foray into Armacham's HQ (several rooms are identical to in the finished game, but in different orders and locations), Jin being the teammate who mysteriously disappears (Holiday was as such instead the one who comments on the remains of the missing Delta Force team), and more frequent running commentary from NPCs, including them actually acknowledging the spooky things that go on.
  • Due to developer Monolith's split with then publisher Sierra (which owned the rights to the F.E.A.R. title), Project Origin was initially developed as a Spiritual Successor. Monolith ran a contest where fans chose the name of the game, with Dark Echo and Dead Echo being the other choices. However, Warner Bros., which purchased Monolith, later negotiated for the rights of F.E.A.R. from Activision Blizzard, which took control of Sierra's properties. As such the game was retitled F.E.A.R. 2, with Project Origin being the subtitle.
  • F.3.A.R. was initially developed by Day 1 Studios as F.E.A.R. 2 back when Sierra still owned the rights to the series. After Warner Bros. and Monolith took control of the series, they allowed Day 1 Studios to continue their work and rebrand it as the third main entry to the series.