Video Game / Amnesia: Rebirth

Amnesia: Rebirth is the third full installment in the Amnesia series of Survival Horror video games, developed and published by Frictional Games for PS4 and PC released on October 20th, 2020.

Much like the previous two games in the series, Rebirth is a survival horror game revolving around physics-based puzzles and hiding or running from monsters. Unlike the previous two, the setting is completely different.

Taking place in the same universe as the last two games, set in 1937, thirty-eight years after A Machine For Pigs, a stark contrast to the Victorian London and the medieval castle of the first two games. The story follows Anastasie "Tasi" Trianon, a woman who, alongside her husband Salim, joins an archaeological expedition into the Algerian interior, only for their plane to mysteriously crash in the desert. Waking up to find herself alone in the wreckage, Tasi must try to find Salim, trying to survive against an unknown horror that stalks the sands they are stranded in.

But mostly, she finds nothing...

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Amnesia: Rebirth contains the following tropes:

• Abandoned Area: The French fort at the beginning of the game, although it still contains the corpses of slaughtered soldiers.
• Abusive Precursors: While the overall role of the Other World's civilization on our own is left somewhat ambiguous, translation of an ancient text mentions invaders harvesting "crops" (humans) so at the very least they were little better than bandits and slave drivers.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Similarly to in The Dark Descent, you can't harm the monsters; all that can be done about them is to run and hide, so that the tension can be preserved.
• Accidental Murder: Possibly bordering on Mercy Kill. In order to progress through an area in the Other World, Tasi must acquire two Leyden jars full of Vitae, but she finds one of them powering a member of the local civilization's life support, and once it is removed, they perish in the matter of a few seconds.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: In its reappearance, the Shadow of the Orb acts exactly as it did back in The Dark Descent, though it doesn't pursue the player throughout the entire plot this time.
• After the End: The alternate world that Tasi visits has been destroyed by what is eventually revealed to be the Shadow, enraged by Tihana's civilization harvesting of the Orbs. The entire world has been reduced to ash and decay, with the charred bodies of its inhabitants frozen in their death throes scattered about.
• Amnesiac Hero: Continuing the tradition of the series' Meaningful Name, Tasi cannot remember the last few days of her life, spending most of the storyline recollecting those events. This is because she has been purposely infected by Empress Tihana, alongside many, if not all members of her crew, with a toxin inside the waters of her fountain. Tasi had been told by Hank to escape, and did manage to do so, now somehow finding herself back at the Cassandra, possibly through a portal. However, she is quickly starting to lose control over the illness, and thus losing many of her own memories, only leaving a few quickly written, vague notes for herself, then taking a dose of Laudanum in an attempt to control the issue.
• And I Must Scream: Countless humans are trapped in a never-ending cycle of physical and psychological torture for the sake of vitae production. Since they are made to forget the torture every time it happens, they can never get used to it, making every session feel as if the experience was new. In many cases, this all happens in claustrophobic pods where you can see the victim writhe and hear their muffled, agonized whimpers and screams. Oh, and extensive research has gone into making sure the victims don't "burn out" too quickly; in other words, great care has been taken to ensure that the victims are kept alive for as long as possible. The Iconoclast ending shows the Shadow creeping into one such pod and killing its inhabitant as a kindness.
• Anti-Frustration Features: During several points where you have to avoid enemies, being caught will cause you to respawn at the endpoint of that sequence, rather than having to do it all over again. For places like the maze section, this is a welcome feature if you can't puzzle your way through and past the adversary roaming it with you.
• Apocalypse How: Possibly a class 4 type in the Other World, caused by rebel alchemists who attempted to cut Empress Tihana's vitae production, through the injection of a mysterious red flesh in it. In the end they only managed to cut one of her four lines, and broke the Great Gate, allowing the Shadow to destroy their world and almost all of its inhabitants. Those it either killed or turned into Wraiths, with only a few, including the empress, surviving the event.
• Apocalyptic Log:
  • The story trailer is narrated by Salim, in the form of a note he left for Tasi.
  • The Foreign Legionnaires at the fortress left several as their numbers dwindled from Ghoul attacks and suicide.
• Artifact of Power: The Traveler's Locket, which Tasi uses to create portals between the Other World and back through specific "weak points". She also acquires an Orb later in the story, hoping to use it as a way to find and reach the rest of her crew, but loses it to the Shadow before it could happen.
• Big Bad: Empress Tihana, the Sole Survivor of the local Abusive Precursors.
• Bittersweet Ending: Much more heavily on the bitter than The Dark Descent. Despite there being Multiple Endings, all of them are rather grim for Tasi and her child.
  • The Provider ending: Tasi flees from Tihana and activates a portal with her baby, arriving back home in Paris. However, it's unclear if her transformation into a Harvester will continue or not (her only hope is that being removed from Tihana's influence will somehow stop the process), and either way her child is likely going to die of her congenital degenerative disease after several years anyway if Tasi doesn’t resort to horrific measures to preserve Amari’s life. There's also the not inconsequential fact the two of them are just three years away from the Nazi occupation.
  • The Harvester ending: Tasi allows Empress Tihana to raise her baby as her own, as only Tihana can provide it with the steady supply of Vitae needed to prevent it from dying. Tihana then completes Tasi's transformation into a Harvester, who spends the rest of her life as another one of the monsters inhabiting the ruins of Tihana's civilization.
  • The Iconoclast ending: Tasi injects the Shadow's red flesh in Tihana's vitae supply, killing her, but is unable to escape. Tasi and her baby are both consumed by the Shadow, but it's made clear that her actions have brought an end to the suffering of the numerous torture victims being used to sustain Tihana's life.
• Body Horror: The Harvesters aren't quite as deformed and mutilated as Alexander's Gatherers, but they're still quite grotesque, resembling desiccated mummified humans.
• Call-Back:
  • Tasi finds the body of Professor Herbert, leader of the archaeological dig where Daniel first encountered the Orb, while exploring the alternate world.
  • More humorously, you can also find Daniel's pink parasol, given to him by Herbert, in the tomb of Tin Hanan.
  • The alternate world is heavily implied to be Baron Alexander's original homeworld, with some details about his past being found there.
• Central Theme: How far is a mother willing to go to protect her child.
• Clarke's Third Law: Most, if not all technology in the Other World is powered by Vitae, while also having the appearance of ancient structures and objects on Earth.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Entire factories in the Other World are dedicated to producing Vitae, which can only be made through the torture of mammals, including humans.
• Collapsing Lair: In the Iconoclast ending, after Tasi poisons Empress Tihana's Vitae production, her Throne Room collapses through the immense amounts of the Shadow's red flesh consuming the place, eventually completely destroying the top of the tower.
• Controllable Helplessness: It happens quite a bit.
  • Your first encounter with Leon is this. You end up in a dead end of a maze section, turn around, and see him scrambling towards you from the darkness.
  • When Tasi steps into a bear trap and is hung upside down from it, she's saved by Yasmin. Unfortunately, she's about to turn into a Harvester, and buys Tasi some time by stepping into the bear trap herself and shoving Tasi out the door, which Tasi closes. Cue a mad dash in the opposite direction as they free themselves and begin to pound on the door before busting it open and chasing you down. No matter how far you get, you will be caught. Thankfully, the doctor is nearby with a revolver.
• The Corruption: The Shadow of the Orb, making a comeback from The Dark Descent.
• Cosmic Horror Story: This being an Amnesia game, it's safe to say that whatever horrors await Tasi in the desert will be beyond human comprehension. Downplayed, in that human action provoked it - it turns out our Earth isn't at risk due to the Orb being sealed away, the alternate world discovered very well what happens when you push the Shadow too far.
• Cower Power: Justified, since the encountered monsters have overwhelming attributes that can make quick work of Tasi. As is tradition in the Amnesia franchise, it's a literal case, with the only way to survive a monster being to find a dark corner, curl up with your nose to the wall, and pray it leaves before it stumbles over you, or simply hope that you can successfully run away and/or find a door to block it.
• The Croc Is Ticking: The game has several pieces of music pointing to the appearing of a monster nearby, alerting the player about them seconds before a proper encounter.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: Empress Tihana's physical body is a heavily mutated immobile flesh sac, with numerous tubes sticking into her spine pumping her full of Vitae. She can use her powers to generate a projection of her former humanoid appearance, which she uses to speak and interact with you.
• Darkness Equals Death: Played with. Returning from The Dark Descent, the sanity meter is back, now named as "Fear", forcing the player avoid the darkness when not hiding from monsters. Like before: "When darkness doesn't equal safety, it equals madness".
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: If Tasi takes enough damage, becomes afraid enough, or fails to resist a pursuer, she just temporarily succumbs to her Ghoul/Harvester mutations, only to wake up in a nearby area with visible signs of what just happened, seen on the skin of her arms. Subverted in any attempts to get the Provider or Iconoclast endings, where failing to resist Tihana's influence will trigger the Harvester ending.
• Death of a Child: Throughout the story, in flashbacks, it is slowly revealed that Alys, Tasi and Salim's first daughter, had died one year prior to their plane crash in Algeria, becoming one of the main motivations for why Tasi refuses to give up her child after receiving Empress Tihana's offer.
• Demoted to Extra: In contrast to the previous installments, the Lantern plays a significantly diminished role. It burns through oil significantly faster (placing a greater emphasis on using matchsticks to make as many permanent sources of light as possible) and is found much later in the game than its counterparts in previous titles were. It is also ultimately lost at the Lower Factory, forcing you to make do for the rest of the game with matches alone.
• Developer's Foresight: If a player picks the Provider ending, Tasi can appear in Paris with a different degree of the Harvester transformation, depending on how many times the player "dies" throughout the story, having a more "monstrous" voice and visible veins in her arms if her illness has advanced too much, but sounding and appearing normal if it didn't, possibly creating a slightly "happier" version of the ending.
• Diesel Punk: Set in interwar Algeria, it leans much more towards this setting compared to the Gothic Horror of the original game.
• Doomed by Canon: In the Provider ending, even if few or none of its negative possibilities take form, World War II will still eventually occur, and Tasi's hometown is soon to be affected by it.
• Doom Magnet: Tasi becomes one while she carries an Orb, making the Shadow pursue her all around the Tomb of Tin Hanan.
• Downer Ending: In the Harvester ending, Empress Tihana takes Amari as her daughter, and Tasi is turned into a Harvester.
• Down the Drain: While following Empress Tihana through a cave in a flooded area, Tasi is suddenly pulled by a mysterious flux, throwing her to another side of the area, almost drowning in the process.
• Driven to Suicide: The Legionnaires who weren't killed by the Ghouls/Harvesters suffered this fate.
• Eldritch Location: The Other World, a different planet or dimension where lied an advanced civilization now long gone, having perished due to the damaging of something named as the "Great Gate", which essentially caused the Shadow to consume the world due to their meddling of the Orbs, leaving it as a wasteland in perpetual darkness, under a greenish, lambent sun, turning most of the population into Wraiths, and according to Herbert, possibly having become frozen at the moment after the event happened.
• Emerging from the Shadows: At one point during Tasi's exploration of a maze-like structure, she will be hit with a dead end. Upon turning around, without any warning, a Harvester emerges from the shadows, charging at her.
• Empathy Doll Shot: Played with. Tasi finds and keeps her daughter Alys' stuffed monkey Makka with her, and it serves as a reminder of Alys, her husband Salim, and her unborn second child.
• Eternal Engine: Empress Tihana's vitae factories, powering her life support in the Throne Room.
• Forbidden Love: Implied between Tasi and Salim, whose wedding photo is captioned "Love Transcends Law" on the reverse. Examining the same photo in a dream sequence set in the couple's Parisian home will prompt a flashback to Tasi declaring that their marriage is "as official as she needs it to be". Additionally, during that same sequence a letter can be found addressed to Salim from the French Interior Ministry, denying an application of his.
• Fragile Speedster: The Ghouls are shown to be much stronger than humans and capable of moving almost too fast for the eye to track (though never when they're actually chasing you in gameplay), even slithering quickly across vertical surfaces like a lizard. However, they are seemingly not Immune to Bullets, and also appear much less structurally intact compared to humans (which makes sense given their desiccated appearance), as Tasi inadvertently ends up pulling one's arm off when it tries to grab her through a grate.
• Gratuitous German: In one of Eva Ritter's final messages, left right above her husband's grave, there is a poem, with all words in it having been written in German.
• The Grotesque: All pursuers in the game, with the Ghouls being unnaturally slim and mummified, and the Wraiths having turned into decayed monstrosities after extensive use of Vitae, coupled with the Shadow's corruption.
• Hive Queen: Tihana seems to have some sort of psychic control over the Harvesters, and they also continue to maintain the Vitae factories keeping her alive long after the rest of her civilization has collapsed.
• Human Resources: Like in the The Dark Descent, humans are tortured and killed to collect Vitae, but this time, in the Other World, physically visited by the player for the first time in the series, massive quantities are produced through Vitae factories.
• Human Sacrifice: It is possible that no one actually gets killed, or only a few are, but still, countless amounts of people are perpetually used as sources of Vitae in the Other World in its factories, meaning that they are constantly tortured for the continuous production of it.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Many objects can be carried in your inventory, such as a lantern, lantern oil, fire-matches, Leyden jars, the Orb, Alys' monkey plush Makka, Salim's wedding ring, and several other items while still not being in any trouble of lacking available space.
• Immortality Immorality: Similar to Alexander in The Dark Descent, Empress Tihana has sustained her life for ages with the use of Vitae, which is generated through the torture and killing of humans. Unlike Alexander, Tihana requires massive amounts of Vitae to sustain herself, with entire factories dedicated to generating the Vitae needed to keep her alive.
• Improbable Infant Survival: Tasi can and will survive all manner of physical traumas, including a tank gun landing directly on her abdomen, yet her unborn baby manages to remain unharmed.
• Industrialized Evil: The people of the Other World, needing to procure vast quantities of vitae for Empress Tihana and others, developed efficient facilities for torturing vast quantities of humans (which Tasi is forced to traverse) and procedures that would maximize their suffering (which Tasi gets to read about). Figuring out how to make this all socially acceptable was one of the challenges their alchemists faced while setting up the vitae factories.
• Interface Screw: As the Fear level increases, the player's vision will start to become distorted, and once it reaches critical levels, they will also start seeing several flashes, showing places and symbols of the Other World.
• Interface Spoiler: Like The Dark Descent, a few helpful hints will appear sometimes, instructing you to hide in darkness from enemies... even if you did not know anything was there.
• Jump Scare: Several of them occur throughout the storyline, especially in the Fortress area. Fear Flashes also used to induce those but were altered weeks after launch to not do so anymore, as Word of God claimed that they weren't supposed to be a source of horror, just signals to the player.
• Karma Houdini: Empress Tihana depending on the ending.
• Last of His Kind: Tihana seems to be the last surviving member of her civilization, the rest were either turned to ash or transformed into mindless wraiths when rebels attempting to overthrow her to stop the Vitae torture factories sabotaged the dimensional gateway, inadvertently provoking the Shadow to destroy their world.
• Late to the Tragedy: Tasi and the expedition come across the Foreign Legion fort after its garrison was killed by the ghouls or killed themselves to escape it.
• Legion of Lost Souls: Tasi and her companions come across an abandoned fortress formerly garrisoned by the French Foreign Legion after crashing in the Algerian interior.
• Lost in Transmission: After making contact with Doctor Metzier, Tasi tells him about the strange symptoms she's experiencing as a result of slowly mutating into a Harvester. The Doctor's response indicates he is aware of the cause, but much of it is lost in static and goes unheard.
• Love Makes You Evil: Lampshaded. Although the "evil" part is debatable, Tasi is willing to risk the lives of every single one of her crewmates so she can stay with her daughter, instead of giving her to Empress Tihana and possibly gaining a way out of the desert. This love is what leads the expedition members to be infected with the Harvester toxin, which eventually causes Tasi's amnesia.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: While the rest of the expedition doesn't care, this is heavily implied to be the reason for why Tasi and Salim, a French woman and a North African man in the 1930's, aren't legally married. It should be noted that it wouldn't actually have been illegal at the time: there were actually a number of instances of French women legally marrying North African and Indian men as early as the First World War.
• Meaningful Name: Continuing the franchise's tradition, Tasi can't remember any of the events that occurred in the last few days, but possibly averted in the "Rebirth" part, as the game doesn't leave its meaning explicit, with some fan interpretations saying it talks about the mutations of Tasi and her crew into Harvesters, others believe it talks about how Amari is essentially Alys being "reborn" in Tasi's perspective, and theories just continue to vary from there.
• Meat Moss: In many parts of the Tomb of Tin Hanan and one of the factories in the Other World, all of it, being the residues left by the Shadow while pursuing Tasi.
• Mirror Character: Downplayed, with Tasi and Empress Tihana, as well as the latter with Amari.
  • Both are Mama Bears that are willing to risk everything and everyone around them for the sake of Amari, with Tasi preferring to find another way out of the desert, rather than offering the child to the Empress, even if that means the potential death of her crewmates, and reaching ridiculous levels with Tihana, who keeps factories producing Vitae through Human Resources for the sake of keeping both herself alive and now, depending on the ending, the baby as well.
  • Through audio recordings found throughout the story, it can be learned that Tihana's mother, Atua, had a congenital disease that passed down to her, needing entire factories to produce enough Vitae for her survival, a situation shared by Amari, who inherited the same disease carried by Tasi that killed her sister.
• Mobile Maze: The Testing Grounds are this, being filled with button-connected doors, which can open and close depending if Tasi, Leon or an object is above them or not.
• No Canon for the Wicked: Notes found in the game show that Daniel's sister Hazel survived up to the age of 15, living past Daniel's expedition to Algeria, indicating that the "good" ending to The Dark Descent is canon.
• Non-Linear Sequel: As is tradition with the series, this installment is set in a completely different time period. 1937, to be precise. That being said, the game ties in much more directly with The Dark Descent than A Machine for Pigs ever did, dealing with interdimensional travel, focusing around returning concepts such as Vitae and the Shadow, and even having a section taking place in the dig site where Daniel first encountered the Orb.
• Non-Standard Game Over: If the player manages to get captured at the Throne Room, an altered version of the Harvester ending will trigger.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: No pursuers in the game are able to be killed, but, this is just because Tasi doesn't have the proper equipment to actually damage them, as Leon De Vries and Yasmin Chaban end up proving.
• Note to Self: Before her amnesia, Tasi writes a note telling herself to remember something, that someone will die, and to find Salim.
• Nothing Is Scarier: As is tradition with Frictional, the game frequently uses the absence of overtly terrifying sights and sounds to great effect.
• Ontological Mystery: At the start of the game, while Tasi is waking up in the remains of the Cassandra, she finds a few notes left by herself prior to the amnesia, telling her current objective, and as she progresses through the nearby caves, Tasi eventually figures that she is pregnant.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Possibly a whole planet/dimension of them, with its empress having entire factories dedicated to consuming Life Energy inside the blood of torture victims, so her specific type of life support can function.
• Poison and Cure Gambit: Empress Tihana does this to Tasi's expedition in an attempt at making them more controllable, telling them that the water of her fountain would cure them of any injuries. Only for them to figure out that although that was true, it was because they were inflicted by a mysterious toxin, which would eventually turn them into Harvesters, being that the only "cure" lied with the Empress, who will only hear their wishes if Tasi gives up her child.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Like Alexander used Vitae, Empress Tihana uses it to keep herself alive, using several factories dedicated to its productions, all containing countless torture victims, that are forced to endure that suffering every day for her sake.
• The Power of Love: Exploited. Empress Tihana's civilization combined Alexander's amnesia potion with their ability to record memories. By selectively wiping the memories of slaves after torture but selectively giving recorded memories of their loved ones back to them and increase their suffering to produce more Vitae.
• Pregnant Badass: Tasi will have to survive the horrors awaiting her in the Algerian desert while carrying a child.
• Psychological Horror: Similar to the previous two iterations.
• Psychological Torment Zone: After long periods inside the Other World, Tasi experiences Womb Levels, showing both Salim and Alys still alive, and every time she attempts to reach one of them, they disappear, much to her dismay.
• Quest for Identity: The main reason why all documents left by the expedition crew are so important.
• Quicksand Sucks: Justified. Tasi stumbles into a patch of quicksand which quickly pulls her under... and through an interdimensional portal.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Upon opening a jail cell in the gameplay reveal trailer, Tasi unwittingly activates a trap which drops a live grenade at her feet, with only seconds to either throw the grenade, or run. She responds with this, understandably.
• Resources Management Gameplay: You want to keep up your supply of matches and lamp oil, as being in darkness increases Tasi's fear.
• The Reveal: Very early into the story, Tasi has a flashback showing her that she is pregnant, and just a few moments later, her goal of finding Salim comes to a sudden conclusion as his body is found, leaving her to spend the rest of the story seeking her crew, in the hopes of bringing the child back to Paris.
• Run or Die: The only two ways to survive when a monster spots you.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • In the Laboratory, the Empress reveals that Amari will be born with the same incurable degenerative disease as Alys, and will die in the same manner unless given vitae - which requires torturing a person to acquire. The Empress even supplies a potential victim. Tasi must then choose between torturing a (presumably innocent) man in order to save her daughter, or to just exit the level without torturing the man and possibly turning her back on the only means to save her daughter. And the worst part? It doesn't matter which choice you make; if you choose to go through with the torture, the Empress later reveals that vitae can't cure the disease, but rather just stave off the symptoms, and that Amari will have to take vitae regularly for the rest of her life in order to survive.
    • Oh, and each option has an achievement tied to it - which means that if you're a completionist, you will have to go through with the torture at some point.
  • By the end of the story, Tasi is forced to take one of three options: A. Return home with her daughter, risking the fact that she has the same illness her sister had. B. Leave her child with Empress Tihana, giving her a chance to live through Vitae, while the protagonist herself will turn into a Harvester in the process. C. Poison Tihana's life support, killing her and ending the suffering of many torture victims, with Amari and Tasi themselves dying as well in the process.
• Sanity Meter: As a returning mechanic from The Dark Descent, Tasi has a "Fear Meter", which can be perceived through the darkening of the screen, becoming distorted when it increases, and once reaching critical levels, creating flashes showing places and symbols from the Other World.
• Scenery Gorn: Anywhere the Shadow appears.
• Schizo Tech: The Other World's technology, containing extremely advanced buildings and equipment such as mobile world-traveling machines, holograms, robotics, metro lines, and life-extenders, while also having the appearance and composition of structures from humanity's Antiquity times.
• The Secret of Long Pork Pies: It is no surprise that Tasi eventually figures what Vitae is made out of, but what is surprising is the fact that she has to engage in the torturing of a person herself.
• Sensory Abuse: Any time that the Fear Meter enters critical levels will have that happen, as the flashes and sounds constantly provoking the player will arguably become more troublesome and terrifying than the pursuers themselves.
• Sequel Escalation: The first two games took place in small, confined areas within a relatively small geographical location. Rebirth takes place out in the desert, with more wide open spaces and even visiting different locations over a relatively large area. The game even introduces interdimensional travel and multiple worlds relatively early on.
• Smashing Survival: Every time the player is caught by a pursuer, they have the chance to resist them by repeatedly using their movement key/s, but if taken again in a short time span, the "game over" screen will be triggered no matter how many times the buttons are pressed.
• Smash to Black: Several times.
  • Every time Tasi goes through a Womb Level, she faints in its end, and wakes up with her child having grown at least a few months older in the gestation.
  • This one being a quite literal example, when Richard suddenly knocks out Tasi after saving him, only for her to wake up shortly after, then torture and kill him while temporarily turned into a Harvester.
  • When Metzier suddenly saves Tasi from the now transformed Yasmin, with her fainting right after the rescue, and waking up tied by ropes in the floor nearby him, now about to give birth to her daughter.
• Stealth-Based Game: In tradition with the rest of the franchise, you have no way to fight back.
• Story Breadcrumbs: Diary entries of other expedition members, miscellaneous documents from previous explorers, audio recordings from the Other World and many flashbacks throughout the journey.
• Story Difficulty Setting: Adventure Mode changes the gameplay to be closer to a story-driven adventure game than a stealth-based horror game, with Tasi able to carry more matches, fewer and less dangerous monster encounters, brighter-lit spaces, and some additional puzzles. Selecting it mentions that it's more for players who just want to experience the story, but also that it's not the way the game is intended to be played.
• Tactical Door Use: Like previous iterations, the player is able to find ways to block the doors behind them while in pursuits, but differently from its predecessors, ground pursuers can't break locked and blocked doors, but in compensation are able to use small tunnels so they can move around the player, and even flank them.
• Tank Goodness: The Foreign Legion fort includes a Renault FT-17 light tank, which Tasi must use in order to progress.
• Tempting Fate: Tasi asks "What could go wrong?" as she prepares to fire a tank cannon to blow open the fortress gates in order to leave. Immediately after firing the ground beneath the tank collapses, dumping it (with Tasi still inside) into an underground room.
• Terminally Dependent Society: The Other World got hooked on Vitae more and more as the technology and efficiency of acquiring it developed so that by the civilization's end virtually everything was powered by Vitae at the expense of any other power source.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Every time the player is "downed", they are able to see glimpses of Tasi as a Harvester, only returning to her normal a few seconds after. Similar events occur thrice in the story proper, first when Tasi finds a Harvester after falling in the bottom of a cave area, second after Tasi wakes up from being knocked unconscious by Richard and strikes him back, and third when Tasi attacks Metzier at the Throne Room after kidnapping her daughter.
• Throwing the Distraction: The player is able to throw objects around to distract pursuers, but due to the more intelligent nature of the Ghouls, as well as their scent, they can discover Tasi's location with more ease than the Gatherers and Manpigs from previous games.
• Torture Cellar: Entire factories are composed of these, all to produce vitae for Empress Tihana's life support and possibly to power up the machinery that is still working.
• Torture Technician: In many of the Other World tablets that Tasi reads throughout the story, commentaries from several of these can be read, showing their perspective over their practice and the world around them.
• Unbroken First-Person Perspective: The whole game is seen from Tasi's perspective.
• The Virus: The toxin in the fountain at Empress Tihana's shrine, being able to turn people into Harvesters, which are Humanoid Abominations seemingly made for the purpose of hunting other humans to torture them and produce Vitae.
• Walking Wasteland: Tasi becomes this once she finds one of the Orbs, having the Shadow follow her anywhere until she loses the artifact.
• Was Once a Man:
  • The Ghouls/Harvesters are former humans who have mutated due to a toxin they were tricked into drinking, heavily implying the Gatherers in The Dark Descent were of a similar nature. At least a couple of the Ghouls you face are former members of your expedition.
  • The Wraiths encountered towards the end of the game are apparently the former rebels who tried to overthrow Tihana by sabotaging the dimensional gateway, if not alchemists and magicians of the local population in-general; they were turned into mindless Wraiths by the Shadow as a result.
• Water Source Tampering: The water in Empress Tihana's fountain is revealed to contain a toxin that can turn people into Harvesters, something that is used by her in an attempt to control the crew of the Cassandra.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Much of the expedition, including Salim, are revealed to have died fairly early in the story, though more can be learned about them throughout the rest of the plot through flashbacks and documents.
• Womb Level: Several of them. After spending long periods of time in the Other World, the player experiences these, beginning with either Alys, Salim or both in their daily lives inside their house or somewhere else in Paris, until then they disappear and the surroundings suddenly start to collapse or distance themselves, and a womb environment starts to appear or become more visible, showing a large fetus in the distance, symbolizing Amari's accelerated growth inside Tasi's own womb.
• You Wake Up in a Room: Like the previous games, Tasi wakes up alone in a room, more specifically in the plane that crashed with her inside, with no memory of what happened in the last few days and suffering from a mysterious illness, only following the note telling her to find Salim, which was written by herself prior to the amnesia.

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