YMMV / Outlast

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Billy murdering everyone in the Asylum, variant and Murkoff, because he's an Omnicidal Maniac... or is he aware that without people there will be no more hosts and eventually he will die when the systems fail due to no-one monitoring them and that the Walrider will then have no host and die and murdering everyone inside Mount Massive is the only way of keeping the world safe from the Walrider? Or is he just a troubled kid, locked inside a 19-year-old's mind and unable to break free?
• Awesome Music:
  • The soundtrack as a whole, but the eerie choir that plays when you enter the room with the three patients watching the TV deserves special mention.
  • The Male Ward Chase track is appropriately tense and nail-biting, given that it's one of the game's few chase missions, and some have joked that it still makes them sweat years after playing the game.
  • The track that plays at the very ending of the Whistleblower DLC is very beautiful and inspirational. It expresses the feeling of freedom as you finally exit the asylum at sunlight.
  • The music that plays during the end credits is both sinister and epic.
• Better as a Let's Play: At the height of its popularity, Outlast was all the rage among Let's Play. It was considered one of the scariest games ever made, which prompted multiple people to be too scared to play it, but love to watch people getting scared by it.
• Breather Level: The Courtyard. Preceded by the Male Ward, a non-stop adrenaline stress test where Trager poses a serious threat, and followed by the Female Ward, a very long level with multiple pitfalls and several hostiles and difficult traversal challenges, the Courtyard sticks out as being a very short, easy level with no hostiles at all up until (and except) Walker, who's very easy to avoid both times he appears.
• Broken Base:
  • The ending is quite controversial. Some were disappointed with it because Miles suffered through so much and players put so much effort into escaping the asylum, only to get anticlimactically shot to death, thus rendering everything pointless. Others enjoyed the fact that Miles didn't make it out alive because they expected it, and it fit the tone of the game. The same people also liked that the Walrider wasn't stopped, since it could lead to a possible sequel. And then the DLC came out and retconned Miles' death, or at least revealed it was a Disney Death, if his survival was intended all along.
  • There's been a lot of debate over whether the game is ableist against the mentally ill. For some, it's the latest example of media portraying the mentally ill as violent and dangerous, using them and the abuse heaped against them for cheap scares. The game's defenders (some of whom are in fact mentally ill) point out that the game — through the files, notes, and characters such as the Pyro — makes VERY clear that the inmates' violent tendencies are the result of Murkoff's inhumane experiments and torture rather than mental illness, and that most came to the asylum to seek psychiatric help for their genuine psychological problems (such as addiction, PTSD, schizoaffective disorder, etc). There's also the fact that only a few of the inmates are actually violent towards you, with the rest mostly cowering away or catatonic.
  • Fandom's treatment of Eddie Gluskin has faced increasing backlash, with many angry over him getting the woobie treatment despite being a truly vile Serial Killer who attempts to mutilate and rape the main protagonist.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Seeing Miles fight back against Trager and have him crushed between the floors of an elevator is especially satisfying since he cut off your fingers.
  • After getting chased and thrown around by Chris Walker throughout most of the game, it's satisfying to see him get thrown around like a ragdoll by the Walrider before being pureed through an airduct fan.
  • Similarly, the same thing happening to Blaire in the end of Whistleblower, especially after he had deliberately screwed you over so many times now, along with all the other atrocities committed under his watch.
  • There's also Eddie getting impaled on a metal pipe after attempting to kill/mutilate you.
• Complete Monster: Jeremy Blaire is the Executive Vice President of the Murkoff Corporation and the man in charge of Mount Massive Asylum. On Blaire's orders, the patients, many who came seeking genuine mental help, are psychologically tortured to the point of insanity to be used as test subjects in the Morphogenic Engine. While most inevitably die, a marginal few were successful enough to serve as hosts of the Walrider, which Murkoff sought to use as a weapon. Despite the catastrophic effect the process has on women, Blaire also sought to use them as test subjects to increase profits. He is also shown to be willing to use potential leaks such as Waylon Park as test subjects to silence them. During the events of the game, Blaire does everything in his power to ensure no one escapes the asylum alive except for himself to ensure that he and his fellow executives can escape justice. Never shown to be insane like Trager or regretful like Wernicke, Jeremy Blaire can be held responsible for every atrocity and act of horror committed and all to satisfy his insatiable greed.
• Crack Pairing: There's a wealth of fanart for Miles and the Walrider, given the Walrider's preference for Miles as a host to the point of saving his life and Miles's ability at least somewhat control the Walrider, portraying them as something of a well-functioning Odd Couple to humorous effect.
• Critical Dissonance: Downplayed. Critics gave the first game mildly favorable reviews, but players deeply loved it, and it's now considered one of the greatest and most iconic horror games of all times. In a similar vein, Whistleblower was criticized for being too similar to its predecessor, but it was a hit with the fans.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • After being chased by the crazed Dr. Trager for a level, Miles kills him by pulling him partway into a descending elevator, crushing him. If you pull out your camcorder to record it, Miles' note is remarkably laconic: "How to make Trager juice. Step 1: squeeze."
  • Father Martin's death by self-immolation is pretty disturbing, to say the least. However, if you record it, Miles' note regarding the situation is a hysterical case of Mood Whiplash: "I can't believe Father Martin one-upped Jesus Christ himself in shitty ways to die."
  • At one point in Whistleblower, you can see an inmate holding a severed head... and playing basketball with it.
  • That inmate who you find fucking a headless corpse...then turns around and calls you a sicko for watching.
  • Gluskin. The guy captures other inmates and severs their private parts. Why? To make them pass as women. Make of that what you will. For many, it crosses back over when we get to see his "process". Legs hurt yet?
• Disappointing Last Level:
  • The labs are brightly lit unlike the dark areas seen before, and tends towards linear chases rather than the nerve-wracking stealth you've seen up until that point.
  • Averted with Whistleblower: the final act is a grueling cat-and-mouse chase in the bowels of Mount Massive between Waylon and Gluskin.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Eddie Gluskin of all people has a lot of female fans. His tumblr tag is rife with fanart and ask blogs. Some people know and accept that he's evil and love him for it; others seem to downplay or outright ignore the fact that he's a dangerous psychopath.
  • A minor case with Chris Walker. Even on This Very Wiki, there are those who will, a bit too readily, see a point in Walker's enacting of a Final Solution at Mount Massive. While understanding that the Walrider needs a host and thus a lack of one would pose it a problem (and Walker is hardly in a right state of mind to think rationally), murdering every last person in the area is neither reasonable nor justifiable, and is nearly guaranteed to only delay the problem.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Dr. Trager is popular despite his limited screentime and overall having no plot relevance. People find him hilarious despite his in-game presence and supplementary material making it clear we're not supposed to like him.
  • The Twins, for their butt-naked appearance and snarky, deadpan way of speech. You'd be forgiven for thinking they were main villains due to all of their fanart and memes, but they really make up only a few minutes of gameplay.
  • Disturbingly enough, Gluskin is rather popular. It's easy to forget that him and Trager only appear about two thirds after the game started.
  • The Pyro, for his Woobie tendencies.
  • There's also the one inmate who saves you from Crippling Castration by attacking Eddie.
• Fan Nickname: Chris Walker's actual name is fairly easy to miss and is quite a ways into the game. He's as such occasionally called the "Pigman," due to his Terms of Endangerment to Miles, "Little Pig". There's also "the Pyro" for the otherwise-unnamed Variant who decided to burn down Mount Massive.
• Genius Bonus: The painting in Wernicke's cell is Prometheus. Like Wernicke, he brought forbidden knowledge to humanity and was punished with imprisonment.
• He's Just Hiding: Most refused to believe that Miles died after all he'd been through after the end of the first game. The DLC proved that he was indeed alive (whether in a resurrected body, or if the Walrider had simply regenerated his body and healed him from the gunshot wounds) and with at least partial, if not full control of the Walrider's powers. In the ensuing comics, Murkoff is certain that Miles is truly dead, but the plot insinuates that he is alive, still has a physical form (whether living or resurrected), and is capable of mentally controlling the Walrider collective consciousness, along with Billy, leaving many to firmly believe that Miles will return in a future installment in one way or another.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In Markiplier's Let's Play of the game, a running joke is that the reason for Chris Walker's rampage is that he's just looking for his teddy bear. The tie-in comics revealed that Chris Walker actually did still have a stuffed toy from his childhood, and he brought it with him when he was committed to Mount Massive Asylum. The toy in question? A little pig.
  • In the base game, Miles notes that Richard Trager "probably has a set of golf clubs in the trunk of his Audi." Though meant as a sarcastic jab at his manner of speaking, the fact that Waylon can find a documented email from Jeremy Blair to Trager mentioning the two of them "hitting the greens" in Whistleblower shows he was right on the money.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Documents reveal that Chris Walker is a former military police officer who's likely suffering from PTSD. A document from later in the game reveals that he's actually trying to contain the Walrider by killing everyone he sees, hence why he keeps chasing you. Miles lampshades this after the Walrider tears Walker apart in front of him.
  • Gluskin. There's no excusing what he's done, but his backstory of being sexually abused by his father and uncle does give him sympathy points.
  • The Variants as a whole. Apart from Gluskin (who was a Serial Killer to begin with) and Trager (a Corrupt Corporate Executive) all of them were simply mentally ill individuals who were twisted into murderous beings as a result of Murkoff's torture. A number of them won't even bother attacking you, preferring to simply curl up in a corner or against a wall cowering.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • The most common criticism of the first game is the number of challenges that involve "collect item/turn valve, evade oncoming enemy, repeat," which become sorely repetitive chores by endgame and don't have the excitement of fan-preferred levels, such as the frantic Male Ward chase or the creepy sewer episode.
  • Whistleblower has been accused by critics as being too similar to the original game and not adding anything new. While partly right, this is a major case of Critical Dissonance as fans love it.
• Magnificent Bastard: Father Martin Archimbaud is an inmate who founded a religion centered around worship of the Walrider, considering himself to be a prophet and inspiring fierce devotion in many of the inmates and variants, including the Twins. Upon meeting Miles, Martin believes him to be an apostle who needs to bear witness. Martin prevents Miles from leaving the asylum by cutting power and then sedating him, though quite apologetic for his actions. Martin serves as a guide to help Miles navigate through the asylum, often leaving notes or messages written on the wall in blood, while also displaying concern for Miles' well-being. Eventually Martin chooses to have himself burned on a cross as a sacrifice to the Walrider, but not before allowing Miles to gain access to the Underground Laboratory, where Miles ends up inadvertently releasing the Walrider exactly as Martin had intended.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • For a game centered around Body Horror, insanity, science gone wrong and horrific imagery in general, the Outlast tags on Tumblr and Archive of Our Own feature a lot of fans shipping Eddie and Waylon, drawing cutesy fan art for the game, and turning the crazed serial killers into misunderstood bishies.
  • Gluskin in particular is often turned into a bishonen, as some people tend to outright ignore or downplay the fact that he was a misogynistic serial killer before he was subjected to the Morphogenic Engine. A small minority of Eddie fans have gone one step further and applied the Ron the Death Eater treatment to Waylon for a) not intervening at the beginning when Eddie is being forced into the sphere, and b) for daring to "reject" Eddie.
• Narm:
  • Some feel that the highly detailed Facial Horror and Gorn are so over the top that it ruins the realism of the setting and makes some of the inmates almost cartoony.
  • The amount of times that Chris Walker seemingly teleports to Miles's exact location (and is scripted to attack him once he performs a certain escape action, even if he hadn't been following him or even nearby beforehand) has made some joke that he, like Marta in the sequel, has a police box.
  • Whistleblower shows that the entirety of the inmate rebellion took place over the course of only a couple of hours, whereas the main game had left details vague on exactly how long the asylum had been overrun — meaning that all the rampant property destruction, Eddie Gluskin's ceiling full of corpses and grisly domestic scenes, Trager's self-flaying and countless victims, all the repurposing of the rooms, etc. practically happened in the blink of an eye, rather than the several days or week that most players had assumed. This led some to joke that the patients had meta-awareness of their existence in a video game and were speedrunning their own demise.
• No Yay: Plenty of it in Whistleblower.
  • Andrew, the doctor who licks Waylon's face at the beginning while he is strapped down for morphogenic therapy.
  • The inmate who lets Waylon out calls him a "pretty flower" and promises to "make him purr".
  • Frank Manera's dialogue has creepy, suggestive connotations ("Gorgeous. Just the smell!") Waylon even describes Manera as looking at him with a hint of "desire."
  • Eddie Gluskin, a Serial Killer who alternates between wooing him and calling him sexual slurs and at one point tries to castrate him so that he can be the perfect "bride".
• One-Scene Wonder: While plenty of inmates only show up briefly, the pyro inmate probably embodies this trope the best. He seems relatively composed, and his dialogue is a massive Tear Jerker... only making it worse when he ambushes you for putting out his fires.
• Paranoia Fuel: Probably one of the scariest things about this game is that most of the inmates don't attack you, so you never know when one will attack you. It overall makes nowhere feel safe.
• Signature Scene:
  • The Jump Scare with the decapitated corpses in the library.
  • Trager cutting Miles' fingers off.
  • Gluskin castrating and murdering two men on a tablesaw while Waylon is Forced to Watch.
• Squick: The game runs on this.
  • That lovely squelch when you step into some gore, which will be often. Hell, the gore itself is creative. Pots in kitchens boiling with blood and limbs stewing inside, fountains in the Courtyard filled with bodies, inmates committing necrophilia with headless corpses that might've been decomposing for who knows how long...
  • A drop in the bucket when it comes to how filthy the rest of his tools undoubtedly were, but in the Signature Scene with Trager, he discards all the other blades and pliers and other torture instruments in favor of his weapon, which are bone shears. Where does he store them when he's not using them? In a urinal.
  • During the opening scenes of the Whistleblower DLC, you can hear two doctors discussing a patient's recent dreams/hallucinations during an Engine experiment. A few key phrases are highlighted by one as overarching themes in the dreams: Childhood memories, reptilian features, and sexual connotations. Lampshaded in that, if you wait and listen, the last line from those two before the dialogue repeats is one talking about how he "doesn't want to think about a little kid fucking a crocodile".
• That One Achievement: Beating the game on Insane mode without ever reloading the batteries needed for your night vision. Normal mode is difficult enough without needing to reload your camcorder, since 90% of the game is in pitch black darkness. Insane mode, however, not only makes enemies more perceptive, but also completely disables checkpoints. So if you die, you'll have to start all over. Though for whatever reason, the achievement is not present in the PS4 version, so players of that particular console can at least spare themselves the trouble of trying to achieve it.
• That One Boss: Trager. After immediately establishing himself as one of the sickest (but most memorable) antagonists in the game, he proves himself a very difficult boss even on easy difficulties, as he's very fast, difficult to hide from, and is almost guaranteed to kill you once he's gotten too close. Complicating his level is a layout full of obstructions that make it easy to get caught, barricades that the player can only push away slowly, and patients that will scream when you're nearby and give away your position. It doesn't help that a new player will have learned to evade detections and close doors in order to beat previous levels, but Trager's path is erratic, and closing doors on him will cause him to simply trap you in the hallway — which means the most viable strategy is to force him to chase you. Despite the difficulty spike, he's often cited as the best boss in the game, and some even argue that the game just isn't as fun after his level is cleared.
• That One Level: The Courtyard. Despite the fact that it's by far the shortest level, with exactly one hostile (that being Walker), it will chew through your batteries very quickly if you don't know where you're going, since visibility is pretty much nil the entire way through without the night vision turned on. See that guy who's standing right next to you? Turn the infrared off and watch him disappear. As an outside level, it is also subject to level design that is harder to navigate than the tight tunnels of the asylum's halls, and it will often not be immediately apparent where you might need to go.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: As popular as the Twins are, their appearances amount to only four or five minutes of total screen time and a couple of enemy encounters that are pretty easy for even greenhorn players to handle, as they move slowly and can always be sidestepped with a nearby escape route. Many players found them underused and wished for them to have replaced Chris Walker on at least one puzzle level, given the challenge inherent in having to perform tasks while evading two separate enemies that can kill you in one hit.
• Ukefication: Poor Waylon gets hit with this hard. Despite repeatedly demonstrating Badass Normal tendencies, fans often turn him into a weepy Uke repeatedly subjected to physical, mental and sexual abuse. The character he's most frequently shipped with? Eddie Gluskin, a Serial Killer who alternates between wooing him and calling him sexual slurs and at one point tries to castrate him so that he can be the perfect "bride".
• Viewer Gender Confusion: It's not uncommon for players to mistake Dennis for a woman initially, given his high-pitched voice.
• The Woobie:
  • Miles Upshur. He goes into the asylum hoping to bring justice to Murkoff, which he already knew was an immoral company, although not to what extent. Once inside he faces terrifying, gore-soaked scenes, is chased relentlessly by several inmates, and goes through insane amounts of pain - being thrown through windows, drugged and knocked unconscious, sliced by shears and beaten with pipes and fists, and so on. He is tortured by Trager, losing two of his fingers in the process, and has no supplies to help bandage the stumps. When it finally seems like he might get to leave, he's near-fatally attacked by the Walrider and ends up as its new host. Then he's shot multiple times in the chest! And unlike Waylon, he doesn't seem to have anyone he can use as anchors for mental support, so he ends up using dark humour and bitterness instead. At the very least, Whistleblower reveals that he manages to escape the asylum, although mutilated and possessed by an incredibly deadly, incomprehensible being.
  • Waylon Park. The man has been having suicidal thoughts throughout the DLC and has a wife and two kids, which makes Gluskin chasing him to force Waylon to be his "bride" a whole lot worse. And for his whistleblowing at the end, Waylon and those that are close to him will likely suffer the consequences. Made worse by the fact that while Miles expresses his angst and frustration through snark and anger, Waylon's journal entry is filled with how he was terrified and miss his family.
  • Then there's the Pyro inmate as described in One-Scene Wonder.

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