Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
- Alice has been tormented by Scratch for six years, so what does she do? She takes her trauma, captures it on film, and starts a photography exhibit called "The Dark Place". Anyone who's created in the past knows how hard it is to take trauma and turn it into something usable, and Alice was able to do that to an Eldritch Abomination trying to drive her insane.
- It gets better: after Scratch started tormenting Alice, she visited the FBC, and got her memories of her time in the Dark Place back. She manages to fool Scratch and Alan into thinking that she killed herself so that she could try to give Alan a lifeline out of the Dark Place.
- Part 4 of Initiation is called "We Sing". With Poets of the Fall as Old Gods of Asgard once again, the game becomes a musical for a solid twenty minutes. Matthew Porretta has pipes! It's also the first point in the game you get the Flare Gun, and can see its destructive power against Taken first-hand. The whole thing is a Call-Back to similar moments from the original game and Control, where the player is given A Taste of Power in the form of a ton of ammo and resources to curb-stomp enemies with while an incredible song plays in the background. Complete with choreography this time!
- Scratch suddenly manifests in the cells, upending everyone's plans. Jaakko Koskela, showing genuine emotion for the first time in the game, stares down possibly the most lethal villain in the entire Remedy universe and tells him to bring it on.Jaakko Koskela: There it is! We've been waiting for you, motherfucker! I'm gonna fucking destroy you.
- Scratch doesn't do poorly either. His reaction to said taunt is to phase through the jail cell bars and slaughter Jaakko in a span of seconds. We don't see what he did, but it's enough to leave Jaakko's leather jacket completely soaked in blood (which Scratch naturally proceeds to take and wear himself, because even as a snarling feral monster, he's still Scratch, and he likes to look good).Saga Anderson: The plan is fucked.
- Scratch doesn't do poorly either. His reaction to said taunt is to phase through the jail cell bars and slaughter Jaakko in a span of seconds. We don't see what he did, but it's enough to leave Jaakko's leather jacket completely soaked in blood (which Scratch naturally proceeds to take and wear himself, because even as a snarling feral monster, he's still Scratch, and he likes to look good).
- Saga's plan to rescue Alan: have the Old Gods of Asgard write a new song about him escaping, using the power of Cauldron Lake and the Clicker to make it real. Tor is ecstatic at the thought and immediately begins brainstorming. By the time Saga arrives at Cauldron Lake for the ritual, he and Odin have already written "Dark Ocean Summoning", instrumentals and all. As they perform, the Dark Presence sends a veritable army of Taken at them, far larger than any group you've faced before. Yet with Casey's and Estevez's help, Saga fights off every last one of them amid the blaring metal and blasting fireworks.Agent Estevez: There's a whole lot of paranatural crimes happening right now. But it's fucking awesome! I want a T-shirt!
- Near the end of the song, the Taken smarten up and stop attacking Saga to attack Tor and Odin instead in an attempt to stop the song. Key word being attempt. The two old bastards proceed to live up to their divine namesakes, striking a power chord so epic that it literally calls down a bolt of lightning from the sky to obliterate the horde of Taken surrounding the bus.
- In a surprising twist near the end of the game, Alan does manage to escape from The Dark Place. However, he quickly realizes that it came at the cost of Scratch taking over Alex Casey and stealing the Clicker, and Saga being thrown into Cauldron Lake. After a brief gameplay section where you relive the good old days by navigating Alan through the woods from Cauldron Lake back to the car to take him to Bright Falls, he discovers that Scratch has used the Clicker to throw the entire town into the Dark Place. Alan muses on how he used Saga and Casey to help him escape, how he's caused most of the problems in Bright Falls, and how all of this is ultimately his fault and nobody else's. He stares down the entrance to the Dark Place, flashlight in hand, realizing that if he steps back inside he might never get out again. So what does he do? Simply says "Fuck it." and walks right in.
- Off screen moments go to the Cult of the Tree and Rose Marigold, who have separately been working to keep Taken from invading Bright Falls. They might not have been doing the best job, but they've survived for 13 years and Bright Falls isn't a complete extension of The Dark Place. Especially considering they both had incomplete information from different sources so they had to figure it all out on their own.
