Headscratchers / Outlast II

As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

• Why does Knoth refer to Val as male? (Specifically, while torturing Mary and Josiah.) Was this a script writing oversight? Is the "main" female heretic not Val? Or is this some form of transgender or intersex situation?
  • Given how one of the documents mentions that Val is incapable of having children, it's probable Val may be a transwoman (or intersex). Knoth referring to her as male during the torture scene could be his way of insulting her by stating she's not a "real" woman.
    • Alternatively, it's possible Val is biologically female and infertile and Knoth is mocking her.
    • Looking at Val's nude character model shows that the placement of her breast and vagina are anatomically inaccurate and shaped with mud. Closer inspection also reveals that there use to be a penis down there, showing that Val is indeed a transwoman (albeit a crudely made one).

• Why did everyone in town think that not only was Lynn pregnant, but that her child was the Anti-Christ? According to the "scriptures" that Blake finds the Anti-Christ will be a descendant of Knoth, but everyone believes that the baby is Blake's. Do they think that Blake or Lynn is a descendant of Knoth? Is there something in the "scriptures" that the end of the world will be heralded by a helicopter crash landing?
  • Reading some of the pages reveals they kind of thought every child born was the Anti-Christ. It also says in the scriptures that the Anti-Christ will "fall from the sky". It's perfectly reasonable to assume no one is in a position to question Knoth, and that he took the helicopter as a sign from God.
• How much of the "scriptures" were written while Knoth was under the influence of Murkoff's experiment, versus how much was "ordinary" religious strangeness? Further, how much of it was written under the recent "corrupted" experimental signal versus the ordinary signal?
• What was the point of Murkoff exposing the town to their "experiment"? It's impossible to set up experimental controls, and they can only do observation by binocular, telescope, and maybe drones.
  • I suppose you already answered your own question. They probably used telescopes and perhaps drones. Maybe they brainwashed the people and made them think that the drones were just birds.
  • The question wasn't how, but why. The only possible reason to experiment on a town like that is... Well, Murkoff are dicks.
• Why did Blake and Lynn investigate at night, much less a cloudy night? That doesn't make for good footage.
  • They're in a remote region of Arizona. Assuming they expected to be out there for at least a few hours, they'd be roasted in the daytime heat. Plus, the moon was out when they were in the helicopter, so it wasn't so dark that filming was impossible even if Blake didn't use the night vision on his camera.
• Where is all the modern technology in Temple Gate besides flashlights and batteries? Where are the firearms? They're not culturally isolated, Laird recognizes what a camcorder is.
  • The Testament's goal is to live like Christ's followers; that is, by using the same barbaric punishments described in the Old Testament. Obviously there were no firearms back then, so they resort to crucifying and burning heretics at the stake instead. Knoth's followers are also familiar with the modern world, since some of them make regular trips to "Publican" businesses to buy "Penissilon" (and presumably batteries/flashlights). As for Laird, he must have joined Knoth somewhat recently if he knew what a camcorder was, since his odd appearance means he probably didn't go out on shopping trips.
• What happened to the Scalled besides Nick and Laird? All the other characters die. The heretics (at least, the ones present in the mines) are killed by Knoth's followers (presumably including Val herself since she's never seen or mentioned again), Marta is impaled and dies, and Knoth and his followers commit suicide. What happened to the Scalled? They are nowhere to be seen when Blake leaves at the end. Were they killed in the storm (assuming it was real and not just a hallucination)?
  • They might have been killed in the storm because they lived unsheltered in the woods. However, it's more likely that they just starved to death, dehydrated or succumbed to their diseases.
• How exactly is this a sequel to the first Outlast? If not for the gameplay being pretty much the same, and the protagonist's face being arbitrarily never revealed despite having too much of his own personality (even having spoken lines) to be a Featureless Protagonist, one could easily assume this was just another Survival Horror game with no connection to its official predecessor.
  • While the tenuous-at-best connection to the first game was a point of criticism, the series is structured more as an anthology regarding Murkoff's evildoing. The comics try to tie the lore closer together by having Murkoff's minions be the one to kill the victim that kicked off the plot, being the ones to discover Blake at the end, etc.