In the sequel to Beholder and Beholder 2 you are Frank Schwarz, a husband and father who lost his cushy office job at the Ministry after someone set him up. The only way to avoid jail time was to make a deal with a high-ranking security officer.
Now a government spy working undercover as a landlord, you must break into tenants' apartments, search them for contraband and eliminate anyone your boss wants out of the picture. At the same time, you’ll have to spy and scheme against co-workers and superiors in the Ministry to work your way back up the ladder. Different factions are secretly vying for power over the Ministry and the country – play them against each other to your advantage.
Like its predecessors, this game draws heavily from works such as Papers, Please, or This War of Mine, with the building management aspect from Beholder making a return, and now going alongside holding down a job in the Ministry, similar to Beholder 2.
This game provides examples of:
- Distant Sequel: Beholder 3 actually takes place in a different nation with a different totalitarian regime in a different time period to the first two games, unlike Beholder 2 which was a continuation of Beholder.
- Frame-Up: How Frank loses his job and home at the start of the game, upturning his life and putting the lives of his family in jeopardy.
- Multiple Endings: The game has four major endings each with a "good" and "bad" variation:
- Family: To get these endings, which are practically a Non-Standard Game Over that take place shortly before the concert which is usually the climax of the game, Frank must first decide to hide his daughter - Kim - during the "Letter" Quest in a spare house and help her survive by sending her money, food, and clothing while keeping the authorities from finding her. Eventually, Frank decides he and Kim need to flee the country if they're going to continue avoiding arrest. After securing diplomatic passports and convincing a foreign band manager to smuggle them out of the country, Frank is confronted by his wife, Sabine, who threatens to report him if he tries to escape...
- For The Family (Good): Frank convinces Sabine to let Kim go while he stays behind. Hidden in the tour bus, Kim successfully escapes abroad, and is able to live freely as herself. Meanwhile, Frank is arrested for helping his daughter escape. While he knows Kim will be safe and happy, he will never leave jail alive.
- A Dead Dream of Freedom (Bad): Frank and Kim try to call Sabine's bluff, ignoring her warnings and hide on the bus together. Sabine calls the authorities on them and they are arrested at the border. Both father and daughter spend the rest of their lives rotting in neighbouring prison cells.
- Hardliners: Lotte Altmann sets off a bomb during the concert, killing the band and over 400 visitors. Under the pretext that it was a terrorist attack, the nation declares a war on terror and uses the excuse that they need to defend themselves to take back reforms and take away liberties. Tens of thousands of civilians are arrested as enemies of the state and subsequently arrested, killed, sent to work camps, or imprisoned.
- A War on Terror (Good): Frank helps Lotte implement her plan and is rewarded with being promoted to a position of leadership within the Ministry, now managing the "helpers" and spies that report on their neighbours.
- A Story of a Man (Bad): Frank refuses to help Lotte implement her plan, trying to betray her at the last moment. All this achieves is getting him declared just one more enemy of the nation, and he spends the rest of his life rotting away in a prison cell.
- Reformists: Stephen Huberts implements his plan to reform the nation. During the concert, the populace is brainwashed by mind control devices into accepting a new lifestyle. The Great Leader is rebranded as the C.P.O. (Chief Prosperity Officer) and the nation is flooded with so many new products to buy. In this new society however, many slips through the cracks and wind up homeless and living on the streets.
- A Nice Place to Live (Good): Frank helps Stephen implement his plan and is rewarded with regaining his former standing in life, now working a cushy job deciding who gets to see which advertisements. Meanwhile, the homeless sit drinking and smoking among piles of trash just outside his new home.
- On the Streets (Bad): Frank refuses to help Stephen implement his plan and ends up living on the streets in this new nation, unloved and alone.
- Revolutionists: During the Great Leader's speech at the concert, Schmolke switches the cameras in the Great Leader's studio, revealing to the entire nation the truth that their beloved leader was nothing more than a puppet in a fish tank. The outraged populace began to riot and Wolf Henker becomes the spearhead of the revolution.
- Part of the Revolution (Good): Frank helps Wolf implement his plans and joins the revolution. He gets a job as one of the "tough men" needed by the revolution, carrying out executions on those who stand in their way of tearing down the government. Frank and his family live in a new house, which he outfits with security cameras and an electrified, barbed wire fence to protect them from the chaos and fighting taking place on the streets.
- Goodbye, Frank (Bad): Frank refuses to help Wolf implement his plans. Once the riot breaks out, Frank is dragged on stage and summarily executed by the revolutionists. He is buried in a shallow grave and promptly forgotten about.
- Family: To get these endings, which are practically a Non-Standard Game Over that take place shortly before the concert which is usually the climax of the game, Frank must first decide to hide his daughter - Kim - during the "Letter" Quest in a spare house and help her survive by sending her money, food, and clothing while keeping the authorities from finding her. Eventually, Frank decides he and Kim need to flee the country if they're going to continue avoiding arrest. After securing diplomatic passports and convincing a foreign band manager to smuggle them out of the country, Frank is confronted by his wife, Sabine, who threatens to report him if he tries to escape...
- Rebellious Spirit: Frank's daughter, Kim, is a nonconformist and a lesbian, which gets her in trouble with the authorities.
