The juxtaposition of corny 1950's suburbia with ghastly levels of violence and gore is deeply unsettling. It comes to a head once you finally enter The Lodge, which is brimming with Surreal Horror: Random, unconnected areas packed with Scenery Gorn, all sorts of strange and disturbing enemies, and indifferent staff who go on as if everything is perfectly normal (and whom you're free to kill with no repercussions). Then you ascend to the third level, and come upon the Temples:
The Temple of Motherly Love. A woman is surrounded by her three children, who are actually eating her alive. In between WHAT IS NOT an Author Tract, the game cuts to a FMV of the kids, mouths covered in gore, commenting on how good mommy tastes. Oh, and then one of the kids takes a chunk out of her thigh. Also doubles as Nausea Fuel.
The Temple of Beauty. The lovely lady you meet here asks if you find her beautiful, and will continue fishing for compliments until you either tell her to get over herself or hand her a mirror. Do the former and she'll attack you. Do the latter, and she'll freak out at how "fat" she is and claw off half of her own face down to the bone, with the skin and flesh hanging down like a banner from her exposed jaw and teeth. Then she asks again if you find her beautiful.
Possibly the scariest thing about the Temples isn't the Gorn, but the lessons imparted by the characters you find in them. It's the cruel logic of a stone-cold sociopath, expressed in the most blunt and concise terms, and it's all part of the plan to mold Steve into a serial killer by getting him to not just act like one, but also to think like one. Get a load of this excerpt from the Temple of the Mystery of Mercy:
Gladiator: "Thus is the Mystery of Mercy: Life is a competition and mercy a perversion of the Natural Order. When you extend mercy to a competitor, you give him a second chance to beat you."
If you kill anyone outside the lodge without a "Get Out of Jail Free" card or specific orders to kill them, Steve is arrested, and you are treated to a scene of him getting executed in an electric chair as he screams at the top of his lungs and gurgles blood out of his mouth, with the scene fading to a heart monitor flatlining. Not helped by the fact that his mother isn't disturbed in the slightest, smiling all the while.
The 1994 teaser video shows off the original art style for the game, which used rotoscoped animation and CGI for the characters, but had to be abandoned for digitized live-action models because of the small development budget. Which is unfortunate, as it looked insanely creepy in comparison to what we got in the finished release.
