Nightmare Fuel / Outlast II

O, be careful, little eyes, what you see.

Thought the original was scary and disturbing? Thought the second one couldn't get any worse? Well, get ready, because even from the teaser and the demo to the game itself, this story doesn't pull any punches. None.

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

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Pre-Release

• Right off the bat, the trailer does a great job at giving nightmares by itself. It starts off with a close up on a burning cross, only the flames seem somewhat...off. Then as a creepy-sounding old man recites quotes from Revelation about the fall of Babylon and how the hour of God's judgment has come. The camera slowly pulls back to reveal it's actually an upside-down burning cross^note Granted the scariness is somewhat negated by the fact that the upside-down cross is actually a common Christian motif known as the Cross of St. Peter, but it's still creepy. The view then flashes to nightvision, revealing a number of eyes staring out of the surrounding forest and into the camera. Sweet dreams!
• It takes merely the PAX East demo to terrify. To recap a "few" of its features:
  • After the intro, the protagonist enters a seemingly barren farm town. When exploring a house with a corpse in one room, knocking on a door near the entrance results in... something banging on the door from the other side. Upon leaving the house, the protagonist notices eyes peering at him through the dark that he can see with his camera's nightvision mode.
  • This eyes belong to what seem to be the crazies in the game. A bunch of creepily-dressed villagers that move away from you into the darkness in a way that almost makes it seem like they're beings out of this world.
  • The aspect of the town, with its evasive inhabitants and its omnipresent religious symbols, can easily give the creeps even to those who are religious. Especially when you see the picture of what appears to be their priest and the horrid images they created.
  • There's a Jump Scare when you try to open the window in which a crow flies at your face.
  • Certain elements, like the dead men next to the first batteries you encounter, the messily-slaughtered cow, and the screams nearby that resemble those of your wife, are anything but calming.
  • Later in the same sequence, the protagonist comes across a mass grave with the decayed bodies of children all lined up in the shape of a cross. Seriously, it's possibly the most disturbing part, and to top it all off, you have to walk over the dead bodies! And, yes, they do indeed crunch when you do so.
  • As you're heading down the hallway in the school section, you suddenly hear eerie laughter and lockers opening and closing on their own. As you turn around, you may see something out of the corner of your eye try to grab at you for a split second and disappear.
  • One major aspect separating the crazies of the farm town from those of the first game's asylum patients: these crazies have flashlights. Not even hiding in the dark can protect the player this time.
  • One death scene involved being stabbed in the crotch with a pickaxe.
  • And finally, the well with the tongue-tentacles. There are tentacle monsters in Outlast now!
• Outlast II was originally refused classification in Australia. Why? Because of a scene where the player is sexually assaulted by a monster at some sort of ritualistic orgy. In first person.

The Game

• The opening scene in the Catholic school. It starts ominous enough, but when you try to follow a certain figure towards a dark hallway, the doors suddenly close and you're pushed back to see Jessica as a sea of blood comes from behind her. Certain people didn't miss the similarities with a certain scene from The Shining.
• The pilot's naked, flayed body is exposed in a pyre. The protagonist's reaction is quite justified.
• Dear GOD, the letters:
  • The first one explains that the man from the first house you entered in the demo committed suicide because of his grief over giving his son to be sacrificed. The end of the note claims his wife would at least find "comfort" in the arms of Papa Knoth.
  • The second one covers the gruesome mumblings of a woman called Lisa, as she had horrid visions of a multi-penised, shining horror. During those visions, she recalls how she blinded her own son with lye in a painful moment (for him) and how she reacted with lust. This is a woman that not only went insane, but that also has fallen into lust with Knoth and has bought everything he said.
  • The Midwife's Lament is a true declaration of intentions. It doesn't help at all that it is found next to a cradle soaked in blood.
  • Val's journals. One of them mentions that Val gets wet while dreaming about slashing the throats of children.
  • One often-overlooked letter proves that not all the horror can be laid at Murkoff's feet. It's from a husband to his wife. He says that he understands the "sadness" she's been going through after their child had to be killed, but that it's getting quite tiresome on him that she won't fuck him because of it, and that she'd better shape up or he'll have to "get firm with [her]".
    • This note is found shoved under the door of a locked and impassable house. Looking through a nearby window, however, shows a woman (presumably the wife that the letter is addressed to) hanging in her kitchen, a sad foreshadowing to the sexual violence in Blake's flashbacks.
• Many places have tons of creepy dolls that should probably never be given as gifts to children.
• One of the earlier things you record with your camera is a small memorial with pictures of babies and little kids, showing just a few of all those who were sacrificed.
• In the first segment of the town, a creepy old lady follows you around, spouting religious nonsense. At first, she seems harmless, since she won't attract hostiles and will not chase you; but if you get too close, she'll stab you without warning. Worse yet, no matter where you are on the map, she will always be staring directly at you, even if you've been out of sight and impossible to track. She even gives Blake an in-universe jump scare after he restarts the generator to find her watching him, having silently followed him up to the room.
  • In the same segment, exploring one house will lead the player to a room where a family is sitting around a kitchen table. They're all dead and have black hoods over their heads, and on the table is a gallon of cyanide, foreshadowing the Jonestown parallels of Temple Gate.
  • Near the start of the map, one man can be seen staring out the window. He won't alert hostiles or aggro as long as you stay outside, but opening the door will have him attack you so fast that the game intends the decision to be an instantly fatal one. Nevertheless, some players caught on and were able to avoid death by immediately closing the door again — only to discover that the enemy will chase you and moves at improbably lightning speed, and will kill you if you try to escape, unless you jump through some massive hoops.
• The way that the game brutally depicts Death of a Child is disturbing. You'll find plenty of corpses of dead children and even babies. And what do you find written on a chalkboard in a classroom? "DON'T BE AFRAID, YOU ARE GOING TO HEAVEN," suggesting that sacrificing children at a young age with the promise of entering heaven is a tradition of the cult.
  • At one point you also find an elderly woman singing while cradling a dead infant. There's several more skeletons of babies in little coffins beside her, all presumably sacrificed.
• You have to pass through Knoth's rape den. There's a lashed and Empty Shell of a young girl bound to a bed. It's covered in buckets of piss and shit, and there are seats. The villagers watch Knoth impregnate the woman like an audience, and likely the birthing too. A Fate Worse Than Death for sure.
• While escaping from Marta in a barn, Blake has to crawl through a ditch full of cow feces, getting it all over his hands. This might seem tame, compared to deformed psychos hunting him, but it's just such a grim reminder of how incomprehensibly disgusting and visceral a situation like this would actually be. Remember: these people don't bathe or brush their teeth whatsoever. They're constantly surrounded by flies and their teeth are a sickening, rotten yellow. Some of them have definitely lived their entire lives without a care for hygiene. Imagine how overwhelmingly putrid every inch of Temple Gate must smell.
• The monster that comes out of nowhere in the school segments. Prior to this point, the enemies you encountered were merely insane, disfigured human beings. But whatever this thing is, it definitely isn't human.
  • In some of the segments, it appears without any jump-scare music or noise to tip you off, taking you completely by surprise.
  • Worse yet it incorporates some sort of visual Interface Screw. When the player is about to encounter one the camcorder glitches out, the walls decay, and brief flashes of the monster appear in the player's peripheral vision.
  • The monster is heavily implied to be a manifestation of the teacher that raped Blake's friend Jessica. It has the same voice as him and at one point appears in the same place the teacher was when Blake finds Jessica dead. Adding to this theory, both the monster and the teacher have the same birthmark on their head.
  • The Ironic Nursery Tune that the monster sings as it's advancing on you in some segments. Even worse if you take it as a reference to Blake witnessing the signs of Jessica's abuse, her subsequent death, and the teacher's coverup.
  "Be careful little eyes what you see. Be careful little eyes what you see. There's a father up above, and he's looking down in love, so be careful little eyes what you see..."
• Marta, the hooded woman carrying a pick-axe. Her tall and scrawny build makes her reminiscent of a scarecrow, and the entire time she stalks you, she’s fanatically hissing prayers bordering on maniacal nonsense. She's the sequel's equivalent to Chris Walker. Even worse is that she's fast, coded to run as fast as Miles did in the first game, which makes chase scenes difficult as she will outrun Blake until he's exhausted, unless the player has a plan of escape.
  • Like Chris Walker, she has her own theme music. While his was intimidating and put the player on edge, Marta's theme music is utterly demented, and is usually preceded by one of her furious, hellish screams as soon as she notices Blake.
  • Other hostiles are notably terrified of Marta. In the Village Square segment, the men who have been patrolling the area flee into their houses in a panic as soon as they realize she's arrived. And these are villagers who are deathly loyal to Knoth — Blake has every right to crap himself as soon as Marta arrives.
• The torture scene, where a woman is slowly and painfully racked. You can see her bones splintering out her elbows and knees.
  • Her husband, Josiah, got it rough too. His eyes were dug out, "JUDAS" was carved into his chest, and he was likely strung up and essentially crucified for days. There's also the horror of hearing his wife scream at the top of her lungs as she's racked to death.
• Lynn has a very unpleasant trip through the mountains. The first time Blake finds her, she seems heavily traumatized and in pain. The sounds you hear from her in the way towards her inside the church, and the mentions of her having become pregnant all are heavily reminiscent of rape. She tries to avoid talking about what happened as much as possible.
  • What happens in the mines is pretty horrible too. Death by Childbirth would be one thing, but she also dies apparently having gave birth to The Antichrist - assuming she gave birth at all, as Blake has been so damaged by Murkoff's mind control experiments that what he sees and what is real have officially been forever estranged.
• The sequel's answer to the butthole-clenching terror of the first game's Male Ward chase is the Chapel escape chase, another intense two-parter that forces the player to make snap decisions in a chase scene with hostiles appearing out of nowhere to chase you and call out your location to the others. And since Blake has finite stamina, unlike Miles, the escape is even more daunting. The sequence forces Blake to crawl under houses in order to flee, and in a departure from the first installment, enemies will crawl after you to try to catch you, which makes for a terrifying sight whenever you look backwards.
  "HE'S IN THE HOUSE!"
  • The sequel even ups the ante by giving more frantic chase scenes. Though some were patched out to give players time to breathe, most were retained for the Heretics, who have multiple nail-biter chases that involve Blake having to haul ass to the point of exhaustion as the snarling, screeching, monstrous foes sprint after him.
• The Scalled section is pure Nausea Fuel. A camp of exiled lepers so twisted by untreated disease and suffering that they almost look like monsters, some of them violently projectile vomiting (on Blake, in some instances, and into his mouth during kill animations), and some of them actually missing their noses. They would be more pitiful than scary if not for the fact that at any moment they can be whipped into a violent frenzy, thinking Blake is their new Christ figure and wanting to devour his flesh to cure them. Their hygiene is also even worse that the villagers, as their bathrooms are just giant puddles of piss and shit Blake has to crawl through. Flies are also swarming and chewing off the Scalled, as if they're already corpses.
  • Each time Blake is caught in the story proper, their leader Laird tries to kill Blake so he can be "reborn", the first time being outright crucifixion (and Blake shreds his hands pulling them through the nails to escape). The second time he actually buries him alive.
  • If you try to lock yourself in a shed nearby when escaping from them early on, you'll find a guy waiting for you inside.
  • The Scalled have an especially brutal kill animation, where they, as previously mentioned, throw up in Blake's mouth before unleashing a gratuitous No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on his head. It lasts for a whole 20 seconds, and ends with probably the most gut-churning noise in the game: the sound of Blake's head cracking open. You can literally hear his brains spilling out his demolished skull. For once, thank God the game is in first person.
• As Blake finally reaches Lynn, he sees an unholy orgy taking place. He's suddenly drugged by one of the Heretics while the leader Val begins to rape him as his wife watches.
• You have two cults in the game: the New Ezekiel Christians who kill children and infants in order to make sure the Antichrist isn't born and the Heretics who want the Antichrist to be born. Both of the cults are not so different from each other in regards to them being violent, unhinged, monstrous rapists who would kill anyone who disagrees with them.
• Just what Murkoff has been up too since Mount Massive went up shit creak without a paddle: they've been brainwashing and making people crazy by doing experiments in the Arizona Desert. This is why Lynn falls pregnant and dies and why everyone else, including her husband, has gone crazy. Makes Waylon and Miles' adventures seem all for nothing, doesn't it?
• The lake. It is one of the eeriest places in the game in a way that only a lake can be. You know it's bad news when Blake verbally refuses to so much as touch the water before anything even happens^note :which it appears to if you don't notice the man walking into the water up past his head as you enter the area. The coast is entirely silent, with no background music nor human or otherwise hostile presences whatsoever, until you decide to get into the water. Going in starts up ominous whistling wind, and going deeper makes the music louder and adds "Psycho" Strings. This even happens if you just go out onto the piers. It's sure to make a player want to get out of and avoid the water, even before that bone-chilling echo.
  Let me help you^...You will hear this a few seconds before the Stalker drags you under and kills you. Run for the shore.
• Val, the leader of the Heretics, is pretty much a living aversion of Double Standard Rape: Female on Male. She makes it very clear through her actions that she is completely in lust with Blake and wants to have sex with him, whether he wants it or not. And it is all incredibly horrifying.
  • Her followers are even worse. While the other cultists -including the Scalled- are still rational to a degree, the Heretics are utterly unhinged, rambling and laughing and snarling after you like wild beasts. They stalk around completely naked, and their strange headwear - seemingly made out of branches- makes nigh-impossible to identify their faces, making them even more terrifying. And then there are all the grotesquely mutilated bodies they adorn their turf with...
• Playing Blake's garbled recordings of the school sections backwards, you hear the priest's voice, specifically his twisted justification for either killing Jessica himself or covering up her death.
• The final flashback to Blake's school. A teacher catches Blake and Jessica, tells Blake to go home, and forces Jessica to stay with the implication that he's going to rape her, with Jessica begging Blake not to leave her. It's never shown what happens, and Blake might not grasp what's going on, but the player certainly does, filling an otherwise supernatural horror story. And there's nothing you can do to stop it, no matter how much you want to.
• The number of dangerous diseases Blake may have contracted. Laird force feeds him his own infected blood which will likely have contained Syphilis and Gonorrhoea. He's also crucified with rusty, blood coated nails. And that's not taking into account the time he spent crawling through swamp water, mud and even human waste with open wounds all over his body.