Yeah, right. Everyone has talked about this franchise, everyone has played these games, and everyone knows about Five Nights at Freddy’s. Why am I talking about it, then?
Because it’s a treasure of storytelling, that’s why.
Or rather, it did not start that way, but it eventually grew to become this. In
light of an actual Five Nights At Freddy’s movie being made, I felt like it was
a good time to talk about the franchise. (Also, anything with FNAF in the name
will bring in clicks.)
The big fans of the series know the backstory: Scott
Cawthon was a video game developer with an impressive output, who yet couldn’t
“make it”. At the time, his latest game was “Chipper and Sons Lumber Co.”,
about a family of beavers chopping trees and managing their business. It was a
cute little game for kids, and the story would normally end there; but then
Cawthon received criticism that the characters in his game looked like robots
or animatronics given life, which was pure uncanny valley to some. It just
didn’t feel right. Following the harsh criticisms, Cawthon fell into a great depression.
However, instead of attacking or suing his critics (as the bigger asshole
developers on Steam are want to do nowadays), he instead took that criticism to
heart… and built a horror game in which the uncanny valley of the foes is the
entire point.
Animatronics given life? Yep, that’s Five Nights at
Freddy’s alright. Scott Cawthon turned one of his original weaknesses into a
massive franchise. Which isn’t to say that the franchise doesn’t have its
weaknesses, although they lie more in the setting than in the gameplay itself.
The story for the first game is pretty simple, and
merely serves as an excuse plot for said gameplay: You (Mike Schmidt?) find a
job as a watchman at Freddy’s through a newspaper ad. You’re told by a guy on
the phone that the animatronics are a little… erm, agitated at night and if
they see you, they might try to stuff you into an empty animatronic suit. And
kill you. But you’ll be fine as long as you can keep a safe amount of electric
power for yourself! Oh, but checking the cameras uses power. Closing the doors?
Uses power. I mean, they spring open when you run out of electricity, and
that’s a real safety measure in some places, but you’ll wish they would close
instead.
The concept is full of holes. First off, why not go to
work in an animal costume if that’s the problem? I would never wear a fursuit,
but if my life hinged on it… Second, we have to save power, so why is that fan
running? If I had to choose between aerated death and sweaty survival, I’ll
pick the latter and ditch the fan, thank you very much. As a matter of fact,
why don’t I guard the place from outside? Problem solved! Oh, and also-
Original page from VG Cats. |
ACK!
Long story short, the plot really stretches your
suspension of disbelief, but you’re not here to question every element, you're here to
play the damn game.
Speaking of game, Scott Cawthon almost made it a
separate game to hide clues towards the next sequel on his site and in various
promotional images, in a way to get investigative fans running and theorizing
about the events of the upcoming title. It’s a nice way to involve the fandom
and gets gears turning. Wild mass guesses all over the place. Letting theories
run wild is a major reason why FNAF now has the success it does. There’s the
horror, then there’s the anticipation at what’s coming next and everyone trying
to piece together a mythos that has become more and more complex and
labyrinthine as it went. The TVTropes pages for this franchise seem to have
more spoiler entries than anywhere else, and that’s because some characters and
situations are so ambiguous that nobody is quite sure what’s going on.
This pic doesn't convey much, but that's because you cannot put sound bites on a picture. |
Anyone who has played this game, its sequels, or has
watched Let’s Players reacting live can tell you: The game's horror is surprisingly
effective. Yes, it uses the tired-and-trite cliché of the jump
scare, but does it well. How? Well, most of the gameplay involves trying to
stop the animatronics from reaching you. Pulling up the surveillance cameras
takes up the whole screen. If a robot snuck in while you had your eyes glued to
the cameras… well, you can guess.
That's an awful lot of rooms for a small pizzeria. |
They know you're watching. So they're watching you too. |
Those are the titular five nights, but it would be a
lie to say that the game ends there. For you see, you then unlock a sixth
night, which features a very sudden difficulty spike. As if it wasn’t already
hard enough! That’s alright, I’ve gotten used to wearing my brown pants by now.
Of course, this is overtime for Mike Schmidt, meaning that he should be paid
more than what he was paid for a single night before… Nope! A measly 50 cents
is added to his paycheck for this night, the worst one of the lot.
Bad idea. Set them all to 0, that'll make everything alright. |
Now, to be fair, while the 4-20 custom night is
extremely difficult, it’s not impossible. You can beat it, provided you play
carefully. Story-wise, however, what does this mean for our protagonist?
Why, he’s fired! Granted, that’s the best thing
that could happen to this poor guy after six nights of intense horror. The
higher-ups at Freddy’s say he was let off due to “tampering with the
animatronics”, “general unprofessionalism” and “odor”. Well, sorry I shat my
pants! It happens to the best of us, especially when faced with the prospect of
our own bloody, messy, painful death at the hands of robotic monsters! When you
think about it, him getting fired is even stupider when you realize that
someone smart would set the difficulty setting of every animatronic to 1,
making them almost harmless, and were this not a game, that’s what Schmidt
would do. But naaaaah, you're a gamer and you want a challenge, so 4-20 it is. And of course, the higher-ups at Freddy Fazbear absolutely want their
animatronics to remain dangerous at night. I swear, these folks are the real
monsters.
Working night shifts is already hard enough as it is,
your sleep schedule gets all kinds of fucked up. I know, I’ve been doing night
shifts for seven months and it’s now my reality to mostly sleep during the day and
live in the evening. Poor Schmidt will be lucky if he ever sleeps again!
Oh, and there are some revelations in there too,
something about children being murdered in the restaurant by a guy in purple,
and then the souls of the murdered children going on to inhabit the robots…
doesn’t explain why they’ve turned murderous, the explanation that they want to
shove the watchman in a deadly suit because they think he’s an uncovered robot
seems pretty poor to me. Oh well. I treat this as if it was unimportant, but this is the plot twist that gets built on with every following game.
Yes, the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise is famous for its jump scares, but
it’s a perfectly horrifying story in its own right. Every new installment adds
a new layer to the horror. Just how many kids did that freaking purple guy
kill, anyway? That kind of psychopath is probably too insane to have a family
and understand what it’s like to lose a child. (We have another revelation at
the end, and we’re told that the restaurant will shut down soon… but that
hasn’t stopped sequels from happening.)
What are you trying to do from over there? Chicken me out? |
…and even then, many games end on ambiguous situations
or stay unclear on what exactly happened (or who we’re following), so fans are
still left guessing until the next installment… which answers two or three
questions, and then brings some more to the table.
Really, the big flaw of the first FNAF game is that
there’s more interest in the plot than in the gameplay. Some people can’t stand
the jump scares when it happens to them, so they prefer to watch Let’s Plays.
That’s my case, although the gameplay is a part of it as I never got past Night
1. I know, I suck. This is not the kind of game that I like to play, although I
admit that the story is fascinating. The images are great and the animatronics
are suitably very creepy. There’s very little music, aside from cues that make
you fearful of something approaching. I must applaud Scott Cawthon’s
performance as Phone Guy as he does recite his lines much like a real person
would; stuttering, pausing and using “uh”s, such things. Written as if someone was not reading off a script, basically. The game itself contains
a fine layer of black comedy, whether it’s the higher-ups’ incompetence or some
innocuous comments from Phone Guy.
Although I really recommend that you try it for yourself, as
watching it and playing it are two very different things. In a Let’s Play, someone
else is going through the stress of constantly checking up their power reserve,
locking and unlocking doors, checking the cameras. When you’re playing, you are
in constant fear. Quick, check the cameras. Okay, the three animatronics are at
the back of the place… that’s good. Quick checking on Foxy at the Pirate Cove…
he’s peeking. In the back… uh oh, Bonnie has left. A minute or two later, Chica
has left as well. Checking around the cameras, I see the backstage area… Oh
shit, Bonnie is there and staring straight at me with his creepy big eyes.
Better watch myself. Okay, maybe look out with those cameras. Oh, but then Foxy
may come at me. Gotta watch him! And gotta keep track of Chica too. Ah, there she is, damn she walks fast. A quick
check of the cameras and then
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