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“Layers of Fear 2 also has more traditional scares than the original.
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The sound effects complement the shifting environments as they often unfold in tandem, upping the atmospheric horror to another level. Voices can be heard talking behind closed doors, whispers fill the room randomly, metronomes tick back and forth, the static of a radio sifts through a darkened hallway. Sound is equally as important as sight in producing effective horror, and Layers of Fear 2 uses it masterfully. Fragmented cutscenes, areas, and objects that occupy these spaces come together to form a whole, filling the shrouded frames of the film reel. Your room also changes to fit the character that you’re becoming in real time. Long-locked doors you’ve passed by several times now open, revealing entire new sections of the vessel. The pristine corridors you walk through in one act can turn unkempt and decrepit in later sections. As you progress through the five acts, global changes begin to ripple throughout the entire ship. The majority of the frights rely on these changes, which made me feel as if the floor beneath me, the walls that boxed me in, and the decorations that brought it all to life were nothing but facades crafted by the devious director to mess with me. On a moment-to-moment basis, I never knew what to expect. Objects you can interact with help shape the story between scripted moments, but even the stationary pieces, the ones that do not shift at all, feel carefully placed to add context the story. Each area has a remarkable attention to detail, which makes the illusions all the more stunning. There’s usually only one place to go to advance the story, but I still felt like I was exploring a much more open space thanks to its shifting architecture. The transformations are methodically placed, deftly masking the linearity of each act. Layers of Fear 2’s clever environment-changing design remains remarkable throughout the roughly eight-hour story. Some of these scenes, the ones that I seemingly stumbled into by accident, made my jaw drop in awe. Lighting effects further exacerbate the horrors that appear both while staring directly at them and when looking away for just a moment. Other passages lead to entirely new environments outside of the ship, such as floating skyscrapers, ominous gardens, and labyrinths. A door that you just walked through may be gone when you turn around, revealing a new corridor in its place. But what makes this world so interesting is that, like the P.T.-inspired original, Layers of Fear 2 kept me on the edge of my seat by constantly toying with environments the moment I looked away. The ocean liner is more of a central hub than a confining setting, and visiting other locations keeps it from becoming too familiar. “Even though the spoken and written story excels, the brunt of Layers of Fear 2’s magic lies in the environments you explore. Unfortunately, you cannot revisit a previous acts of the story, so you’d have to do a New Game+ run and likely know what you’re looking for ahead of time to ensure you get a different ending. Though these moments work well thematically, it seems easy to miss the actual, subtle moments that trigger alternate endings. Some junctures are presented as critical choice-based moments, but most of the time you don’t actually have a choice at all. Multiple endings exist as possibilities in Layers of Fear 2, but the process for seeing each isn’t exactly clear. On multiple occasions, I loaded the most recent checkpoint to listen to the words again to try and fully absorb their meaning. Coupled with Lily’s doleful lyrical poetry and the earnest performance of her younger brother, Layers of Fear 2 has some of the sharpest writing I’ve seen – not just in horror games, but across all genres. That’s perhaps the greatest strength of the story: its prowess for making me believe, if even for a moment, that the crazy words coming from the void are the stuff of genius. The obtuseness can be a tad much at times, but the delirious diatribes of the director, which are riddled with contradictions and philosophical tangents, frequently border on the profound as well. Each of these superb arcs entwine to create a whole that is both disorienting and, yes, satisfyingly layered.Steeped in such madness, it’s no surprise that a significant portion of the dialogue borders on the nonsensical. And then there’s the tale of you, the actor, who somehow wound up on this ship for this strange role.
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There’s also the mystery of the crew and passengers who once occupied the vessel. Picking up objects such as a monocular or empty cans of food cues interesting audio logs of the siblings’ own experiences that took place there. One of the main storylines follows Lily and James, siblings who pretended to be pirates on the ship.