The Rise and Fall of F.E.A.R.

during the mid-2000s the first person shooter space was experiencing something of a golden age on the PC after a decade of rapid evolution the genre was the most creatively and technically effervescent it had ever been blockbuster sequels like half-life 2 and doom 3 were pushing the limits of their field in ways that had never been attempted in the past while strong original titles like Call of Duty and Far Cry were sowing the seeds of what would become monumental franchises in the future it's within this bubble that monolith productions would debut fear a supernatural themed first-person

shooter inspired by the cinematic works of hideo nakata and John Woo Fear distinguished itself from its competitors with his sophisticated enemy AI and J horror inspired narrative which sees the player content with a monstrous psychic entity known as Alma Wade well it never became as synonymous with his genre as valve or its software's most renowned works players lapped it up all the same and over the next few years ports expansions and sequels of monoliths opus would grace pcs and home consoles alike yet the more the frightful saga progressed the more it would move away from

what had made its inaugural titles so potent its follow-ups were still entertaining and occasionally quite creative but the intelligence of their enemies and the scariness of their locales only seemed to become more muted like so many other series during the 7th console generation fear found itself unable to escape the gravitational pull of its eras most popular shooters resulting in its identity being gradually stripped away as it attempted to remake itself further and further in their image over the decade of its existence the fear series epitomized the era in which it debuted and the era it

became part of with everything good and bad that this entailed this is the rise and fall of fear like many young PC developers in the 90s monolith productions first wave of games were eclectic in both tone and style from blood a grisly first-person shooter centered on the occult to clog a chirpy pirate-themed platformer the washington-based studio made no buts about dabbling in as many genres as it could following its founding in 1994 attracting a respectable following in the process however after releasing blood to that chosen and the mecha inspired shooter show go to poor sales

in 1998 monolith fell on hard times and some soul searching was an order it's during this period that the studio became interested in making a first-person shooter that would provide a Hollywood like experience wherein the player would feel like an action movie hero it wasn't a particularly novel idea many other shooters during this era featured largely similar premises but the studio felt that with its pedigree it could spin it in a way that none of its contemporaries had previously thought of determined to both reclaim the trust of their fanbase and overcome the failures of their

previous two titles monolith staff moved ahead with this concept and after a multitude of iterations their action movie ambitions would coalesce into the operative no one lives forever a stealth heavy first-person shooter with a 1960s spy film aesthetic stylish bombastic and sporting a lovingly witty protagonist no one lives forever would release in the year 2000 to widespread critical and commercial acclaim critics hailed it as being among the best titles in his genre and monolith found itself able to rest easy once more the studio would attempt to make the most of their spy thrillers popularity over

the next few years releasing a sequel subtitled a spy in harm's way and a spin-off called contract Jack in 2002 and 2003 respectively it would also begin applying its knack for developing shooters to popular licensed properties creating aliens versus Predator 2 and Tron 2.0 within this same period with the exception of contract Jack all of these titles would go on to be favorably received cementing monoliths mutation as a developer of considerable caliber and ensuring that it would keep on trucking ahead but it wasn't ready to rest on its laurels after spending a half decade working

within no one lives forever somatic and visual confines monolith had become anxious to take the original core concept that had led to its creation a first-person shooter that would provide an action-movie link experience and reinterpret it in an entirely new way it wanted to push the technical capabilities of the medium forward and catch players off-guard in ways that none of their previous games had been able to and they would do so by taking inspiration from a medium no one could have predicted at the end of the 21st century Japanese horror films had experienced a massive

renaissance after spending decades relying on more schlocky and exploitative depictions of the macabre the genre had been swept up by a new more refined breed of movies ones that placed much greater emphasis on slow creeping suspense on psychological terror than unbridled gore chief amongst this new breed was hideo nakata x' 1998 classic ring the most popular film of his genre during this era ring centered on a cursed videotape that allowed Sonico a vengeful Juraj or spirit to enter and wreak havoc on the world of the living both this film and several others including takashi shimizu

chauhan franchise would eventually find themselves remade in the united states over the course of the next decade with many American Studios trying and often failing to capitalize on their popularity and uniqueness but even before this would begin to occur the original versions of these films had managed to captivate people all over the globe including Craig Hubbard who had served as no one lives forever 'he's chief game designer and was now directing monoliths new action movie like experience hubbard and the rest of monolith knew that in the same way no one lives forever 'he's 60s by

aesthetic helped save it from feeling like another generic shooter imbuing this new project with elements of j-horror would give it an extremely distinct identity it wouldn't be the first shooter to prominently feature horror elements but it would be the first to feature such a distinctly East Asian spin on them and because Hubbard was already extremely familiar with the subject matter in question he and the rest of the team would be able to create it with greater confidence and passion than any of their past endeavors this was all in addition to another cinematic that monolith staff

wanted to imbue the project with Hong Kong action movies the over-the-top intensity of films like John woos hard-boiled had left an impression on the team one that they felt had not been replicated by any other game before if they could successfully translate these movies manic brand of action into the way the player fought it would set the project even further apart from its competition as well as potentially complement its moments of joy horror elements after about a year of development these various influences would coalesce into fear first encounter assault recon a first-person shooter in which

the player an anonymous point man with the ability to slow down time as well as perform various martial arts inspired melee attacks is tasked with bringing down two powerful beings that have taken over the headquarters of the mysterious Pharma can technology corporation paxton fettel a rogue psychic who has taken control of an army of clone super soldiers and alma a terror inducing entity that disguises her true form with that of a young girl [Applause] [Music] all of these aspects as well as the fact that it was a monolith developed game would be enough to get

audiences extremely hyped for fear following its public reveal at the 2004 Electronic Entertainment Expo yet fear contained one more aspect that would go on to be extensively detailed in the months that followed and would bolster its appeal even further monolith understood that in order to make the players time-slowing abilities and martial arts moves feel like necessary and balanced parts of the game it would need to feature enemies that would put them through the ringer and in order to grade enemies that would be intelligent enough to do so it would be imbuing them with a new

artificial intelligence system called goal-oriented action programming or go the brainchild of monoliths Peter higly Gope would enable fears enemies to act with a level of complexity unseen in most prior first-person shooters in those games enemies would typically only move between select nodes or areas and make decisions on what to do in a highly scripted fashion their programming only allowing them to activate a new goal like move to an area or start shooting if the player did something in the right place and at the right time first they could still behave in ways that appeared intelligent

but there would always be a layer of predictability underlying whatever they did waiting to be exploited in contrast fears enemies would be able to navigate themselves to almost any point within their environment be able to choose what goals they want to achieve on their own and decide in real time what steps they needed to take in order to satisfy these goals on a practical level this meant that the enemies would act in a much more dynamic and intelligent fashion than non go pee if one of them got killed the rest of them would deliberately avoid

the spot in which this happened if the player attempted to block them from entering through a door with their body they would attempt to dive through a nearby window and if they saw an opportunity to do so they would try to flank the player from whatever angle they could in order to make sure this intelligence would be apparent to the player monolith would go out of its way to record an exorbitant amount of lines for the game's enemies providing them with dialogue for almost every possible situation they could find themselves in the last thing that

the studio wanted was for players to pick up the game at launch and find out that one of their game's most important elements hadn't hit home with players in the way they wanted it [Music] when fear would finally release in October of 2005 this wild array of ideas and systems would prove a very strong experience with critics quickly hailing it one of the best shooters of the year its combat encounters were tremendously satisfying both in terms of the breadth of abilities and weapons one was encouraged to use within them and the demandingness of the enemies

they contained yet they managed to be satisfying without diluting the game sense of scariness which only became sharper the further the point man's journey progressed true to monoliths vision the game felt as if the works of John Woo and hideo nakata had been condensed down into a single experience one in which both existed in perfect harmony rather than at odds with each other and while the story that wove through this experience wasn't the most coherent to ever be put to poly-carbonate it wasn't without its merits not only did it use some clever narrative devices to

flesh out its world such as integrating most of its lauren to voicemails left on answering machines but it was also bookended by a spectacular conclusion with the game's final hours seeing the point man kill Paxton Fennell after it's revealed that they were both birthed by Alma Wade in spite of all this one area where players almost unanimously conceded that the game could have done better was its environments outside of the few moments in which Alma direct players into the Alma verse a dreamlike reality created by her psychic influence most of the game's environments were drab

and repetitive consisting of the same generic office complex seemingly copy and pasted ad nauseum in an interview with IGN in 2009 monoliths leo de Bruyn would attribute the sameness of its environments to time and budget constraints as well as the team trying a tad too hard to ensure that the game looked consistently creepy while there was little debate that they succeeded in doing so he would acknowledge that a break here and there could have helped it feel less fatiguing not as disliked but also not incredibly beloved either would be fierce multiplayer because the game was

a new property monolith had elected early on to keep its multiplayer offerings simple with Hubbard explaining in a 2005 interview with GameSpot that they wanted to start with a solid foundation and build upwards rather than jump right into something fancy for this reason all it featured were some standard multiplayer game types like Deathmatch and capture the flag with a few extra wrinkles from the game's single-player campaign mixed in such as it's slow motion abilities none of it felt bad or tacked on it just didn't particularly stand out when compared to what the rest of the

package offered while these deficits would arguably prevent fear from becoming as renowned as the likes of half-life were doomed they wouldn't stop it from becoming monoliths best-selling title yet as well as becoming a source of influence for the design of many more games to come from stalker shadow of Chernobyl through Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider reboot fears Gope system would find its way into many other titles in the decade following its release extending its indigenous games legacy well beyond that of most other shooters unfortunately before monolith would be able to bask in the glory of this

long-term accomplishment it would be forced to deal with some short-term shenanigans [Music] about a year before fears release monolith had allowed itself to be purchased by Warner Brothers the two entities had previously possessed a fairly intimate relationship both had collaborated together on the development of the matrix online over the past several years and Jason Hall who had previously helped co-found monolith and served as its CEO for a long period had joined Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment as its first senior vice president just seven months prior to the acquisition their Union seemed practically kismet and for the

most part didn't affect the progress of any of the other projects that monolith was working on at the time however as a result of various contracts that monolith had negotiated before this purchase Vivendi not Warner Brothers ended up retaining the rights to fierce named after its release the following year this alone was bothersome to monolith but what was even more so was that due to a falling-out that had occurred between the two the vendee planned on continuing to use said rights without the studio's involvement the fear series was now under the ownership of two dueling

entities one with access to the story characters and many other conceits unique to it and the other with access to its branding monolith would vow early on that even though this meant it could no longer release any more games with fear in its title it would continue to develop new games set within the horror universe yet the next two years would see the burgeoning series continued entirely under other developers with the exception of fear combat a free repackaging of fierce multiplayer component released in August of 2006 fear Kombat wouldn't prove immensely popular but it would

still go on to enjoy a loyal fanbase over the next few years so much so that a dedicated group of players within the fear community has continued to update and keep it online after GameSpy which hosted its original master server discontinued its support of it in 2012 the first few fear projects to be made entirely under vivendi x'g iDEN Swit arrived in october of 2006 with the release of both an x-box 360 port of the horror shooter and an expansion titled fear extraction point the 360 ports development had been contracted out by Vivendi - day1

studios a Chicago based developer that had gotten its start in the late 90s making video game adaptations of classic board games like battleship as well as Axis and Allies before coming into its own with the mech assault games on the original Xbox its work on the port represented the first project the studio had completed since the release of mech assault - lone wolf in 2004 and while it didn't contain everything that had been included in its original release it did include a few bells and whistles not present in the PC version some new guns an

additional single-player mission and instant action an original game mode that scored players based on how skillfully they managed to complete a host of combat intensive scenarios were now available exclusively for Xbox 360 owners of fear to mess around with these additions wouldn't be enough to prevent critics from lamenting the port's concessions but they would still manage to bolster its appeal ever so slightly resulting in it being received almost as well as the original version [Music] extraction point on the other hand had been developed by timegate studios a Texas based developer most known for its work

on the Quahog real-time strategy games and its reception would be less unanimously positive many felt that its story which pitted the point man against a newly revived fettled and in escapades that immediately after fears ending didn't have much to offer besides providing an unnecessary epilogue to what came before it as well as introducing too many unanswered questions for whatever sequel Vivendi would eventually create for the expansion and while it contained new environments enemies and weapons to tussle with such as chain guns and deployable turrets they ultimately didn't do enough to make it feel like that

distinctive and experience when compared to its predecessor but even though these aspects of extraction point weren't that great it still contained the same mechanics systems and aesthetic qualities that it made set predecessors so revered experiencing them wasn't as novel as that had been the first time around especially when they were used to try and scare the player yet these elements alone still made for a very satisfying experience as a result while extraction point would ultimately end up being placed on a lower pedestal than fear by critics it was still enjoyed by many he's alive doesn't

appear to be injured although I don't know how he survived extraction points release would be followed in April of 2007 by fierce Playstations report developed once again by j-1 studios content wise the port offered almost exactly what day one had previously offered in the xbox 360 version with this additional mission featuring a slightly different scenario than what the former had offered yet as reviews would be less kind with many critics disparaging the port for looking and feeling significantly worse than his counterparts between it's inconsistent framerate awkward control scheme and washed out visuals the PlayStation 3

version of fear was easily the games worst variant though considering how many other developers were struggling during this period to achieve parity between Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 releases of the same games it wouldn't be fair to attribute its poorness to day one alone the complex architecture of Sony's High Definition console was likely to blame as well after this time gate studios would round out the year in November with a second expansion two monoliths were shooter fear Perseus mandate find a better healthy unlike extraction point which had served as a direct continuation of the original

fear Perseus mandate followed an unnamed sergeant on a deathly jaunt parallel to the events of the base game with him and his team sent in to investigate a similar yet separate ARMA cam facility beset by its own supernatural woes and critics would be none too pleased with it outside of a few decent scares some enjoyable firefights and a challenging fearsome new group of enemies called the night crawlers that its campaign featured intermittently the expansion as a whole felt severely tired compared to what had come before it where extraction point had at least felt like it

made an effort to expand on the first game's narrative and mechanics Perseus mandate felt like a rehash of everything that was featured in the original fear and extraction point yet without the presence of its most celebrated characters and the engine supporting all of it now over two years old was beginning to show its age an issue exacerbated by the fact that timegate had attempted to make Perseus mandates environments bigger than those of its predecessors in the same month that Perseus mandate was made available on the PC both it and extraction point would be packaged together

and released on the Xbox 360 as beer files beyond serving as the expansions first and only appearance on a home console fear files would also contain a sizeable collection of new instant action scenarios courtesy of day 1 studios yet opinions on its main attractions would remain largely the same extraction point wasn't imperfect yet still very enjoyable follow-up to monoliths opus while Perseus mandate was only really worthwhile to the most hardcore fans [Music] [Music] by the end of 2007 the consensus had been reached that it was high time someone made a proper sequel to fear one

that would inject a series with new ideas update his engine and move past the narrative beats and locations than its expansions had been unable to escape from put simply the world needed fear too and as it would happen no less than three different versions of fear - were being worked on around this very time the first version as revealed by Ryan Davis on a 2011 episode of the Giant Bomb cast was being worked on by day one Studios for Vivendi a continuation of the publishers take on the fear franchise it ultimately ended up being discontinued

albeit not before some of its fundamental aspects were hammered out the other two were being made at monolith with Craig Hubbard revealing in 2013 that the studio was developing one exclusively for home consoles while the other was being developed exclusively for the PC eventually the PC exclusive version ended up being nixed after another project within monoliths took precedence resulting in the console exclusive version both becoming the sole edition of the sequel in existence and being reworked so that it could arrive on personal computers as well after watching the property be taken in a direction it

had disagreed with her some time monolith was anxious to show the world how it wanted the series to continue after the original game and the pieces that would allow it to do so were falling into place there was just one problem monolith still couldn't use Fears name in order to get around this the studio decided to launch a contest to let its American fanbase nameless sequel in mid 2007 promising to reward the authors of the three best submissions an all-expenses-paid trip to meet the development team in person as well as having their names and likenesses

featured in the game one thing led to another and monolith sequel became titled project origin both monolith and its community were happy with the name as well as the collaborative process that had led to its creation but its lack of any sort of beer branding was still unfortunate while hardcore fans would know that project origin was a continued of monoliths 2005 opus many casual players would not and this would hurt its chances of success thus it would come as a serendipitous surprise when out of the blue in mid 2008 it was announced that Warner Brothers

had managed to reacquire the rights to the fear name from Vivendi and that the sequel would now be retitled fear to project origin this had come about as a result of a series of happy coincidences after finding the video game industry a little too volatile to weather on its own the vendee had decided to merge its game publishing unit with Activision in late 2007 resulting in the latter obtaining access to all the properties Vivendi owned and becoming activision blizzard in the process however upon the mergers completion the following year the newly formed conglomerate quickly assessed

that it had little use for most of these properties and decided to sell off the majority of them leading to the fear name finding its way back home [Music] with the series now entirely back in its hands monolith would make a point of publicly de legitimizing time gates expansions declaring them as having taken place in a non canonical Vivendi timeline while establishing fear - as taking place in a monolith timeline the series one true chronology although a fairly significant announcement looking from the outside it meant very little for fear twos actual development which by this

point had resulted in a somewhat different feeling shooter than its predecessor some of this stem from changes many had naturally expected monoliths to implement in the sequel such as attempting to further improve the intelligence of the game's enemies and making the game's environments more varied in colorful but a lot more of it stemmed from some less expected changes many of which monolith would explain had been made as a result of this shifting landscape of entertainment media over the previous few years the proliferation of the Saw films for example had led to the studio implementing more

moments in the game in which the player would be confronted by short but intense bursts of horror likewise the surge in popularity of first-person shooters on consoles had led to the game adopting many mechanics popular in them at this time like the ability to aim down iron sights some of these changes would prove a little more controversial than others such as the removal of being able to lean around corners in a post on the game's community forums Dave Matthews fear choose primary art lead would claim that this was purely done because the team felt his

presence was hurting the game from their perspective the ability to lean allowed players to scan ahead of them risk-free and neuter their fight-or-flight mentality making enemy encounters less tense its removal with force players to expose themselves more and be kept consistently on edge but among the community it seemed like a decision made more out of monoliths desire to my spear to the final 12 months of the sequel's development would see almost all of monoliths staff brought on to help ship it making it one of the studio's largest projects yet unfortunately when it would launch in

February of 2009 the scope of its production wouldn't quite be matched in praise with the consensus around fear to project origin quickly becoming that it lacked the spark of its predecessor many agree that its single-player campaigns escapades which took place from the perspective of Delta Force operator Michael Beckett following him on an Hill conceived quest to kill Alma were much better pace than those of the original fear and still decently scary one mid game missions set in a dilapidated primary school called Wade elementary would be especially priests in this regard with players almost unanimously hailing

it for its consistently unsettling atmosphere and intriguing environmental storytelling and it's multiplayer offerings while not tremendously different from what had been offered in the past were perfectly congenial yet the amount of scares that contained on the whole word paltry compared to what had come before it and the rhythm of its firefights felt to beat on while they still featured most of the unique mechanics systems and weapons introduced in fear one such as the players ability to slow down time they tended to take place in more linear and restrictive arenas than normal rarely allowing opposing parties

to flank one another this meant that both the player and the enemies they fought now had much fewer options than normal on how to engage each other and that the latter group as a result seemed much less dynamic and intelligent than they actually were also unsatisfying albeit for very different reasons were the game's mechs in order to both appease fans who wanted to wield power armor used by enemies in the first fear and spice up the game's flow monolith had made a point of including hulking max called elite powered armor throughout fear twos campaign for

the player to intermittently control while most found the max very fun to use they simultaneously felt them to be at odds with a of the rest of the game as if they had been ripped out of an entirely different project to claim that fear 2 was a gigantic departure from the game the key before it would be unfair amidst its armored mechs less numerous scares and neutered enemy encounters it still very much contained the soul of monoliths first game yet fans couldn't help but wish it was a little more appearance like its predecessor fear to

single-player campaign would be followed by more story centric content following its launch except this time said content would come in the form of just one expansion and it would be fully canonical titled fear to reborn the expansion would be promoted in the lead-up to its September 2009 release as containing bigger and more diverse environments than those featured in the game it was derived from as well as much more engaging enemy encounters the team at monolith had been more than receptive towards people's complaints with their sequel and wanted reborn to both address and dissuade them as

much as possible while also laying the groundwork for what would come next in a series in the end however reborn would miss its mark with most players its story which followed a clone named Foxtrot ate 1/3 on a series of missions concurrent to the events of the base game was decently entertaining for what it was as were the many flashy set pieces 8 1-3 barreled through the problem was that there just wasn't very much of any of it at roughly two hours in length most outlets agreed that reborn was over far too fast for its

own good it contained glimpses here and there of the improvements that monolith had promised it would contain but because one blazed through it so quickly it was difficult to stop and appreciate them in retrospect some players might have wished that they'd attempted to do so a little more as fear to reborn without much fanfare would end up being monoliths last entry in the franchise after repeatedly implying that it would be continuing the series itself after the expansion the studio would instead use its release as an opportunity to pivot on to newer projects and pass on

the series torch by her warner brothers to a capable inheritor little did the world know that this inheritor had already been long chosen and that it was planning on taking the series in some radical new directions [Music] get up I said get up less than a year after the release of hereto reborn Warner Brothers would unveil Fear 3 announcing that it would hit PCs and home consoles by the end of 2010 and then its development was being handled by none other than Vivendi sold flame day1 studios in the interim following its work on the fear

franchise for Vivendi day one had released 2008 fracture a third-person shooter in which one could raise and lower terrain through the use of futuristic weapons and worked briefly on a pitch for a tie-in game for 2010's Tron legacy that ultimately ended up being rejected by Disney fractures development which had been done in collaboration with LucasArts had been an arduous process for day one and its review scores which had ranged from middling to bad reflected this however amidst these gaps the studio had also successfully negotiated with Warner Brothers to rework the version of fear - it

was developing for Vivendi which Warner Brothers had acquired the rights to at the same time it got fears named AK into a sequel to project origin thus Fear 3 was born despite the troubles that had endured over the previous few years day 1 would repeatedly express confidence in its ability to deliver a fear game worthy of the series legacy in the lead-up to its release in addition to its work on the first fears console ports giving it greater insight than most on the series inner workings the studio had the blessing of monolith on its side

as well as the support of comic book authors Steve Niles and famed horror director John Carpenter the two had both thoroughly enjoyed the series first two entries in years prior and after being asked by gay one to lend their expertise to fear three's development graciously agreed to do so with the studio recruiting Niles to help co-write the game script and carpenter to guide the direction of its cinematics but carpenter and Niles weren't just there to bolster day1 sense of confidence or lend the project's marketing campaign an extra wrinkle they were also there because day one

felt the duo would be most helpful in realizing a very specific dynamic the studio one in Fear 3 to feature one that the series prior titles had never previously explored all that much and spoke to both our tours experience in writing more intimate familial scenarios after fear twos flurry of new protagonists day one staff had decided early on that their game would return to taking place from the point man's perspective and realized in doing so that his relationship with Alma and paxton fettel was a source of untapped potential within the fear universe not just in

terms of the narrative possibilities that could allow for but also the new gameplay possibilities that could open up in almost any kind of fiction letting members of any dysfunctional family play off of each other nearly always yielded interesting situations and the point man's family as it were was especially dysfunctional for both this reason as well as day one wanting their game to reflect the increasingly social direction they felt that the medium of games was heading br3 would allow players to enjoy its entire campaign cooperatively as the point man and fennel who have formed an uneasy

alliance to try and save both themselves and Alma from other supernatural forces the latter had typically served a large land tagging istic role in the series yet now she would also be at the mercy of being known as the creep and as a result of fear two's conclusion on the verge of giving birth to a third child day one's vision of how this cooperative experience would play out was ambitious and unlike other examples within the genre during gameplay the point man would function as the series protagonist typically tended to time slowing abilities and all while

fettled now a specter bound to his brothers presence would be able to manipulate enemies using his psychic powers as well as temporarily possess them completing challenges strewn throughout the campaign would reward players with points that would rank up and improve both character's abilities and whichever player managed to earn more points than the other would result in the campaign's outcome being all in their favor yet the studio would maintain that fear three would still be perfectly enjoyable alone espousing and interviews that it spent plenty of time making sure its campaign would be just as enjoyable as

a single-player experience Vettel's inherent creepiness would keep the game's atmosphere consistently tense and a new generative scare system which would monitor the way the game is being played and use this data to determine when to surprise the player next would prevent his frights from ever feeling predictable perhaps because of all these new systems and ideas br3 would end up taking much longer than initially promised to arrive with multiple delays resulting in it eventually releasing in June of 2011 and when it finally arrived it would do so to a much divided audience most tended to agree

that even with its generative scarce system it rarely managed to feel frightful in and of itself let alone like the games that had come before it where fear too had felt as if it were at least partially cut from the same cloth as its mid-2000s predecessor fear 3 which now sported features like a snap to cover system and regenerative health felt largely divorced from its legacy its gameplay and overall tone influenced more by the bombast of the most popular shooters currently around it than by the subtle suspense of the ring and Juwan there was a

little dispute that it was an action game first and a horror game second but at the end of the day many agreed that it was still an enjoyable and polished experience for what it was one that only got better when played cooperatively in addition to being fun to use both pointman and pedals varying abilities complemented each other extremely well resulting in the game's campaign feeling much more distinct from other cooperative shooters as well as a mentally more replayable and if the game's single-player offerings weren't to one's liking there was also its multiplayer suite unlike monolith

which had been content to populate fear one and twos multiplayer modes with fairly standard game types day one had taken it upon themselves during fear threes development to design a small yet far more inventive set of competitive scenarios and critics were more than impressed with the results between modes like soul King which pitted players against one another as soul hungry phantoms and [ __ ] run which force players to hurry through enemies Thrun environments while being chased by a death inducing mist fear three small T player was both a ton of fun and not quite

like anything else on the market it was easy to hate fear 3 for what it represented for being the culmination of a once unique feeling first-person shooter series decline into commonality during the 7th console generation but it was impossible to hate fear 3 on its own between the cooperative choice of its single-player campaign and the creativity of its multiplayer sweet day one shooter was more than another ho-hum experience when elevated on its own merits unfortunately these positive attributes would fail to translate into sales while Fear 3 wouldn't prove a massive commercial failure it would fail

to reach his predecessors level of commercial success putting the future of the series in the question you know the experience of building all of the games over the last 17 18 years like you find things that work and you try to update them and replicate them and so you'll see you know anybody who's played monolith games will see don't see bits of like oh yeah that I remember something like that you know oh that's really cool like there's threads because we're some folks working yeah it's a maliki some taste like homologation in the years following

the release of Fear 3 all of the series previous developers would find themselves thrust in radically different directions than before with the whims of the video game industry altering their trajectories and ways both good and bad time gates Studios would endure the worst after completing work on the science fiction themes shooters section 8 and section 8 prejudice the studio would go on to co-developed their critically maligned aliens colonial Marines alongside gearbox software before folding in May of 2013 due to financial difficulties day 1 studios would be more fortunate while it was forced to lay off

the majority of its staff in late 2011 after an attempt to reboot Konami silent scope series would fall through it would end up being purchased by wargaming in early 2013 after being enlisted to help the latter port world of tanks to the Xbox 360 and monolith productions after briefly dabbling in multiplayer only titles like Gotham City Impostors would manage to forge a new and much beloved identity for itself with Middle Earth shadow of Mordor in 2014 a third-person action game set within junior or Tolkien's mythic universe shadow of Mordor would draw a considerable praise for

its Nemesis system a go p-- based artificial intelligence system that allowed enemy orcs who killed or survived an encounter with the player to obtain Greater stature within their ranks and become much more powerful its inclusion provided the game with a healthy dose of unpredictability and although it resulted in a very different gameplay experience than what the fear games had provided attested to monoliths legacy of designing cutting-edge AI within the span of just a few years every developer that had previously worked with in fierce confines and found itself unable or uninterested in returning to the series

yet fear would continue to prevail for a little while longer with German video game publisher area Games announcing in July of 2013 that PC gamers would soon be receiving fear online a free-to-play online only rendition of the horror series composed solely of competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes fear online had originally been announced in 2010 under the name fear origin online and had previously only been slated to release in South Korea not unlike how titles such as Call of Duty online and halo online would later be developed exclusively for Chinese and Russian audiences respectively while the

fact that it would now be coming to the west was considerably surprising reactions on the whole to fear online would be largely tepid some expressed cautious optimism arguing that it could be just what the franchise needed to reinvigorate itself as well as an enjoyable game on its own after all fear combat had also been a multiplayer-only affair and it had maintained a dedicated fanbase four years after its release yet most struggled to care about it one way or another after witnessing both fear - and fear 3 moved further and further away from what had made

their progenitor special and then going two years without any new developments fears fanbase had simply lost much of its passion for the series in general let alone a freemium interpretation of it and it didn't help that fear on lines developer a Korean studio named in play interactive at few other projects of note attached to its name this miasma of apathy and mistrust would continue unabated when fear online would release an October of 2014 in open beta form despite being available for anyone to try free of charge the game would struggle to attract much in the

way of an audience with what few players it did manage to finding it to be an unexceptional experience its few competitive modes which consisted of standard multiplayer game types like deathmatch were fun and well balanced Affairs and its microtransactions which allowed one to purchase attributes like skins support items and crafting materials to fashion into new weapons were nothing out of the ordinary for games in its genre yet its cooperative mode which forced players to fight Alma born monsters and soldiers alike in a series of increasingly challenging scenarios was far too punitive and in its entirety

felt severely lacking in terms of polish when compared to the series previous entries veer on lines graphics would be especially criticized in this regard with many outlets expressing that they looked as if they were an entire generation behind given that the project had entered production roughly a half decade prior this observation was likely accurate even among its biggest proponents it was hard to disagree that fear online felt like a fear game in name only its visual than thematic connections to the trilogy that had come before it were fleeting and the moments in which it actually

felt like them were rarer still despite repeatedly expressing that they wanted to create an experience that fear fans would be proud to play area games and in play interactive just didn't seem to have their heart in the project so much so that they would provide it with almost no support after the beta's public release and eventually shut it down less than a year later in May of 2015 while the project's rapid death was of little surprise to the fear community it was still upsetting fear online might not have been what most fans wanted but it

felt unfair that his producers had decided to hedge their bets so quickly and not make any attempt to further improve upon their work and now that it was gone fear fans had nothing more to look forward to the series had been on the rocks since the release of three yet fear on lines and seemed to signal that it was finally truly over in May of 2018 nearly three years after Fearon lines closure YouTube juggernaut machinima announced out of the blue that it would be producing a live-action adaptation of the series for online distribution no further

details on the project were ever given such as when it was expected to be completed as well as whether it would be a single movie or an ongoing series and unfortunately none are likely to ever emerge in the future as less than a year later machinima would abruptly shut down taking down most of its programming on YouTube with it in the process - most fear fans machinimas live-action adaptation was a strange development one that began and ended at the press conference announcing its existence yet the fact that it existed at all was still intriguing there

was no reason for Warner Brothers to have mandated its creation in the first place unless it felt that fear still held substantial interest amongst gamers and if that were the case than a video game revival of the property might very well be in the cards either that or Warner Brothers was just looking for a quick and easy way to prove it was still using the series license so that it could continue to hold on to it though even this would mean its owner still view it as having some value what's known for certain is that

even if such a revival were to happen whichever studio would take charge of its development what habits worth more than cut out for itself especially if it tries to focus singularly on evoking the first game's feel titles like 2019 Resident Evil 2 have shown that there still exists a sizable audience for triple a caliber horror games today meaning that it wouldn't be contentious for a hypothetical fear floor to focus more on evoking terror than the franchise's latter entries but fear at its core was never just a strong horror game it was also an incredibly strong

shooter with immensely satisfying gunplay and an intelligent cadre of enemies that put player stratagem to the test fears next stewards would need to not only ensure that these two halves remain in balance but do so while simultaneously updating the series for modern times a feat that even monolith itself struggled with as evidenced by people's mixed reactions to their work on fear - yet even if a fourth fear game never comes to pass the series legacy is unquestionable from the many other titles it influenced to employ elaborate artificial intelligence systems meaningful time manipulation abilities and environmental

destruction physics - the lessons that taught about combining different sources of inspiration to great effect and it's that legacy that earned fear the loyalty of its fans and cemented the everlasting significance of its namesake in the history of gaming much like Alma herself its spirit will continue to live on no matter what happens to it what was that sound our documentaries are crowdfunded and made possible by the generous supporters backing us on patreon if you enjoy our content consider subscribing to our Channel and becoming a patron to help us create more thank you [Music] [Music]