Outlast

Outlast
Developer(s)	Red Barrels
Publisher(s)	Red Barrels
Designer(s)	Philippe Morin David Chateauneuf
Artist(s)	Hugo Dallaire
Writer(s)	J. T. Petty
Composer(s)	Samuel Laflamme
Engine	Unreal Engine 3.5
Platforms	Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 Xbox One OS X Linux
Release date(s)	Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 Xbox One Linux, OS X
Genre(s)	Survival horror
Mode(s)	Single-player

Outlast is a first-person survival horror video game developed and published by Red Barrels. The game revolves around a freelance investigative journalist, Miles Upshur, who decides to investigate a remote psychiatric hospital situated deep in the mountains of Lake County, Colorado. The Whistleblower DLC centers on Waylon Park, the man who led Miles there in the first place.

Outlast was released for Microsoft Windows on September 4, 2013, and for PlayStation 4 on February 4, 2014. Outlast received generally positive reviews from critics, and it was praised for its horror elements and gameplay. Linux and OS X versions were later released on March 31, 2015.

Gameplay

Outlast is a story-driven survival campaign told in first-person narrative and set in a dilapidated psychiatric hospital overrun by homicidal patients. Its presentation is similar to the found footage genre popularized in horror films. The protagonist, reporter Miles Upshur, is incapable of combat, except for scripted sequences allowing him to shove enemies out of his way. Without any traditional weapons, players have to navigate the facility's ransacked environment with parkour: vaulting over low obstacles, crawling, and sliding through narrow gaps. In addition, Miles may survive encounters with assailants by hiding inside staff lockers or under beds; more intelligent opponents may search the room for an allocated period before moving on.

Miles carries with him only a notebook and a camcorder, with which he plans to document the horrors within the asylum. It has a night vision option for use in the asylum's many unlit sections. Use of the IR mode consumes batteries, which must be scavenged and replaced as the storyline progresses. Plot details unfold through notes taken by the protagonist as footage is recorded through his camera, as well as manila folders scavenged from the environment.

Plot

Miles Upshur, a freelance investigative reporter, is investigating the Mount Massive Asylum, based on a tip from an anonymous informant that unethical experiments are being conducted at the asylum by the Murkoff Corporation. Upshur enters the asylum through a broken window, where he is shocked to see blood and a dying SWAT officer who tells him that the "Variants" killed them. The officer implores Upshur to leave, but the route Upshur took is now impassable and he must press on.

As Upshur explores the asylum's second floor, he is surprised by a hulking sadist inmate named Chris Walker, who grabs him and throws him into the atrium, knocking Upshur unconscious. He is briefly roused by 'Father' Martin Archimbaud, an inmate and self-anointed priest who calls Upshur an "apostle" sent by "God", before falling unconscious again. When Upshur finally wakes up, he makes his way to the security room to open the front doors but Father Martin cuts the power from the basement.

Chris Walker finds Miles and chases him. After evading him, he restores power, but Archimbaud ambushes him and injects him with anesthetic, insisting he cannot allow him to leave yet. When he wakes up, Upshur finds himself trapped in the Prison Block, which is filled with deranged and catatonic inmates. He manages to escape and make his way through the sewers, reaching the Male Ward, while pursued by two Variants known as the Twins. Upshur is surprised by his savior, Richard "Rick" Trager, a Murkoff executive who has been afflicted by the same insanity as the asylum's inmates. Trager restrains Upshur and wheels him into an operating room, where he severs two of Upshur's fingers while rambling about a supernatural entity called the "Walrider", which he claims is responsible for the asylum's current condition. After escaping and finding the key to the elevator, Upshur activates it and crushes Trager between two floors when he tries to enter the elevator, killing him.

Upshur then travels the upper floors to get to Father Martin, and when he does, he says to meet him outside. After turning on the sprinkler to put out a fire set by one of the inmates, he exits through the exit previously shown by Trager. As Upshur wanders around, trying to find Father Martin, he begins to encounter a strange black cloud, which he realizes is the Walrider. When he jumps across a gap, he loses his camera and goes down to get it. Upshur then reaches an auditorium with a playing reel, where he learns that the Walrider was created by Dr. Rudolf Gustav Wernicke, a German scientist who was brought to America as part of Operation Paperclip. After going even deeper into the asylum, Upshur is told by a Neutral Variant that he can find Father Martin in the chapel. He goes to the chapel, once again evading the Twins, only to witness Martin's suicide by self-immolation. Before Martin burns himself, he gives Upshur the key to the elevator, which he has fixed. After another encounter with Walker, Upshur takes the elevator to descend through the floors, but the elevator descends into an underground lab, at the heart of Mount Massive.

As he goes deeper into the laboratory, Upshur is chased by the Walrider and ends up running right into Walker. But before Walker can kill Upshur, the Walrider kills Walker by dragging him into an air vent, shredding him. Upshur escapes the Walrider and encounters an aged Wernicke (who was thought to be dead). Wernicke explains that the Walrider is not a supernatural being, but a technological entity made up of nanites, which are mentally controlled by Billy Hope, an inmate and subject of Murkoff's experiments, who thinks that Wernicke is his father. Wernicke tells Upshur to shut off Billy's life support, hoping that this will disable the Walrider. After numerous delays, Upshur completes this task. But just before Billy dies, the Walrider attacks Upshur and enters his body. As the wounded Upshur staggers toward the exit, he is surprised by paramilitary operatives led by Wernicke, who shoot him down. A horrified Wernicke realizes that the Walrider has made Upshur its new host. The Walrider soon attacks him and the mercenaries. Panicked screams, futile gunfire and mauling sounds are heard as the screen fades to black and the credits roll.

Whistleblower

Waylon Park is a software engineer working at Mount Massive for the Murkoff Corporation. After several encounters working directly with the Morphogenic Engine and witnessing the torture that the inmates are forced to endure, he decides to send an email to Miles Upshur reporting on the corruption of Mount Massive. Shortly after sending it, he is called to the lab's operation center because one of the cameras that was used to monitor patients inside the glass spheres have malfunctioned. After fixing it, he goes back to the server room, only to be caught by his employer, Jeremy Blaire. As punishment, Blaire has Park committed and forced to endure the tests of the Morphogenic Engine. However, after the Walrider breaks free and begins causing chaos at Mount Massive, Park manages to escape his restraints, taking a camcorder with him. He roams the facility as surviving guards and personnel try to escape from the newly freed prisoners, trying to find a radio that he can use to contact the authorities. During this time, he consistently eludes a bearded, cannibalistic prisoner named Frank Manera, who wields a mechanical circular saw blade and tries to kill him in many ways, including trapping him in a furnace. Just as Park manages to find a radio, Blaire appears and attacks Park, destroying the radio. He begins to choke Park to death while berating him for not keeping his mouth shut. Upon hearing Chris Walker coming, he leaves him to die, only for Park to escape.

Park eventually wanders into a secluded area of the Female Ward, where a variant by the name of Dennis, inflicted with dissociative identity disorder, plots to capture and offer him as a sacrifice to a prisoner named Eddie Gluskin, whom he calls "The Groom". Park escapes Dennis by hopping over several obstacles and running down a set of stairs but is ambushed by Eddie Gluskin. While initially eluding Gluskin, Park falls into an elevator shaft and gets a piece of debris lodged in his right shin, reducing him to a limp. Park is eventually captured, where he discovers how Gluskin repeatedly tortures and mutilates male prisoners' genitals, treating them like his brides (as there are no real women stationed at the asylum for him to torture) before brutally killing them. He attempts to kill Park in the same way, but Park manages to escape at the last second with the help of another prisoner who attacks Gluskin. After Gluskin kills the other prisoner, he returns to kill Park by hanging him in a gymnasium full of hanging bodies. Park puts up enough resistance so that Gluskin is caught up in the multiple ropes of his pulley system, and eventually impaled by a loose wooden beam, killing him.

As daylight finally breaks, Park continues throughout the asylum (and seeing the burning chapel and a dead Rick from the main game), discovering that Murkoff's paramilitary forces have already arrived at the scene and are killing every person they see so that no one would ever tell others about what really happened. Park manages to elude them as they are all killed by the Walrider and makes it to the main atrium. There he finds Blaire wounded, lying against the front door and pleading for help. Park, not feeling sorry for him attempts to walk past Blaire and leave him to die. But Blaire gets up and stabs him in the stomach with a glass shard, declaring that no one can know the truth about Mount Massive. But before he can deliver the finishing blow, he is attacked and killed by the Walrider, whom still is using Miles's bullet ridden body (after killing Billy Hope earlier). Park staggers out the open front door and past the military vehicles, towards a red jeep waiting by the security gate (which belonged to Miles). As Park enters the jeep and starts it up, he notices a dark figure: Miles Upshur's Walrider-sustained broken body, slowly exiting the asylum with a dark mist surrounding it. He manages to escape and slam through the entry gates just as the figure exits the asylum.

In the epilogue scene, a fully recovered Park has contacted a leaking organization that he can use to reveal his secret information on Murkoff. Park is sitting at a laptop with the video file of all his recorded video from the asylum, ready to be uploaded to the Internet. A man associated with the leaking website informs him that it will be more than enough evidence to ruin the Murkoff Corporation, but warns Park that doing so will result in Murkoff doing everything it can to punish him in return, including threatening his family. Despite some initial hesitation, Park ultimately decides to take the risk and uploads the video. The credits roll once he closes the laptop.

Release

Outlast was released on September 4, 2013, for download through Steam, and it was released on February 4, 2014, for the PlayStation 4 as the free monthly title for PlayStation Plus users.

The downloadable content, Outlast: Whistleblower serves as an overlapping prequel to the original game. The plot follows Waylon Park, the anonymous tipster to Miles Upshur and shows the events both before and after the main plotline. The Microsoft Windows version of Whistleblower was released on May 6, 2014, worldwide, the PlayStation 4 version was launched on May 6, 2014, in North America and on May 7, 2014, in Europe, and the Xbox One version launched on June 18 in North America and Europe.

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings (XONE) 80.00% (PC) 79.95% (PS4) 77.16% Metacritic (XONE) 80/100 (PC) 80/100 (PS4) 78/100 Review scores Publication Score Destructoid 9/10 Eurogamer 7/10 Game Informer 7.5/10 GameSpot 7/10 IGN 7.8/10 Joystiq PC Gamer (US) 7.5/10 Metro (UK) 7/10

Outlast received positive reviews. Aggregating review websites GameRankings and Metacritic gave the Xbox One version 80.00% based on 3 reviews and 80/100 based on 5 reviews, the Microsoft Windows version 79.95% based on 37 reviews and 80/100 based on 59 reviews and the PlayStation 4 version 77.16% based on 19 reviews and 78/100 based on 33 reviews. It has been received with a number of accolades and awards from E3 2013, including the "Most Likely to Make you Faint" honor, and one of "Best of E3".

The PC gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun gave Outlast a very positive review, noting that "Outlast is not an experiment in how games can be scary, it’s an exemplification." Marty Sliva of IGN rated the game with a score of 7.8, praising the horror elements and gameplay while criticizing the environments and character modeling.

Sequel

On October 12, 2014, Red Barrels co-founder Philippe Morin confirmed a sequel to be in development. The sequel, a new survival horror game set in the same universe as the original Outlast, would present a different location and different characters. The main character is a journalist, who along with his wife investigates a murder on a countryside area, but their chopper crashes, his wife goes missing and he is trapped with psychos. Outlast 2 was officially announced on October 29, 2015. It is set to be released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in Q3 2016.

External links

• Official website