The Dead Speak: The hallways creek with sounds guided by the past. A new energy both old and new waiting for a new stain to burn on the place that was once called home. Much like a record player, the memories of the dead loop in a constant cycle of pain and burning questions. They linger through the halls, some muttering their last words, some pulling the trigger until they get it right. Visage tackles intense psychologically rooted concepts of death, mourning and loosing yourself. With the passing of every chapter, this first-person horror game, Visage created an undeniable atmosphere of a soul just begging to be seen. Lucy: The year is 1961, when we see our first inhabitant, Lucy. Coming into Visage the unexpected is a driving force in the way this game is designed. From the controls, simple enough to utilize, (I was on PC, so since there isn't too much action apart from the every now and again chase scene, it's not that demanding), to jump scares to mentally taxing cut scenes that show the fates of the characters that haunt our main antagonist/protagonist, Dwayne. The first ghost that the players encounter on their journey is Lucy, a child ghost that has to be one of the scariest ghost characters I’ve ever seen implemented in a game. Her mannerisms, the way she is utterly haunting you throughout the game is mesmerizing and terrifying. When witnessing this character I saw a lot of sociopathic tendencies, (in killing pico the bird, negligence of others and only wanting to have her needs met.) But since this game deals with a world where the supernatural exist, Lucy was not only possessed but manipulated by doctors through medicinal injections. This “medicine” will be important to note for later. This game creates an unsettling atmosphere but forcing the player to be front and center during things that made my skin crawl in uncomfortable nausea. The game must be doing its job if it’s giving me intense feelings such as these. When Lucy managed to rip her own jaw off I was in disbelief that a game actually went there, and while I’m not surprised since there are games such as Martha is Dead where you can cut off the face of a person, this game did it in a way where unlike Martha is Dead, I wasn’t actively participating in the act, rather just watching which is a big difference in my eyes. With collecting the jaw of Lucy the chapter comes to a close and another nightmare begins. Deloris: The second encounter in the game is with a woman, Doloris and her story took place in 1962. This chapter was a longer one and if you think Visage is a short game it is, but this is the longest chapter out of the three. This chapter is also the saddest of them all, since you deal with a ghost who has psychological issues that include dementia, delusions, paranoia and auditory hallucinations. In my eyes, Deloris had birthing complications due to being older when having her child which is why we see so many references to the baby as just being born, or possibly being neglected due to Deloris’s mental state being so poor that she couldn’t take care of them. Deloris is also on copious amounts of drugs as well, making her mental state not all equipped to take care of a newborn. She popped up throughout the game to scare me, kill me or give me jump scares that made my skin scrawl. This game is very good about giving properly timed jump scares that made an impact and weren’t just there for show. Raken: The final chapter in this game is discussing the ghost Rakan, which takes place during 1970. With a man who dealt in his life with scopophobia (the fear of being watched) psychotic behavior and paranoia, you’d think this chapter would be the best saved for last. Well, you’d be wrong. This chapter was lackluster and felt like it was immensely rushed. The concept of being watched in this game is a constant theme and one that done through the use of being heavily medicated. Each character has been on some sort of medication that made them go made, instead of complacent which I think was the intended goal here. Dwayne: throughout the game isn’t it funny how we never actually see Dwayne. No hands, no feet, so reflection. After the first scene of the game, we just get thrown into this constant loop of witnessing each person life in the house that Dwayne lived in. now Dwayne lives in the house in 1985 and killed himself along with his family. Is it possible that we are playing as a ghost and not an actual living person? There are many signs to point that this is the case, reliving past memories with VHS tapes, the clocks in the hours are all stopped at 3:33 which is the demonic witching hour or better known as the hour of Christ’s death. Looking through the tapes that are collected throughout the game it's clear that Dwayne worked as a chemist making LSD and putting it into pharmaceutical supplements and the drinking water to make society “calmer”. This is actually based on true events from what happened during MK Ultra. The CIA carried out illegal experiments on U.S citizens: “The US government worried that Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean agents were employing mind control to brainwash US prisoners of war in Korea in the 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the Cold War. In response, Project MK Ultra was approved by Allan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in 1953.The secret effort attempted to develop techniques for controlling human behavior with drugs and other psychological manipulators that may be used against Soviet bloc opponents.More than 150 human experiments employing psychedelic substances, paralytics, and electroshock therapy were conducted as part of the program.” Source, ethossun.com In some fashion, or another each person that died in that house were affected by what Dwayne did. Lucy with injections that made her act worse, Dolores with the medication she was on that somehow made her condition more severe, and Rakan who was getting too close to an answer but was shut up by the government because he knew too much. Dwayne is in a sense experiencing purgatory, seeing the consequences of his actions playing out like a VHS, over and over again. Its why he drank himself and we see the memories of the cans of beer around the hours and its why we take pills in the game to give us sanity, one of the pills that we take is called Chlorpromazine, it’s used to treat psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia or manic-depression in adults. The Void: With several different endings you can get this game was the first time in a while that I was properly spooked by a horror game. The controls were just as immersive as experiencing the game play. Since you can play this game on both console of PC its very straight forward, and controller compatible on PC making the experience smooth. The only thing I would have liked to see is the character move a little faster when running. When a ghost is chasing me, I don’t want to feel like I’m walking through water. Life can leave a lasting impression on places; especially if the life lived was a painful one. Visage created a powerful, impactful experience so tread lightly,
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