Intro:
A gateway to happiness is only a pill away. Forget me not’s and hypnotizing words will keep your mind in pristine condition. With Phenexol everything will be fine. The curtains will close; sanity is now covered up in the deepest part of your mind where even your subconscious dare not reach. Remothered: Tormented Fathers dives deep into the psychology of what it is to “forget” in accordance with PTSD and the drug Phenexol, the dangers of gender reassignment (when the person doesn’t want to change genders), and how the cult of the “Red Nuns” or more formally known as the Cristo Morente a radical group that was used as experiments in the Phenoxel 2.0 drug trial were used and treated. Memories fade, but the pain of the past will always linger…
To remember, you must forget: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is triggered by traumatic and/or terrifying events in one’s life. PTSD is something that can plague a person's mind on a daily basis and make someone vulnerable to people, different situations, lights, sounds the list goes on. In the game Remothered: Tormented Fathers this terrifying illness, those bad memories that one will have repeated over and over again are gone with the swallow of a pill. It will make a person forget the bad, and keep the good. But forgetting comes with a high price. Psychologically one has to forget some things in order to remember; the brain will prioritize the things of importance and discard the rest that is not. In Remothered: Tormented fathers the memory that is bad is forgotten with a pill called phenoxyl (which is a real antibiotic, amoxicillin is used to treat bacterial infections) can help you forget the bad memories in question, but it will not relieve you of the psychological distress that came with those memories. With several things from transitioning from one gender to another by force, to having a new drug being tested on you without your knowledge this game delves deep into the psyche of the group versus the chaotic and selfish needs of the one. Let’s look into first and foremost our main antagonist Richard Felton, originally Jennifer Felton was forced to take hormonal treatments ever since her father came back from the war. Jennifer's father had her undergo phenoxyl treatments combined with hypnotherapy so she would become the son the father always wanted. Psychologically this causes Dissociative identity disorder where from going under the hypnotherapy Jennifer in a sense would be an alter ego, and Richard is the main persona. So there is a lot to unpackage here when it comes to this character and how they are represented.
Your Choices Were Never Yours: Going into the subject of gender reassignment is a touchy one and one that many reviewers of this game have spoken about whether it is for a sentence or the whole article. Taking the reassignment of one’s gender and putting it into a game treads on a very thin line. We see so many transgendered people put in the light of being a “feared character” in horror games and movies. In the silence of the lambs, for example, the main male antagonist besides Hannibal Lector is Buffalo Bill a transgender man who is portrayed as an evil character through his horrible past, and how the director thought it would fit to have his story shown. While unfortunately, this is a common theme to see misuse of the people in the transgender community, this game I feel doesn’t do the community damage but more brings light to how unhealthy it is for the parent to reassign the child’s gender without the child’s expressed consent. The choice was taken away from the child and I feel THAT is the horrifying part. That is what we need to focus on with this game how a child’s life was taken away from her at a very young age all for the condescending nature of the father who wanted a son and went to drastic measures in order to see that idea through. Red Nuns of the Unholy Order: Cristo Morente, a group of 12 nuns were experimented on with phenoxyl prototype 2 without their knowledge. (Again a lack of consent within this game) They experienced high insulin levels, great bone density, photosensitivity, and more. The Red Nun that Dr. Reed encounters is Gloria a still practicing Red Nun and the one who keeps Mr. Felton under hypnosis treatments. The goal of the Red Nun Gloria is very simple, to get revenge for what she was put through as a child. And to kill Dr. Reed, who was also a Red Nun. These characters in the design, story and even voice acting are stunning! The voice acting of the Red Nun had me genuinely creeped out and I had to pause the game because I was taken aback at how genuinely happy I was to hear something new in a horror game. I wasn’t scared, but giddier with excitement towards how I felt. Horror games nowadays really don’t capture me mentally, or even physically. I go into all of them with a steady heartbeat and a yawn. But this game, the characters had me on the edge of my seat and the story the red nuns portrayed had me enthralled. Don’t even get me started on their costume design. The game is fresh it’s modern and quite frankly eerily beautiful. Silence of the Lambs, but make it a game: Is it just me or does this game remind anyone else of the movie Silence of the Lambs? The lead protagonist Dr. Reed looks like a spitting image of Clarice Starling, and the moths in the game, the Acherontia, is a moth that is in the movie as well, better known as the death's head hawk-moth. I love how there was extensive use of the themes that we see in the silence of the lambs and classic horror films as a sort of homage if you will. It made me happy to see different elements of horror put into this game that truly made it suspenseful and fun all at the same time with the hiding mechanics to the way in which you had to defend yourself. Moths are fun, but bugs in a game not so much: Bugs in a game are normal and to be expected. But when the game crashes several times, on top of freezing at certain points then it becomes a hassle. This game had some bugs that I wasn’t too pleased with. First off since I was playing this game on PC I felt as if the controls were clunky at times and needed some cleaning up. When I would run the game would stutter in its graphics, or freeze at points before a cut scene. Later on in the game when it got to a point where I had to turn off valves in the cellar and avoid Jennifer at all cost it would freeze, and she would instantly kill me when I got done with it. I rebooted the game and things then after that point went normally, but that was frustrating, to say the least. The other thing I wasn’t a fan of was that Richard was an unpredictable AI. You couldn't run or he’d hear you, you could do certain movements without him catching wind that you were that which got irritating, but after getting the hang of it, it was manageable.
Final thoughts…: this game overall was amazing, it should a lot of dark truths, combined with horror elements that took me back to early resident evil days. The save mechanic actually reminded me of The Evil Within, and at first, I thought it was a copy until I talk with the founder &director who made Remothered and he showed me how he created this concept long before The Evil Within was put out into the market. The puzzles had me ecstatic, and happy how much attention to detail was put into them. And the fact that the save point is a mirror AND a metronome, the very thing that was used to make one forget is great in keeping with the framework of the story and its overarching theme points. This game’s not for the week of heart and talks about some heavy topics. The ending had me in tears with how much it went into, and how Gloria showed that someone who was evil is sometimes the one who is tremendously hurt emotionally and that’s why they act the way they do, out of that fear and anger and mistrust. I would recommend getting this game only if you are mentally strong enough to handle the topics that it delivers. This is a horror game that deals with real-world issues such as the reassigning of a child’s gender. You have to prepare yourself for this game mentally. Just because it is a game, doesn’t mean you won’t be impacted by it mentally and emotionally. Everything has an impact. Everything is there, just a moment away. Lingering under the surface,
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