Trying to examine Obscure’s world thoroughly and dig deep into it had me quite surprised, Since I remember the game being quite bland in adolescence, With no real substance, But after replaying it recently, I’ve became quite fond of the surface level aspects of the game, Things like the level design, atmosphere and narrative,
But I’ve never quite managed to wrap my head around the stereotypical early 2000’s wacky characters, Especially in contrast with the game’s dark and mature tone, That was until I’ve went through a couple more of exhaustive playthroughs, where I’ve came to realize that there was
More than meets the eye, And that there’s a great sense of detail to be discovered, Things from minute character backgrounds to hidden lore scattered throughout the game’s level design, All disguised as b horror flick from the 80’s, So grab yourself a flashlight, as I’ll be
Shedding it on the dark corners of… Shanon’s underskirt? This is Obscure. obscure So before jumping into the present events of the game with god knows what this is, I’ll briefly establish 2 parties that are essential to the game’s world Starting off chronologically with the foundation of the Delta Theta Gamma Brotherhood in 1805,
A powerful organization with ties that lead to the president himself, Their base for existence revolves around the unchained practice of science, In other words, they don’t give a s**t about morality and ethics to achieve their goals Now of course to achieve this height of unbound science, They interpret anything expendable, including human life,
With their bigger picture being a better future for humanity, Their recruitment process, relies heavily on student’s brain power, And in order to be able to reach that demograph, They infiltrate schools by disguising themselves as a “fraternity” And so now with the brotherhood’s history
Out of the way, Let me skip forward by a century or so, Specifically to 1895 Where the Friedman twins, Leonard and Herbert Friedman were taking a trip to Africa, Fueled by their shared interest in plants, The twins spent a lot of time collecting unknown plant specimens,
However during this specific trip, the twins discovered a plant with youth restoring properties, And in hopes of figuring out a way to transfer the plant’s anti aging capabilities to the human body, They take this plant known as Mortifillia back to the states with them, Unfortunately, their attempts at gaining recognition
For their work had failed, As their experiments were considered to be morally and spiritually controversial, Unsurprisingly, this is where the Delta Theta Gamma Brotherhood steps in, Offering the twins a spot in the brotherhood with full access to their labs so they would be able to complete their research,
Initially, the twins had declined the offer, Since they wanted a direct admission for their work, But 1902 rolls around, and it’s been 7 years since the twins had first discovered the Mortifillia plant with no significant progress on their research, So they decide to use their remaining asset
To build a school, This school is where the game will take place, Which is why am jumping onto the present timeline, Leafmore High, 2003 I know what you’re thinking, “this can’t be the actual theme song” Well it isn’t, that’s because the original one is copyrighted,
Although the 2014 steam rerelease of the game actually swaps the no longer licensed soundtrack, but I feel like the new one fails to set the rebellious and wacky tone of the game, Anyhow this prologue cutscene gives a brief introduction to the main characters,
And it does its job at portraying the surface level characteristics of each individual, This sounds way deeper than it actually is, Ok let me show you what I mean, Troubled jock with family issues, Shy nerd with a kind heart, Lazy stoner with a laid back personality, You know what I mean,
So after finishing up with this basketball practice session, everyone decides to head home, Everyone but the team’s captain, Kenny, Kenny decides to hang around for a bit longer to shoot some hoops, Taking control over Kenny, in what seems to be an ordinary high school gymnasium,
But taking a closer look at the floor where it says 1960, It contradicts with the school’s original foundation date which is 1902, So something’s have had to happen to constitute the rebrand, Actually there are some evidence that allude to the high school campus being a different institution originally, This is indicated by…
Hold on let me get this, Going after the bag thief, leads Kenny to an abandoned house outside the school’s premise, Deep in its shed, is a huge basement that consists of tunnels and rooms built beneath the school, And it’s where Kenny finds another student, in a depraved state, Locked behind a cell,
The game introduces its 2 player co-op mechanic, and sends them both to the afterlife, As a grotesque creature barges in and ceases the duo’s escape attempt, Concluding the game’s prologue, And I have to say that this interlude’s pacing is masterfully crafted, Taking the suspense up a notch a little by
Little, Starting with daytime surrounded by friends, to nighttime alone, progressing through areas where each one feels sketchier than the last, tying it up with an epilogue that jumpstarts the mystery surrounding the occurring events, Switching the scene to the morning after, to the introduction of the worst jiggle physics
I’ve ever seen in a game, Yeaaah forget about Kenny, we need to get your breasts x-rayed Naturally, Kenny’s girlfriend Ashley, and his sister Shannon are both concerned since Kenny hasn’t showed up from the night before, So they decide to team up with josh, a student journalist who sets a meeting in the school’s
Cafeteria at 6 o’clock to investigate Kenny’s disappearance, The arrangement takes place but with the unfortunate circumstance of being locked up by the janitor, Who’s in my opinion is all in on whatever is about to go down, As I’ll elaborate later on, hmmm interesting
Ok so, while running around in the administration building, searching for clues in regards to Kenny’s whereabouts, I’ve ran through different combinations of character line ups, Since each one has their own special ability, With some more useful than the others, but if anything, these so called “aptitudes”
Do a better job of providing background profiles for the characters than actually being put to use, Sure Kenny’s sprint ability can come in handy in hard mode, And Ashley’s special offensive attacks can rack up some damage, But for the rest, am not even sure if these
Abilities even work, Case and point, Josh’s ability as a filmmaker and a journalist, Is flushing out remaining objects in a room, Where if an item remains unpicked, Josh would point it out by saying “there’s something else to do here” But later on in the game, during a major event,
Where all the player’s equipment are laid in a box, you’d almost be certain that Josh would point the box out, But I don’t know, let’s take Josh’s opinion on the matter, “There’s nothing left for us here” Although I love the fact the there are passive abilities that the game doesn’t tell you
About like, characters being able to push objects faster than the others depending on their body type, Or just the variation between their default run speed, Small attributes that make each one feel more individualized, So progressing through the building and right into the girl’s restroom, Josh gets traumatized by the sight of these toilets,
So I’ve offered him a sick leave and replaced him with Shannon, Ok, this is the perfect segue to talk about the hidden depth behind the characters, Hold on let me bring out the alternate costume to strengthen my point,
Now, taking a look at this dumb bit… Taking a look at Shannon, it’s easy to assume that she’s written as this pretty blonde girl who’s not exactly bright, bear in mind that this stereotypical profiling Wasn’t anything far-fetched back in 2003,
But Shannon, is in fact the exact opposite, as she’s mature and intelligent, with such qualities passing on to her special ability, Since she literally informs the player on what to do next, Her intellect is indicated through various notes scattered throughout the game, Such as the teacher’s notebook which registers
Shannon with an excellent rating and zero days of absence, Or by the school’s newspaper which announces her as the winner of the “champion genius” broadcast, They could’ve used a more original name for this one, But going by the not judging a book by its
Cover approach, her provocative and rebellious choice of fashion is her way of looking older and more mature, it’s a some sort of a defense mechanism to downplay her brains, since it’s not exactly “cool” to have one in a high school social setting, as it can be a bit intimidating, anyways,
Scouting through the administration building while finding some clues and theories, I’ve headed for the attic where the group encounters this giant ball of a creature with a small pair of eyes and a mouth full of teeth, Its form resembles some sort of a mutated animal, To be more specific, a mutated frog,
A biology teacher by the name of Mr. Walden rushes in and breaks the nearby window, revealing the creatures fatal weakness to direct sunlight, It also appears that Mr. Walden is struggling with an ailment of some sorts, But nonetheless, he unlocks the front door
Of the building, and tells the students to get the hell out, So far nothing substantial has been revealed, and the game’s world is still in its infrastructure building phase, As it establishes the first hub area, the school yard, A disc hmm, might wanna check what’s on
It later on So after the students regroup at the school yard, they head for the classrooms looking for the principle to see if he can offer any help, But instead we get Stan, who I’ve happen to connect with the most, Although he does try to swindle me
Stan is the most unhinged crook, With a performance rating of mostly F’s, Which he tries to illicitly forge and hustle people for it, Selling unauthorized energy drinks, Hell, even his special ability is picking locks, But none of that takes away from his likeability
And charm, as his laid back personality can calm everyone down in stressful and heated situations, And although his character arch does not see any real evolution in the first game, He does return with more maturity and discipline after serving some jail time in the second game,
But for now, I’ll use his abilities to picklock this closet where a newspaper can be found, this news paper connects a lot of dots, so let me go into detail, You see, ever since the foundation of this school by Leonard and Herbert Friedman in
1902, There had been a lot of controversy over students disappearing, With most of the disappearances occurring at the school’s dormitories, And so, the school’s principle/founder Herbert Friedman takes it on himself to control the damage and potentially solve the problem by
Closing out the dormitories, And with the help of the police, he was able to do so, And surely enough, that seemed to work, closing out the dormitories had put an end to the kidnappings, well for a while at least,
But what’s weird is, how come the police had never found the culprit, or even has the slightest clue on his identity and whereabouts, After all, one of the student who’d gone missing, was last seen in the sick bay after feeling unwell, How come the nurse hasn’t got a clue as well?
Is she in on it? And what about the authorities, how are they letting the school stay opened for business? Especially with double digit number of cases! Could this all be a big conspiracy theory that renders everyone involved as part of
An alliance, who’re working together to carry out the kidnappings and cover them up? I mean for such a theory to even have a place in reality, the people in question need to have ties that go all the way up to the president! But I’ll cross that bridge when we get to
It, So let me make me make a cup of coffee and get back to the classrooms building to resume the group’s mission of finding the principle, While traversing the classrooms hallway, the group encounters a grotesque creature, but this one seems different from the one’s we’ve seen before,
While the first one seemed to have undergone mutations as an animal, This one resembles more of a humanoid transfiguration, Revealing that there’s levels to this s**t, But what they all seem to have in common is weakness to light, The monsters emit black spores that only dissipate with a direct light beam,
But by advancing to the next room in the building, A note can be found detailing a plant with those same exact properties, This plant is the Mortifilia, which was discovered over a century ago by the Friedman brothers, who’ve also happen to have found this school,
The connection is obviously there, but the timeline is not adding up since the Friedman brothers have discovered the Mortifilia before they have even founded the school itself, and that was over a 100 years ago, And what’s f’d up is, Herbert Friedman
Is the present day principle of the school, That means he’s about 144 years old! So it’s either that the Friedman twins were able to find a way to extract an anti aging serum from the Mortifilia, Or that Herbert could just have the world’s
Greatest cardio, And so, to answer this, the group heads to the principal’s office where they find an old letter that was sent to herbert, written by a woman named Elisabeth, and it says: Ok that is not what the letter says, For starters, Elisabeth is actually Leonard’s wife,
So she is basically writing to her brother in law Herbert, and asking him to stop her husband from testing the anti aging serum on himself, but her attempt falls short, Since it’s revealed that after the twins had failed to gain recognition for their findings,
One of them, Leonard, took the matter into his own hands and decided to inject himself with the serum to prove its life regenerating capabilities, What happened to Leonard next on, well at least according to the authorities, is that he lost control over his plane and died from crashing it near long island,
Of course this information is far from the truth, and it’s heavily propagated by the brotherhood to protect the experiments secrecy, What have actually happened to Leonard is worse than his proclaimed death, But for now, the fact that Herbert is still
Alive and well at a 144 years old, indicates achieving some sort of a success with the serum, Sharing him with the same life prolonging results is Elisabeth, As right next to her 100 year old letter is a voicemail left by her, Revealing her to be the school’s nurse,
Ms. Wickson, A small detail that I love here is that Elisabeth’s accent does have a resemblance of how a person born in the 1800’s would sound like, kind of, Next stop is the library, So after trying to brute force this safe by using the code with the highest success rate
In survival horror games and fail, I’ve happened to notice an oversight by the developers, well not exactly an oversight but maybe a lack of detail, You see, these written lore notes that you find throughout the game, contain a lot of information surrounding the events and the characters, but this information, more so
Than often seem to predate the cutscenes information, and it creates a disconnect, Ok that didn’t sound very coherent, Let me put it this way, Am playing as Ashley and Josh, right, And I’ve found a note that contains top secret information that easily convicts Herbert Friedman as the perpetrator of the whole monsters
Breakout situation, or at the least acknowledges his direct involvement, But when Ashley and Josh get a hold of this information, They don’t seem to get the memo, and act as this information doesn’t even exist, but you do, as the player, Where in the following cutscene the duo come
Up to Herbert asking for his help while they seem to be oblivious to his actions, On the other hand, you as the player know he’s on some s**t, Which creates this weird disconnect between looking at the narrative through the pre-rendered cutscenes side, And looking at the narrative through the in
Game written notes side, Now I know the developers take into account the fact that most players won’t pay attention or even read the written notes, So they try to base their story progression off of the cutscenes, Which is totally understandable, but it would’ve been cool to connect some dots and have a
Character reference a newspaper I’ve inspected or something, With that being said, there are a couple of plot holes that actually suffer some inconsistency which I’ll go through at the end, But I’ve been holding on to this disc for a while now, and it’s time to finally see what’s on it,
So after careful examination, I’ve had come to the conclusion that she not wearing no panties man look, The tapes actually show Kenny to be alive in a cell, And reveals Herbert as the bag thief from the start of the game, and the one who imprisoned him,
But it also shows Mr. Walden the biology teacher to have set the monsters loose by accident, after stumbling upon Herebert’s underground labs, The group learns this and head to the janitor’s office, Mr. Garrison for assistance, only to find his dead body, His death actually happens in real time where
If you stand outside his office you’ll hear his last words battling the monsters, and if you get too close he’ll cry in agony as he’s killed, But in my opinion Mr. Garrison has to be somewhat involved in all of this,
First of all, he possesses a loaded shotgun in his office, while carrying a handgun as if he’s ready for a possible invasion, And moreover, he’s got access to the school’s surveillance system in his office room, so it’s difficult to assume that he couldn’t
Have witnessed anything, And he looks like the grown up version of the kid from Bully so, It’s not looking good bruv, Leaving Mr. garrison’s corpse behind and heading deep through the cafeteria, the group finds Elisabeth aka Ms. Wickson who’s locked inside the infirmary and since she plays a
Big role in the whole experiment, she’s aware of the monsters weakness to light, and will not open the door unless the power comes back on, So I’ve tied some wires up and bounced back to get some info out of Elisabeth,
Now I would love to tell you what they’re talking about right here, but for some reason the dialogue’s audio in this game keeps getting out of sync where the characters start getting rude and talk over each other, Hey john, Yeah? You got an extra fleshlight? You mean flashlight? …no
I have no idea what’s causing this shit, but I’ve watched multiple playthroughs of the game on youtube and they all seem to have the same problem, Maybe it’s like hardware acceleration where modern systems are too good for this game,
But I don’t know and Elisabeth don’t know nothing either, it seems like she’s in shock and just keeps talking gibberish about her husband Leonard and his brother Herbert, The group runs into Mr. Walden, who’s unbeknownst to the students, is infected with the Mortifilia spores, But he still hands them out the auditorium
Keys which will be the next destination, Traversing through the amphitheater, Yeah am not sure about this one! Anyways the students find a projector which they use to play a film reel, this film shows their principle Herbert injecting himself with the anti aging serum, but there’s a small insinuation in this movie, because at
The start, it shows a helpless victim that is presumably used as a guinea pig, and then showing Herbert injecting himself, which implies that Herbert’s using the serum on himself with a preconceived knowledge on how it works, of course this knowledge is gained by trying
The serum on other test subjects, But what happens when the serum is administered without this “knowledge”? I mean Herbert and Ms. Wickson’s age, showcase the intended results of the anti aging serum, But on the other side, the rampant monsters running around the campus are a living example of the serum’s failure,
What causes this failure, is exposure to the sunlight during the mutation process, Where direct exposure, damages the strain tissues and causes the initial mutation, Initial is the keyword here, since depending on how much light radiation the subject is exposed to afterwards, will determine how advanced his transformation would get,
To put this in simpler terms, take a look at the monsters above the ground, their evolution is significantly hindered by the various light sources they’re subjected to, In contrast to the ones living in the underground labs where light is almost nonexistent, It’s clear that they’ve reached an atrocious state of evolution,
But what’s really freaky is that these so called “Homme-Arbres” are considered baby toys in comparison to Leonard’s state, Leonard Friedman was the first to try out the serum, and with no tangible information on how it works, he got himself exposed to sunlight, which immediately started his mutation process,
But that was in 1903, a hundred years ago, It’s almost unimaginable to perceive the state he’s in now, And so to get an idea, the students take an elevator shaft ladder straight down to the underground tunnels, to look for Kenny,
Oh and by the way, this elevator has a safety mechanism that if left unchecked, the elevator will collapse and crush down whoever is assigned as player 2, Thought I’d mention this, since i love these wacky final destination type of deaths, Moving on to the tunnels, this is where s**t starts to get real,
Hey buddy, you’re okay? So the group reunites with Kenny behind bars, where’s a metal hook is conveniently placed under one of the beds, And after they use it to escape, they head to see Ms. Wickson but she’s dead as well,
So they decide to follow a tip left by a student back in 1969, that leads them to the closed down dormitories, Stan… Running around the dormitories the group finds Alan Gardener’s diary, Once a student back in 1969, Alan’s research on the disappearances provide a lot of information
That connects the final dots, So the unedited, final version of the story in a nutshell is as follows: The Friedman brothers discover the mortifilia plant and its life prolonging properties, They try to introduce their findings to the scientific community but fail, The twins go rouge, and build an underground
Laboratory disguised as a collage which would give them access to students who’d they use as guinea pigs, The student test subjects seem to handle the serum well, that is because they’re trapped underground with no sunlight to relapse the mutation process, One of the twins, Leonard who’s desperate
To prove his work to the public, looks at the results and decides to inject himself with the anti aging serum, But he makes the mistake of stepping into the sun and things go south for him, His brother Herbert starts experimenting on
The students double time, in hopes of finding a cure that would reverse Leonard’s mutation, The office of technology inside the congress, gets a hold of the twins sketchy schemes and unanimously decide to confiscate their equipment and close down their collage,
The Delta Theta Gamma Brotherhood steps in with its deep governmental ties and aids Herbert in covering up whatever sick experiments he has going on, And so Herbert resumes his mission to find a cure for his brother Leonard, but realizes
He’s getting old and running out of time, so he injects himself and his sister-in-law Elisabeth Wickson with the anti aging serum, of course the catch is don’t get exposed to sunlight, And it’s hinted at in the prologue cutscene
Of the game where Herbert is standing just shy of the sunray with his hands tied behind his back, “take advantage of the sunlight while you still can” Now the attention the collage has gotten due to the number of the disappearance cases is massive, and so in 1960 Herbert diverts that
Attention by rebranding it as a high school, 1969 Alan Gardener is aware of the scrutiny and leaves documents that would convict everyone involved, But he wasn’t able to publish any of them since he was caught by Herbert lurking around in the underground labs, While Herbert gets to stay on the loose,
Things keep rolling until the present day, Where Alan Gardener’s discoveries, lead the 5 students to Leonard’s location in the underground labs, specifically under the school’s gymnasium, where the game started, and where it’s about to end, Now Mr. Walden the biology teacher, who’s obviously been infected, catches Herbert with
An antidote, Of course Herbert is intending to use it on his brother Leonard, but Walden shoots Herbert and tries to use the antidote on himself, but a transfigured Leonard is not letting it slide, Which brings the game to the final boss battle of Leonard,
His fight is pretty straight forward once you get the hang of it, And his death will initiate the game’s final cutscene, And depending on the survival of the 5 members, the game will prop a different one, Where if all 5 remain alive, the game will show them reconciling each other,
While if 1 or more of the members dies, The game will show the victims memorial, So with the conclusion of the narrative out of the way, There are some pretty cool discoveries to be found late game, Things like the Mortifilia infection resembling a real life disease called “Xeroderma Pigmentosum”
Which is characterized by Severe photosensitivity, skin color changes and uncontrollable tumor developments, The game also integrates a ton of details surrounding the Mortifilia infection, covering aspects such as how it works, but the constant usage of medical terminologies, makes it a bit confusing to try and decipher how accurate
The description is, But what’s more comprehensible is the different forms of mutations, Where sometimes the subject comes into contact with foreign bodies like a fly or a type of ameba which can merge the two into a grotesque body of flesh like this queen monster, Additionally some data files manage to build
Some infrastructure like this audio clip which suggests that Herbert was able to give the monsters orders, This is Spanish for “that’s enough, I want him alive” Presumably speaking about Kenny in the game’s intro, Taking all of this into consideration, there’s obviously a ton of effort and detail put into the game,
And although it has a lot of background lore and world building, it does run into some inconsistencies, here let me give you a couple of them: Ok so, Leonard injected himself with the serum in 1903 after observing it’s results on other test subjects, So these “test subjects” were kidnapped
And experimented on before 1903, But Alan Gardener’s research suggest that the first disappearance was in 1904, leaving some inconsistency in the timeline, Another one is a newspaper mentioning that after the disappearance of the 16th victim, new measures have been taken by Herbert and the police department, where’ve they closed
Down the dormitories, But again Alan Gardener, who resided in these dormitories before they closed down, was able to recount 26 cases of disappearances, Sure, the brotherhood could’ve covered up 10 of them which reduces the number back to 16, but it seems like a fetch honestly, But don’t get me wrong, these oversights
Do not take away from the quality of the game, If anything does, it’s the replacement of the original sum 41 soundtrack with a dull and a generic one in the remastered version, It’s kind of weird but the studio behind this game is on some kind of hiatus nowadays,
And haven’t really released anything significant ever since alone in the dark in 2008, and it’s a bit depressing because both of the obscure games are crafted with a ton of love and detail, And absolutely do not deserve their low review scores, Understandably, the “wacky” characters
Played a big part in the game’s demise, and although there’s some hidden depth behind them, it’s hard to not judge a book by its cover, But in my opinion, these “cheesy” dialogues are a part of the game’s charm really,
And if there was ever a new entry to the series, I won’t play it unless the characters no capped and it’s lit bro all over the place, But for now I’ll hang out at the gymnasium in 2003, and wait for Kenny to miss a shot.
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