Amnesia Rebirth test: rebirth or descent?

Ten years after the release of the much noticed and terrifying Amnesia: The Dark Descent and on the strength of the experience acquired on SOMA released five years later, Frictional Games is returning to the license to which it owes much of its fame. After traumatizing us with The Dark Descent, the Swedish studio was expected at the turn with this new opus which, as we will see, takes a significantly different direction. At the risk of losing the fans of the first hour?

Amnesia Rebirth test: rebirth or descent? Read the conclusionAmnesia: Rebirth

An original historical and scenario context
An ambitious narrative with multiple challenges
A poignant statement and a memorable heroine
Aesthetically well inspired

... but less predominant in the general balance of the game
Minimalist gameplay less relevant in this context
Fear mechanics unchanged from the first installment
Quickly redundant puzzles

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is part of the first generation of first-person horror titles whose fame owes a lot to the youtubers of the first hour and their famous "Let's Play" while exclamations saturated with decibels. But the title of Frictional Games, which succeeded its release to the studio's first foray into the horror genre with Penumbra, obviously owes the recognition of thrill seekers to its indisputable intrinsic qualities. The Swedish studio had been able to instill fear at every moment in the mind of the player while only giving him snippets of explanations on the nature of the evil which harassed him.

A more original and ambitious context

And it is primarily on this last point that this Rebirth opus differs from its illustrious predecessor. Frictional Game has chosen a much more explicit narration, relying on a real staging where The Dark Descent only deployed most of its background through letters and notes gleaned by the player.

Set in 1937, we play Anastasie Trianon, a Spanish archaeologist on her way to Sudan alongside several other researchers, including her husband Salim, aboard a plane that soon crashes during the introductory sequence. . Coming to her senses in the rubble in the middle of the Algerian desert, she discovers that all the members of the expedition have disappeared from the carcass of the device. Under the crushing heat of the North African sun, she sets off to find the trace of possible survivors by taking the entrance to a cavernous network located not far from the crash site. There she will realize that she is wearing a strange artifact on her wrist, opening doors to an ancient extinct civilization and that, to make matters worse, she is pregnant.

Of course, we won't offend you by going too far into plot details, but just know that Anastasie will be exploring the remnants of this mysterious civilization and, of course, a terrifying threat will never stop. popping up and tracking her down is a good part of the adventure.

Acheter Amnesia Rebirth

Exploration, puzzles and horror

In that order of importance. Because what strikes quite quickly over the progression of this Rebirth episode is that the distribution between the different fundamental components of the game no longer favors the thrill as much as the original opus. Rebirth clearly emphasizes the exploration of the different places it invites us to travel and the deployment of the scenario concocted by Frictional Games. This therefore involves a narration that could be described as emergent, through clues whose meaning escapes us at first before appearing to us more and more clearly, but also many monologues by Anastasie and flashbacks untimely.

Several intrigues intertwine throughout the game: the investigation into what happened after the crash, that of the origin and disastrous destiny of the civilization discovered, the revelation of Anastasia's painful past and the strange evolution of her pregnancy which seems to be going at supernatural speed. Frictional Games partly manages to make these different parts of the story coexist and communicate, but the studio unfortunately uses intrusive flashbacks a little too often, in particular to shed light on the events preceding the crash. On the other hand, he is much more subtle in telling us about the tragedy experienced by Anastasie and Salim before the start of the game, taking advantage of the loading screens to distil the painful memories of our heroine drop by drop in the form of charcoal drawings full of suggestions. .

The fact remains that there is sometimes some confusion in the development of these different plots and we experienced some difficulty in hanging up some wagons. Nothing insurmountable, but immersion is unfortunately affected. However, we salute Frictional Games' daring and rather unprecedented bias, which avoids the escalation of startling revelations to focus above all on an intimate story, that of Anastasie, an oh so touching character, and her fight to save at all costs. costs its child and this until the final outcome, intervening after ten hours of play and placing the player in front of a terrible dilemma.

Spinning game mechanics

If the narration of this Rebirth opus is therefore much more ambitious than that of the first part, unfortunately the same cannot be said of the game mechanics implemented by Frictional Games. Connoisseurs of The Dark Descent will never be caught off guard by this new episode since we find, more or less, the same formula with a few small adjustments ready.

Let us quote them before returning to the heart of our subject. First there is this mysterious artefact worn by Anastasie like a watch and which, awakened by the proximity of a dimensional door, will show us the path to follow on certain occasions, but whose usefulness proves therefore very punctual and always guided by the needs of progression. More interestingly, the unborn child is also important since when the action becomes more and more intense and Anastasie's mental state deteriorates, causing auditory hallucinations and apparitions, it will then be to calm him down by talking to him so that our heroine finds some serenity herself.

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BOOH!

And that's about it. For the rest, we therefore find the minimalist gameplay of the first Amnesia consisting of an almost total helplessness in the face of dangerous creatures arising on our way and against which only escape and concealment can guarantee us a chance of survival. Darkness retains a preponderant role in the heavy atmosphere that reigns in the corridors and caves explored and our only escape from their disastrous hold on our mental health remains the rare sources of light. This can emerge from a match or a torch that it will have served to ignite, or even from the lantern, which still consumes a lot of fuel. The distribution of resources is still just as parsimonious and it will therefore be necessary to be as economical as possible so as not to find oneself too often at the mercy of darkness.

Voltage drop

In short, you will understand, the heart of the gameplay remains unchanged. But what is the problem, you might ask, if it worked so well in The Dark Descent? On the one hand, it was ten years ago and a good number of titles exploring the springs of fear in subjective view have gone through it, effectively defusing most of the tricks already implemented by Frictional Games in its previous titles. Of course, we will always be surprised by jumpscares that are a little easy, but the scripted appearances of the emaciated creatures populating the nightmares of the players of 2010 no longer have quite the same impact today.

And then if the original Amnesia played on a permanent tension through the skilfully rhythmic appearances of the creatures prowling in its disturbing home, Rebirth is much more sparing of its effects and is no longer so much a survival horror as an adventure mixing exploration and solving morning puzzles of chills. And that makes all the difference. Indeed, we will spend a good part of our time solving redundant puzzles to unlock access and getting lost in environments which, particularly in the second half of the game, end up looking a little too similar.

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The game sometimes suffers from a certain visual monotony

Lovecraft Country

And it's a shame indeed because we must salute the particularly inspired work done by the Swedish studio on the aesthetics of its game. And especially in the design of this universe mixing desert expanses, colonial fortress, cavernous network and, above all, an entire civilization whose constructions of overwhelming proportions and threatening architecture, erected on devastated lands, give rise to some rather striking visions that Lovecraft, whose influence is significant, would not have denied.

Frictional Games plays on a few occasions on the contrast between the bright and open desert expanses of the outside world and the gloomy and confined atmospheres of the world of the portal builders. But unfortunately this does not prevent a certain monotony from regularly settling in, the fault of a visual uniformity too rarely contradicted by a few flashes of which one guesses at first glance that they have been the subject of great care. particular from the studio.

Particular care given that the game is based on a more advanced version of the in-house engine already used on the first title of the license. In other words, do not expect to take full retina, the limits of the engine of Frictional Games and its small team of thirty people are obvious wherever you look.
The title therefore has the advantage of being at ease on a modest configuration. That being said, this does not prevent the studio from showing ingenuity to show some splendid panoramas and often making good use of light sources to embellish the interior environments.

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We must all the same salute the work done on the aesthetics of this fallen civilization

Amnesia Rebirth : l'avis de Clubic

On paper, Amnesia: Rebirth had everything to be the rebirth announced by its title, that of a big name in horrific video games. Starting with a reputation inherited from its predecessor on which to build a succession that lives up to expectations. Frictional Games demonstrates great narrative ambitions and, overall, the Swedish studio manages to materialize them despite some moments of confusion. Her heroine is touching, devilishly courageous, and her fight very quickly becomes ours to the point of totally taking precedence over the other issues developed by the screenplay, relegated to the background of our concerns.

But then, as for the rest, we had the right to hope for better. Certainly, the Swedish developer has demonstrated technical ingenuity and aesthetic inventiveness. But when it comes to the other heart of the game, its gameplay, its pacing is lazy to say the least. Ten years after the first opus, the studio's tricks are now worn down and have naturally lost their effectiveness. Of course, the thrill is still there and we'd be lying if we said we didn't jump on many occasions. But jumpscare is an easy process and this sequence lacks a spring more powerful than surprise to instill fear, the real one: the certainty of being tracked by an elusive presence, capable of appearing when you least expect it. .

Instead, Amnesia: Rebirth prefers to focus on exploration and solving puzzles with mechanics that are a little too redundant. The adventure is no less interesting to live, but it's a safe bet that we won't come back to it once the game is over. Still, for around thirty euros at the time of its release, there is no harm in being tempted.

Amnesia: Reborn

We expected a rebirth and it is partly a repetition that Frictional Games delivered. More ambitious on the aesthetic and narrative levels, this Rebirth opus is lazy when it comes to scaring us. Water has flowed under the bridges in ten years and it is a pity that the Swedish studio did not take note of it. Amnesia: Rebirth remains an effective title carried by a story and a heroine as we would like to see more often in video games, but we would have liked it to show as much inventiveness in terms of game mechanics.