![]() As you walk from a sepia-hued kitchen into a facsimile of the Emerald City, the implication is that the actor took refuge in both film and in their own imagination, an escape from their abusive home life. The Wizard of Oz sequence, for instance, dovetails with details about the actor’s bleak childhood. Others follow, from Melies’ Trip to the Moon to The Wizard of Oz, Psycho, Nosferatu, Casablanca, and so on. Both the iconic factory scene and clock make an appearance, the first time I realized Layers of Fear 2 was borrowing scenes from film history directly. I started to understand around the time I saw Metropolis, or “Mechanopolis” as it’s called on the in-game poster. Or don’t, as may be.Īnd there are so many references to catch. The escalation-the increasing detachment from reality-mirrors the actor’s process, as they lose their identity in favor of digging deeper into the character. A normal suburban kitchen opens onto woods, with a glimmer of opulence in the distance. An elevator opens up onto a city block, skyscrapers stretching into the mists above. A door projected from film onto the wall turns into a real doorway. These parlor tricks continue through the entire game, but they gradually grow more ambitious. You start Layers of Fear 2 on an ocean liner, but as with the first game the ship is an impossible Escher space where you exit a room and find yourself back inside, or double back to find a new hallway’s replaced the old. It builds, and at first the constant changes in tone and location seem random. All the glimmers of recognition, the moments where you thought you noticed a pattern? You did. Layers of Fear 2 is building towards this moment where you realize it’s all intentional. ![]() Without it, you’d come to a completely different (lesser) understanding of the story being told. Rather, it relies on the audience having certain knowledge of film, film production, and film history in order to connect the dots. Nobody uses the words “The Method” though. This manifests similar to madness, with constant flashbacks and disorienting geography, but it’s not. You’re the actor, and the whole premise of Layers of Fear 2 is that you’re one of the early adopters of the Method-which, as you probably know, asks actors to search for emotional truth within themselves in order to embody a role, or “Build the character,” a recurring mantra in Layers of Fear 2. And there are certainly parallels, with Tony Todd’s gravel-voiced Director hoping to create his own Great Work. Thus people (naturally) assumed Layers of Fear 2 did the same, but with cinema. Layers of Fear told the story of a painter gone mad.
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