Regular discussion #1

[secretstaircase]

Slightly later than expected (sorry!), here's the first discussion topic. A nice easy one to break the ice.

Which Fatal Frame game is your favourite, and why?

Comments

[secretstaircase]

Probably obvious to anyone who knows me: my favourite is the third. The initial reason was that I loved the Manor of Sleep, with all its dark open spaces and hidden rooms, and anything with snow is good in my book.

Then as I got more into Fatal Frame as a whole, I really liked that FF3 had characters who really belonged somewhere. In FF2 particularly, we knew very little about the main characters. Where did they go once the game was over? Where do they call home? What do they do when they're not ploughing through unspeakable horror? That's one reason that up until FF3, I preferred the ghosts and had very little interest in the main characters. I like having a bit of background, knowing about characters' everyday lives and families, and FF3 delved into that more. I was a little disappointed when FF4 went back to the old way of doing it.

I also like all the rituals in FF3. They're confusing and not very well planned-out, admittedly, but when I reached a certain level of involvement in the fandom, I saw it more like a puzzle to be pieced together by really paying attention to everything.

And it comes back to the fact that I just frickin' love the Manor, as well. The setting is just gorgeous, in that creepy way. In the early chapters, I really felt for Yoshino, trapped in all those empty, shadowy rooms arranged in strange patterns. Later I was really drawn to the idea of the last surviving members of the Kuze family living out the remainder of their lives in isolation, with the rest of the manor spreading out in darkness behind locked doors. And the family just slowly dying away - no massacre, no insane rampages or violent curse swamping the place like a tidal wave, just... waiting to die. The idea of them waiting for days or weeks, not just a couple of hours - and the fact that they knew they were doomed and they kept trying anyway.

/waxing lyrical XD

Also, I think the soundtrack to FF3 is beautiful, and the importance of a good soundtrack cannot be downplayed.