#fear pointman

P1 and P2 unsupervised together in the wild, what will they do have they done?

You share not the blood of our-our-ours

Thus we focus on your death

I promise to take care

'til the end

'Cause there were times when you were

While the game wasn't a chore to go through, it's undoubtedly my least favorite of the franchise. Perhaps my biased negative thoughts on the plot before I even started playing are to blame but I couldn't get into F.E.A.R 2 as much as I did with the first and third games for multiple reasons (although if I'm being honest, I also knew of the endings of F.3.A.R and was unhappy with Fettel's and that didn't stop me from enjoying the game more overall soooo...) One reason, as far as I'm concerned, is the game being unable to choose a tone. While the first F.E.A.R (and its DLCs- ESPECIALLY THE DLCS!!!!) was more about horror and the third entry was 100% an action game, I get the feeling that F.E.A.R 2 tried to be a weird middle ground between freaky stuff and action pack gameplay which ultimately results in a incomprehensible hot mess. I legit played the whole game with a straight face save for the occasional highbrows raise and honestly even laughter sometimes (probably because by the end of the game and after 10 hours of gameplay with only a 2 hours break, my sanity was gradually wearing thinner and thinner-). I get the feeling that F.E.A.R 2 tries to be scary and fails miserably because not once was I scared while playing. The "jumpscares" and Alma's apparitions are too loud with bright flashing lights in a way that is too "in your face" to genuinely be scary. The enemies are not as coordinated as the original replicas and do not give off the same disturbing "lifeless almost robotic" energy (though that's something I had already noticed in F.3.A.R), the abominations are a good concept and are disturbing on paper but fail at being scary in the actual game. I was disappointed at the school interval because everyone seemed to agree it's the best and the scariest one and- it isn't?? To me at least, it really isn't. Again, too "in your face" and the moment where you're stuck in some bloody corridor while the light is repeatedly going on and off is more frustrating and eyes straining than anything else. Same for those goddamn puppeteers Remnants enemies who just scream every 5 seconds while blinding you with these same bright orange lights- it's unbearable.

So yeah, the whole fear factor was completely lacking... And so was well- F.E.A.R.

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I wasn't there to witness the reactions to the game back when it was released in 2009 (well, I was there but busy playing Pokemon Rangers) but I seem to be one of the very few people out there who are bothered by the fact that the F.E.A.R organization is missing from that second F.E.A.R game. I'm working on a whole rambling post about the lost potential of F.E.A.R and the themes it could have brought up but basically, while I am aware that the story is primarily about Alma, I just want the F.E.A.R games to be about the F.E.A.R team as well. I want to play F.E.A.R people in my F.E.A.R games. Is it really too much to ask? I think the Delta Force team should just exist as a side faction. I don't know, it just bothers me that a game named after its fictional paranormal military organization wouldn't let me play as a paranormal military guy. Am I seriously playing a F.E.A.R game without a single mention of F.E.A.R??? It's like writers really forgot the meaning they gave to F.E.A.R in their story and just focused on the literal sense of the word rather than the acronym even though it should focus on both.

Michael and his team should have been F.E.A.R (EDIT: except Keira, I think she actually works fine as Delta Force soldier. EDIT 2: changed my mind about this, Becket can remain Delta Force but I'll make another post about him to explain). Or they should have just resumed Point Man's story.

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The Dark Signal team- certainly does exist. No but seriously, I feel nothing but sympathy for these guys, I really do. However, they literally all exist just to die and it's kinda sad how my reaction to Redd, James and Cedric's death was basically just "well, it was nice knowing you guys". We don't get to know them so who cares? Again, I knew they would die anyway but I still think it's a shame because I think a guy like Redd would have deserved more attention simply because he's Spencer's brother and like- you'd think the game with themes of family would do something with that. Maybe draw parallels between the Wade brothers and the Jankowski brothers? No, just me? Redd doesn't even get to know his older brother died!!! Perhaps Spencer's phantom could have appeared to his brother? Anyway, Harold's death is the saddest to me, simply because he wasn't being himself and him begging for Michael to basically mercy kill him is sad but again, it would have been nice to explore the relationships between the characters further in order for Harold's death to really be impactful. Perhaps establish Michael and Harold to be really close in order for his death to be impactful both to Michael and to the player. I said it could have been an idea to draw parallels between Point Man/Fettel and Spencer/Redd just because they're two canon pairs of brothers in a game about family (both Spencer and Redd could have gone through Paragon the way Point Man and Fettel were both experimented on for example) but thinking of it, it would have been even neater to have a deep relationship between Michael and Harold mirroring Point Man and Fettel's somehow given that both Point Man and Michael find themselves forced to shoot a brother/brother-in-arms in the head.

I like Manuel, probably because he's supposed to be the comic relief guy of the story? I love that his role is just to drive the team around and never mind if the road is blocked by replicas, let's just drive down the subway even if it sends everyone in the truck flying and then he's having the time of his life shooting replicas. I'm happy he made it out of this shit alive even though we don't really know what happens to him in the aftermath.

I like Keira, I really do!!! Girl really is done with everything happening and to be fair, who wouldn't? She's the polar opposite of composed and phlegmatic Jin. She's got a temper and doesn't take shit while also being nice and being a good partner to have around. In fact, I've always been bothered by the way Jin acts in F.3.A.R, she's always struck me as OOC and while I already suspected it, the reason is basically because Jin in the third game is closer in personality to Keira than- to herself. Anyways, we get to tag along with Keira more than we get to with Jin and I liked being around her. She died such a stupid death though... First of all, she wouldn't have died had she worn an actual bulletproof vest. Girl, what are you doing walking around with your belly in the open!!! Your vital organs are exposed!!!!! And why the hell didn't she shoot Aristide? At least a non-lethal shot if she really wanted to take her alive but goddamnit, Aristide was armed, why did Keira have to act so stupidly brave in front of a woman holding a gun and clearly ready to kill her at the first act of rebellion. I get that Keira was angry and done with everything and desperate to end it all but she really acted dumb here. She should have known better. I still like her a lot though and she deserved far better.

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Anyway. Michael Becket. Sergent Becket...

Man sure does endure. A lot.

I haven't played a whole lot of games but damn does Becket as a protagonist go through some serious SHIT. Faced with paranormal activity, sees his companions die one after the other, fights his way through replicas, mutated psychic monsters, military mercenaries, weird ghostly zombies, is assaulted multiple times by a dead woman, learns that he's the only one who can stop said woman and save the world, is about to do just so, witnesses Keira being murdered, is compelled to regretfully kill Harold in some horror ghost mindscape while being brutally raped by the dead woman who had been stalking him the whole game and is eventually left there, strapped in a chair with the horrifying knowledge that the entity who raped him is now pregnant with his child.

What an awful day to be Michael Becket. Really, the guy has all my sympathy. He goes through so much shit only to be brought back for like two minutes in the third game, where we learn that Armacham had him locked up for months in order to use him as a tool to find Alma and instead of being freed by Point Man and Fettel, he ends up being possessed (and thus in a way, physically violated again for the THIRD time: unwanted brain surgery, rape, possession) and literally blown to pieces by Fettel.

I can only like Becket.

What bothers me with Becket though is the fact that he's a silent protagonist!!!!! Unlike Point Man, Becket absolutely DOES NOT work as a silent protagonist.

Pointman works as a silent protagonist because of who he is as a character or rather who he is not. Point Man was born and raised as an experiment, a test subject, a lab rat. He wasn't given a name so he wouldn't develop a personality, an identity, a sense of self, a voice of his own. Point Man not having a voice in-game works because him being mute works and makes perfect sense from a story and character standpoint. Point Man never got to truly develop a sense of self, never got to know who he truly is and thus never found his voice. Not to mention that the brutal abuse he went through as a child most likely helped rendering him mute.

Michael Becket, however, is a normal guy. Aside from the fact that he's got some untapped psychic powers he's not even aware of and that he was experimented on as a child for Project Paragon (which he doesn't remember anyway) Michael is a normal guy. He had a usual birth, was given a name, grew up like a normal child with a normal family with a normal life- Michael Becket has a name, an identity. Michael Becket is a person. Michael Becket should have a voice.

Michael Becket should be able to comment on what's going on around him. He should be able to voice his thoughts, express himself, his fears, his outrage, his concerns, his anger, his sympathy for his team... Michael Becket should be able to interact with the people around him. He should be able to talk to his team, he should be able to ask Snake Fist what he means when he says that if he [Becket] dies, everyone dies as well. He should be able to comment on the fact that he suddenly obtained superhuman reflexes following the surgery that he unwillingly went through. He should be able to be outraged. He should be able to ask why Alma is interested in him and only him. He should be able to talk with Keira when they're together. Keira shouldn't act as Michael's voice. He should be able to scream his dying partners' names and should be able to talk to Harold to try and reason with him. He should be able to scream and be enraged upon helplessly witnessing Aristide murdering Keira. He should be able to scream when Alma appears before him to do the unspeakable.

I also think he should have experienced flashbacks of the Paragon tests he went through as a child while he was in Wade Elementary School. Have his memories come back in flashes following the brain surgeries activating his powers and from being back in the school.

And maybe, just maybe, he should be able to comment on the fact that Aristide's secret bunker room in her apartment has a whole fucking cork board with he and his team's face plastered on it with red circles and notes and a map which clearly indicates that everything that will happen in the game was carefully orchestrated by Aristide????

Like, either give Michael an actual character/voice and write a coherent plot or don't show this kind of detail at the fucking beginning of the game if you want me to take things seriously. Because, as it stands, not only is this story shit but Michael being mute also ruins the experience and makes this trainwreck of a plot even messier. Not to mention, it makes him seem dumb af.

Not to mention the immense potential Becket had. Dude is a psychic with untapped powers so strong that with the right training, he could be even stronger than Fettel!!!! Can we talk about this?? This is such a compelling piece of lore which makes Becket's death scene even more powerful and tragic- even with little to no powers, Michael was able to fight back against Fettel's possession and even take control of his body/mind back even as Fettel's spirit was still inside him. Becket could have been a beast of a psychic and if writers had really wanted him to get a tragic ending, then having ATC catch him and forcibly turn him into a psychic commander would have been much better than whatever the fuck happened in the end. That way, we also could have had an answer to the question of who controls the replicas in F.3.A.R and Point Man and Fettel could have been trying to find Becket in order to stop the replicas and also maybe save him at the same time. He could die then but not necessarily and certainly not in the disrespectful way he did in the final game. He dies painfully, unjustly and nobody cares.

Justice for Becket, really...

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Okay, now, let's get to the nasty: Alma's characterization and motivations.

What the hell was that? What the hell does that mean? Who thought it would be a good idea? Who in the Monolith writing team had the brilliant idea to turn the abused little girl who was forcibly impregnated twice (I'd like to straight up say "raped" but I'm not sure it fits the official meaning of the word but let's not sugarcoat things, that's basically it- her body was violated twice while she was unconscious and thus unwilling + she was only 14 the first time it happened) into a siren sexual predator rapist? Whose idea was that? Who decided "HOT ALMA" had to be a thing???

Okay, I get it- apparently the idea was to turn her into an abuser due to the abuse she faced herself. Not an irrational choice and the same could be said about Fettel's characterisation in the third game but guess what? I dislike both.

I dislike both because this all comes out of nowhere. Fettel had never been shown to be a megalomaniac madman prior to F.3.A.R and it's obvious to me that they made him pure evil in order to justify the multiplayer aspect with its good/bad ending depending on which player/brother gets a higher score. Good characterisation ruined for the sake of gameplay and Manichaeism.

I get that F.E.A.R 2 is supposed to expand on Alma's character following her awakening and breakout of the Vault but this feels like such a weird development to go for...

F.E.A.R 2 establishes that Alma is now a woman, even though she doesn't realize it. Apparently, the whole point is that Alma, after being freed from the Vault, became aware of what she really is and thus exclusively appears in her current physical corpse-like body, because that's what she is now. Okay but what does that even mean?? What did Alma even realize? The same game that claims Alma is now a woman without realizing it is also supposed to tell us Alma has now realized what she truly is? That's awfully contradictory.

And again, what conclusion did Alma even reach? What does she see herself as now? A mother? That's not new, Alma definitely began to see herself as a mother as early as her first pregnancy. She definitely bonded with both her sons back when they were still in the womb in order for her to feel so hurt over them being stolen from her. Alma was a mother before Point Man was even born, she started seeing herself as such the moment he began growing and living inside her. Alma was a mother way before she got out of the Vault.

I swear, I'm willing to understand the writers' implied idea that Alma wanted another child that she could carry and hold in her arms after their birth but that strikes me as weird considering that Alma still considers Point Man and Paxton as her babies and still cries for them to be given back to her even at the beginning of F.E.A.R 2. Even James Fox understands that. Alma still cares about her two babies and wants them back by her side, I don't think she would be willing to replace them with another.

While she does seem content with her new pregnancy at the end of F.E.A.R 2, Alma just spends the entire game acting like an animal in heat looking for a mate who happens to be Becket because of his strong psychic signature and that's all there is. She spends the whole game attempting to seduce him/sexually assault him until she gets what she wants by taking advantage of him being trapped. And like, yeah sure, that mirrors the abuse she went through and her being impregnated once she was locked in the Vault being powerless and unable to defend herself but still-

She doesn't act like a grieving mother unlike the first game where she attempts to get back to Point Man after getting out of the Vault. She's a sexual predator. And that disturbs me. Especially since F.3.A.R once again made it clear that at her core, Alma is a little girl. She once again reappears as a little girl, weak, scared, alone, curling up and crying the moment the monster symbolizing the memory of her abusive father appears. Alma might be an adult physically but at her core, she's still a little girl. Her body did keep growing while in stasis but her mental growth was essentially stunted at barely 8!!! That's the reason why she's still a little girl in her spiritual form: that's how Alma still sees herself because that's what she was like when they stopped her growth and basically killed her for the first time. Even as Alma bonded with her sons while they were still in the womb and embraced her role as a mother, Alma remained a little girl.

Seeing this little girl turning from a tormented and scared abuse victim in search of revenge and of her lost children to a sexual predator acting like a siren assaulting the protagonist and eventually raping him disturbs me.

It's not the fact that F.E.A.R 2 has a rape scene itself- the story has always been gross and meant to make one uncomfortable, Alma's story is meant to make you uncomfortable- it's just the context, the characters involved... Everything is wrong and I cannot imagine Alma even thinking of doing that.

Especially with how blatantly sexualized she is, like- Alma wasn't violated because of some sick attraction or fantasy from her abusers, she was violated because of the potential her offspring could offer. Alma isn't meant to be a sexual object, isn't meant to be sexualized- SHE WAS A CHILD AND STILL IS FOR THE MOST PART!!! Roughly speaking and to be brutally honest, Alma has always been seen as nothing more than a womb. She was dehumanized into a means to an end in order to achieve the perfect psychic. As far as I'm concerned, sexualizing Alma is disturbingly OOC and- somewhat off-topic. Dunno how to explain. Although I realize that her using and raping Becket also mirrors that. Alma was a means to an end. Becket was a means to an end. But I guess I don't think said end is something Alma would want.

Not to mention that it caused some sick ass people to genuinely think of her as hot and even wish they were in Becket's shoes like omg-

If anything, it would have made more sense for her to see Becket as one of her children or something. I don't know how or why but it would have been infinitely better than whatever F.E.A.R 2 is about.

I don't care if it's not canon, Extraction Point handled the whole thing much better in my opinion by having spirit little girl Alma tag alongside Point Man while guiding/saving him because he's her baby and she wants him safe- and by having physical Alma be an actual gross reanimated corpse full of rage (and being the Alma standing above Fettel's corpse in the EP intro because this Alma is angry and she shared all her anger with her youngest son who has vowed to avenge her and make the world remember all the hurt it has inflicted upon her at the beginning of the story). It's not Alma herself being gross, it's Alma being the result of every gross thing that was done to her until she embodied them as a literal corpse because they killed her and left her to rot in the vault for years. I hate how F.E.A.R 2 sexualized her and even how F.3.A.R depicts her as prettier than she really ought to be. Alma is an experiment and a result. A result that isn't pretty.

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Anyways, it's a shame because there were some good ideas. Michael Becket could have been a great protagonist and his team, although mostly just there to die, could have been nice characters sharing a meaningful bond which would have been both wholesome and heartbreaking to witness. The failed psychic commanders turned abominations, the Paragon and Harbinger projects with the Wade Elementary School actually being a secret lab facility where children are experimented on in order to find the ones with psychic abilities... The Dark Signal team being a result of Paragon and Harbinger test subjects was a nice plot too but it never ultimately amounted to anything. The whole ATC trying to eliminate Aristide because she's become too bothersome for the company part is also great and the ATC Black-ops remind me a whole lot of the Nightcrawlers from Perseus Mandate to the point that I think they could easily be merged into one single faction...