Outlast: Whistleblower is a grim,
two-hour expansion that thrusts you back into the hellish world of Mount Massive
Asylum, and for better or worse, forces you through the same brutal torture as
the main game. But if subverting expectations is a core tenant of horror,
Whistleblower drops the ball by making every second of your adventure feel like
deja-vu.
As the title suggests, you play
as the man who tipped Miles Upshur off to the horrific goings-on at the asylum.
Shortly after sending the inflammatory email, you’re captured and forced to
endure the horrors of the crumbling institution. Whistleblower acts as both a prologue
and epilogue to the main game, and contains some genuinely interesting story
beats that help flesh out just what the hell has been happening. Once again,
there are also documents scattered about that provide well-written bits of
information on world and its inhabitants.
Sadly, a lot of the environments
in the expansion feel like retreads of places we've already been to. Your
journey is ostensibly the inverse of the main game -- you
The first DLC pack for the
terrifying game Outlast, Whistleblower tells the story that led to Outlast,
then stretches past the events of the first game to show the final chapter in
Mount Massive Asylum's story.
Pikmin 3Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns
of the PatriotsSuper Mario Bros. 3 start in the underground laboratories, and
eventually make your way to the asylum-proper. But wrecked offices, disgusting
bathrooms, and foggy exteriors lose their evocative power the the second time
around, and this general sense of familiarity really works against
Whistleblower.
The DLC still maintains Outlast's
impeccably gruesome visuals and sound design, but doesn't ever manage to
deliver anything truly refreshing. Enemy encounters and scare patterns feel
exactly the same, removing quite a bit of suspense. Sure, the jump scares still
got me 100% of the time, but Whistleblower failed to build that great sense of
tension that the opening hour of the original did so successfully.
A strange thing about a lot of
these jump scares is that they appeared to me as audio-only. Whether because I
had my night-vision off, or perhaps I was facing the wrong way, I was often
greeted with a loud bang, a violin snap, and no visual clues whatsoever.
Moments like this come across less as terrifying, and more just straight-up
confusing.
You're still powerless against
the ghouls that roam the asylum, so you'll have to run and hide anytime you're
spotted. This is where a lot of Whistleblower's problems come to surface.
Mission objectives are vague, and the level layout is more labyrinthine than
ever. This led to a lot of frustration when I was trying to run away from a
pursuer without any clue where I needed to go. There's also a heavy emphasis placed
on climbing up very specific and easily missable surfaces, which only compounds
the confusion.
It gets even worse thanks to a
slew of narrow hallways that often forbid you from maneuvering around your
attacker when cornered. Even more so than the original, I found myself dying
over and over until I figured out where the game wanted me to go, and what it
wanted me to do. Nothing kills horror and tension quite as swiftly as
frustration.
THE VERDICT
Outlast: Whistleblower delivers
more of the same gruesome locales and jump-scares as the core game, but doesn't
introduce much new to the horror experience. Its sound design is still top
notch, and it took me to some dark places that few video games ever dare to go.
But while Whistleblower sheds a bit of light on the mysteries of the original,
but ultimately feels far too familiar, far too often.
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