Chapter 5 Foresaken - question (SPOILERS!)

[Bad Whippet]

A question that hopefully can be answered by someone who has played this chapter more than once: firstly just to complete the objectives, and secondly, to explore and collect everything and so will know how both experiences compared...

I've just completed the horrid thing (and am glad). I just wanted to get it over and done with as quickly as possible so avoided exploring anywhere I didn't have to go and just focused on getting to the end, which means I never found a safe, any collectibles or anything else beyond basic loot. Now that I'm out the other side I *think* I've seen the worst of it (I missed one scene for sure - being thrown back into a burning room or something like that? I saw it on youtube but missed this in my play-through). Has anyone since explored the place fully come across other horrid things? Or are all the additional places beyond Erin's cell etc just rooms with collectibles?

[Morgan]

Did you go through the dining hall?

[Bad Whippet]

No, that's one area I successfully avoided. :D

[Morgan]

Originally posted by BadWhippet:

No, that's one area I successfully avoided. :D

It was awsom. :-)

[Bad Whippet]

LOL! By that I assume it was TERRIFYING!!! :) :)

[Morgan]

Originally posted by BadWhippet:

LOL! By that I assume it was TERRIFYING!!! :) :)

I’m not scared easily by games/films/books (spiders are another matter) but I’d say it was very creepy and the best implementation of artistic horror in gaming to date. I'd love ti have seen a more extended version of it.

[modus0]

If you though the asylum was good for artistic horror, go pick up Thief: Deadly Shadows; the Shalebridge Cradle is much creepier.

I *still* get goosebumps thinking about that level, and I can practically ghost it.

[Morgan]

Originally posted by modus0:

If you though the asylum was good for artistic horror, go pick up Thief: Deadly Shadows; the Shalebridge Cradle is much creepier.

I *still* get goosebumps thinking about that level, and I can practically ghost it.

Played it back at launch and as a whole mission I’d agree it was far scarier for its time (by the end I just wanted to get out). However I’m not sure it was more artistic for sheer creep factor. Unlike Thief 1&2 I’ve never replayed Deadly Shadows though so I may be selling it short.

[82Angelfan]

That room where the entity knocks you back was cool. However, I could not just walk back in and pick up loot there as I kept being pushed back. I had to go through next room. I read some other peoples account where they seemed to just walk in after being thrown back. Anyone else?

[Bad Whippet]

Here's a list of scares I can remember:

• The open door before entering the asylum
  
• The keyhole jump scare
  
• The rolling ball
  
• The moving wheelchair
  
• The invisible entity that passes you once you have the key from the male ward
  
• The room that is lit by flame after the entity (I didn't venture there to see what it was)
  
• Inmates that appear near cells
  
• Smashing of a glass or something
  
• The goblin things in the lower prison levels
  
• The jump scare of the 'frozen being' when you turn back in the prison levels
  
• The things that claw at you as you try to escape the prison

Scares I know about but didn't see:

• The dining area (white shapes/dummies?)
  
• The entity that knocks you back in the room (was that the lit room I saw earlier?)
  
• Banging pipes - and a safe
  
• The warden - never saw him at all

Are there any others anyone can think of that I have missed (especially from people who did have the nerve to explore the place thoroughly)? If there are no others, I might risk replaying the level (one day...).

[Solitaire]

Originally posted by BadWhippet:

• The warden - never saw him at all

The warden is the invisible entity that spawns in the men's ward; that's the enitity that was wandering around slamming doors.

I thought the asylum level was done really well, but there were too many jump scares--and I could predict when they were going to happen, for the most part. I remember at one point there was a dead-end room with loot and a document in it, and I told myself there was going to be a jump scare in there. I backed into the room with my eye on the doorway and sure enough, picking up the items made a bookshelf fall over.

At least being wary for jump scares kept me on my toes, but I wound up using predator techniques to get past the gloomwalkers because they gave me the heebie-jeebies.

The scene at the end of the level was dumb, though. The level could have easily been completed without an intense climactic scene (which the game loves chucking at you at the end of every level).

[DouglasGrave]

The "invisible" entity in the male ward (which actually shows up as a vague shimmer in the air) is the Night Warden; it appears immediately after you exit a certain room number, and you're forewarned by the note that appears on the corridor wall opposite that room's door.

I've heard that there are a couple of additional scary events seen through keyholes (including the inhabitant of the burning room), but since it seemed like asking for trouble, I studiously avoided looking into keyholes throughout this entire level (apart from that one room which instead has two wall peepholes that make loot appear in the viewed area).

There are also some miscellaneous scary sounds or ghostly speeches that start when you're picking locks. I just started assuming they would happen every time so that getting startled didn't mess up my lockpicking. One of the speeches does give a clue that a second piece of loot will appear in the cupboard you're messing with if you shut it and open it again (but nothing scary turns up in there, just another bit of loot).

Frankly, you probably want to just clean out the level (all documents, loot, collectibles, secret areas, etc.) at once so that you don't have any need to come back. Annoyingly, I had to do this chapter a second time because on my first run I missed a piece of loot that only spawns in the hands of the statue out the front after you roam down the right-hand side of the building, and the front door is the only absolute cutoff point in the entire level (I don't count the very end section because you don't have any real control after that point; you're just wandering around unable to do much except follow the scripted escape path while Erin talks at you again).

Originally posted by gamblingjackal:

At least being wary for jump scares kept me on my toes, but I wound up using predator techniques to get past the gloomwalkers because they gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I found them reassuring; they stop throwing jumpscares at you when real opponents are around, and I had fun luring them to their burning death under the electric lights.

[Bad Whippet]

Thank you all for the really helpful replies. That warden disappeared down the corridor on the left and shortly after a room started to glow like flame - that's the burning room (I'm guessing)? Is that also the room where you get thrown?

I missed most of the loot, and didn't even think to look at statues! I watched one video where the player dropped down to the very low levels of a lift shaft at the beginning of the game and they then climbed quite a few stairs (with floors to explore in between) - none of which I did. I just wanted in and out! :D

[Bad Whippet]

Originally posted by Morgan:

Originally posted by modus0:

If you though the asylum was good for artistic horror, go pick up Thief: Deadly Shadows; the Shalebridge Cradle is much creepier.

I *still* get goosebumps thinking about that level, and I can practically ghost it.

Played it back at launch and as a whole mission I’d agree it was far scarier for its time (by the end I just wanted to get out). However I’m not sure it was more artistic for sheer creep factor. Unlike Thief 1&2 I’ve never replayed Deadly Shadows though so I may be selling it short.

I'm a recent owner of Thief Deadly Shadows (I've played the game 4, maybe 5 times up until last year). The Abysmal Gale (abandoned ship) and the Shalebridge Cradle (abandoned orphanage) were terrible, with the Cradle being the worst by far - but I have to say I found THIS Thief scarier. I imagine this is because (these days) the graphics in Deadly Shadows don't look as realistic as new Thief's graphics do. They're still good, but graphics have come a long way in the last 10 years and the Asylum looked even more real, and the scares were more developed (more jump scares and using entities that suddenly appear - whereas the Cradle was much more Blair Witch - a building tension that was in itself terrifying). Of course, people who played Deadly Shadows when it was first released would also have been served the most realistic graphics of the day so it would have been equally (if not more) terrifying. But in my opinion THIS Thief is more frightening.

I think.

Maybe I'll change my mind when I replay Deadly Shadows...

[DouglasGrave]

I prefer not to have the jumpscare; they're effectively startling when they spring, but they also mess up your play in a way that's dramatically different to the pure tension of Shalebridge Cradle, which did have one or two, but didn't rely on throwing them in your face to get an instinctive reaction and built more on the underlying horror of its history and its residents' condition.

In the Moira Asylum, I was too busy watching out for the next time they would try to blindside me with a jumpscare to appreciate the backstory scattered throughout the place. I just got desensitized to anything else, and by the time I got to the lower levels, creatures that should have been scary on the first level where you really face them were practically relaxing.

Originally posted by BadWhippet:

That warden disappeared down the corridor on the left and shortly after a room started to glow like flame - that's the burning room (I'm guessing)? Is that also the room where you get thrown?

The only fire I've actually seen in there was with the room that explodes when you pick the lock, throwing you (harmlessly) backwards and giving you a brief glimpse of a figure at the door. I don't recall the associated room number, but it was one of the doors looking down the small cross-corridor in the middle of the ward.

[EbonHawk]

Originally posted by BadWhippet:

Are there any others anyone can think of that I have missed (especially from people who did have the nerve to explore the place thoroughly)? If there are no others, I might risk replaying the level (one day...).

Just as you enter the women's showers, there is a creepy long-fingered claw or something that reaches up through one of the shower drains in the floor. They're extremely elongated and look almost like snakes or tentacles, and they kind of wave for a split second, then they yank back out of sight right before you can be sure you saw them. Just one of the creepiest things I've seen in a long time.