Summary
- Five Nights at Freddy's has deep lore that requires dedicated fans to uncover, despite the simplicity of its original games.
- The recent Five Nights at Freddy's movie combines original storytelling with Easter eggs for hardcore fans.
- The franchise has the potential to branch out into third-person survival-horror, offering new perspectives and gameplay mechanics.
Five Nights at Freddy’s has an interesting history with rich lore if newcomers are willing to dig into fairly obscure methods of procuring context for each game. This is ironic due to how elementary the original Five Nights at Freddy’s games are, and yet the IP has blossomed into a tapestry of theory-crafting that the fanbase nurtures. The recent Five Nights at Freddy’s movie further demonstrates this, delivering an original spin on Five Nights at Freddy’s lore while also maintaining a lot of Easter eggs and references that will be completely lost on any casual fan, let alone someone who has never heard of the games before.
The games themselves have taken different shapes since their inception, such as leaving the confinement of a security office entirely and indulging in the fear that VR can administer through an immersive first-person perspective that the franchise is known for. Indeed, the series is dominated by this lens and does well to lean into the jump-scare motifs that such games afford, but the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie was proof that the IP could also have legs if it leaned into the tropes of third-person survival-horror, emulating how Mike Schmidt navigates the iconic pizzeria in the movie.
How Five Nights at Freddy’s Could Work as a Third-Person Game
Third-Person Survival-Horror is Back and Here to Stay
Third-person perspectives aren’t anywhere near emergent in gaming nowadays, but there is a lot a game can achieve with this over-the-shoulder perspective that Five Nights at Freddy’s could take advantage of in a survival-horror game. The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie had the difficult goal of attempting to solve how Mike would actually spend the titular number of nights at Freddy Fazbear’s, and while it hit some bumps along the road it managed to still lay out a commendable formula for what a third-person game could achieve.
Likewise, because of how beloved third-person survival-horror is with franchises like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, it would only make sense for Five Nights at Freddy’s to branch out and make that leap at some point to stay fresh. Even if the genre it’d be leaping to isn’t necessarily fresh itself, there are ways it could make it a fresh interpretation with its traditional setting and mechanics still well-embedded into its new perspective.
Third-Person Survival-Horror Could Be a Great Way for FNAF to Branch Out
It would need to draw out nights into a somewhat lengthy endeavor in comparison to how early titles in the franchise depicted them, but a third-person Five Nights at Freddy’s game where players searched a similarly derelict Fazbear’s and could make their way through environmental puzzles to reach new areas of the pizzeria could be fascinating. Taking cues from a game like Alan Wake 2, it would be incredible if players returned each night to try to progress further into the pizzeria or find clues on how to solve different puzzles, while also going in and out of the office to observe monitors for ominous activity.
Moving through ventilation shafts like characters do in the movie would also be a neat idea, as well as arming players with tasers like Resident Evil’s defensive items. The formula could easily integrate survival-horror elements into the nightly terror that is seminal in Five Nights at Freddy’s, but also give the protagonist more of an immediate emphasis since players would see them the entire game. However, third-person could eliminate a lot of the typical jump scares that are possible in first-person, though that might be a worthwhile change if other features could substitute them well.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 78 /100 Critics Rec: 71%
- Released
- August 8, 2014
- ESRB
- m
- Developer(s)
- Scott Cawthon
- Publisher(s)
- Scott Cawthon, Clickteam LLC USA
- Engine
- multimedia fusion
- Franchise
- Five Nights at Freddy's
WHERE TO PLAY
Welcome to your new summer job at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, where kids and parents alike come for entertainment and food as far as the eye can see! The main attraction is Freddy Fazbear, of course and his two friends. They are animatronic robots, programmed to please the crowds! The robots' behavior has become somewhat unpredictable at night however, and it was much cheaper to hire you as a security guard than to find a repairman.
From your small office you must watch the security cameras carefully. You have a very limited amount of electricity that you're allowed to use per night (corporate budget cuts, you know). That means when you run out of power for the night- no more security doors and no more lights! If something isn't right- namely if Freddy bear or his friends aren't in their proper places, you must find them on the monitors and protect yourself if needed!
Can you survive five nights at Freddy's?
