[00:00:00] What the heck? It was slow. It was. I told you it would be different. It was very different. And that's really all I told you. I gave you zero context. This horror I can stomach. It's not really horror though, that's the thing. It's...
[00:00:16] And it's not very jump-scary in the same sense of Outlast. It's noise jump scare. Yeah, it's more atmospheric, more just psychological. But yeah. Welcome to Scerry Christmas. We're playing Layers of Fear. In this episode, we get stalked by a ghost snail.
[00:00:37] We open a door with our butt cheeks. And we interrupt a baby's bath time. Thank you for coming back from our replay reviews. My name is Leah and my name is Kathy. We are two friends who are here to replay review and analyze your favorite video games.
[00:00:54] And since Kathy has never seen the games before, it helps me view them through her fresh eyes. Almost like I'm discovering them again for the first time. We hope it'll be a similar experience for you. So it starts out we just hear a voice. It says,
[00:01:13] I know how you must feel. Lost. Alone. Hopeless. You probably deserve it. But even for you, there is still a way. A way to bring it all back. The one precious thing you ever truly desired. Finish it. What are you thinking?
[00:01:46] When I hear finish it, I feel like murder, like gotta finish killing someone. But in this sense, after seeing everything that goes down, finish it means like finish a piece of artwork. I agree. It seems like it's referencing the painting that we'll see soon.
[00:02:01] But my follow up question is then who do we think is talking and to who? When I first heard this, I was thinking it sounded like someone else telling us as the main character. But by the time we wrap up this first half of part one,
[00:02:20] I'm thinking he's talking to himself. The more we get to know this main character, the more I feel like he has some mental health issues. Yeah, maybe we'll have to do some vocal analysis or something.
[00:02:34] It seems like every male voice that we hear in this game is the same, but I'm not confident. So I agree. I think it's probably him talking to himself. So wandering through this mansion, we find a ring and when we look at it, we hear
[00:02:58] Will you marry me? I hate this. This might be one of the times we agree, but I hate when people only have one personality trait. So for example, I'm an artist and that's all I am.
[00:03:15] Right? Like you should propose because you love her, not because you're an artist. You've got to have more personality to wow a female. Come on. Exactly. It was cringe. Dig deeper. Dig deeper. Just even a little bit. It's amazing how much just a tiny bit of effort.
[00:03:34] How far that can go? As we continue to wander around, a painting flies off of the wall and on the back of it is written paint deep lies. I don't know if you had any reaction to that.
[00:03:47] Nope, but we also notice there's a lot of different writings on the wall. It's not just on paintings. It's like on the back of the chest. It's on lids. It's everywhere. Yeah, that's one thing that I'm wondering if we should also address at the end of the game,
[00:04:03] sort of analyze those if we have time. But on this painting, we find a sketch of a woman and here. Now, tiny bit to the left. Yes, just like that. Hold that pose. I want to get all those lovely curves just right.
[00:04:24] And then not long after that we find a hairbrush and here when we pick that up, this is a woman's voice this time. First time not the man's voice. Hello. It's about time for us to talk, don't you think?
[00:04:36] I mean, I've seen you in my house so many times and yet I could never find the courage to face you directly. Not until now. So I have a few questions surrounding this. Number one, is this woman the same woman that he's sketching and proposing to?
[00:04:53] Or is it someone else? I'm confused because I don't know if he's picking up these items in the narration we hear is in chronological order or is it just happens to be different pieces just from different timelines. Right.
[00:05:10] But I'm hearing this and it almost sounds like he's a stalker. Like I've seen you in my house multiple times. And is this the house that he's in right now? Or is it a different house? Is he stalking someone? Is he? Well, she's the one saying this.
[00:05:25] Well, yeah, but is he stalking her like she shows up in her house multiple times? I don't know. I just don't get good vibes. That's my second question. That goes into my second question, which is, is this a giant mansion with multiple renters in it?
[00:05:39] Or like, is this woman the owner and she's renting to this guy? And if so, that's what makes me wonder if this is a different woman than the one that he proposed
[00:05:49] to because we later find the cane and he talks about if we move here, you're going to have to carry me up the stairs. So it doesn't seem like she's the owner. So I'm leaning towards it's a second woman.
[00:06:02] Mm-hmm. I just don't know if this house is something that they move into or if this is part of like her, her heritage, her dowry. This mansion's included. I don't know.
[00:06:16] But I'm thinking it might be the same woman who owns all these pieces, but I also don't know. It could go either way at this point. We hear some creepy crying and other weird stuff happens and eventually in the kitchen,
[00:06:29] there's some definite poltergeist type activity, including a knife that gets thrown. This all builds up to a painting of food spilling out, all the apples, potatoes, or whatever is in it and fall out of the painting. And what's left is a piece of skin.
[00:06:46] And when he picks it up, we hear him say, First, I looked for a canvas. Not just any canvas. I had to find a knife. Not one of those bread ones. It needed to be as sharp as a razor.
[00:07:04] So I used a razor in fact and then carefully flayed the skin. Booze helped keep my hand steady. So things have amplified. It's so weird because we don't have enough context. If it's the skin of a human or a skin of an animal or what is, what is,
[00:07:25] what are we talking about? It's just, it's creepy. Right. And it's all we know is it's wrong. Yeah, it is. I'm worried about cannibalism. I think that's fair. Fair to be worried, especially after Outlast.
[00:07:40] So we return to the studio room and add this piece of skin to the in progress painting, which morphs into a couple of flamingos. Is that what you see? I don't know what I see. It just looks like blurs. All right.
[00:07:56] In scene two, we find the second piece of the painting. So starting out, we're taking the elevator upstairs and I think we see a ghost in the hallway. Did you see that? Yeah, but it's also quite normal because things are shifting around quite frequently. So yeah, why not?
[00:08:16] We also find a burnt piece of sheet music and here a piano and then a voice says, Why did you stop? That tune was perfect. Honey, please just a little longer, at least until I finish painting this one part. Don't make me beg.
[00:08:35] So again, do you do anything else or just paint? Painting is his personality. It's all it is. We're already getting so mad at this person. At one point we're walking through a room and then it sort of erupts into disorder.
[00:08:53] Everything's strewn about, but we get a flash momentarily of it back to being perfectly arranged. What does he really sing? So like is the room in disarray reality, but his memory is seeing the room how it used to be all orderly?
[00:09:11] So do you think he's out of his mind right now just walking around an abandoned mansion or what do you think is going on? Exactly that. I think that he has gone through some trauma and what he sees all the disarray is its current state
[00:09:27] and every time it has that weird noise and he's doing a flashback, that's the past history. He's maybe hallucinating or wanting to live in the past because he's in denial. And at this point every time we hear those weird noise, it almost looks like his vision is melting,
[00:09:44] which makes me think that it's like either some kind of fire happening where things go up in flame because that's the same kind of pattern we see the pictures. They either go upwards as in they're on fire or they go downwards as if it's like a candle melting.
[00:10:01] I agree with you and there's also a lot more documents and notes that you can find that give a little more insight into what's happening, but I played it that way trying to find everything and it just took way too long.
[00:10:12] So I just went for the main clues this time, but maybe after we finish the game we can talk about some of those other clues as well to get a better idea of what's going on, but for now seems like it's a mixed reality.
[00:10:26] So we approach a painting of some dogs, maybe Greyhounds and hear them barking, but as we get closer the painting changes and the dogs turn to skeletons and we hear whimpering. Really it hurt my heart to hear that.
[00:10:40] Very nearby this painting we find a collar and the memory that we hear from this one is so many things wrong with this one. Get a cat so that the baby has someone to play with? I don't understand this. What is the cat gonna do?
[00:11:10] Or maybe just spend more time with your child instead of getting an animal to replace you? Not good and then also he bought a dog instead of a cat, so I feel like maybe shouldn't have done that. We're then soon stalked by a wheelchair.
[00:11:26] We walked past it earlier and it was a normal wheelchair and it soon appears right behind us and it now has paint on it, so that seems weird. It might have been his because he said that oh you'll need to carry me up so maybe he has
[00:11:41] some issues? Yeah I will tell you one of the things I found in my first playthrough is a note about getting a prosthetic leg and they made it too short and so that's why he's
[00:11:50] limping. Continuing on we get locked in a room and hear creepy walking, shuffling outside in the hall followed by some knocking and banging on the door and so whatever it is then shuffles away.
[00:12:03] When we open the door there is a snail trail of paint which seems to lead into a painting that then melts and morphs into a different image. So here's what's interesting because you just talked about the wheelchair
[00:12:16] so it kind of sounded like this thing outside the door had a limp. Like it kind of sounds like the main characters walk a little bit and then in this painting that
[00:12:24] melted we find a cane and this is when we hear him say, this house is absolutely amazing but those stairs with that leg of mine I think you'll have to carry me to the bedroom once we move in. Eww again everything he says is stupid but
[00:12:42] shhh. Is he the paint snail ghost? I'm calling it a snail because it leaves behind a snail trail. So I'm sorry if that was confusing. Yeah I was like I'm trying to think about like snail okay. There was no snail what he's talking about. Yeah um why not?
[00:13:03] In a bedroom probably the one that he was carried to we find a violin in here. Honey what in the world are you doing? What did the doctor say about straining yourself? Leave that thing alone it's not going anywhere.
[00:13:18] Number one what kind of strain is she under? Number two what kind of doctor? And number three it's not going anywhere does that mean the violin's not going anywhere or her career as a violinist isn't going anywhere?
[00:13:32] I feel like there's a lot of ways this quote could go. I kind of like your third idea that she's a violinist and then she can't keep playing and I'm thinking that maybe she has a baby or she's pregnant or something
[00:13:45] like that and she just can't do that because she's on bed rest or she's hurt or maybe mentally she's just not capable to be doing so much. I don't like the the direction he's going
[00:14:00] and the attitude he has to her sometimes he sounds very sweet sometimes he just seems really mean and aggressive and I'm thinking that he was very sweet in the beginning and as slows slowly goes downhill and he's becoming more and more aggressive.
[00:14:13] I agree with that trend I mean it the way it starts out is like you're my piece of art and now it's like a little more controlling yeah a little more controlling also in this room
[00:14:25] there is a record player that causes the room to melt I think which releases a bottle of blood and when we pick it up we hear. What? So many things wrong with that sentence. I'm thinking all this relates to the piece of skin,
[00:15:12] the carving. You saying that it's related to the piece of skin. Did the bloodletting happen before or after the skinning or is it a different person because either this is a mass murderer or someone is being horribly horribly tortured by being skinned alive and then having their blood
[00:15:32] siphoned out of them. And it seems like he's the one doing them all and he's a painter that's his identity so is a serial killer not an identity of his or does he not admit that
[00:15:45] because the one thing and this is not the full quote but it says needing to separate the meat from the bones like yeah what the heck it's just so disturbing what's going on. Yeah it's making me
[00:15:58] wonder if he is like killing people that live in this mansion if he's some sort of serial killer because if this is in chronological order it seems like it would be much harder to siphon someone's
[00:16:10] blood when they have no skin on their body. But let's keep tabs on this theory I think we're leaning towards serial killer right now. I know right? It's funny because I had no thoughts of
[00:16:22] this having anything to do with a serial killer before we started recording 15 minutes ago so I'm excited. Yes, neuterna fevets. Back in the studio where the in progress painting is we find a flask.
[00:16:36] Oh stop looking at me like that. It's just a little something to help me focus on my work that's all. And then on the flask is engraved some liquid courage for your grand art opening.
[00:16:49] Leah I just I just thought of something oh my god what if this art is his cover for being an artist in reality his artwork really is the use of human body parts and skin like the redness
[00:17:03] is the blood that's why he needed to siphon that his canvas is human skin or whatever and maybe he keeps marrying different females and and if those three female voices that we hear in the beginning
[00:17:16] belong to different people then he's obviously luring females back cutting their skin to use as canvases taking their blood and that's the redness and he burns down the place which
[00:17:30] is the melting effects. I just oh my god what if this whole art thing is just a cover the grand opening and the liquid courage is for him to actually feel better and not throw up as he starts
[00:17:42] killing people. He had to be either drunk or insane. I know right to do that but I think definitely human elements are being used for art. I 100% agree with that. Speaking of which
[00:18:00] we add the blood to the painting which then morphs into a meat pile or maybe a bloody scorpion? I don't know. So at this point I have two theories. One he's an artist and he has some
[00:18:15] kind of art business and then he gets married to the person who owns the ring. Then he has a drinking problem as noted by the liquid courage and then he probably maybe takes drugs and then there's a
[00:18:30] house fire at the mansion and it actually kills his wife or his child which I'm thinking that they have a kid and then he's in denial or he's in just really mourning the loss of his
[00:18:44] wife and his kids and that's why you see everything always kind of burning and flickering and he's going back and forth between reality and the burnt mansion. My second theory is that the voice
[00:18:58] we hear in the beginning just that cry in the female crying sound is maybe his wife and they're mourning the loss of their baby dying which we'll get some more clues about that
[00:19:10] and then his wife leaves him then he gets into a drinking problem that's why his voice starts to become more and more aggressive during certain parts that we know is more closer to present than
[00:19:22] the past and then he's slightly mentally unstable he burns his own place at a rage and he's just left alone in the mansion and that's why we see things melting. I think there's definitely some hallucination going on. It's schizophrenia maybe. I think something's going on there's definitely a
[00:19:43] psychological aspect not just to the game but I think to the character. All right final scene we find the third piece of the painting so under an odd painting of a face we find a
[00:19:54] dented pair of glasses and when we pick them up the character says ugly. Ugly? You are a true so that's where I painted you fucking plant maybe I need to kick some artistic sense in your stupid face.
[00:20:12] Got him. Got him real good because he said the painting's ugly I painted a true portrait. Good one. Number two do you know what a pleb is because I don't know I don't should we google? Yeah you google keep it on your browser. Derogatory and informal that comes
[00:20:31] with a warning on google now when you type in something bad. An ordinary person especially one from a lower social class well it wasn't quite as offensive as I thought it would be considering
[00:20:43] the warning it came with but okay hey we learned a new word today. And then number three did he beat this guy up and that's why the glasses are dented is that what I'm picking up on here? That's
[00:20:55] what I'm thinking. You think this guy is in a painting now? Huh he's probably burnt maybe it's his skin and his bones. And then continuing on there's a trippy section of gameplay where a phone falls and it's backwards and then you have to walk backwards and it's confusing
[00:21:17] but once you figure it out you can answer the phone and it says hello yes speaking what what what fire oh god is she she witch hospital I'm on my way. This sounds like the same voice we've
[00:21:36] been hearing right yeah so who's she has to be his wife and baby maybe here's where I'm slightly confused we were thinking this is the house that was on fire but we know that the phone is happening in
[00:21:54] this house and he throws his phone down and that's the history so the fire must have taken place somewhere else or unless there's two different fires going on because how could he be picking out
[00:22:07] a phone in the house that had the fire unless partial like part of the house was on fire I not too sure. I'm confused by this as well because it seems like we get hints to both
[00:22:22] of these events occurring here the phone call in the fire that's been referenced a few times and we even see it once in a memory when he goes up into the attic there's flames below him in a room
[00:22:33] that we were just in where there were no flames so he's hallucinating actual flames as well and it's all in the same house so yeah your your question is correct something's off
[00:22:46] unless he set the fire and he's just playing stupid but the thing is that if he's setting the fire to kill someone and then he wants their skin for canvas it doesn't work out it doesn't work out anyway questions surrounding that I think we need more information
[00:23:06] we do get jump scared by a ghost behind a door and after it fades away we enter the room which is covered in more paint and snail trails so this is also where I get confused because now
[00:23:18] it seems like the snail trails are being left by this female ghost but our main character is the one that has the lip so I don't know what's going on with the ghost and the paint snail trails unless
[00:23:33] those snail trails are from him and his wife fighting violently and he's leaving snail trails everywhere but it's so closely intertwined with the ghost the other thing is that as we're looking because the room rotates we get those snail trails at the top of the ceiling which
[00:23:51] I don't know if it truly is on the ceiling or if it's just in his mind things are flipped around and that's why the floor where snail trail should be end up at the top I love how casually we're
[00:24:03] just tossing out snail trail uh yeah I don't know I mean there's a lot of really trippy things like that room where you get locked and then there's no doors and the only way to get
[00:24:14] out is if you reverse but first and maybe open a doorknob with your butt cheeks like there's lots of weird things that I don't understand and I don't know if it's symbolic of maybe a mental condition
[00:24:29] but I'm confused by the ghost because then pretty quickly after this we see I'm assuming the same ghost lady but it's just like a shadow this time you know in the the window which will soon push
[00:24:41] the character down and then it just disappears so I don't really know who is the ghost if it's always the same person what form the ghost is in if that changes if his wife did die then it would
[00:24:52] make sense if his wife if his whole mo is to kill females then multiple ghosts multiple females mm-hmm could be could be and that could be why they look different because they're they're killed in different ways and used in the paintings in different ways maybe
[00:25:14] soon we stumble upon a piano that plays by itself and causes all the furniture to float and on the piano we find a box with a piece of bone inside I needed to remove the flesh from
[00:25:29] the bone at first I was lost as to how but then I sawed it off with a hand saw boiled it then put the bone in a mortar I had to get one obviously this was not something I'd done before finally I
[00:25:46] mixed the dust with some white paint it made for a lovely undercoat so more confirmation the stuff is being used in the painting I'm really grossed out right now you're gonna have to
[00:25:58] go test all your artwork I'm really disturbed but again same person or different person and then also they said that they haven't done this before are we sure seems like he's speaking from experience
[00:26:12] but I'm wondering the bones and the dog the painting because we see it with the skeletal form are those the bones we're referring to I don't know I don't think so I saw that painting more as
[00:26:27] like maybe I think you said like the dogs died in the fire maybe so I'm not sure if that relates to the painting but what if what if this is father martin oh my gosh because his finger paints were
[00:26:43] taken away from him and this is what he's progressed to he's progressed to learning unsuspecting females to then use their blood as finger paints this is what happens if you take finger paints away from father martin expect nothing less it's all hell and fault
[00:27:02] so when the bone is added to the painting it changes into a fish and I don't think that there's any connection between the painting and what we add to it it doesn't seem like there is
[00:27:14] and that's the end of part one any summarizing thoughts for you at this point I don't even know what the objective of the game is what's he's trying to do is he trying to cover his tracks
[00:27:25] is he trying to find answers I think he's trying to complete his painting and maybe he's yeah being haunted by all the people or perhaps just person that he's killed to make it I think he's
[00:27:42] definitely insane well is that it for part one that is it do you have anything else I don't have anything else I guess we'll see what else we learn in part two tomorrow and we'll count us off then
[00:28:01] audacity on one three two one thank you for listening and don't forget to send in any questions comments or game suggestions you can find all our contact info on our website replayreviewspod.com
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[00:28:29] theme music is condemned by eggy toast they'll play you out and we'll be back next week