Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Box Art

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a survival horror game created by Frictional Games. The player takes control of Daniel, who must navigate Castle Brennenburg while avoiding various dangers and solving puzzles. Amnesia: The Dark Descent released on September 8th, 2010 to very positive reviews, with reviewers praising the horrifying atmosphere, soundtrack, world, and monsters.

## Plot

### Amnesia: The Dark Descent

On 19 August 1839, a young man awakens in the dark and empty halls of the Prussian Brennenburg Castle with no memory about himself or his past. All he can remember is that his name is Daniel, that he lives in Mayfair, and that something or someone is hunting him. Shortly after regaining consciousness, Daniel finds a note he wrote to himself, which informs him that he has deliberately erased his own memory and is being hunted by a "Shadow", an unearthly presence that manifests itself through fleshy, acidic growths spreading throughout the castle. The note instructs Daniel to descend into the Inner Sanctum of the castle in order to find and kill its baron, Alexander.

As he makes his way through the castle, Daniel gradually learns both about its mysteries and about his own past, through notes and diaries he finds as well as through sudden flashbacks and visions. The origin of his situation is a mysterious orb that he recovered from the Tin Hinan Tomb, which unleashed the Shadow. Each of the experts he contacted and consulted in person about the orb was later found gruesomely dismembered. Realizing that the Shadow was slowly stalking him, Daniel desperately exhausted all archaeological leads into strange orbs until contacted by Alexander, who promised a means of repelling the threat of the Shadow via a "vitae" energy, which could only be harvested from living creatures via extreme pain and terror. However, Alexander's true purpose is to use Daniel's vitae-enriched orb to return to his native dimension, from which he was banished centuries prior. To achieve this end, Alexander and Daniel gathered vitae by torturing innocent people that Alexander claimed to be murderous criminals.

To maximize the production of vitae, the victims were forced to consume a potion that induced amnesia, so that they could never grow accustomed to their torment. Unbeknownst to Daniel, application of vitae to the orb further enraged the Shadow in addition to briefly repelling it, sealing his eventual doom. Increasingly desperate to escape the Shadow, Daniel became sadistic in his attempts to harvest vitae, and accidentally killed an escaping prisoner, a young girl, in a fit of rage. Following the final ritual, Alexander sensed Daniel's guilt and declining faith in him and left him for dead as a result. Realizing how Alexander had manipulated him, Daniel swore revenge and swallowed an amnesia potion in order to overcome his paralyzing guilt.

As Daniel nears the Inner Sanctum, he encounters Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, a man who had once studied the orbs with his student Johann Weyer and has since been kept alive and imprisoned by Alexander. He tells Daniel that Weyer has been able to harness the power of the orbs to travel between dimensions, and instructs him in finding the pieces of what used to be his own orb, which is needed to breach the Inner Sanctum. Agrippa also asks Daniel to take with him his head, which can be severed alive using a tonic invented by Weyer, and throw it into the inter-dimensional portal after Alexander opens it. Once Daniel enters the Inner Sanctum, there are three possible endings: he can let Alexander succeed, then be killed by the Shadow and descend into darkness, while Alexander tells him his sacrifice will be forever celebrated; he can prevent the portal from opening by knocking over its support columns, then leave the castle content with his redemption after the Shadow kills only Alexander; or he can throw Agrippa's head into the portal, which leaves the Shadow to kill both Alexander and Daniel, though Agrippa promises to save Daniel from descending into darkness, calling upon Weyer to help him.

### Amnesia: Justine

The player takes control of an unnamed woman, who awakens with amnesia in a dungeon cell. A phonograph in the cell contains a recording by a woman named Justine, who tells the unnamed woman that she is the subject of a psychological test. The woman must overcome three puzzles to escape the dungeon. In each, she has the option of simply abandoning the puzzle and walking away, but doing so will cause an innocent victim to die. She is also pursued by the Suitors, three monstrous characters who turn out to be Justine's former paramours, now twisted by physical and psychological torture. After surviving the puzzle sections, the woman discovers a phonograph dangling from the ceiling, which causes the walls of the chamber to close in and threaten to crush the woman. She passes out, but awakens unharmed and begins to congratulate herself. The woman is Justine, who staged the entire experiment to see if she still had any compassion for humanity within herself. The ending sequence's dialogue differs depending on the number of people Justine had rescued.

## See Also

* Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
* Amneisa: Rebirth
* Amnesia Series