Survival horror is definitely not a genre for all audiences. Although not always explicitly gory, video games that belong to this category are mostly characterized by a set of unique traits, that set them on a level of their own. During the years they too, just like all other genres, have gone through several different stages and developments, but their core remains consistently the same: the depiction of a stressing, chilling atmosphere, most often with hints of metaphysical elements and an overall feeling that simulates that of experiencing a nightmare. The lead characters, usually stranded or trapped, are being chased by terrifying enemies who sometimes are monsters, and other times are humans acting as such. Survival gradually becomes their main concern, while at the same time they are looking for ways to and means to fight those enemies and finally defeat them. Throughout their still vivid history in the gaming industry, survival horror games have been and still are influenced by emblematic thriller, horror and mystery films that, most of the times, gained a cult following with the passing of time. In this article, I will focus on two game series, The Evil Within games and the Resident Evil saga, and how they were influenced by two one-of-a-kind film-makers, Dario Argento and David Lynch.

Dario Argento (left) and David Lynch (right)

Dario Argento is the Italian creator of many unforgettable giallo films. Giallo means yellow in italian and the term is used to describe horror movies of the 70ties and 80ties, where gore was particularly prominent. Argento is a master of horror and his giallo films left an indelible mark in the movies industry. Combining pure, raw gore with lush, extravagant settings or contrasting his twisted plots with idyllic environments, almost always with raucous heavy metal music playing in the background, his films are, interestingly enough, mostly memorable for their unique cinematography, the ingenious ideas when it comes to mystery, and the use of unexpected elements as important plot points. 

Suspiria (1977)

Argento's films are full of symbols, allegories and the multi-leveled use of elements and objects. In his iconic Phenomena (1985), the protagonist is Jennifer, a young girl who sleepwalks and has the unique ability to communicate with insects. Jennifer also comes from a not so usual home: her parents are divorced, and her father is a famous actor who, however, never appears physically in the film. The way that Argento chooses to present her is very interesting: typically, she has the characteristics of a fairy tale heroine, with elements of the stereotypical damsel in distress archetype, but the story follows her as she deals with dangers almost all alone; and the man who at some point runs to her rescue is neither a love interest nor a knight in shining armour but her father's lawyer, who however gets morbidly murdered before being able to offer her assistance. Jennifer has no love interest, anyway, she prefers being alone and the company of an old entomologist, whose pet is a female chimpanzee called Inga.

Jennifer with the professor and Inga, and the various insects in glass cases and photos

Jennifer's ability to communicate with insects is referenced in Alexia's power to control the ant colony in her mansion in Resident Evil: Code Veronica, in Natalia's understanding the messages of the larvae in Resident Evil: Revelations 2 and, in a grotesque version, in Marguerite's bond with her beloved flies in Resident Evil 7. Insects are featured quite often in video games, and in the Resident Evil universe their appearances are always of major importance. Derek Simmons's final mutation in Resident Evil 6 was a giant fly; the huge mosquito-like monsters in Resident Evil 4 were among the saga's most hateful enemies; and who can forget the wasp hive in the lab at the Spencer mansion in the first Resident Evil game. All these of course go back to Franz Kafka's iconic novella Metamorphosis (1915), in which the protagonist Gregor Samsa transforms into a giant insect.

Jennifer (left) and Natalia spotting insects in the forest

Argento develops his story in the form of a fairy tale, adding elements in the way that gradually widen the gap between magic and reality. Jennifer's dream world - or, better, in this case, her nightmare journey - consists of sleepwalking and having disturbing visions associated with murder. Her communicating with flies is her safe haven, and it is actually the insects that lead her to getting to the bottom of the horror-filled mystery of the story. Jennifer is a student in a boarding school where the governess is a woman with a troubled past and a more troubled present. Her dark secret is the existence of a child, result of her being raped by a mentally ill man in the asylum where she previously worked. The child, grotesquely deformed due to a medical syndrome, is hidden in what seems to be an abandoned house and is the one responsible for the murders that Jennifer sees in her sleepwalking sessions. While investigating the house, Jennifer falls in a pool filled with maggots and disintegrating human limbs. A bit later, the sick boy shows up and attacks her. At this point, her sleepwalking nightmares identify abruptly with the reality she is experiencing, and her only way to make it out alive is to summon her loyal friends, her insects, that rush to kill her monstrous pursuer.

 

Jennifer in the pool of terror

Jennifer's fall in the gruesome pool is a symbolic descend to Hell, more accentuated by the fact that said pool is in the basement of the house. This scene is referenced in The Evil Within, during a sequence close to the beginning of the game. Sebastian, the lead character, has just been separated from his partners while investigating a massacre at a mental hospital. Unbeknownst to him, he enters a sick man's mind and all that he experiences are distorted segments of memories and monsterized versions of reality's fragments. In this twisted world, he finds himself chased by a butcher / executioner who walks around yielding a chainsaw. In his struggle to escape him, Sebastian falls in a bloody pool, where human limbs gradually come to the surface. Jennifer and Sebastian have a lot things in common, their innocence and purity of mind being the most obvious and most crucial for the development of their stories. Just like Jennifer sleepwalks unwillingly, Sebastian finds himself wandering inside Ruvik's mind, both unable to escape for as long as these situations last. But while Jennifer's fall in the symbolic Hell happens at the end, marking the start of the catharsis process, Sebastian's fall in a similar Hell takes place at the start, dragging him deeper and deeper in the monster's twisted mind.

Sebastian in the bloody pool

Profondo Rosso (Deep Red, 1975) is another emblematic movie by Dario Argento, which is much gorier than Phenomena, but its main theme is that of mystery and suspense. Horror in Profondo Rosso is created primarily by the feeling of unknown and a disturbing sense of insecurity caused by the constant fear that someone is watching from a well-hidden spot, while the extravagantly violent scenes are used as a frame that essentially holds both the characters in the film and the viewers in the grip of Argento's very unique view of a thriller movie. Set around a series of particularly gruesome killings, the film follows Marcus, a musician who witnesses one of the murders, as he investigates the case to which he gradually seems to be connected in a rather weird way. The movie contains one of the most shocking twists in cinema history, which does not have to do with the identity of the killer, but with how said killer is revealed in a very early and completely unsuspected sequence in the story. 

 

Marcus suspects that he might know the killer

 

Profondo Rosso is definitely not recommended for the average viewer, but to this day it remains an exemplary piece of cinema art, blending masterfully its extremely gory scenes with exploration of mystery at its finest. It is films like this that defined the horror movies that would follow, as well as survival horror games. Resident Evil 3 makes a great tribute to both this exquisite film and its genius creator, by naming a secondary but rather important character Dario Rosso (his name from the director's name, and his surname from the movie's title). He is the civilian whom Jill finds locked in his van at the start of the game, and she tries to persuade him to follow her to safety, but he insists to stay in his hiding place in a panic state. The interesting thing about him is that his fate is unknown, as we do not have another chance to meet him and we can never be sure whether he survived or zombies got to him in the end and ate him alive. In the sequence where he appears, Dario Rosso represents all the panicked civilians who found themselves all of a sudden in a zombie-ridden city, not knowing what caused all this, and with a vague, dark and cut-short future awaiting them.

Dario Rosso is about to hide in his van forever

David Lynch is yet one more film-maker whose influence can be seen in almost all aspects of artistic expression. The creator of the famous Twin Peaks series is also responsible for some of the most impressive and exceptional artschool movies of contemporary cinematography, his trademark being the use of connotations combined with the stream of consciousness way of story narration. Lynch's dreamy landscapes and environments are presented as tangible depictions of artistic inspiration, often deliberately appearing as theatrical sceneries or backstage setups, with the director breaking the fourth wall in the most inventive ways and playing with the deepest layers of his heroes' psyche while at the same time challenging the subconscious of his audience.

Inland Empire (2006)

The iconography in Lynch's films is one of the most complex and cryptic, but somehow the ingenious director manages to unlock your mind, leading you to interpret what you see in more than one ways. A master of interior settings, where rooms symbolize the grey matter or the psyche, his movies are highly intellectual and most of them follow a "circular" route. The most characteristic of this kind of cinematography is his masterwork Blue Velvet (1986), a movie with an affinity of layers, and one of those that challenge you to watch them multiple times, and every time with a new perspective. In the film's iconic opening sequence, young and innocent Jeffrey finds a severed human ear in the middle of a field. After taking the macabre finding to the police, he gets entangled in a twisted web of mystery, terror, lust and betrayal, meeting people that seem to belong to a completely different world than his, a world that scares him but which at the same time he finds too attractive to ignore. Heavily inspired and influenced by Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (tales that are almost always referenced in his movies), Lynch explores multiple themes in Blue Velvet, one of them being the loss of innocence and the emotional coming-of-age of his hero. The cut ear functions as a passage, just like the rabbit hole did in Alice in Wonderland and the mirror in Through the Looking Glass. For both Alice and Jeffrey, going through these passages is a kind of rite, after which they are called to face the complexity of the human nature in literal and symbolic ways. The ear in Jeffrey's case literally drags him into its labyrinth and leads him to another maze, this time of the real or not so real world in which he finds himself. Set in an idyllic countryside bursting with bright colors, Jeffrey's journey is a nightmare which seems to always bring him in the same central point.

Jeffrey holding the severed ear

A photo of a human ear is one of the pictures that Sebastian sees during the introductory sequences of The Evil Within 2, when he enters Stefano Valentini's disturbing gallery that is spread all around his mind palace. The ear is not a random choice there; Stefano's method of intimidating his potential victims starts with him triggering the sound of a musical piece by Tchaikovsky, heard in such a distorted and haunting way that the beautiful music has an overwhelming paralyzing effect. Stefano "catches" people with sound first, subsequently dragging them into his twisted world, similarly how the cut ear in Blue Velvet caught Jeffrey's attention and eventually lured him in places unknown to him until then. And Sebastian, who shifts between realities through a mirror, simulates Alice's rite of passage through the looking glass, which again identifies with Jeffrey's passage through the ear's labyrinth.

The photo of the ear in Stefano's gallery

Lynch's environments in the Twin Peaks world are iconic dreamscapes, specifically the Black Lodge or Red Room which functions as a virtual meeting place between the protagonist Dale Cooper and select key characters from the series and movies. Comprised of an almost empty space with just a few pieces of furniture and strange shapes on the floor, the Red Room is, as its name suggests, a room where the red color dominates: its walls are fully covered with red curtains and the geometrical pattern on the floor is in fact white and red zig-zag lines. The furniture is three black armchairs, a table, two lampstands and a replica of the statue of Aphrodite of Melos. The room, existing in Dale's mind, functions as a meeting place where he has discussions with people that he had known at some point in his life and played a critical role in certain events that he was involved in. 

Dale Cooper with the Dwarf and Laura Palmer in the Red Room

The Red Room, being essentially Dale Cooper's mind palace, is referenced in the interior of the Grand Theater which is Stefano Valentini's mind palace in The Evil Within 2. A huge building with red curtains hanging from the ceiling and covering parts of its walls, sometimes revealing secret doors behind them, it is a labyrinthine network of rooms where the red color dominates, with certain corners being set up in the style of Dale's Red Room. In both the Twin Peaks' Red Room and The Evil Within 2's Grand Theater, the red color dominates, often making contrast with another color that is among Lynch's preferred ones, which is the bright blue. Stefano in The Evil Within 2 can be seen wearing a blue-mauve suit, and wherever he appears, the environment around him is colored with red and blue shades.

The red curtains are dominating Stefano's mind palace

 

From his part, Stefano Valentini, who uses his camera as a murdering tool, alludes to one of the most creepy characters that David Lynch has conceived, which is the Mystery Man from Lost Highway (1997). A difficult, highly intellectual movie, one of the most riddling and complex that Lynch has directed, it features an array of enigmatic figures, his puzzling protagonist included. The Mystery Man is a secondary character who, however, plays a key role in the main hero's story, although both his appearance and his actions remain partly unexplained till the end. He has a camcorder which he uses to record incriminating events from the protagonist's life, aiming at exposing his double nature. It is notable that the Mystery Man, in his turn, has his origins in another iconic character, Mark Lewis from Michael Powel's Peeping Tom (1960), who used his camera to take shots that satisfied his well-concealed sick psyche.

Mark Lewis (left), the Mystery Man (center) and Stefano Valentini (right)

Close to the ending of The Evil Within 2, Sebastian and one of his allies have to cross a path that is consumed by flames so as to reach the hiding place of one of the story's villains. It is one of the most difficult and challenging parts of the whole game, and the first time that you go through it, you are rewarded with an achievement titled "Fire Walk With Me", which pays homage to David Lynch as this phrase is the title of his 1992 movie that is part of the legendary Twin Peaks storyline. This alone signifies how influential Lynch's films and overall artistic approach have been in the game's creation. Lynch, in his turn, has been influenced by Dario Argento's aesthetics when it comes to the use of colors as means to highlight plot points and character traits, and the symbolic nuances that both characters and environments can carry, elements that both directors handle masterfully, which is one important reason why their works are favorite points of reference in so many video games.

See also:

» References to Dario Argento

» References to David Lynch

Mechanisms of Desire

Continuing on the spicy path that this blog has taken lately, today I am going to elaborate a bit on the dark romantic aspect of relationships between characters, something that, surprisingly, is not a new thing in video games. As early as in 1995, Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within was maybe the first game to include such an element in its plot, which back then was particularly radical and innovative, given that the technical means were very few, and the ways to accompany a game with cutscenes were also rather limited. Regardless this didn't prevent the game's developing team to come up with a captivating story involving characters that since became iconic. The element of desire is quite prominent in the story, as I will analyze in a bit, and in a rather complex form, for that matter. I have also picked a few more select cases of characters who, like Gabriel, are not simply involved in the theme of desire, but are also deeply and dramatically affected by it in their attitude and mentality.

Desire disguised as confusion (Gabriel Knight in Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within)

Like I mentioned above, Gabriel's case can be considered an archetypical story involving the theme of desire, as it belongs to a video game that was most probably the first one to address such a subject and in such a radical way. Gabriel is a consciously straight ladies' man, and his self-confidence on that matter is particularly high. All this is doomed to change when, while investigating of a series of murders, he meets the charming and mysterious Friedrich Von Glower, typically a Baron but in reality a werewolf of more than one hundred years old. Friedrich is instantly attracted by Gabriel who initially seems to be unaware of the situation, but as the story progresses, he gets smitten with Friedrich although this is something that he cannot even acknowledge at first.

At a crucial turning point, however, he comes across Baron Von Zell, Friedrich's ex-lover whom Friedrich had turned into a werewolf during a moment of passion. Von Zell is the one responsible for the aforementioned murders, and while being hunted by Gabriel and Friedrich, he is shot dead, but not before managing to attack and bite Gabriel. Soon after, Gabriel starts to feel the effects, as he is slowly turning into a werewolf himself, something that he realizes and tries very hard to control and suppress. In a rather revealing scene, we can see him struggling with himself in physical and emotional pain as his inner werewolf struggles to prevail as well. In reality, what Gabriel is truly trying to suppress is the desire that he is actually developing towards Friedrich which, allegorically, found a way to the surface after Friedrich's ex bit him. Gabriel is in deep confusion because he is unable to admit and accept this unprecedented feeling, which also happens to be very strong and difficult to handle. Gabriel's inner struggle is in fact a battle with his own feelings and that part of himself that has awakened all of a sudden without him being able to control it at all. At the same time, however, he is struggling to persuade himself that all this turmoil has to do with him slowly becoming a werewolf, but in his attempt to focus on that, he is merely highlighting more what is truly going on inside him.

Desire suppressed by denial (Jill Valentine in Resident Evil 3 Remake)

The romantic aspect may not be particularly present in Resident Evil 3, but there still is a degree of electricity between Jill and Carlos, mostly filtered through admiration from his part, while Jill is rather prejudiced at first because Carlos belongs to a company that she knows is evil. As the story progresses, however, it becomes quite clear that Jill and Carlos are attracted to each other, something that Carlos shows almost directly, what with his attitude towards Jill and his choice of words when it comes to flirting her, albeit a bit awkwardly, and also given the tense circumstances they find themselves in. But for Jill, things are not that simple; although Jill is a very "raw" character, in that she is honest, sincere and crystal-clear, she is quite secretive when it comes to expressing her feelings. As the events in the story develop and she starts to see that Carlos is honest and she actually begins to like him, it is not very easy for her to admit it, let alone express it with words to him. Moreover, Jill is a person who puts duty above all and who values her partners very highly; this is something that becomes very clear during her brief dialogue with Carlos after she leaves the power plant, when Carlos calls her "partner" and she replies with a rather bitter and cold "Not your partner", because, for her, comradeship is something sacred. Carlos, on the other hand, is always laid back, and doesn't seem to take anything else into account except for the fact that he likes her, and he is very specific and clear about this. After Jill witnesses Nikolai betraying his team and leaving Mikhail and her to die, her prejudice against Carlos disappears completely and it slowly becomes clear that she does care for him. Chances are, if she didn't know that he was a soldier of Umbrella, she would have allowed herself to realize that she actually did like him from the beginning, both as a person and as a man. 

Even after all this happens, however, she is still in denial; being faithful to her mission and because her priority is the elimination of evil, she refuses to give room to her feelings while, subconsciously, trying to control them. After she is treated with the antidote and just as she is about to wake up, she has a nightmare during which Carlos gets in her room to inform her that everything is fine, but just then he begins to turn and he asks her to kill him. Jill cannot do it, of course, and a zombified Carlos attacks her, which is when she abruptly wakes up in anguish and confusion. The fact that, among all the people that she met in the course of the story, her subconscious decided to make Carlos attack her in a zombified state in her dream, can have a dual interpretation: on the one hand, being forced to work with Carlos had brought her closer to him, putting him inevitably in the position of a temporary partner, and subsequently someone whom she could trust, at least to a degree. The fear of losing a partner, and more so in such a violent way, had been with Jill from the start of the story, after the unfortunate incident with Brad; so now her nightmare reminds her that fear by presenting Carlos as a victim with Brad's fate. On the other hand, however, this subconscious choice indicates that Jill is attracted to Carlos but she refuses to allow herself the luxury of enjoying this feeling because if she does so, she will betray her mission. Her subconscious puts the man that she likes in the position of a dangerous enemy because she feels both enchanted and threatened by his presence.

Desire masked as guilt (Joseph Oda in The Evil Within)

Joseph's case is quite similar to that of Gabriel Knight in that, for both of them, desire takes the form of something considered forbidden and subsequently both of them experience a devastating inner struggle with their wild, primitive self through which they channel that feeling. But whereas for Gabriel all this was mainly due to confusion (Gabriel found himself in a situation that was unexpected and unfamiliar, and which he was unable to handle), for Joseph everything is pretty clear and conscious, which is why he is primarily led by guilt for what he experiences. Joseph is emotionally vulnerable, which is why being trapped in Ruvik's memories affects him so much. After unwillingly entering the STEM system, Joseph comes face to face with his most secret and suppressed fears and emotions, something that weakens his will and his resistances and results in him not being able to control himself and thus turning into a Haunted.

Soon after Sebastian finds him in STEM, Joseph experiences his first transformation during which he violently attacks Sebastian while struggling to take control of his monstrous self. The fact that this first transformation happens while he is with Sebastian is not random; since Sebastian is, unbeknownst to him, the receiver of Joseph's forbidden feelings. The next time he turns is when, due to Ruvik's control of his mind, he instinctively catches that Juli's presence is threatening, since in reality she is there as a spy on behalf of Mobius, and he attacks her in an attempt to push her out of the way and, eventually, to prevent her from affecting Sebastian. Later on, while still with Sebastian, he attempts to kill himself because he realizes that not only he is unable to control this transformation, but moreover a part of himself yearns to become a Haunted. Part of himself, that is, is ready to accept and embrace the feeling of that forbidden desire, but his conscious self, most probably having grown up in a strict, heavily traditional environment that forced him to follow all the expected norms and stereotypes, brings forward the feeling of guilt in order to make him suppress whatever it is that makes him revolt both emotionally and physically. Joseph becoming a Haunted then reverting back to his human form with even more guilt each time stands as an allegory for his struggle to come to terms with himself and break the restrains that keep him imprisoned.

Desire leading to self-destruction (Derek Simmons in Resident Evil 6)

Derek Simmons expresses probably one of the most straightforward forms of desire, given that he is not particularly complex himself, at least at the beginning. Originally the typical power-hungry villain with a Messiah complex, he developed an obsessive paranoia after falling in love with Ada. Of course for a man like him, "love" is not exactly the word we should use; he clearly cannot feel anything positive for anyone but himself, and what truly pushes him to extremes is not so much his feelings for Ada, but the fact that she rejected him. By rejecting him, Ada in fact challenged his power, something that, for him, is impossible to accept. After Derek crossed the line by coming up with the idea to create Ada's clone, his mania grew bigger, and his malicious acts shifted from general to very specific. At this point, it was desire that drove his actions, but also blinded him so much that he didn't realize that, by succumbing to this feeling and letting it take control, he got tangled in a peculiar and marginally twisted triangle, with two depictions of the same woman at its two points: Ada, the real one, and Carla, her clone. Subsequently, Derek's actions caused Carla's actions because she, in turn, realized that he had turned her into a lab rat when it was already too late for her to reverse the effects, while at the same time she felt deeply betrayed, not only as a scientist but also as a woman. It is hinted that the real Carla, for her part, had feelings for Derek but he would only see a potential Ada in her, so the realization of this added more fuel to Carla's already unstable psyche.

When Carla took her revenge on Derek by turning him into a monster, Derek's inner monstrosity also came to the surface and literally found a face. Not only he lost any sense of humanity but he also lost himself, and this was a path that he had in fact taken much earlier, when he first came up with the idea to create Ada's clone because he could not have the real one. His paranoia grew stronger after the clone was actually created, when he began to refer to and address the clone as if she was the real Ada. Such a sick situation, of course, could not drag on for too long, and would inevitably lead to his own destruction, aided also by Carla's thirst for revenge. From the moment when Derek was transformed into a monster, and seeing, in his paranoia, how powerful he could actually be in that state, he literally killed his human self, giving room to his inner monster.

Desire as obsession (Stefano Valentini in The Evil Within 2)

Although Stefano's murderous instincts can easily be mistaken for those of a typical serial killer, in fact they have much more depth, like he does as well, both as a character overall and specifically as an artist. Stefano's psyche is in turmoil, but there are two main conflicting emotions inside him: the extreme love that he feels for his own creations, and the venomous hate that he directs towards every other living soul around him. In fact Stefano is obsessed with his art, in a most twisted and unhealthy manner, and views everyone and everything through the distorted prism of his camera's eye. Stefano has given life to his camera by creating the hideous monster Obscura, which is also the depiction of his inner, normally unperceivable self. Moreover, Obscura represents his own feminine side, which he has embraced to a degree but still resents and feels contempt for. Stefano could be easily labelled a killer of women, but this would only be a shallow and superficial characterization for such a complex mentality. In reality he hates all human beings, independently of sex or age. In the real world, he started killing female models because, as a fashion photographer, he could very easily approach them as potential victims. Progressively, killing women became some kind of ritual, as through them he would every time attempt to eliminate his female side. In the reality of STEM, however, where he could act completely out of control, his "gallery" of victims grew bigger and richer. Male citizens and soldiers were also "honored" to become part of his installations, with some of them even getting to have their own personal exhibition room, like Turner, Hayes and Baker, and of course Sebastian for whom Stefano had prearranged a dedicated gallery hall in order to place the installation that he had conceived and which would feature him as a "protagonist".

For Stefano, desire is a very complex, dark feeling and notion; he hates Sebastian on the surface, but in the essence he yearns for that aspect of his that Stefano feels will make him an ideal model / victim. Sebastian combines two things that Stefano seems to deem as essential for the creation of his morbid art: innocence and sexual appeal. In his artwork, Stefano always depicts these two elements together, either directly or through symbols. Although he sees Lily as the ideal "blank canvas" for his future inspirations due to her innocence, he would still need victims to actually create art. Sebastian has Lily's pure heart, but he also has the sexuality that Stefano seeks so ardently for his disturbing creations. The sequence where Sebastian confronts and finally kills Stefano looks and feels like a twisted sex hunt, which becomes more than evident in case Stefano manages to catch Sebastian and stab him with lustful rage. At this stage, Stefano's obsession with his own art identifies both with the attraction that he feels for Sebastian on a physical level, and his desire to create "his masterpiece" which will incorporate all the perfection that he believes he has achieved: the perfect canvas, which is Lily, the perfect human material that would be Sebastian, and the perfect concept, which however he eventually lost the chance to create.

 

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Special thanks to afterdarkmysweet for providing info for Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within.

Interior Spaces In Video Games As Settings And Myth Components

From the moment when the video game technology found the means to create three-dimensional settings for  its environments, the concept of space and its use in gaming moved to a wholly different level. Still, third-person shooters from the early '90ties, like Wolfenstein 3D or Blake Stone and even more evolved games like the very first Tomb Raider, took place almost exclusively in interior areas because back then creating an open-world exterior space was a very difficult and complicated task. Under that light, we could say that the setting played a major role in shaping the essence of the plot. When, in the first Tomb Raider, Lara Croft had to go to Peru, the game's action was limited to a series of caves. Exterior areas, whenever they were present in the game, were in fact interior spaces with a black ceiling indicating the sky. In the gameplay sequences of Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within, the most iconic point-and-click game from that time, we see real environments that were photographed and used as some sort of backdrop, in front of which the action could take place. The evolution of gaming technology however was so fast and so impressive that it soon was able to offer all the means for the creation of video games that were almost like movies. Now game developers can create a vast open world and expand it as much as they want as a huge, seemingly limitless exterior that covers several different areas.

A video game is, simply put, a moving picture that develops on a computer or TV screen. The whole surrounding, exterior environment of a game is built from scratch and, in its turn, happens to be a specified space made of pixels and defined by a programming language which gives it the attributes of a virtual exterior world. Within that virtual exterior world, individual interior spaces are formed, again from combinations of pixels, taking their own place and gaining their special major or minor importance in the world that includes them. As soon as the surrounding space becomes the exterior of an interior setting, the interior space gets a specific level of autonomy. This means that, on the technical level, it still depends on the programming of its exterior space but on the levels of fiction, story and plot, it has its own identity and role in the game. So in terms of programming, it is made of a set total of pixels and commands, but in terms of storyline and gameplay, it is what us, as players see: a mansion, a store, a hut, a museum, an asylum, a lighthouse, a castle - whatever the almost endless list of interior settings in video games can feature.

While there is a multitude of interior areas in games that exist in the environments simply for the sake of realism (houses in a village or a town, apartment buildings in a city, abandoned huts in a countryside) or for aesthetic purposes, or both, they often have a prominent role, being places that the lead characters have to explore so as to make important discoveries. Although now we see games that depend much of their action on the exploration of vast exterior environments, like Miasmata, Kholat or the recent zombie-themed Days Gone, interior spaces never ceased to play a major role in the development of the stories. Ramon Salazar's castle in Resident Evil 4 is a good example of how an interior setting shapes the core of the game's adventure. While outside in the Spanish countryside, Leon Kennedy has a moderate liberty considering which way to choose and what strategy to apply so as to escape from the enemies. Once inside the castle, things become tighter, as the place has traps everywhere and vicious monsters guarding its halls. Salazar didn't deliberately lure Leon in his castle, but the way the story unfolded, such a development was inevitable.

The castle is centuries old, but this is not limited to its architecture and history. Everything inside it seems to be lost in time. The owner himself is dressed like a baroque nobleman, the latter being a tragic irony completely, as he is neither a noble nor a man. What makes his castle even more chilling, is that there are whole rooms that are completely deserted, while there are still signs of life around. You go through a garden maze where zombie dogs roam, only to find yourself moments later in a beautifully decorated bedroom where there is only calm and silence. Next up you move to an empty dining room, and just after this, there is a small trap room where several enemies attack unexpectedly. This is a pattern that repeats itself throughout the whole sequence of the castle's exploration, although from a point and on, you rarely have the chance to enter a room that is safe and empty - with the exception of the safe rooms with the typewriter. Although a big part of the game takes place in exterior areas, the action that happens indoors is the most memorable. 

Having a story unfold in an interior space is many times a necessary option to create a haunting, immersive atmosphere. The Asylum in Outlast, the Brookhaven Hospital in the Silent Hill series, the Church in The Lost Crown, are examples of iconic environments that perfectly set up the mood for a chilling horror adventure. Claire Redfield in Resident Evil: Code Veronica finds herself in the creepy mansion of Alfred Ashford, an old-fashioned villa that is full of zombies, traps, hidden passages and secret rooms, after escaping from her prison cell following a zombie outbreak. While a house is normally a safe and protected zone, in survival horror games there is more danger creeping inside than outside. You can never know what lies behind a closed door or what will jump out of a dark corner. Claire is involuntarily an intruder, and as such is treated with extreme hostility, more so since the owner of the mansion is a deranged man who lives in his own little world. Alfred threatens to shoot her on sight whenever they cross paths, taking advantage of his knowledge of the grounds so as to outsmart her and subsequently defeat her.

Such interior settings rely a lot on the element of the unexpected; they are unknown grounds and the lead characters have to explore them in detail, most of the times coming across all kinds of nasty surprises. In the original Resident Evil, Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine and their teammates are trapped in the Spencer mansion, a rather unfriendly estate where the inhabitants are zombies and monsters. The biggest part of the game takes place inside the mansion and follows the heroes in their quest of keys and other important items with which they are able to open one by one all the doors of the vintage house. An impressive library, art gallery rooms, a tea room with a grand piano, could, in other conditions make any visitor feel at home. Not in this case, though. The interior space here offers a very brief and temporary relief from danger, but it's not long before we realize that there is much less safety inside that it was outside.

The Raccoon Police Department in Resident Evil 2 Remake acts in a similar way. The huge building offers a shelter to Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield as soon as they get inside while the city is crawling with zombies, but soon they find out that the situation is pretty much the same, if not worse, in the station. Surrounded by an imposing aura, mostly due to the fact that it used to be a museum, with several vintage key items lying around and works of art decorating its halls, the RPD is an archetypical environment, given its importance in the progression of the plot. Once inside, Leon and Claire have to reveal a secret passage that leads to the basement and, subsequently, to an alternative setting. Said passage is just a few steps away from the entrance, hidden below a huge statue in the main hall. Opening it, however, is neither easy nor straightforward. There are certain items in specific rooms that need to be found before the secret door is revealed. But even when this is done, there is still work to do before the exit becomes available. In that sense, the story in the first half of the game is centered around the RPD; all the attention and the focus of the characters shifts to it, as their main task is to explore every nook and cranny in the building to find the items in question.

Ethan Winters in Resident Evil 7 finds himself in a similar situation when he gets trapped inside the Baker house, and his quest is the agonizing search for a series of key items that will allow him to leave. Unlike with the pathetic, brainless zombies, Ethan has to face a human enemy, a morbid and bloodthirsty stalker who is far more dangerous because he still retains a level of intelligence. Just like Alfred Ashford, Jack Baker, the patriarch of the house, knows the layout of his grounds, which gives him a great advantage over the unwilling intruder. Regardless the environment becomes an unexpected ally for Ethan, as he can use it to hide from Jack who is frantically turning the place over while looking for him. The Baker house is a fortress of lethal traps where everything that would have a normal, everyday use, has been turned into a weapon against anyone attempting to escape. Once you get inside, you cannot leave. Doors lock behind you and other doors lead to more dangers. You have to go through painful puzzles so as to find a way out. Maybe the most frightening aspect of Ethan's unexpected impisonment in the Baker home is the fact that the farm stands in the middle of a broad, swampy countryside with no other houses in any close distance while Ethan has no way to communicate with the outside world, and his only means of escaping, his car, lies in pieces in the garage.

The eery, dream-like depiction of Salem in Murdered: Soul Suspect offers the ideal exterior environment for its gloomy horror story. There are several interior settings in the game,  however the most memorable and crucial one is the Judgement House where lies the key to the final revelation of the mystery story. From the moment that the gameplay allows Ronan O' Connor to wander around Salem, he can see the exit to the region where the Judgement House is; however he cannot go there until certain things have been done first. This alone intensifies the significance of that house and creates a feeling of uneasiness concerning it. The Judgement House is an old, crumbling, mazey mansion haunted with ghosts of the past, with demons hiding in the walls, and a particularly chilling room that the antagonist of the story, a mysterious serial killer, has transformed into a lair. Ronan can get in the house freely and explore it, but once he discovers that room, the demons are unleashed and roam the corridors and halls and a shocking revelation becomes accessible in the basement.

Set in a vast exterior environment, Resident Evil: Revelations 2 is noted for its intense claustrophobic feel which is evident right from the start but becomes even stronger as soon as we find out, through Claire Redfield's eyes, that we are in fact on an isolated island in the middle of nowhere. Claire Redfield and Moira Burton explore several interior areas in their struggle to survive and eventually escape, but it is not until they reach the Monument Tower that they start to acknowledge the nature of the evil force that brought them there. The Monument Tower is a very tall, steep, intimidating construction that can be seen from a distance long before we are able to reach it. Essentially the lair of the game's arch-villain, Alex Wesker, who affectionately calls it "the scaffold of the Gods", it is a disturbing fusion of high-tech devices and flimsy architecture, and looks like a server lost in a spaceship. Just like in Resident Evil 4, here too the hostile countryside is nothing compared to the nightmarish interior that is the tower. Anxiety and fear build up progressively as Claire and Moira ascend the twisted construction up to the point when they meet with Alex who, not surprisingly, is hiding behind a wall of glass. Just then, Alex commits suicide after revealing her plans, albeit her words are full of riddles. As soon as this happens, a self-destruct sequence begins and the two girls have to run to the emergency exit, a narrow path over a chasm that leads back inside the tower where, in one version of the story, Moira is crushed to death.

Mark Jefferson's Dark Room in Life Is Strange is yet one more unforgettable interior environment which also happens to represent the root of the evil in the story. Located in a well-hidden underground area of an isolated barn, Mr Jefferson's private space is a seemingly clean and all-shiny place with top-notch technological equipment where the professor is supposed to take and work on his artistic and inspired photographs. In reality, it is the lair of a psychopath who is obsessed with capturing the loss of innocence with his camera. Max Caulfield finds herself trapped in Mr Jefferson's Dark Room, in a sequence where the whole essence of the game is being summarized. Max has the ability to rewind time, just like photographs take us back to the past. In her attempt to change the present, she has to use her own photographs, as well as the stuff and equipment in the room around her. Max being trapped in the Dark Room symbolizes the way she is actually trapped in time, in a doubtful reality of consecutive rewinds that fix one thing but mess with everything else.

In The Evil Within, the notion of interior space moves to a completely different level. As the whole adventure develops inside a madman's head, through his shattered memories, there is no actual exterior world anywhere to be found. In this specific universe, however, there are still countryside and city streets which eventually contrast with the most important interior setting, the Victoriano manor. Sebastian Castellanos is literally dragged inside the mansion in Ruben Victoriano's vicious attempt to force him into acknowledging how much he had suffered as a child and how unjust life had been to him. The manor here is a tangible element off Ruben's memories but is also a major symbol, tightly connected to him. When Sebastian gets inside the house, he essentially dives into Ruben's innermost thoughts. Ruben's house is not simply an interior space; it is the field of the story's most important revelation which had to occur in a protected place: it was a secret that had to be shared only with a specific someone. The dimly lit rooms of the manor are chilling; their air is filled with sins of the past and from time to time, Ruben himself appears in his ghoulish form, chasing Sebastian and threatening to kill him.

In the same atmosphere, the interior spaces of The Evil Within 2 are all part of a virtual world, where exterior areas only typically belong to the outside. Although technically houses are still houses, stores are still stores, gas stations are still gas stations, there are several interior environments that are directly connected to the protagonist, Sebastian Castellanos and the game's villains. Sebastian's Safe Room is a safe haven that is abruptly formed by his memories once he is sedated and enters the virtual world STEM, in a desperate search for his little daughter who had been abducted so as to participate in a nightmarish experiment. Sebastian's Room is a reminiscent of his office at the police station and it is the place where he can return through teleporting mirrors. There was a space with a similar role in The Evil Within, but that one was much less familiar and friendly to Sebastian. The Room of The Evil Within 2 is a place that no one can invade (except for one instance); in there, he has the chance to contemplate, remember and come to terms with his conscience by watching slides from his past.

Notably, there are certain interior settings that are particularly popular in video games and quite often are closely connected to their respective stories and their progression. Lighthouses (Alan Wake, Bioshock Infinite), churches (Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry 4, The Evil Within, Resident Evil 6), laboratories (Gray Matter, Resident Evil 2, The Evil Within 2), asylums (Murdered: Soul Suspect, Thief 2014, Sanitarium, The Evil Within), museums (Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within, The Lost Crown, Murdered: Soul Suspect), universities (Life is Strange, Resident Evil 6) underground train stations (Resident Evil 6, Tomb Raider 3, The Evil Within), are environments that we get to see a lot more than others, not only because they are advantageous by default but also because usually they gain a high symbolic value in the stories where they are featured.

As video game characters become more and more realistic, it is not random that their surrounding world also resembles the real one. Heroes who have jobs, families, backgrounds, who have suffered losses or lived days of happiness, are expected to be active in a world where familiar things exist. Since they are not space soldiers fighting against aliens, but instead are writers, detectives, scientists, professors or artists, their world naturally consists of places where they can live like real people. Even in dream-like realities, like those of The Evil Within series, the virtual world of the stories is comprised of elements borrowed from the real world where the characters live. And this is something that practically has no limits. Since contemporary games are like interactive movies, with their metaphysical, supernatural or fantasy elements going hand-in-hand with their strong realistic aspect, they also place their lead characters in situations where they get to visit and explore real-life settings, the virtual depiction of which is impressive, to say the least.

Doors As Passages In Video Games

If we examine video games as a contemporary and unique form of artistic expression - which they actually are - we could classify them as modern fairy tales. While many of them carry a good amount of realism in their plots, their stories are usually based in elements of fantasy, science fiction or post-apocalyptic theories. In the Devil May Cry universe, we may have a modern-day environment as a setting, but there are demons hiding in every corner. Or take, for example, Lara Croft's adventures: although rich with historical facts, the games of the Tomb Raider series feature a good deal of fantastic elements that are in perfect balance with their realistic aspect.

The main characters in Action games are brave heroes who fight their way through hordes of enemies and obstacles, while they must also solve several tricky puzzles. Puzzles and riddles in video games are among the strongest references to fairy tales, especially those which result in opening doors. Just like in fairy tales, doors several times open with magic means or keys - either literal keys or objects used as keys - that need to be obtained by going through generally difficult trials. Similarly, in video games doors are passages: they lead the heroes one step further, to another part of the world, where, usually, a revelation or a fight awaits.

Resident Evil HD Remaster takes place in a huge villa, the Spencer Mansion. The main characters, Chris and Jill, together with their team, seek refuge inside the house at the start of the game and it is impossible for them to get back out, as there are ominous threats awaiting. Early on, they discover an imposing metal gate at the back of the main hall, which seems to be their only way out of there. The gate is locked and requires two key items in order to open. The biggest part of the game consists in exploring the mansion, which is full of zombies, monsters and traps, so as to find said items. The door needs two identical objects made of stone and metal which can be placed on two receptacles on the metal bars, serving as keys. The first object is found in a crypt in the back yard of the mansion, but actually opening the crypt and being able to unlock the coffin that contains the object requires a lot of searching and solving more riddles. Interestingly enough, they are only able to look for the second object once they have found the first, as they have to unlock another door with it, gaining access to another huge area at the back of the mansion, which has to be explored. The second object is made of two separate components: the metal object, which is found in a locked office of the mansion, and the stone ring, which is hidden in the secret cabin of Lisa Trevor, a girl who is now roaming the grounds of the mansion in the form of a hideous monster. Once both stone and metal objects are found, they can be placed on the metal gate and now Chris and Jill are able to proceed to the eerie undergrounds of the mansion.

Opening this gate and stepping out marks the transition to a world where all the horrors that they have already met in the mansion, are now intensified. The fact alone that the keys to open this door are so hard to find is a strong indication that what lies beyond it is extremely dangerous. The powers that dominate those grounds are inconceivable, and Chris and Jill have to use both their physical and mental strength in order to survive.

In Resident Evil 2 Remake, the main characters, Leon and Claire, are trapped in a similar situation. They find themselves in the imposing and mazey Police Department of Raccoon City and, as they cannot get out on the streets that are filled with zombies, they have to look for another way. Following the notes of a deceased police officer, they find out about the existence of a secret passage that is located just beneath the huge goddess statue that decorates the main hall of the station. They need to find three medallions and place them on the pedestal of the statue so as to reveal the passage. The three medallions are locked in their receptacles on three statues that are found in equal areas of the station. The Lion statue, which holds the Lion Medallion, is on the balcony overlooking the main hall, the Unicorn statue, which holds the Unicorn Medallion, is on a lone gallery outside the Library, and the Maiden statue, which holds the Maiden Medallion, is in a secluded section of a storeroom, also next to the Library.

Finding the medallions is not a very hard task per se, but it becomes quite tough due to the several zombies and monsters that wander in the corridors of the station. Every time that a medallion is placed on the pedestal, one part of the secret opening is revealed. Once all three medallions take their place, Leon and Claire discover a small metal gate that leads to a secret round room, just beneath the statue.

What is ironic is that although this passage is supposed to lead to a way out, there are more riddles lying ahead, the danger becomes even bigger and our heroes will have to struggle a lot more before they are able to leave the station. The underground however becomes the place where both Leon ad Claire meet their allies, Ada and Sherry respectively, and from that point and on they will not be completely alone in their quest.

In Resident Evil: Code Veronica, there are several doors that need a special key or item in order to open, however it is two of them that are particularly interesting. The first is the elaborately decorated door in the Secretary's room that leads to an isolated area of the Ashford mansion. Its upper section is a huge receptacle where two identical guns, the Gold Lugers, need to be placed for it to unlock. The quest for these guns is rather complicated, and it will be a long time before Claire, the main protagonist, is able to use them on the door after she finds them. Even from their first appearance, the Gold Lugers are connected to trouble. They are found in the back room of the Armory in the mansion, and as soon as Claire takes them down, a trap activates and the room fills with poison. Being forced to place them back, she seems to have no way of retrieving them so as to open that door. A bit later, Steve, her partner for this story, finds himself in the Armory and, being attracted by the shiney pistols, takes them off the wall. The room again fills with poison but Steve panics and does not consider placing them back. Claire arrives just in time to unlock the trap from the outside, and so Steve runs out safely with the guns, which he refuses to give over to Claire. It will not be very long however before Claire offers him a pair of loaded Submachine guns in exchange with his Gold Lugers. Steve gladly makes the trade and so Claire is able to finally place the Lugers on the door and get it to open.

This door stands for a major passage in the story, as it opens to a secret office which, in turn, leads to a hidden palace where Alfred, the game's minor villain, lives a life of paranoia and illusion, playing the roles of both himself and his deceased twin sister, whom he adored. Thus it is not random that Claire needs a pair of twin guns to open the door. The world beyond the Luger door is that of a sadistic madman who impersonates his dead sister and finds extreme pleasure in making innocent people suffer. In connection to this comes the second door that stands out, which is located in the Morgue. Technically not a door, but a secret passage that is revealed beyond a raised wall, it opens by placing a glass eye on a life-size anatomy model. Claire has to kill a doctor who has become a zombie, take his glass eye and place it on the model, thus gaining access to the basement of the Morgue, where she comes across a horrifying room with torture machines.

In Resident Evil: Revelations 2, Claire finds herself before yet one more puzzle that involves a locked door and an eyeball. This time, things are more complex and the door in question has a retinal scanner which needs a specific artificial eye in order to unlock. Claire finds the eye in a trapped room inside a factory but she first needs to replace it with a glass eye so as to be able to take it without activating the trap. She must then use the eye on the retinal scanner outside the locked door so as to gain access to the nearby slaughterhouse.

What is interesting about this puzzle is that it opens the way and is connected to another puzzle that also has to do with a locked door that requires a special kind of key item. The same artificial eye has to be used on another retinal scanner outside an office, where Claire finds a liver replica. Later, in the slaughterhouse, she has to find another liver replica and use them both to open another door. While the first liver replica is in plain sight inside a corpse in the factory, the second is stuck in a bucket of blood in the gory slaughterhouse. Some kind of mincing machine above it has to be operated a few times, so that enough quantity of blood fills the bucket, allowing the liver replica to be released. The two liver replicas have to be placed then on a statue of Prometheus that blocks a door in the yard of the factory and the slaughterhouse. Doing so, causes the statue to explode, thus revealing the door that leads to another part of the factory where a tense timed event takes place.

Apart from being a passage leading closer to Alex, the story's villain, the Prometheus door has yet one more major significance. Alex uses both Prometheus and the livers as symbols, to hint at the fate of a man who turned out to be a traitor, both to her and Claire. Neil, Claire's boss and friend, secretly worked with Alex, aiding her in her evil plans, but at some point attempted to betray her, so she punished him, injecting him with a virus that turned him into a monster. In the myth, Prometheus was punished for stealing divine power, by being bound to a rock while an eagle would come every day and feed on his liver, which would grow back overnight and this torment would go on eternally. Alex identifies herself as a God and Neil as Prometheus; and the liver parts being replicas signify Neil's false faith to both Claire and Alex. Given that, soon after going through that door, Claire finally faces Neil in his monster form and has to fight with him, the passage revealed by it gains a very important symbolism, at the same time serving as a foreshadowing of what is about to happen.

In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a door opening with a retinal scanner reveals a hidden elevator which leads straight to the lab where Burke, a very dangerous and twisted man, uses prisoners as lab rats. Adam, the protagonist, watches Burke using his augmented artificial eye on the scanner and then, following instructions, he steals a new replacement eye from Burke's office, all the while hiding from the guards who are looking for him. He then visits a technician who fits the eye on him, so that he is then able to use the retinal scanner himself and subsequently open the door.

While the passage that the door reveals brings forward a terrifying truth about the man involved, at the same time it becomes a means of salvation, as Adam then has the option to save the prisoners and the doctor who was forced by Burke to carry out the experiments on his behalf. In that sense, opening that door affects positively the lives of several people, including Adam, as he was himself a prisoner of Burke and possibly one of his potential victims.

In Resident Evil 4, Leon, the main protagonist, uses the false eye of Bitores Mendez, a minor villain, to open the gate that leads to Salazar's castle. He first must fight with Mendez in a barn and defeat him, so as to be able to take his eye and unlock the door with it. Although there are several doors in the game that open with impressive puzzles, this specific one is of a very high importance because it marks a passage from on world to another. Up to that point, Leon was wandering in the country, and the enemies he had to face were ignorant victims that had been turned into puppets in the hands of the evil Lord Saddler. By opening the castle gate and getting inside, he finds himself in a place where time seems to have stopped and from where there seems to be no obvious way out. Everything inside the castle looks like it belongs to past times, and even Salazar himself is dressed in a style that goes quite a few centuries back. Additionally the enemies, although of the same kind as the villagers, seem to have a certain level of intelligence and they are much more dangerous and bloodthirsty. The castle is full of traps and monsters and the trials become tougher in every new area.

In Resident Evil 7, Ethan, the protagonist, finds himself trapped in the house of Jack Baker's family whose members became deranged, following their infection by a degenerative virus. The exit door, which will temporarily offer him some freedom, is of course locked and needs three special items in order to open: three dog heads that are hidden in certain areas of the house. The blue head is hidden inside a book and it is the easiest to find. The white head is hidden in a grandfather clock and requires another brief puzzle to get it. The red head involves a long and dangerous exploration of several areas of the house, resulting in a terrifying boss fight with Jack Baker himself. Once all three dog heads are placed on the door, it is unlocked and Ethan can get out, although he has a long way to go before he is finally free.

The creature with the three dog heads that is depicted on the door is Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded the gate of Hades in ancient Greek mythology. While the Baker house is no less than Hades itself, the real nightmare begins once Ethan steps outside. Cerberus in this case is not guarding the entrance, but the exit; and in that sense, the passage that is offered to Ethan after he unlocks the exit door is one that is set up in such a way so as to lead him to his death.

In The Evil Within, Sebastian, the lead character, gets trapped inside the mind of Ruvik, a genious madman with a painful past, and finds himself wandering in places connected to his memories. The most prominent one is Ruvik's family home, where the dark secrets of his past are gradually revealed. There is a huge door in the main hall, that Sebastian has to open so as to proceed deeper inside Ruvik's mind, and to do so he has to carry out three simple Phrenology tasks. There are three Phrenology tables in the house and on each one there is a human head with the brain exposed. Sebastian has to hit a specific part of the brain with each probe, and if done correctly, blood flows away from a tube above each table, filling a similar tube on the locked gate. Once all three tubes fill with blood, the door opens.

As the story of the game has to do with mind games, it is not random that this specific gate is like a simulation of the brain: during the Phrenology tasks, Sebastian hits the sections of fear, hope and consent, which send the blood flowing in the tubes on the door. The gears on the door then start moving all together, unlocking it, just like the human emotions keep the brain's gears working. It is a concept that is as complicated as it is ingenious. The passage that is revealed beyond the door is literal: it is a long passage, a hallway, where Ruvik awaits to lure Sebastian even deeper in his memories, leading him to the root of his life's tragedy.

In The Evil Within 2, the gate that dominates as a major point of transition is not an actual door but more like an artificial barrier, made up of barbed wire and two framed photos depicting two girls in a macabre setting, that seem to be surrounded by an aura of black magic: they have flaming blood around them and they are impossible to touch. This peculiar installation is the morbid work of Stefano, a twisted photographer who is able to control Union, a virtual environment made especially for the people taking part in STEM, a nightmarish experiment aiming at controlling minds. Sebastian has to find a way to destroy the gate, in order to enter the Theater, where Stefano is hiding, and fight with him.

Stefano is like a magician; and as such, he creates illusions. Sebastian has to apply reverse magic in order to make the illusions disappear. In reality, or at least in the twisted reality of STEM, there is no tangible barrier in front of the theater. The two framed photos that block the way forming a makeshift gate are not really there. The first one is in the back room of a bar and the second is at the end of the upper corridor of a hotel. Sebastian has to locate them, literally get in their interior and destroy them from the inside. By doing this, their illusions in front of the theater shatter and disappear. The "magic" that Sebastian performs so as to fight Stefano's evil tricks is basically the opposite of what Stefano did. Simply put, Stefano made the photo artworks and Sebastian destroys them. What Sebastian does is like a voodoo process: he "kills" the essence of the photos, stabbing the frozen corpses that form them, just like a voodoo magician sticks pins on his dolls, resulting in hurting the person that those represent.