Not quite Layers of Fear 3 but not quite a remake either this title really doesn’t make things any easier from a communicative point of view simply by taking the name of Layers of fear. Surfing a bit of ambiguity since the game’s announcement, Bloober Team explains that this production is based on Layers of Fear (2016) and Layers of Fear 2 (2019)”but with a surprising new story and never-before-seen content“, we are told. A kind of amalgamation between the two episodes therefore reworked in the form of a story “complete, final and unpredictable“, we can read. Another argument for the fans, the addition of a new chapter entitled The last comment which deepens the story of the first chapter from the point of view of the painter’s wife.
The sum of all fears
Remember that both involve sharing the obsessions of an artist, a painter in the first part set in a Victorian mansion, and an actor in the second set aboard a transatlantic liner. One thing’s for sure, we’ll stay on the register of first-person psychological horror with a penchant for narration over action, even if this replay will offer new gameplay mechanics, according to Bloober. In many ways this Layers of fear also looks like a technical test for the Polish studio, which is here trying out the Unreal Engine 5 engine, a technology that is also used in the remake of silent hill 2.
