While the story for Outlast‘s first main arc has completed itself, the developers over at Red Barrels have been rather engaged in preparing the prequel to the series. The good news is that the project is almost complete, and the launch of Whistleblower has been set for: “May 6th of next week” in Red Barrels’ exclusive interview with Eurogamer. While the source placed the DLC at $8.99 the developers reminded the site that the price-tag for multiple regions is still under debate. The one comment that does reassure us on Outlast‘s upcoming prequel is that the content is planned to rekindle everything we loved about the original survival horror experience. Following the original tipster that spurned Outlast‘s prior protagonist, Miles Upshur, into investigating the ominous mental hospital; the plot is centered around the software engineer Waylon Park, following his eventual betrayal of the underground corporation that’d optimized mentally ill as vessels for extensive experimentation.
Below is the “Whistleblower” trailer on Red Barrels’ Youtube channel that appeared earlier this morning. Attached is all of the gruesome imagery that made Outlast a particularly unsettling game to add to your go-to horror stash. But if there is one thing that Outlast does well, it is deploying the atmosphere, and the game doesn’t seem to have lost its original charm.
A lot of this add-on experience is going to be set in the timeline prior to Miles Upshur’s sequence that explained the dark reality of Mount Massive Asylum. Meaning that we can expect to get a little more background on the mental ward itself, as well as the events that led to Park’s decision to warn the reporter to bring all the asylum’s sins to light. Outlast didn’t particularly end on that note; but the developers have admitted that most of the the game’s content is going to take place in the past– there will be some fragmentations which’ll allude to the comprehensive conclusion of the game’s main plot.
We’re not certain if this means that the game will jostle around in an attempt to answer a lot of questions that Outlast ended with, but it is worth taking the time and enjoying a revisit to the mental ward that gave the horror game franchise an uplift when it was released last year for PC. We are rather curious to see how the game manages to conduct itself with another set of characters as well as lead into the the original setting of Outlast. Getting a conclusion post-game would also be a treat, considering the abrupt ending was a little underwhelming to some of the audiences that reviewed Outlast in 2013/2014.
“Whistleblower” will be an addition to a game that isn’t exactly in need of one, but nonetheless it’ll be a pleasant renewal of the success that the survival horror game saw upon its initial release. We’ll keep you informed as to the DLC becomes accessible on the PSN next week for both North America and European audiences.