F.E.A.R. 3

Interval 0: Preparation

Game Director & Executive: Adam Adamowicz: So, um yeah. Fear 3.

The making of FEAR 3

Adam Adamowicz: FEAR is a series that everyone here at Eff Yeah Games played, and fell in love with. A bit odd, because not all of us fans of horror games, especially me.

Lead Level Designer: Steve Meister: FEAR 1 was a game that blew my mind, FEAR 2? That was a game that made me have accidents of various kinds within my pants.

Lead Programmer: Joel Burgess: There are few perfect games out there, and not everyone agrees on what they are, most people form a consensus on stuff like Halo, or, or Half-Life, or CoD, but, and I can kinda see where these people are coming from, but for me? FEAR 2 was a perfect game.

Adam Adamowicz: It's a bit of a shame that this series, which a lot of people love, gets handed around from studio to studio. First it was Vivendi, and they started something new, then it was Monolith Productions, and its non-stop rave reviews for Project Origin, and now it's us, at Eff Yeah Games, and we've done our absolute best with it, and fingers crossed, we're hoping to keep a hold of it.

Steve Meister: I am not letting go of this. We are not giving this to someone else, this is my baby now.

What is FEAR?

Adam Adamowicz: FEAR stands for First Encounter Assault Recon, and is a military unit, formed under the Bush Administration to fight ghosts and stuff. They're back now. So we'll be seeing a lot more of the actual title characters now. Seeing how they work and such.

Steve Meister: We tried really hard to delve into the whole spec. ops, but it seemed a bit too much like sci-fi CSI, so we scaled it back. These are guys who deal with freaky s- for a living, so they're as in their element as they can be, but in dealing with Alma, they can't help but be in over their heads.

Lead Designer and Writer: Emil Pagliarolu: Alma is, quite literally, the center of the Fear series. She was one of those typical scary little girls, and a very powerful psychic. Her father, Harlan Wade, happened to be the president of this big weapon's company, came up with the idea of making psychic soldiers, and started his search close to home.

Adam Adamowicz: Armacham, in the games, is this... really evil company. They've conducted experiments on this little girl, Alma, impregnated her, twice, performed experiments on soldiers, and were trying to create a clone army commanded by psychics to sell on the market. So, yeah, they've got a dirty laundry list.

Steve Meister: They've also created this clone army, the Replica, basically an evil version of the clone army from Star Wars, with the intent to sell on the market. It's a project that Armacham has invested a lot of money into; the problem was making the psychic commanders to lead them. Anyway, through the events of FEAR 1 and 2, they've been released into the city of Fairport, and have been accordingly wreaking havoc.

Emil Pagliarolu: So Armacham pools most of their research into Alma, except Alma doesn't really like being experimented on. The scientists were getting stuff like migraines around her, and they noticed that she kept getting more and more powerful, and everyone figured that the only thing that was keeping her from doing worse was her youth and naïveté. So, a few days before her eighth birthday, they took her away, and sealed her in a Vault, putting her in basically a comatose state.

Adam Adamowicz: So, a while later, Armacham still wanting Psychic soldiers, decided to... artificially inseminate Alma. Twice.

Joel Brujess: So that's where we get, spoiler alert, Point Man, and the Paxton Fettel, both are Alma's children, the 1st and 2nd prototype, but it's not something they knew about until the events of the first game. As for Alma, she was, basically, in a coma the entire time, and both times, the company, Armacham, wanted to keep Alma under, but she woke during the birth for both of them, never, never even getting to hold them, so she's now incredibly possessive over this third child.

Adam Adamowicz: In the first game Alma managed to contact Paxton Fettel, mentally, for the second time, and he stages an uprising, composed of himself, and the clone soldiers that Armacham made, and that he's the only one able to control, and starts going on a killing rampage against Armacham for Alma, and this is when the FEAR team, and the Point Man are brought in, and the Point Man finds out, at the very end, he's finds out that Alma is his mother, he finds out Paxton Fettel is his brother, minutes before he shoots him in the head, his aunt Alice Wade, was just partially cannibalized by Paxton Fettel, and then he sees his Grandfather, Harlan Wade, release Alma, who immediately killed him, violently. Yeah, it's a pretty messed up family.

Emil Pagliarolu: In the second game, we get a look a Delta Team immediately after the events of the first game; the main protagonist is Michael Beckett, who through the events of the second game, attracts the attention of Alma. The Delta Team tries to kill/contain Alma at a nuclear plant. Long story short, their plan fails, and Michael Beckett is locked away, and Alma is pregnant again, and there's nothing to stop her from destroying everything.

Passing the Torch

Adam Adamowicz: FEAR is a series that has been handed around a lot. First it was developed by Vivendi games, who developed two expansion packs, Extraction Point, and Perseus Mandate which continued after the events of the first game. Then the rights of the game were bought by Monolith Studios who made Project Origin. At the same time this game discounted the events of the two add-ons by Vivendi, even going so far to contradict them at times. Then the game was handed over not to us, but to a studio called Day 1 Studios, unfortunately they couldn't really pull it off, so most of us in the office at Eff Yeah Games jumped at the chance to purchase the rights to make the next game.

Steve Meister: You should have seen some of the things the last guys were doing; they were basically just copying Call of Duty. You could only carry two weapons, health regenerated, the weapons were generic, and there was even a level in Brazil. I'm not even kidding, there was a level practically ripped from Modern Warfare 2, where you were shooting it out in the slums of Rio De Janero, and I had the exact same reaction as I did in MW2, why the hell am I here?

Emil Pagliarolu: We decided to incorporate some of the elements ourselves, not start from scratch, but there was a lot of cutting being done. I had to do a lot of work, reworking everything, because the city the game takes place in was basically nuked, and has either been a warzone, or been left to rot for nine months, and these guys hadn't seemed to remember this.

Adam Adamowicz: They even did this silly thing, with this text speak, in the title of the game, replacing the E with a 3 in the title, which was F3AR, which no-one can pronounce.

Joel Brujess: We decided to create our own engine for this, nothing, nothing too special, but we wanted a really fine level of polish for this. We didn't want to upstage Crysis, or, or be a Halo-Killer, but we wanted to go all out. Some of the technological challenges were making all the debris and assorted small world objects. The attention to detail is something that struck me personally, and a lot of the other developers on the team. And they react like they should, things blow up, books will burn a lot of things, things that while not really necessary, add that fine level of polish. The other reason we wanted our own engine was for all the lighting effects, it's, it's very pretty in and of itself on the environment, and, and we had a lot of fun making different lighting modes, one person even made a 'hangover mode', but we really wanted a top of the line lighting method was for Alma, and her various assortment of illusions.

Steve Meister: There were a lot of things that bothered me about what the last guys did. For instance, we didn't see anything about what happened to the Replica, we had almost no backstory, or plot for that matter, Michael Beckett, the guy from the last game, had like a five-minute role, and while I can't tell you much about him, we have expanded his role, hardly any characters, Brazil, but at the same time we have to be grateful to them, because when we got the rights to the game, we had no idea where to start, so the other guys gave us the base that we then worked on.

The Story

Adam Adamowicz: Okay, so... it's now nine months after the first two games. That's when the main plot is set. After certain events in Project Origin, Alma is now... pregnant; don't ask me how that happened.

Emil Pagliarolu: I sat down, I played the game, I saw the endings, and both times, I sat there, and I was like what the f-.

Joel Brujess: We sat down, we talked, and surprisingly, we talked more about the backstory then what happens next, every-everyone had their own theories, not just us, at the office, people who have played the games themselves, out there on the internet, but then after hours of talking, and talking, one of us stood up, and said, 'are we making a game, set before the other games then?'

Producer: Tim Lamb: That was me; I was the one who said that.

Emil Pagliarolu: And of course we decided that nine months later, when Alma is giving birth to her... 'ghost baby' was the most fertile time period for our story.

Adam Adamowicz: I think it seems a bit cliché, but we've decided to bring back the characters from the first game, everyone wanted to know about them. So, our two main characters, as I'm sure you've been able to tell from stellar trailers, are Point Man and Paxton Fettel. Point Man, he's the protagonist from the first game, he's seen it all done it all, but the kinda stuff he found out in the first game kinda haunts him now, we wanted him to kinda stay an enigma, so even though you're in his shoes, you may not know what he's thinking. Paxton Fettel on the other hand was a lot easier to write for, considering that we actually let him talk.

Producer: Jeff Gardiner: For some reason, whenever the idea of giving the Point Man a voice was raised, it was immediately shut down. I think it's a cliché, first person shooter, silent protagonist, that' new. But I guess he's the kinda character now, that no matter what you write for him, someone will disagree with you. So to compromise, we let every other character speak instead.

Adam Adamowicz: With Paxton Fettel, I'm told writing for him was a goldmine. He's a Cannibal, that's the first thing most people remember about him, but he's also educated, taught in the ways of waging war, Sun Tzu kinda stuff. But like I said, he's a cannibal and kinda a ghost now. So you can't be too sure if he is crazy or not.

Steve Meister: Okay, so through FEAR one, you're fighting though standard urban sprawl, stuff that hasn't been fought in yet, I think that was interesting to me, because other shooters fight in places that have basically been trashed, seeing these places so crisp and clean, made the fighting more intense for me. So it was a big shock, and an emotional moment, when at the end of the game, they completely obliterated it with a nuke.

Adam Adamowicz: So, this entire city of Fairport, which is a pretty decent-sized place, is blown up. And it's been nine months since then. Someone should've noticed what's happened.

Emil Pagliarolu: So, realistically speaking, the government would try to figure out what the hell is going on. But we can't quite have them coming in, finding Alma, and getting killed. Armacham's doing that instead.

Emil Pagliarolu: Armacham has taken complete control of the city of Fairport, and they're the only ones who lets anything in or out of that city. They've got several dirty marks against them, but the reason the government's letting them do this, is simply that most of the people who know what they've done, are now dead. Still though, you don't police a ruined city without someone getting suspicious.

Joel Brujess: So, the FEAR Team, the original FEAR team from FEAR 1, or what's left of them, are called in to find out what the hell's happening, and from there, the rest of the story unfolds.

Adam Adamowicz: There are still a lot of questions out there, whose leading Armacham, what's been happening in the world in the past nine months, what happened to the protagonist in Project Origin, to find out, you'll have to play the game.

Weapons of FEAR

Adam Adamowicz: Something that not many people know, and surprised a lot of people in the office, was that FEAR is set in the near future, which accounts for stuff like mechs, and lasers.

Joel Brujess: The weapons have changed from game-to-game, and many of us tried to come up with some story explanations as-to-why. We said FEAR 1, older, maybe outdated weapons, FEAR 2 Army Stuff. FEAR 3, we're saying prototype weapons.

Jeff Gardiner: Originally we were going to do all new weapons for FEAR 3, but halfway along, we realized that a lot of our weapons were exactly like the ones from the old games, the pump-action shotgun, and the assault rifle acted just like in FEAR 2.

Steve Meister: So I'm playing through the Demo we made, I take a shotgun from an Armacham Merc, and it looks like something from a hundred years from the future, with a kick like a mule, then I turn a corner, and I see a mall cop using the same thing, and I asked myself, what the the Hell?

Joel Brujess: And so we had this big debacle about which weapons to put in, and which factions should get them, and one guy, who was playing Crysis, said, why not just keep the weapons the same, but reskin them for the factions, so we did that, but we liked that so much, we took it a step further, and made it so that each faction has a different version of the same kind of gun.

Jeff Gardiner: Armacham have all these top of the line attachments, their weapons are regularly maintained, so the look and act, differently than most guns. The Replica forces have been dug in at Fairport for a long while, and they haven't been resupplied in that time. But at the same time this situation is what they were literally made for. So, they've taken whatever they can get a hold of, they've reworked various household items into their weapons, so they're weapons look more rag-tag and worn out. They've attached makeshift bayonets, and duct-taped magazines together and such. The Army is standard issue stuff, stuff that works the way it's supposed to, so while it may not be as flashy or cool looking as other weapons, they are a bit more reliable. Then we have civilian weaponry, which you won't see much of in the main game, but it's as basic as basic gets, we tried our best to make sure the stuffs not overshadowed by the other weapons in the games. Lastly there's the weapons distributed to the FEAR team, which we made sure were some of the most versatile in the game.

Steve Meister: When we first got a hold of the series, the last guys made it so you could only have two guns. We quickly got rid of that. But we saw the value of making sure the developers knew which weapons the player was carrying. First we have the main slot, which is where you keep your SMG's, your Assault Rifles, even a few of the fancy Energy Weapons we made. Then you've got your trusty shotgun, in the first game, I picked up a shotgun, and I did not let go of the thing for the entire game, but it's also where you keep any sniper rifles. Then there's the Heavy Slot, so something like a grenade launcher, or missile launcher, and some of the most powerful Energy Weapons. Lastly Is the sidearm slot, it's something we spent a lot of time working with, we made a long list of sidearms, we've got 9mil's, we've got your magnums, we've got revolvers, machine pistols, duel wielding, this fancy kind of sawed off shotgun, someone even made a single shot grenade launcher that the rest of us had way too much fun using to get rid of.

Craig Lafferty: In FEAR 2, you were given the ability to switch firing modes for a few of the guns. It was a cool ability but something that wasn't really capitalized on. Someone was playing Resistance, were all the guns have a secondary trigger, and they said, 'why can't we have this' so we decided to capitalize on the firing mode function. Now we have basic things, like a shotgun firing a double barrel blast, we have rifles that can be semi-automatic, or burst fire, but we also went a little more exotic. The sniper rifles have different scope functions, zoom, heat-detection, and the like, we rocket launchers, we have lock-on targets, heat-seaking, even a follow the laser function that was inspired by the RPG from Half-Life 2. Another new thing were different ammo types, the revolver has certain bullets that explode on impact, and some of the shotguns have shells that light targets on fire, for the full-auto gun, like SMG's and Assault rifles, there are bullets that are meant to shoot through wall, grenade launchers, scopes with different augmentations, and for the pistols, we found a compromise for dual wielding. Just use the select fire button, and with almost any of the pistols, you'll pull out a second one, and you can fire two at a time, and depending on which you pick up, you'll fire it in a different fashion.

The Factions

Adam Adamowicz: One new thing we wanted to add were factions. There are several factions at work for the city of Fairport. Armacham.

Tim Lamb: Armacham is the most corrupt company you can think of, with deep pockets. They've designed cloned soldiers to put on the market, experimented on this little girl, and now this entire city has been blown up, and all they can think about is covering their a-, and saving face, and only now are their true colors showing.

Adam Adamowicz: Alma.

Jeff Gardiner: Alma is the most powerful psychic in the world. But due to the stress of childbirth she's experiencing, the control of her powers is slipping, so the dark corners of her mind are starting to bleed into reality.

Adam Adamowicz: The Replica.

Craig Lafferty: A clone army designed to take commands from psychic commanders who have been unleashed into the city.

Adam Adamowicz: The Army.

Nathan McDyer: USA! Heh, heh.

Adam Adamowicz: And FEAR itself, all are vying for some kind of control for Fairport, and the third child. Each of them have some stake in this matter, and we tried to give each their own style.

Tim Lamb: Armacham are the guys that have the biggest stake in this city. In FEAR 2, you basically decimated their entire mercenary team they sent to contain the situation. Armacham hasn't let that stop them though, they've kept bringing in more and more private mercenaries, who have been dealing with Alma for months now, so they are tough, they know what they are doing, and they've got the resources to keep the city on lockdown. They're now being led by Brigadier Rumsfield, who's not a very nice person. She, yes she, has been brought in after Colonel Vanek failed to get the job done, and if you remember Colonel Vanek, you'll remember he wasn't that pleasant to deal with either, so imagine who they've brought in to replace him. These guys have got powerful weapons, the tech, and a bunch of flashy energy weapons to keep you pinned. And we made sure to vary the enemy types, and not just in the weapons they use. There are the light guys, with SMG's and Assault Rifles, they'll be flipping and jumping over cover trying to flank you and such, the heavier types with Heavy rifles, and even a minigun or two. But then there are guys coming in with mechsuits, teams of riot shielders, flame throwers. They'll lay down automatic turrets, send out flying drones, throw out grenades, try to flank you. They have the equipment, and they will use it as best they can. They might not be Cthulu-esque monsters, but they are still something needed to be taken care of.

Jeff Gardiner: Alma is now so powerful, that the control she has over that power is beginning to slip. As the game progresses, and the birth process gets worse and worse for her, we'll be seeing more and more of her apparitions. There are the scarecrows, who are these contortionist gone mad creations, who will crawl in and out of the wall to grab at you, and tear out flesh from their unsuspecting victims, ghosts who will try to horde rush you, remnants which are these reanimated bodies that will summon other monsters to attack you, there are the scavengers who are like these demonic hellhounds, with needle sharp teeth, and the as they take more and more damage, they catch on fire. And lastly there's the creeper. He's a bad motherf-, and that's all I can say about that. In addition to these supernatural dangers, we have the cultists, who are normal people have survived up until this point, not only have they survived the Origins Explosion, they've survived everything else thrown at them for the past half a year. And due to Alma's influence, they've basically formed a religion around Alma.

Adam Adamowicz: Alma is as close to a God as you can get.

Jeff Gardiner: So, they're now completely insane, they've carved symbols into their body; they put up shrines to Alma, writing blood on the walls, they are some of the most unnerving enemies around. They act basically like zombies, suicide rushing you, but we also have some knife throwers, some suicide bombers, and then we have the cannibals, who are based on the FEAR 2 abominations that everyone loved and hated, they are these crawling things that have lost all remnants of humanity, they crawl and jump and trying to pin you down, and bite your throat out.

Craig Lafferty: The Replica were bred for war, quite literally. They're tough, they're smart when it comes to war, but they've been pinned down in the ruins of Fairport since the last games. So far they've been holding their own; they've been causing trouble for Armacham. They're still some of the most dangerous things out there, even if they're gear isn't the best, they're efficient, and they know what they're doing. They've uncovered enough Armacham locations to bolster their numbers with more clones. Theres a whole hierarchy, the new Variant VIII are the grunts, and the guys you'll be seeing the most. Then there are the Variant VII from FEAR 2, those who have survived are the events of the game are higher up in the chain, they're tougher, meaner, and all around better. Next is the Variant VI from the first game who have survived everything, they're the field commanders, and are some of the toughest thing in the game. And at the top, is the mysterious Replica Commander, who is the meanest b- around, and that's about as much as I can tell you.

Nathan McDyer: The Army's come into play now. You don't blow up a city without someone noticing, so now Uncle Sams coming into play. The main military arm of the world's most powerful country is coming down on Armacham's head. These guys aren't some delta-squad who'll get killed every time you turn around. They've got the numbers, they've got the training, they've got the experience, and they're gonna put a hurt on these guys. They're bringing in the equipment, they're bringing mechs, tanks, jets, we even, spoiler alert, we're even bringing in an aircraft carrier.

Adam Adamowicz: And lastly is FEAR itself. FEAR stands for First Encounter Assault Recon, and they're a paranormal special operations branch of the military formed back in 2002 to deal with the kind of stuff you see in horror films. They've seen it, done it, but that doesn't mean they don't get rattled every now and again. So, back in Fairport, and everything Alma's doing, their as in their element as they can get. Rowdy Betters from the first game has since been promoted, and he's coordinating the FEAR team for the operation. They've got all the spec-ops equipment, and we tried our best to make it some of the most useful in the game. You won't be ditching whatever gun you're holding for one of these things, but you'll definitely be wanting to keep a hold onto them. Some of the stuff are equipped with things called spectral scopes, which are especially handy when dealing with Alma's Apparitions. And of course we're also delving more into the history of the FEAR team, and how it operates as well.

The Characters

Adam Adamowicz: So in FEAR 3 you'll be seeing a lot of familiar faces from the previous games, but we're also bringing in some new ones.

Joel Brujess: The Point Man is back, yes, we're still not telling you his name. He's seen a lot, and may not be the better off for it. When you take a look at him, you can see he may not be in the best of shapes, he's, he's kinda let himself go. He's still a soldier, and he's still knows how to kick a lot of a-. He's kept the slo-mo ability, his health regenerates by a small amount, he's fast, he's deadly, we wanted you to feel like you are the deadliest son of a b- around, and in a sense, I guess the Point Man really is. But, even though we've taken the mask off, we're still not showing everything there is to the Point man, you know he's the good-guy, but you can't be too sure about what's going on under the surface, he's kinda of an enigma.

Steve Meister: Paxton Fettel is back, and we designed him to be the opposite of the Point Man, Paxton is clean-shaven, the Point Man has been neglecting his hygiene a bit, the Point Man has friends, where Paxton only has people who are useful to him, where Point Man is calm, Paxton is insane. We had a lot of fun writing for him, since he's around for quite a while, and he's, well he's insane, and insane people are always fun to write for. Fettel is a ghost now too, he's kinda-but not really dead. The Point Man shot Fettel in the head seconds after learning he was his brother, and after a series of events in the second game, he came back, it's a little complicated, but the point is that Paxton can now do certain things, like, he can possess enemies. Like jump, right into their skin, and use them as a meat-shield, or as a suicide bomber. And as cool as that is, that's not the only trick he has. He has an energy blast that's pretty powerful, he can levitate explosive objects, and throw them across the room, although the Point Man is needed to actually blow them up, he has a melee attack that can push someone off their feet, or snap their neck if he approaches them from behind, he can even levitate an enemy to become an easy bullet monkey. What Fettel's plan is though, is not exactly known, but you know that no matter how much he smiles, and acts nice, he's only working for his benefit.

Nathan McDyer: We also have the other surviving members of the FEAR team, Rowdy Betters has been promoted, and he's overseeing all FEAR operations in Fairport. He's the same as he's always been, trying to keep things light, and at the same time, having to keep things from boiling over. Douglas Holiday was the leader of the Delta-Force in the first game, and one of the only survivors. He's voiced by David Scully, whom you may recognize as Sargent Avery Johnson from the Halo Games. So yes, he is a Bad A-. Now he's part of the Army coming in, and due to his experience, he's the guy everyone's turning to when things turn freaky. Jin, a FEAR member from the first game, is also back, but back then she's not just a medical officer anymore, she's taken the time to learn how to fight, so she's not gonna wander off into some dark corner and disappear. What her relationship with the Point Man is? We're not telling.

Tim Lamb: For each of the factions, we made sure to include a leader, for FEAR we have Rowdy Betters, for Alma's Apparitions and the cultists, we have Alma, of course, for the Replica, we have the Replica Commander, and we can't say anything other than you do not want to mess with him, for Armacham we have Brigadier Rumsfield, who has come in to take over from Colonel Vanek from Project Origin, and while she's not at the top of the Armacham corporate ladder, she's right up there. She's been having to deal with what Alma, and the Replica for months now, so she knows what she's doing. At the same time she's rather cold, she's here to contain the situation, and as far as she's concerned, that's all. For the Army we have General Romney, who's a good General by all means, but the way he sees it, the problem is with Armacham, not with Alma, so that could certainly lead to some problems.

Adam Adamowicz: Michael Beckett is back. He's the protagonist from the second game, and he's also on the list of things of we're not supposed to talk to. What I can say is that he's been stuck in Fairport for the last nine months as well. He's seen a lot, and he's survived a lot. He's just as much a bada- as the two brothers. Also, he's the obligatory character voiced by Nolan North.

Nathan McDyer: We are also bringing in some new characters for FEAR, who have been brought in to help deal with the situation. There's Mark Landler, who's an older man, he's had experience in dealing with crazy stuff, but he hasn't let it get to him. He's kinda flashy and obnoxious, but the way he sees it, it's necessary to keep everyone from going crazy. He's also a fan of older music. We also have Terry Thompson, who's not exactly a rookie, but he's still kinda new to the team. He takes things a lot more seriously, and he's trying to keep a handle of the situation. He's a bit like how the Point Man was in the first game. There's also Ray Chandler who's the field intelligence guy, he cracks a few jokes and doesn't seem to take things seriously, but he's the kinda guy to watch your back.

The Art and Sound

Adam Adamowicz: FEAR takes place in the city of Fairport, which is a decent sized city, that at the end of FEAR 1 suffered from a massive explosion. Since then what's been left has either been taken over and repurposed by the Armacham mercenaries, warped and reused by the cultists, or just been left to rot.

Concept Artist: Craig Mullens: It was kind of difficult to find source material to draw from, as most cities don't get bombed and left for nine months. We wanted to get a design for the place that spoke of two worlds. The world before where everything is familiar and normal, in a kind of way that sticks with you, and then the world that has become now, where places have taken new purposes or left to rot.

Emil Pagliarolu: As we were tossing ideas around, we started talking about various settings from other games, like the ringworld from Halo, or City-17 from Half-Life 2, and how iconic those places are, and even if you don't play many video games, you can probably recognize it if you see it, and someone said, that we should make our own Rapture, and that's what we decided to do, turn Fairport into this epic location that people will keep wanting to come back to.

Sound Design Lead: Ashley Cheng: For this game we wanted the sound to be perfect. We wanted people to hear whispering in your ears, the sound of bad guys chatting on the radio, echoing footsteps, distant gunshots, and so many more, the sound team had their hands full, and every day someone would hear something cool, and say 'can we use this.' And then there was the music, we just stopped short of calling in Hans Zimmer to compose for us.

Emil Pagliarolu: In FEAR 2 we were given a map, you only see it once, but someone printed it out, and posted it on the door to the office, so everyone knows how the city's laid out. The main part of the city is on an island, kind of like Manhattan, with a bay in the middle. This is where the blast originated from, so while this place was the most developed area, with skyscrapers and such, it's also where most of the devastation occurred, and were only the bravest tread, because it's also the epicenter of all of Alma's apparitions. Surrounding that is a couple rivers, and an even wider bay, with suburban development surrounding the coastline. This is where Armacham has set up shop, trying to keep anything from leaving, they've got every possible corner covered with major checkpoints on the three major highways. Lastly we were even able to go into the forests and wilderness because there are a handful of state parks surround Fairport, some of the sections there being largely inspired by Alan Wake.

Craig Mullens: We had different approaches to the design. One of the ways we did it was basing off the areas according to their distance from ground zero. Firstly is Ground Zero itself which was originally the Origins Facility, which the Point Man blew up in an attempt to kill Alma. This failed. Anyway, it took place in the Auburn Industrial district, but the district is now gone, it's a crater, and it looks like someone dropped a nuke on it. The surrounding area is of course trashed, but the further and further you go, the buildings will be more or less intact, left untouched since the blast. As we get off the main island, you'll have the bases where Armacham has now set up shop, these places are clean, they're strong, fortified, basically built to withstand the end of the world, again. Lastly we have the places that weren't touched by the explosion at all, and have simply been left to rot. These places, farthest away from the blast, have now been taken over by the cultists, and have been warped into the demented stuff you see from a horror film.

Emil Pagliarolu: So we have 4 main kinds of areas. We have places where Armacham has taken over, and put in things like camera's, blockades, turrets, and the like, usually the guys will have a gun case next to some blue glow sticks, and everything has the Armacham company symbol on it. We then have the places were the cultists have set up shop, which are mainly places they were living before the blast. The Cultists are people who have survived everything up until this point, but have been driven insane by Alma's influence. Now nothing new has come into the city since then, and Armacham has been keeping them holed up, so a lot of things are starting to get worn out. They've also reworked everything they can to their new religion that worships Alma. They're drawing murals of blood on the wall, putting everything in red, setting things on fire; they've reworked all this upper-middle class housing and developments into these extremist cult slums.

Ashley Cheng: For the music, we did our own score, even had a few orchestra pieces. We drew inspiration from both horror pieces, like Resident Evil, and military pieces like Modern Warfare, so we you could feel strong and indominable one moment, and weak and powerless the next. We even took a cue from Left 4 Dead in some of our characters have their own musical cues, most of the apparitions, and some of the enemy types for Armacham. We tried to make it so it would fit the action, the faster you go through a section, the more intense it will be. If however, you are going slow, and you're just exploring, the music will be slower, calmer. We also added some songs you might recognize for some of our set piece moments.

Emil Pagliarolu: We did a lot of concept art for this, for every enemy, for every character, for weapon, for every level, we did dozens of drawings, a lot of work went in to this. It's all there in the game too, as unlockables. Got get started playing it.

Author's note:

Hello everyone. My name is Samaster01, and I used to love FEAR.

The first game in the series I got, was FEAR 2, a fascinating story of tech'ed up soldiers armed to the teeth with the latest weaponry, only to be brought down to their knees by a paranormal force that cannot be stopped. It. Was. Epic. There was not a part of it I didn't love, other than there was not more of it.

I got the original fear at a bargain. I was somewhat dissapointed in the graphics, less so in the gunplay, and the story was slightly harder to keep track of. But nonetheless it was a great came. One of the most anticipated games for me, was F3AR. I even got a t-shirt when I got the game.

When I played it. I was dissapointed. It wasn't a horrible game. It wasn't a bad game. It just wasn't FEAR. The comments made by the developers above basically match my own (seriously, brazil?). There was no story to speak of, everything copied call of duty, and Alma wasn't even the bad guy, heck, she wasn't even that scary!

I can understand that maybe the formula for the first two FEAR games wouldn't translate that well into a co-op game, but then why make a co-op game?

So, I have created my own game studio, and set them to the task of making a FEAR game, made right. A game that'll put FEAR in the limelight. What you have seen so far were various making-of trailers for the game, meant to highlight various concerns I had for the real game, and showing various things to come for the story. If the names look familiar, that's because I basically copied the developer list from Fallout 3.

So, this company of mine, has basically made a love-note to the series. They've taken what made the series unique, and they've rolled with it. Now, I'm going to try to add as many video game elements as possible without turning this into a walkthrough for a game that doesn't exist. You'll be seeing what I mean in the next chapter, which I've already written up, but am in the process of editing.

I'd like to think that I've taken the best elements from each game (primarily FEAR 2 to be honest), and added my own unique flavor to it, but I'm sure that right now, it's impossible to tell if I did. So, read the chapter, and get really hyped for the story I'm going to give you.

Please review, and feel free, and encouraged to tell me any ideas you have, or even any complaints about the games if you have any.

-Sincerely Samaster01