Fatal Frame III: The Tormented (2005) pt. 2 of 4 - synopsis, continued

Welcome back! Last time around, we were introduced to our cast of characters, its major themes, and the general structure of the game. Today we'll be digging as deeply into the story as we can without getting into spoilers, basically everything up until the third act, so that we can do a little more analyzing and criticizing in pt. 3.

Okay, so we know that Yoshino had survivor's guilt, like Rei, and fell into a sleep that eventually consumed her. But why? And how? I mean, what’s the deal with the Manor of Sleep anyway?  

Old musty notes fill us in. Long ago, the Manor of Sleep was a real place that existed deep in the mountains and housed a religious shrine of no small import. The clan that operated out of the shrine was composed entirely of women, only tolerating men when they needed to expand the ranks a bit (if you catch my drift.) Not sure what they did with the countless baby boys who would have resulted from this, but whatever...  

This feminine clan also performed a now-obligatory rite of protection that is shrouded in mystery. All we know is that it involves a ‘sleeping priestess’ and it allowed those in the surrounding area to come and “offer their pain” to her. It also features impaling of some sort, but the details are currently muddy on exactly how and why. Still, whatever was conducted here sounds every bit as horrible as rites in Fatal Frame games generally are. 

It’s also around this point that we have our very first encounter with the ghost of the ‘woman brushing,’ yet another ghost in a Fatal Frame game that mistakes the player for their long-dead boyfriend. Believe it or not, she’ll become incredibly important to the story eventually, but not until a second playthrough. So just keep her in mind, I suppose. As best you can anyway. God, this game is dense. 

Trouble in paradise.

Okay, so as we’re learning all of this, the game also sort of reintroduces Miku for players who haven’t played the original Fatal Frame, just in time for her to begin acting extremely suss. She’s caught singing the “Handmaiden’s Lullaby” at one point, seemingly unconsciously, a traditional song that comes from the time before whatever calamity trapped the Manor of Sleep in the land of nightmares. Has she been dreaming of the Manor of Sleep as well, all this time? I mean, she has lost someone, and it’s easy to see how she’d feel guilty considering she had to make the decision to just leave her brother behind when he refused to go any further, but I thought she seemed like she was adjusting quite well. I guess that’s the nature of trauma though. You know, the tattoos and all that. 

Speaking of the tattoos, we have it confirmed around this point that each time one dreams of the Manor and makes it closer to the shrine at the center of it, their spectral tattoo spreads a little bit further, until it covers their entire body, eyes and all, just like Yoshino. And afterward, as we’ve witnessed ourselves, the affected party vanishes, leaving behind only a human-shaped soot mark.  

Getting back to our amateur detectives and their massive home, we’re finally filled in on a little detail that’s been bothering me, and the effect is… well, it’s a bit forced, actually. You see, while we already knew that Kei was friends with Rei’s dead fiance, Yuu, we’re now told that both of these guys were also friends with Mafuyu back before he disappeared in the first game. I guess folklorists have to stick together, but doesn't this feel just a tad absurd to anyone else? Like the worst possible way to approach canon welding? Guys? 

Anyway, that’s apparently their best explanation of how Miku got hooked up with Rei in the first place. After Mafuyu’s disappearance, Yuu took her in as a favor to his friend, and apparently, Rei didn’t object at all. So she’s not even a paid employee, she’s just crashing at Rei’s house and doing all the cleaning and chores. 

It’s at this point that we’re also filled in on previous series protagonist Mio Amakura’s condition, and it’s not looking good. She’s obviously afflicted with the same sort of guilt-based curse or illness as Rei and Yoshino, only it has progressed closer to the point where Yoshino was just before she was 'taken,' as Mio hardly ever wakes up anymore. Kei doesn’t mention a tattoo, but as it’s been established that no one but those afflicted can see them, that’s to be expected. As a little bonus, he attaches a headshot of Mio from the second game for maximum fan service.

Anywho, Kei has sent over some fruits of his tireless research offscreen, primarily a pair of tapes in his possession, which feature him interviewing people who claim to have been affected by this mysterious curse, or “urban legend” as he calls it, and who have seen the Manor of Sleep in their dreams.  The tape officially confirms once and for all that this curse preys on those who are unable to move on from their grief. It’s like some kind of ghostly Jigsaw is out there in the wild operating by way of Freddy Kruger and ridding the world of all its poor, grieving souls.

But forget about all that because we are officially all the way back in the place where the franchise began: Himuro Mansion. And we’re playing as Miku again! Duuude, I remember all of that stuff!

I guess this would be the appropriate time to reference back to the actual game and its structure, and how things have ever so slightly changed. This time around, you’ll be controlling multiple characters, each with their own strengths and weaknesses and upgrades, all of whom have to progress through their own themed sections alongside the wider architecture of the Manor of Sleep, making it feel like Fatal Frame again only EPIC! I don’t mind the attempt to make a sprawling horror game, but I can’t help but feel like this is just a genius ploy to recycle content even more than usual and call it a feature, but perhaps I’m just being cynical. 

Practically, it makes almost no impact on gameplay, as pointing and shooting and choosing the most appealing sounding upgrades works just as well here as elsewhere, only one of your playable characters, who I won’t spoil quite yet, is functionally gimped as far as offense goes, and so is encouraged to run away from ghosts and hide. He even gets a dedicated stealth button, but by the end of the game, his sections are still filled to the brim with hostile ghost encounters anyway: they just take a bit longer than usual because of his pitiful damage output, but I guess I’ll get into that a bit more when that character makes themselves known. 

Last time on Fatal Frame III...

So in case you don’t remember what happened during the first Fatal Frame or indeed, never played it, Fatal Frame III helpfully provides you with the cliff notes of the whole thing. Coming straight from its predecessors, however, definitely makes these recap chapters feel like naked padding, seeing as the narrative never moves a muscle here and we're not even getting new and interesting side stories, but they're ultimately inoffensive and the way they test your memory of previous games is neat.

After working her way through a remixed jumble of environments and mini-bosses from the original game, Miku unlocks a door and finds that she’s been in the Manor of Sleep all along, just in a little themed offshoot that connects right back into all the places Rei has been exploring. Apparently, the architecture of the Manor is pulling things from the memories of those that are trapped within, incorporating them alongside the features of the real place (Kuze Manor,) that once existed before whatever cataclysm sealed it in a dream. Neato. Oh, and we have our suspicions about Miku confirmed: she's been in the grips of the very same curse as Rei, Mio, and Yoshino all along. 

Which brings me to one of the most mind-bending aspects of Fatal Frame III's narrative, where the game seems to blur the lines between who is dreaming what. Like, did Miku dream what we just saw and Rei was just able to see it while she was sleeping, or was she dreaming that she was Miku the whole time? Probably the former but it’s never really explained and whenever Miku’s dreams end, we still cut to Rei waking up her tattoo spreading a bit further. Miku’s comments the next morning do seem to suggest that she had a nightmare, and she did recognize Himuro Mansion after all, but it’s still kind odd that Rei is able to be aware of what Miku is doing. I thought the whole point of this curse is that it insulates the person and amplifies their grief to the point where they can no longer even get up the energy to awaken at all until they wither away? How can she just decide to check in on Miku’s dreams like that? I mean, she's still the one who develops the dream photos during the day, even though Miku took them. In fact, Miku never seems to recognize the shots when she examines them nor ask how Rei got her hands on them, so I’m just like: what’s going on here guys? Is this a translation thing? 

Our little nostalgia trip to Himuro Mansion done with, Rei decides to dig through some more of Yuu’s records. She finds research he conducted on the urban legend surrounding the Manor of Sleep, all of which suggests that it has been claiming victims since at least the beginning of the twentieth century, though it’s likely even older than that. A letter from Kei waiting for us by the door confides that he has begun to dream of the Manor after beginning his investigation and is now officially in the grip of the tattoo curse. Sure enough, we begin the next chapter playing as him. Kei is, and let's be fair about this, by far the least compelling or even necessary character in the game but hey: multiple playable characters!

Kei’s debut chapter is yet more fan service and recapping, this time revolving around revisiting locations and ideas from the second game. Actually, upon looking ahead, both of your boy’s first chapters are nothing but summarizing and stalling for time in this fashion. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool to see these familiar locations remixed in this way, but should they really take up so much time? Even Miku only has one chapter that’s nothing but catch-up. Besides, is any of this crap really adding anything of substance to the story that Fatal Frame III is trying to tell? It just seems like stuff is being piled on to the narrative haphazardly, with no regard to how it may distract from what might be considered the main thread of this story. Of course, it’s also annoying that Fatal Frame II’s perfectly standalone plot is being stripped for parts here, but you can always just ignore it when you go back and play that one.

This is the chapter where we really start to get a sense of how huge and endlessly sprawling the Manor of Sleep really is, as we’ve now filled-out Kei’s little Crimson Butterfly-themed corner, Miku’s original Fatal Frame-themed corner, plus everything else we’ve explored as Rei, all combined into one big map. 

We also see a bit more of the mysterious blue tattooed lady that touched Rei all the way back in the first chapter of the game, the one who is presumably the one spreading the curse around. She’s been a minor presence throughout, but here, we have to run and hide from her a few times (Kei is the impotent stealth character I mentioned earlier) which reminds us that we have no idea who she is and why she’s important yet, though she clearly is important at least. 

Back in the waking world, it’s beginning to become clear that Rei’s apartment is being invaded by the demonic forces from her nightmares. This indicates that Rei is either losing her sanity or is incurring some sort of ghostly wrath for digging too deeply into the Manor. It may even be both, as while many of the spooky happenings take place while Rei is awake, one time, she’s attacked by a woman crawling on all fours with hideously long arms in the attic of her apartment, only to wake up and realize she had been dreaming all along, signaling that things are getting out of hand and the line between dream and reality has become irrevocably blurred. Has Rei gone beyond the point of no return? 

Concerning the Manor of Sleep, series vets will be happy to hear that where we’re at in the game roughly coincides with its first true-blue patented Fatal Frame fetch quest, one which tasks you to backtrack through basically every environment you’ve seen so far, searching for something that will unlock something else. In this instance, we have to track down four spectral “Shrine Carpenters,” with nothing but a vague location to go on, and pacify them one by one. Then, and only then, can you progress to the next chapter. Ugh. These are always my least favorite parts of these games, though at least here things are spelled out a little more explicitly so that I never became completely stumped.

This year's martyr.

So while we play hide-and-seek with these guys, we learn about who they were and what they’re doing here. They were carpenters hired to seal up the Kuze Shrine after the calamity that took place here, now renamed “The Unleashing,” itself said to occur when the “sleeping priestess” becomes “restless.” Obviously, the seal didn’t work too well considering the Kuze clan is nothing but a footnote in a history book at this point. I’m sorry, had I mentioned that the central clan of this story was named Kuze yet? Geez, I’m really getting overloaded here. 

Just like everything else in the Fatal Frame universe, ordinary carpentry wasn’t going to cut it in magically sealing up evil, so the four Shrine Carpenters were made into human sacrifices after the completion of their ‘upgrades’ by being buried, possibly alive, within the walls of the manor. 

The magical seal they were trying to invoke was something that had perhaps never been attempted before, something no one was sure would work, and something which ended up being a grave mistake on the part of the clan’s leadership. You see, they decided they would seal up the Kuze Shrine within a dream, in order to keep the vengeful force trapped within from harming anyone else in the waking world. In the process of sealing her up, however, something went horribly wrong, and now the restless priestess is free to take victims of her choosing, anywhere and at any time, provided they meet her very specific criteria. The picture of our antagonist is becoming clearer by the minute, and she’s a classically tragic villain in a vein suspiciously similar to Kirie from the original Fatal Frame. 

But as disturbing as all this information is, it’s hard not to be at least somewhat relieved that that lengthy fetch quest has finally concluded. So, what have you got for us next, Fatal Frame III: The Tormented? Oh… another fetch quest… We’ve got to, er, search the entire fucking map again to locate four “Purity Stones,” which are located exclusively in these tucked away little “doll rooms” that we’ve already found all but one of. Keep their locations and the routes you take to get there in the back of your head for later, if you can remember that is, because you will be needing them again a little later. Aren’t you excited? 

While attempting to gain egress into the last doll room, the one you’ve yet to explore up until this point, Miku and by extension the player are suddenly accosted by that same woman from the attic dream sequence that Rei experienced a little earlier. We learn almost nothing about her right away but boy is her debut a standout moment of horror. It’s one of the more visceral moments this series has ever seen. 

And if, like me, you’ve just about had all you can take of summary, rest assured we are almost done with this first bit, with only one crucial last thing to discuss: the so-called “Impaling Ritual” that all this horror and tragedy stems from. The thing that went so horribly wrong and caused the Kuze clan to seal the manor up in a dream. Every Fatal Frame has one, you know, and this one… boy, is it a doozy. 

So, here’s how it works: a priestess is chosen, and to be chosen, one must know and understand the pain of losing a loved one. This is because that priestess would have to sacrifice herself in the interest of healing a multitude of strangers’ pain and suffering. Kind of like Jesus, I suppose. 

First, the chosen sacrifice has her own pain "grafted" on a mirror by the "Engravers," before shattering it and freeing herself of her earthly attachments. Then people from the surrounding countryside visit to “offer" their pain to her. Somehow, she relieves them of it via tattoos that are etched into every square inch of her flesh. And finally, this poor tattooed priestess is taken to the Chamber of Thorns, which lies at the heart of the Kuze Manor, lulled to sleep with the Handmaiden’s song that Miku was caught humming earlier, and then staked to the ground via her hands and feet (see what I mean with the Jesus comparison?) to prevent her from ever waking up, somehow. Don’t ask me why it’s so important that she sleep forever or how she can sleep forever and how getting staked through the hands and feet wouldn’t wake you up: it’s magic. Fine. 

The Unleashing is what happens when something interrupts that magical sleep. If the sleeping priestess were to ever awaken from her slumber, her magical tattoos would somehow bleed into her eyes (like with Yoshino in the hospital waaay earlier) the rift between the living and the dead would begin to break down, and she would become a force of supernatural vengeance. Hey… that sure sounds a hell of a lot like that blue tattooed lady, now that you mention it.  

And with that, we are done with summary (for now) baby! When next we speak, I’ll finally be diving into some actual analysis and criticism of this wholly overcomplicated, convoluted tale and speaking a bit more on the actual quality of the experience as a survival horror game. Hope to see you then!

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