Good news, fellow cowards. Amnesia: Rebirth can now be played from start to finish without ever coming face-to-face with a spooky monster.
Arriving as a free update on Steam, Epic and GOG, Amnesia's new Adventure Mode echoes a similar mode for Frictional's previous release, SOMA. Like that game's Safe Mode, Adventure removes all "life-threatening" encounters with baddies—but the developer has also taken larger steps to pivot the tone of Amnesia away from horror.
Rebirth's desert environments have been illuminated to alleviate the base game's sense of claustrophobia, and fear effects have been removed entirely. New puzzles have also been introduced in certain areas, changing the mood from one of dread to what creative lead Fredrik Olsson called a more "Indiana Jones type of adventure."
"We believe that anyone who loves a good story-driven adventure game will be stoked about this new mode. Not everyone is into horror and we don’t want that to block people from experiencing Tasi’s story," Olsson continued. "We did something very similar when we released the Safe mode for SOMA. It was extremely well received and opened up the game to a much broader audience, something we hope will happen with Rebirth as well."
SOMA's Safe Mode worked so well because the monsters weren't exactly core to that game's themes. Often, the sudden appearance of a videogame spook would spoil the building dread of existential panic the game worked so hard to build. But Rebirth's themes are motherhood are closely tied to its fears.
Does pressing F to baby have the same weight if I'm not genuinely scared for my unborn child? I suppose it's time to find out.
