But below the surface, Frictional Games - the studio who developed the game - is asking the player to redeem Daniel from his monstrous past.Įxamining Daniel’s in-game model, he’s actually only rendered as the arm that carries the lantern.

However, Daniel becomes aware that these people aren’t actually criminals, drinks the potion, and in the first note to himself requests that he “redeem us both.” On the surface, this might lead one to believe that Daniel is referring to the Daniel before and after drinking the amnesia potion. Alexander promises Daniel a way to escape the “Shadow” by capturing criminals and torturing them within the confines of the castle to gather “vitae” (a kind of life force or life-energy). The short version of Daniel’s story: after taking a mysterious orb from a tomb in the Sahara desert, he begins to be hunted by the “Shadow,” an unknown presence that manifests itself through fleshy growths. But what Amnesia ultimately asks of its player once they glean enough information from these notes and flashbacks is something more dire: the task of judging the player-character, of deciding whether or not he can be redeemed.

Amnesia seems simple in what it asks of its players: explore the castle while avoiding detection and death at the hands of its monsters, solve puzzles, pick up notes, and experience auditory flashbacks that fill in Daniel’s backstory. The player is left with a note, written by the “past” Daniel, instructing him to descend into the depths of the castle and kill someone named Alexander. But is Daniel a different person under the player’s control? Conventionally, gamers are pushed towards a “redemptive” or “good” choice for the character they control, but Amnesia asks the player if they are even fit to make those very choices for someone else.

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