Five Nights at Freddy's - Scott Cawthon Financially Supports Anti-LGBTQ+ Politicians

[Salamander]

...There's something really weird about his eyes.  They look like they were scribbled on with MS Paint.

[TCB]

Nightmare Foxy...dropped ball there.

So Nightmare Chica is left, interesting. Or not I dunno. 

[Tani Coyote]

Have y'all forgotten that Foxy began as an exception to the others? Running and animated while everyone else was static barring the headclick thing?

 

Seems par the course he gets to keep his Nightmare eyes.

so based on complaints 2 and 3 its basically turning into the super Mario series?

I can understand why people are upset that the horror series is becoming less scary (to be fair though I think the fan animations already kinda did that themselves)     that said just because we are getting a cartoony vibe rpg game doesn't mean scott won't sneek in some subtle dark story bits into the game and things might not be as simple as their designs would suggest after all we haven't even seen what the enemy units are designed like (unless some of the animatronics we know of will be enemy units)

as for the installments my only answer to that is "they bought the games and demanded more games so scott made more and something tells me a good chunk of the whiners are going to buy fnaf world when it releases anyways because of whatever reasons they may have"

 

I'm not talking about whiners who are part of the fanbase, though. I mean people who aren't part of the fanbase and just hate on it constantly.

 

This is the reaction with anything popular though when one doesn't particularly care for it.

 

 

Because God forbid one just not care for something instead of joining a hatedom.

 

Edited September 20, 2015 by Ty the Tasmanian Ogilvie

[Shaddy Zaphod]

So why is nightmare chica the last to change? That feels like a weird choice. I mean, technically it's the only one who hasn't had a game with direct focus OR some outlying traits to make it different, but I doubt that actually has anything to do with it whatsoever.

What I do find interesting is that with the way I thought the nightmare animatronics were overkill and dumb before, they now take it in the opposite, FNAF2-direction of uncanny valley, rather than how-much-stupider-can-we-make-these-things-look-without-just-having-four-endoskeletons. This is something I approve of.

Okay but really what the fuck is this even going to be? I hope the "new story elements" are presented in a manner that makes it possible to take them seriously, but it doesn't look promising in that regard. 

[Tani Coyote]

I personally can't help but have this feeling it might be another universe entirely that mixes pre-existing elements, a la what Klonoa Heroes did with the wider Klonoa lore.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

It's funny that the only time we see Mangle before she got turned into a two-headed spiderbot is as a chibi robot.

[Salamander]

It's not just Nightmare Chica left; I believe a Phantom Freddy also has to appear.  Odd pacing, though, I agree.

As for the nature of FNAF World as a game, I think the chances of it having anything to do with existing continuity are pretty poor.  Cuddly cutesy versions of animatronics which are hallucinatory, nightmares, or happen to contain mouldering corpses seem unlikely to be anything produced within the existing universe.

[Tani Coyote]

The plot twist - maybe it takes place in our world, with FNAF just being a series of games inside this game.

[Salamander]

What I've been thinking is something like that - that FNAF World is very consciously "a video game," and while it has its own story and so on then it's very self-aware of its true nature.  ...It's kind of a shame it's not a horror game, as I keep on imagining some kind of Nanashi No Game setup where the premise is that it's a FNAF fangame that becomes haunted or something.

[kirby1up]

well the pictures finally done no signs of phantom freddy and to quote scott cawthon  "coming 2016 (seriously.)"

[PaddyFancy]

Knowing Scott he'll release it as soon as it turns 2016 on the International Date Line when the Republic of Kiribati sees in the new year.

Because technically it'll be 2016 right? XP

[Klinsy]

And here's Phantom Freddy, the gang's all here!
 

Unless we get Purple Guy, Phone Guy, the Night guards and the Child.

[sonicgirl313]

Well it seems Scott is hinting at Balloon Boy making an appearance in FNAF 4. I assume BB will be the twist to the familiar minigame Scott mentioned.

Scott has also confirmed that he intends to make more horror games that are not FNAF.

So why is nightmare chica the last to change? That feels like a weird choice. I mean, technically it's the only one who hasn't had a game with direct focus OR some outlying traits to make it different, but I doubt that actually has anything to do with it whatsoever.

What I do find interesting is that with the way I thought the nightmare animatronics were overkill and dumb before, they now take it in the opposite, FNAF2-direction of uncanny valley, rather than how-much-stupider-can-we-make-these-things-look-without-just-having-four-endoskeletons. This is something I approve of.

Okay but really what the fuck is this even going to be? I hope the "new story elements" are presented in a manner that makes it possible to take them seriously, but it doesn't look promising in that regard. 

Scott actually answered that on his Steam Page. He said he chose to change Nightmare Chica last because he found her the hardest to make look cute.

[Matthew]

Scott was making things up as he went along, but that isn't indicative of a story without merit or reason for investment. FNAF 1 was pretty self-contained. The newspaper clippings about five kids being murdered in an establishment where five animatronics are acting demonically sells itself. It wasn't filled to the brim with detail, but the implication was there that you could make a logical connection. Had FNAF not been successful, it could've still stood on its own narrative. But since it blew up, he had room to logically expand upon the ambiguity he deliberately introduced- What was the Bite of '87, how long has this been going on, who is the killer, and other questions. Just because he didn't actually plan out four games from the outset (and no one really does) doesn't mean the story is subsequently not to be discussed and debated.

The fact it's made up as it goes along doesn't mean the story has no merit. The reason the story has no merit is because, on the whole, it's so vague and hides the fact it's underdeveloped, with little thought put into it, by obscuring the plot in easter eggs and cryptic atari minigames. It's made up as it goes along in a bad way and for some reason fans don't acknowledge the story is completely atrocious. I enjoy the theories but I know the game's canon is a complete hot-potch.

FNaF1 was the only game that was self contained because Cawthon had no idea that the series was going to be a success so he didn't have these far-flung ideas of satisfying fan theories. As far as I'm concerned, the plot was very simple to start with. The animatronics were possessed by some dead children who were killed by a serial killer and that was it. Golden Freddy was just a secret animatronic easter egg, there was no clear cut purple guy, there was no Puppet controlling everything (the pictures in FNaF1 is really stretching things), Bite of '87 had no real significance and was just exposition and phone guy was just a narrative tutorial character with no meaning. 

Also, think about how stupid the premise of the first game actually is. Animatronics that have to wander around during the day because otherwise they will lock up is hilariously dumb. Firstly, the animatronics would have be way more advanced than what we have now (I know they are possessed but they are still working on animatronic technology) but secondly, can you imagine a restaurant that risks complete closure and potential criminal charges when the police finds out they are risking kid's lives with dangerous unpredictable animatronics (that have already bitten a kid before). I can't take such a premise seriously and unless a game has a coherent and satisfying plot then I'm afraid I can't enjoy a story that's made up entirely out of cryptic secrets. That's why I don't like Destiny's story.

I actually liked the story of FNaF4 the most out of any of the games because it actually had a simple plot that worked at what it was aiming to tell. You play as a kid in a coma who's having hellish nightmares about the animatronics that terrified him (or possibly seriously injured him) as a kid. It's well done and precise, I hope it's the continued gold standard for Cawthon. Since the game has a satisfying and simple plot it's then possible to enjoy all the easter eggs and little fan-nods that are in the game.

[Salamander]

I'm quite willing to suspend my disbelief on some of the points that you raise, especially when the story largely exists to justify the gameplay experience, but I agree that in this particular medium there's a lot to be said for telling a self-contained story that doesn't spend too much time on the finer points of an otherwise thinly-sketched series mythology.

[Nepenthe]

The fact it's made up as it goes along doesn't mean the story has no merit. The reason the story has no merit is because, on the whole, it's so vague and hides the fact it's underdeveloped, with little thought put into it, by obscuring the plot in easter eggs and cryptic atari minigames. It's made up as it goes along in a bad way and for some reason fans don't acknowledge the story is completely atrocious. I enjoy the theories but I know the game's canon is a complete hot-potch.

FNaF1 was the only game that was self contained because Cawthon had no idea that the series was going to be a success so he didn't have these far-flung ideas of satisfying fan theories. As far as I'm concerned, the plot was very simple to start with. The animatronics were possessed by some dead children who were killed by a serial killer and that was it. Golden Freddy was just a secret animatronic easter egg, there was no clear cut purple guy, there was no Puppet controlling everything (the pictures in FNaF1 is really stretching things), Bite of '87 had no real significance and was just exposition and phone guy was just a narrative tutorial character with no meaning. 

Also, think about how stupid the premise of the first game actually is. Animatronics that have to wander around during the day because otherwise they will lock up is hilariously dumb. Firstly, the animatronics would have be way more advanced than what we have now (I know they are possessed but they are still working on animatronic technology) but secondly, can you imagine a restaurant that risks complete closure and potential criminal charges when the police finds out they are risking kid's lives with dangerous unpredictable animatronics (that have already bitten a kid before). I can't take such a premise seriously and unless a game has a coherent and satisfying plot then I'm afraid I can't enjoy a story that's made up entirely out of cryptic secrets. That's why I don't like Destiny's story.

I actually liked the story of FNaF4 the most out of any of the games because it actually had a simple plot that worked at what it was aiming to tell. You play as a kid in a coma who's having hellish nightmares about the animatronics that terrified him (or possibly seriously injured him) as a kid. It's well done and precise, I hope it's the continued gold standard for Cawthon. Since the game has a satisfying and simple plot it's then possible to enjoy all the easter eggs and little fan-nods that are in the game.

A story that has multiple readings over the events and themes isn't automatically bad; if anything, the stories that can be discussed beyond blow-by-blow plot elements and basic emotional feelings tend to be more interesting and thought-provoking from a critical perspective. You can argue about the effectiveness of the delivery methods of certain bits of information, particularly since I think most people find 3's hidden mini-games ridiculous, but the actual information contained within the games concerning the narrative is actually objectively consistent with the events and rules that Scott established beforehand, even though the fully detailed timeline and certain elements' thematic meanings are open to interpretation. Seriously, there's no real plot holes here that completely break the story and make discussion impossible. To be able to create a compelling narrative that's that airtight, asks audiences to spend this amount of time and effort deciphering its deeper backstory, and still entertain is excessively hard to do when you consider most people can't even write a basic short story. What Scott did is an achievement worth applauding and criticizing the story because it asks you to invest that kind of mental power comes across as relatively defeatist.

I'm also not sure what good it does in saying that the premise of the animatronics needing constant maintenance at the risk of their servos locking up is a significant detriment when we're already accepting that it's even possible for animatronics divorced from true robotics to be possessed by "restless souls" in the first place, particularly since such excuses were originally intended to be tongue-in-cheek, unreliable justifications for why Freddy Fazbear's even operated the way they did in the first place. Seriously, there's detached, eight-foot tall floating heads of eyeless bear costumes attacking people and we're going to knock the story on the admittedly contrived nature of how completely unrealistic robots even physically work? This isn't a science-fiction vehicle.

In general, it seems your problem is that you just don't like ambiguous narrative, which is fine, but to make an actual quality assessment about the story from that is pretty misguided. Just because I hate playing car sims for example doesn't mean I'd actually call Forza 6 a crap game.

[Matthew]

In general, it seems your problem is that you just don't like ambiguous narrative, which is fine, but to make an actual quality assessment about the story from that is pretty misguided. Just because I hate playing car sims for example doesn't mean I'd actually call Forza 6 a crap game.

I do like ambiguous narrative, I don't like it when the only thing going for the narrative is ambiguity. FNaF is just a bunch of hot-potched half-thought out ideas thrown at a writing board to see what sticks. There's no clear well-fleshed out plot carrying any of this out except for FNaF4.

Let me give you what I consider a good ambiguous narrative. Shakespeare's Hamlet is incredibly ambiguous, you could make a whole 'Game Theory' series out of all the characters. Let me give you a classic example. One of the big 'what if's' in Hamlet is if Hamlet is actually insane. Is he insane, pretending to be insane or is pretending to be insane but has actually fallen insane in pretending to be insane? There are loads of what-ifs in Hamlet that are like this. However, in Hamlet there is an actual plot that is clear and coherent that is supporting all this. It's not like Hamlet is just a bunch of ambiguous details thrown at the reader because Shakespeare thought throwing some vague plot threads that weren't really developed would make a good narrative.

This is why I like FNaF4 far more than any of the others from a narrative standpoint, because there is that clear narrative then I'm more interested to find out exactly what Fredbear or Nightmare are. I'm more interested in all the other themes as well, like the nightmare motifs. I mean, I'm not saying this as someone who dislikes FNaF. I like the first and think it was the best because, despite the stupid premise, I think it's still the creepiest out of them and I think FNaF4 was a big return to form. I dislike FNaF2 aside from the Atari Minigames and greatly dislike FNaF3 except for the ending though so there's that.

Edited September 25, 2015 by Matthew

[Nepenthe]

I'm not sure why you keep saying that only 1 and 4 have a plot when the mini-games and phone calls frame the plot of the other games. 2 is about the pizzeria reopening after scandal and the animatronics coming to life to try and stop the murders that happened last time. 3 is about the murderer's undoing after the pizzeria has closed and his birth as Springtrap, and the souls' personal journey to finally attain rest.

4 ironically has even more ambiguity due to its deliberate introduction of timeline confusion, the still awful tease of the box, Plushtrap's mere existence, and Scott's own admission that no one has actually figured out what's going on (we know everything about the other three games in his word which further weakens your claim that they're more ambiguous somehow, as well as your certainty that the game isn't taking place in real time) and its finale only really makes sense in any context by connecting the characters and implied meanings and fates back towards the first three games.

Otherwise you are left with a more standalone yet nonsensical story that dissatisfied people so much at the outset they were trying to make up random meta readings ("the box represents the fans!!!") and waiting for narrative DLC that will never come to make it work. It can't even be easily argued to be more emotional if you've gotten invested in the souls' fates in 3.

I also don't get your constant insistence that the plots are just undeveloped nonsense thrown at the wall, when again, all of the information we've gotten is airtight and non-contradictory in order to actually build the narrative and understand it. And we know this because again, Scott said that we figured everything out. The only difference between 1-3 and 4 is that 4 is the really only game to spoonfeed us direct information through locked, dialogue-heavy cut scenes.

Edited September 25, 2015 by Nepenthe

[Matthew]

I also don't get your constant insistence that the plots are just undeveloped nonsense thrown at the wall, when again, all of the information we've gotten is airtight and non-contradictory in order to actually build the narrative and understand it. And we know this because again, Scott said that we figured everything out. 

I have to disagree with that because it really doesn't. It's literally just random ideas thrown together in a vague presentation to make it appear more clever than it actually is. We have no idea who purple guy, the killer, actually is (the fucking antagonist) and it can't be bloody phone guy because it makes no sense why the animatronics would still kill the player character once he's dead. The spirits of the dead kids could just be explained away as defiled and now evil, but that argument has no merit because it's not developed or fleshed out at all. If it is what's happened it's undeveloped as fuck.

And if it is phone guy, talk about fucking retcons. He's obviously killed by all the animatronics in the first game, yet in the third game, he dies through the spirits of the dead kids. So unless the kids suddenly develop animatronic noises it makes no sense. The only reason people like MatPat jumped to phone guy is because he's really the only other character in the game beside the protagonist who really exists. So purple guy has to be him or he's just same nameless purple guy. It's a matter of deduction

But it must be phone guy because Cawthon has confirmed so! What's happened was that Cawthon just made shit up as he went along and threw his ideas in the air because he knew fans were going to find a way to explain anything. Thus, he's thrown plot threads wildly in the air and they appear to unite but the cover's a smokescreen. He says we have figured it all out, fucking great. He's probably just saying want fans want to hear him say, that we figured out 1-3 but FNaF4 was super mysterious! OOOH. That or he's starting to believe his own rhetoric, but I seriously hope that's not the case.

The phone guy in the first game was just some guy who got killed in the shift before you. He's a narrative tutorial tool, serving a service similar to the journals of dead adventurers in games like Onimusha. He's there to heighten the atmosphere, improve immersion and act as a tutorial. He's good at that, he's clearly not the big villain of the whole game and was never intended to be because it's a pretty important plot point. Like, if Phone Guy was always intended to be the antagonist it wouldn't just be hidden away from the player. That's a failure of the writer, you don't hide your villain in contrived cryptic riddles. Side characters like Zack in FF7, sure, not fucking Sephiroth.

I also think the vast majority of the praise for the lore for FNaF comes from GameTheory and as a long time fan of MatPat, I'm so sad he's become so attached to that series. We are in a situation now were people watch his videos for FNaF, who probably don't watch much else of his stuff, and don't understand his sense of humour. He knows the lore is fucking bananas, it's part of his appeal to make videos that are utterly ridiculous and act as though they are genuine. He even explicitly says FNaF's lore is ridiculous in his video about FNaF4. It was part of his appeal from the start to make over the top far-reaching theories and deliver them in a heart-felt manner.

Everything he says is supposed to be taken with a massive pinch of salt yet you have people running around like his word is the fucking untold truth. It's ridiculous.

I like FNaF, but the lore is honestly completely nuts and gibberish.

You need the basics of story to be able to tell an interesting and compelling narrative. FNaF doesn't have any basics because the story is a fucking mess.

Edited September 25, 2015 by Matthew

[Disonoid 3000]

Wait, Scott confirmed Purple Guy to be Phone guy? When the hell did that happen? I need citation on that, it's too stupid to take without proof.

 

 

[Matthew]

Wait, Scott confirmed Purple Guy to be Phone guy? When the hell did that happen? I need citation on that, it's too stupid to take without proof.

Well he didn't explicitly confirm but he practically did as he's confirmed MatPat was correct about virtually everything, so he might as well have since it's something MatPat's always stuck to.

Edited September 25, 2015 by Matthew

[Nepenthe]

You're wrong. We do have an idea of who the Purple Guy is: He's a homicidal employee of the Freddy Fazbear's franchise and the soul haunting Springtrap. His name, backstory, favorite food, and whatever else anyone could possibly want to know about him has no relevance to the actual narrative and point of the story anymore than knowing this same information about Phone Guy would radically change his role in the plot.

You're also speculating unnecessarily on stuff we already know. We know for certain that Phone Guy is not Purple Guy because context clues have obviously dictated this since 2 and utterly screamed it at audiences in 3. Subsequently, Cawthon never confirmed Phone Guy as Purple Guy. His commending of MatPat's theory specifically said "You almost got everything right," of which that could mean anything, including the fact that MatPat was wrong about the killer's identity (he has yet to reconcile the fact that Phone Guy died in 1 and yet Purple Guy is still alive afterwards. He even mentioned it but just glossed over it because it was obviously inconvenient). 

And really, you think MatPat is the only reason people care about the franchise, as if he's the only one on the Internet with genuine interest in the franchise and enough of a brain to sit down for awhile and trawl through the Internet? Normal fans and LPers were into solving the story before he got into the fray because it's interesting on its own merits. I figured the first three games out just by watching Markiplier and checking my theories against the information compiled on the Wiki. This narrative in and of itself isn't that complicated, again up until 4 which still stands as the narrative with the most potential of having been an actual cock-up.

[Matthew]

I know Markiplier is like the king of FNaF for the dedicated fans, but MatPat's videos on FNaF1 and 2 got over 10 million views so I'd imagine they are overwhelmingly influential, especially in correlation with the anecdotal evidence from the fans of FNaF shouting his name around on the web. 

We are just going to have to disagree on the merits of the story. I find this kind of story-telling bullshit, it's why I don't like Destiny's story. I really do feel you need the fundamentals of story to tell an interesting narrative mythology and FNaF never really does this because it's so cryptic and I associate this with piss-poor writing and underdevelopment. You can like it if you want and that's cool, I'm not going to rain on your parade, but I think it's dumb.

[Nepenthe]

You keep saying you need the story fundamentals to have a good story without actually demonstrating what those fundamentals are and from there how FNAF lacks them, and just as well you keep equating cryptic with bad when there's plenty of classic fiction that does much worse in forcing you to figure out the true subtext. My point of contention is not that you don't like it, but rather that you've failed to put up a more convincing argument with actual defined terms. Just as well, if you didn't want to rain on anyone's parade you wouldn't have started out by mocking people interested in the stories by calling that interest "hilarious." No one likes a high horse.

[Matthew]

You keep saying you need the story fundamentals to have a good story without actually demonstrating what those fundamentals are and from there how FNAF lacks them, and just as well you keep equating cryptic with bad when there's plenty of classic fiction that does much worse in forcing you to figure out the true subtext. My point of contention is not that you don't like it, but rather that you've failed to put up a more convincing argument with actual defined terms. Just as well, if you didn't want to rain on anyone's parade you wouldn't have started out by mocking people interested in the stories by calling that interest "hilarious." No one likes a high horse.

Classic fiction that's vague though, such as Finnegin's Wake usually gives you the basic concepts of why things are happening though, rather than hiding it in the pages. FNaF doesn't give even the smallest of details explaining why things happen, like why purple guy killed the kids. It just comes off as undeveloped vagueness for the sake of hiding how little thought out it is.

I didn't mean to get on a high horse when I criticise the plot of these games. I actually do like FNaF believe it or not  . I often use hyperbole in criticism, it's not meant to be taken seriously. So sorry if you got the impression i was mocking you.

We are supposed to be having fun here