Hello everyone,
I decided to make this post because last night I randomly started thinking about when I first completed Hidden hands: initiation, this isn't exactly a review, more like I want to put what I felt while playing into words that I want to share with you all (btw SPOILER ALERT for Hidden hands), probably not that interesting but at least I can say I have it written somewhere, also wall of text incoming, sorry about that. Now the mission itself is okay, I'd give it a 7/10 because I like the idea of doing an initiation and I also like it being set in a lonely island but what I want to talk about here is more than just mission design and how good it is, I will explain everything in order:
1- Intro
So the mission doesn't have a video intro but just text, now that's fine but there's no denying that video intros immerse the player a lot more, in this case however I think that was a good choice because this "lesser" immersion actually enforces the feelings this mission gave me, and, paradoxically, made me more immersed (though not in the way the author might have wanted).
Also the music used in the intro is kinda unnerving, I don't know if this is a custom music made by jack farmer but I feel like it would be very good for horror missions.
2- The Island
This mission takes place in a "mysterious island" and that alone made me feel... well... isolated. You are tasked with stealing a bunch of stuff from different places and this is where the "fun" starts: the objetives themselves are nothing out of the ordinary, the places you're about to rob though are... weird.
Starting off I want to point out how strange it is to have these locations on the same island, maybe the bank and the manor could make sense but an inventor's house that looks like it's trying to become one with nature relatively close to a builder's church which in turn is relatively close to what appears to be a cursed place that leads to underground ruins filled with zombies looks a bit off to me, not considering that this island was described as "mysterious" in the intro, what this could mean is anyone's guess but my own interpretation is that this island was recently discovered and weird things happen there, not the kind of place you'd want to build a manor, house or church isn't it?
3- The buildings
Now we have to describe the buildings themselves (and this is the meat of this post): they are rather large. As soon as you enter the manor (from the main doors) you'll notice it consists of one REALLY big room with a couple fountains and 2 large plants on each side, I've never been inside a manor so they might just look like that irl, but it feels kinda strange to have a fountain indoors doesn't it? Then you also have another big room in the center which seems to be used only as a dinner table, it all feels very off to me... as if this house was hastily made by someone for a specific but unknown purpose. Moving on the second floor we have very wide hallways and, while there are guards, the dimensions of the hallways alone makes it feel very empty.
It all felt... fake, as if someone out there was watching me, possibly someone who also built not only the manor but the whole island.
TDM has your regular NPCs that come with an array of voicelines and animations which generally its fine but as I started feeling observed I also started to think "what if these people aren't actually people?", I felt like they too should be wondering why that place is like that, maybe even wonder why their rich employer decided to build on a "mysterious" island, you can see how I started to essentially immerse myself in a story I made up by feeling paranoid.
Think of it as the guards roaming inside thief gold's Constantine's house, where you'd ask yourself "why am I the only one being freaked out here? Why are these guards just going on as if everything is normal? Are they even human? Is this a simulation?".
Everytime I'd travel between objectives I felt like watching my back as if I was being stalked by someone and at the same time I felt that whatever I was doing I wasn't doing by my own free will, it's as if I'm the protagonist in a tale, where the world's actions are already predetermined but I happen to be the only one aware of this.
I hesitate to call this a horror-game type of feeling because there is no real monster stalking me (or is there?), so there is no real danger outside the guards patrolling these buildings, it's a much subtler horror feeling, where I know there is no one lurking in the shadows apart from me, and there really isn't anyone lurking in the shadows apart from me... and yet my brain thinks "what if there is though?" because of the eyes I feel observing my every move. It's like a horror without horror kind of thing, do games like this even exist? Probably not.
To make this easier to understand try imagining you waking up tomorrow and everything looks as always: same breakfast, same trip to work, same colleagues, same everything... except the people and the things around you feel off, I don't mean they look different or anything, they just FEEL off and the more time you spend living the more you feel like a test subject who has been abducted from your original world and put in a look-alike world. This may sound similar to Matrix if you will, with the only difference that Neo never finds out about it and keeps living in a fake world chasing a truth he can never reach. Maybe I'm crazy but boy wouldn't I love to read a book with this kind of story.
4- Conclusion
Now to conclude my possibly confused ramblings I want to thank jack farmer for making this mission (and the hidden hands franchise in general) because while this is not the way he intended the mission to be enjoyed (or maybe it was?) it managed to make me feel a kind of creepiness that you don't often find in games (I like horror games despite being easily scared lol).
Also I had the same feelings I just described in another mission however I can't for the life of me remember the name, if someone could remind me that would be greatly appreciated, it was a mission about stealing a gem that acted as the "tear" of a painting.
Have a nice day!