My History with FNAF - FNAF 4

In my FNAF retrospective, I cover FNAF 4, the first controversial game of the series.

         I’m back… A year and a half later. Between my journal on Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 and this journal, my feelings on the franchise haven’t changed much, thankfully.

         Similarly to my recent Sonic journal, since all my old journals were deleted from DeviantArt, I’ll give a summary of my thoughts on FNAF 1-3.

         None of the games are spectacular gameplay-wise, though I do find FNAF 2 the best in this category. While the most repetitive, it’s at least a stimulating repetition. FNAF 2 is my favourite of the games as well, as though it doesn’t match the horror atmosphere of the first game, it makes up for it with the more intriguing lore, animatronics and mechanics. FNAF 1 has the best scare factor. FNAF 3 was a satisfying conclusion to this small story, although it came up short in the scare department. A constant with FNAF 2 and 3 are that I find the minigames scarier than the main games; it’s creepy in FNAF 2 with the ear-piercing static.

         They’re not great games, but it was a great time to be in the franchise. I compare them to the first three Kingdom Hearts games; even if there’s a worse title of them, I still like them all. These KH comparisons will make more sense as we continue.

Lead-Up to FNAF 4

         After FNAF 3 released in March of 2015, a teaser for FNAF: The Final Chapter released in April of 2015. At this point, I questioned if Scott Cawthon was rushing these games out. Sure, they were simple click games, but game development shouldn’t be so fast.

         My reaction to the teaser was confusion more than anything else. Freddy had a demonic look, and all these little Freddies poked out of his body. I knew immediately that this wasn’t a pizzeria, so perhaps it was another haunted attraction. After all, FNAF 3 had this concept, where goons tried to profit off of murders.

         I usually speed through the lead-up, but it’s crucial to my feelings on this game. Cawthon released an image of every animatronic, asking some variation of “was it me?” If you brightened the Foxy teaser and looked in his eyeballs, you’d find the number 87. The Bite of ‘87, the thing that had been mentioned since FNAF 1? Holy cow. We were gonna get answers to this? My 13-year-old mind was intrigued.

         And the final teaser had a new animatronic we’d not seen before. It had a purple hat and a purple bowtie. Golden Freddy? But Golden Freddy had black elements. Who was this dude?

         The game would release in July of that year, just four months after FNAF 3.

Presentation

         At a glance, FNAF 4 looks like an upgrade to FNAF 3. However, the game isn’t running in a 3D engine. It just uses more tricks to simulate 3D. The environment has more animations, in part because the protagonist can run around the room. In fact, the reason he runs with his head down is totally to hide the fake 3D that the game uses.

         Despite this, the location is not as scary as any of the three previous ones. It’s a child’s bedroom, oddly with two doors that lead into a long hallway. Heck, it looks like my room back when I was a child. Toys all over the place, that old closet design, you know.

         The visuals may be lacking, but sound is this game’s strength. More than the previous FNAF titles, audio is emphasised here. There are more atmospheric noises like dogs barking, and you actively hear the animatronics move around. It’s a fair compromise to make up for the otherwise average visuals. Audio is an underutilised element of horror in general, so this is a nice twist on what FNAF prioritised beforehand.

         The minigame cutscenes are more detailed here. We’ve jumped from Atari 2600 to Intellivision, ladies and gentlemen. They’re as colourful as the ones from FNAF 3, but include more disturbing audio design seen in FNAF 4. I still find FNAF 2’s minigames creepier, but these are an upgrade to FNAF 3’s, strictly in the presentation. I’m choosing to mention this here because unlike the predecessor, there are no optional minigames. Well, no optional retro minigames. These are mandatory cutscenes that happen to be playable, taking place between every night.

Animatronics

         The nightmare designs don’t bother me as a concept. It’s no secret this game takes place in a child’s head, so it’s alright if they’re exaggerated. But in execution, the results aren’t great. Only a few manage to frighten me.

         Starting with the worst, Nightmare Freddy is not scary in the least. I’ve tried to find some horror in him, but I’ve got nothing. Heck, the little Freddles are creepier than their daddy. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t appear much to begin with. While Freddy has always been rarer than other animatronics, this man is on vacation in this game. I’ve never gotten one jumpscare from him. Never. You have to actively attempt to get him to kill you.

         Bonnie, Chica and Foxy are better but still fail to draw a great reaction from me. Nightmare Fredbear also falls in that camp, even with its stomach-mouth.

         However, one animatronic is genuinely horrifying. Nightmare, the black variant of Nightmare Freddy. I don’t care if he’s just a lazy recolour. He’s so effective because he blends with the environment more naturally. And unlike everyone else’s jumpscare, his is a static JPEG with a unique, longer sound. It sounds so cheap when I describe it, and I guess it is in practice. But that single image is the scariest thing this game has to offer for me.

Gameplay

         FNAF 4 completely abandons the camera system. I appreciate this design, as had it been used in this title, it easily could’ve been boring. The formula is otherwise the same. You’re defenceless, you need to check the sides of a room, and you have to wait for animatronics to leave your door if they arrive. Same system with some tweaks.

         You’re able to run to the closet in the centre, look behind to your bed, or approach the two doors.

         Freddy and his Freddles are the least important mechanic. Freddy only jumpscares the player if there are three Freddles on the bed for too long of a time. But this almost never happens because it’s so easy to shine the light on them every couple of seconds. They’re so trivial that I feel their inclusion is pointless. At the very least, they’re not annoying either.

         Foxy is similar, although he’s more aggressive. He’s like Freddy in FNAF 1, where he’ll start in the hallway with the other guys, but when he’s in a certain room, he will never go back. In this case, that would be your closet. Once Foxy gets in your room—I believe this happens if you check the door to a hall he’s not in—he’s hunting for booty in that closet. The strategy is simply closing the door for a while until he reverts to a cute plush form. Otherwise, he’s on a similar timer on Freddy, though the threat is higher.

         Bonnie and Chica can enter your room if you’re negligent, but most of the deaths will occur at the doors. Basically, you have to shine your light on them down the hall to scare them off. If they’re right at your door, shining the light results in death. You need to close the door quickly, wait for them to leave, then return to your standard gameplay.

         Let me ask something. What is stopping the kid from closing the door in this game?

         I know the explanation is that the game needed to happen (or didn’t, but we’ll get into that soon), but seriously, please explain this to me. In FNAF 1, the building is on power. FNAF 2 and 3 don’t have any means of protection from animatronics other than FNAF 2’s mask, which you probably couldn’t breathe through well. FNAF 4? Bro, just lock your bedroom door and keep your light on your bed until 6 AM. The game’s logic already makes less sense.

         But my real issue with FNAF 4 is that it’s so repetitive. I will give it credit for being scarier than FNAF 2 and 3, simply because there is so little you can see. That you have to listen, potentially being distracted by other sounds, really puts you on edge. But when all is said and done, all you’re doing is running up to doors and shutting them or shining a light. Once you get the audio cues down, you’ve won the game.

         They shake things up on Night 4 or 5, introducing Fredbear as the only animatronic. He’s a combination of all the mechanics. If you hear footsteps, he’s going up to the doors; and you can actually shine a light on him without dying. But if he laughs without footsteps, then he’s in your room. The annoying thing about this is that Fredbear has a strict timer, and you will never know if he’s in the closet or the bed. I say to just flash the bed first, then go to the closet; the strategy for removing him is the same as with Freddy and Foxy.

         Nightmare is the same as Fredbear, only much more aggressive. That makes his inclusion annoying, especially with his lengthier jumpscare. You get so little time to defend yourself from him if you make one wrong move.

         I have no solutions for how I’d make FNAF 4 more fun. I’m sure somebody could figure out a way, but Cawthon wasn’t capable of it.

         There is a minigame called Fun with Plushtrap, in which you try to stop a cutesy Spring Bonnie on an “X”. If you succeed, the next night will begin at 2 AM instead of 12 AM. Though if you ever die during this night, you’re back to 12 AM on every later attempt. Think of it like if the cloud item in Mario 3 had a minigame. It’s painful to lose that bonus, but I appreciate being able to lessen nights if you’re skilled enough. Or if you remember the simple pattern for knowing when Plushtrap will land on the “X”, which I believe is easily reproducible.

         Lastly of note, there was a Halloween DLC for this game. I’m pretty sure it was free; I never bothered with it. It replaces some animatronics with skins or new creatures, namely Foxy with Mangle and Nightmare with Nightmarrione. I don’t have strong thoughts about it; it didn’t add much meaningful content.

Story

         FNAF 4’s story revolves around a boy. To this day, we still don’t know his name, as most official material simply calls him Crying Child (CC). Fans either dub him that or Bite Victim (BV), as to not be confused with several other children who cry in this series. I’m going to call him CC because I’m more used to it. But bafflingly, there isn’t a lot of story in this game. We witness CC tortured by his brother, terrified of animatronics in the restaurant, and that is it. Considering the minigames have dialogue, I would think there’d be more to gather.

         There are two infamous moments. The first comes in the cutscene after Night 5. CC’s older brother and his friends force the boy in Fredbear’s mouth. After that, Fredbear crushes the boy’s skull. The second moment comes from the post-Night 3 minigame. If you turn on the TV, you see an advertisement for a Freddy TV show that mentions the year 1983.

         Okay…

         Firstly, and this minor, but many fans claim Fredbear malfunctions due to the boy’s tears. This makes no sense. Water and sudden movements are only a concern if a human wears the suit, not when it’s in animatronic mode. Likelier is that Fredbear’s programming forced him to close his mouth before opening again, and CC’s skull interrupted the process.

         Now onto the bigger issues. This game’s marketing completely lied. It hyped this up as the title that would reveal the Bite of ’87 and which animatronic was guilty. Most of the teasers left a clue stating “87”, and none of them mentioned “83”. Why mislead the audience like that? Especially when the game has nothing else of substance to back up the narrative.

         My guess to what happened is that Cawthon originally wanted this to be in 1987, but at the last minute, he realised it wouldn’t make sense for Fredbear’s to be open when FNAF 2’s restaurant was months away from opening. I have little proof of this, but it’s known that “83” didn’t start appearing until the last or penultimate teaser. Either he was a dumbass who planned this all along to troll the audience, or he tried to fix a plothole in the most obtuse manner. Neither leaves a good look.

         Let me bring you back to 2015, when we weren’t sure if the year was 1983 or 1987.

         Thinking this was the Bite of ’87, I regretted that it was shown in any form. The way other fans interpreted the event was far more interesting than how Cawthon portrayed it. Many of us had ideas of children touching animatronics, causing them to go rogue. Or they believed the event happened to an adult, with Mangle attacking the security guard on his final day. In either case, the animatronics were responsible; they had agency. Having some kids just throw a little boy into Fredbear—removing all agency from the animatronic—was a huge let down.

         And you couldn’t blame people, like myself, for believing that the game took place in ’87. The date on the TV screen meant nothing. Newsflash: it could’ve been a show that started in 1983 or a rerun. When FNAF had all sorts of other subtleties beforehand, that was not an unrealistic conclusion.

         Even looking past this mess, knowing that the game has a separate bite incident in 1983, what is the point? All this shows us is that a boy died. Yes, with hindsight, we know that this is the Purple Guy’s son being killed. But Purple Guy killed a child before this, as shown in the FNAF 2 minigame, so it’s not like this incident sparked his streak of murdering kids. Sure, FNAF 4 shows us an example of a “springlock malfunction” that Phone Guy speaks of in FNAF 3, but who needed to see proof of it? We understood the concept from Purple Guy’s death, depicted in that same game. What about the Bite of ’83 necessitated FNAF 4?

         You can remove FNAF 4 from the timeline, and absolutely nothing changes. When this game launched, I hated the narrative far more than the gameplay. The silver lining is that FNAF 4 is so pointless, especially with this being the Bite of ’83, that it doesn’t majorly hurt the series. As stated, removing it doesn’t affect any of the later entries. At least I’m able to ignore this game, something that cannot be stated for the future instalments.

Theories and Fan Content

         I’ve already mentioned the confusion with the year the game takes place in. Both sides of the argument had valid points. The fault in the confusion lies solely on the creator, Scott Cawthon.

         Because the gameplay is so strange, there were endless theories on what could be going on. The most popular theory was that we were playing as CC during nights in the hospital after the bite incident, hence why the animatronics look so much scarier. Supporting this theory was that you could find hospital gear or flowers near the bed at rare times. Additionally, the voice you hear when being jumpscared is that of a little kid. And lastly, Nightmare’s jumpscare noise is an ambulance siren but slowed down.

         The alternative theory was that we were playing as the older brother, essentially being mentally punished for what he did to CC. Less support for this theory, but it wasn’t a stretch either. Unfortunately, reality had different plans several years later…

         The only other major theory I can note is regarding the box. I’m gonna be blunt: I didn’t and don’t care about the stupid box. Why so many people were obsessed with what was inside, even when it was clear you couldn’t open it, baffles me. If it had something important, we would’ve gotten it. Since it doesn’t open, nothing about it matters. It might’ve been that Cawthon wanted to put something in, but he genuinely didn’t have anything he could think of.

         I don’t have much to say about fan content either. I didn’t like the songs that came out for this game. I didn’t watch many animations, too.

         I think around this period, I began to feel fatigue with the franchise. I don’t think I was alone either, as many kept less tabs on the series once FNAF 3 concluded. Not only were there too many games coming out in such a short span of time, but the initial hype of FNAF was gone by now.

         Think of it like Pokémon. When Pokémon came out in ’96, be your introduction the video games or the TV show, everyone wanted a piece of it. Kids, adults, it was an overall craze. But past the Game Boy Color games in 1999-2001, all the hype was gone. Pokémon still remained and remains a success with millions of casual and hardcore fans, but aside from Pokémon GO, it never reached that hype period again. That’s just natural for franchises that try introduce new concepts.

         FNAF had quite frankly reached a point of oversaturation.

Conclusion

         Pulling up the Kingdom Hearts comparisons again, this is the 358/2 Days of the FNAF series. It’s not a good game, and it’s far inferior to its predecessors. The story decisions it makes are also highly questionable. But if nothing else, the game can be skipped over. None of the later games are strongly affected by this one, so it’s harmless.

         With stronger gameplay and a story that wasn’t trying to be so vague, this would’ve been a more memorable title. Even still, I think the oversaturation around this era would’ve hurt its reception. In under a year, Cawthon had released four games that blew up YouTube recommendations. That high must’ve felt incredible, but if he didn’t stop, he was going to crash and burn soon.

         Foreshadowing?