I should've done my research before booting up Machine for Pigs because knowing that it was made by the same people as Dear Esther would answer almost all the questions that cropped up in my mind during the first hour of playing. I knew that it wasn't made by the original scandi neurodivergents of Frictional Games, as I remember it being the main reasoning people on YouTube used to explain the game's failure. I recall being a bit amazed that a proper instalment of the franchise was met so poorly by the audience that spent the last two years playing mostly custom maps made with the Dark Descent editor. Many Let's Players dropped the game after 1 hour or so, which meant that I never saw the game past the mansion intro so I was somewhat excited to play it, even with all of the negative aura still hanging around the game today.

The lack of object interactivity in Machine for made the first impressions a bit poor, as I felt like the game didn't trust me as much as its predecessor did, while also discouraging exploration. I really love Victorian England as a setting and it was always a personal gripe of mine that I got to see so much of Castle Brennenburg (which while a masterfully created environment I didn't have much of an aesthetic connection with), through YouTubers playing the Dark Descent and almost nobody was showing me what turn of the century British mansions and factories looked like in Machine for Pigs, so I could finally see it all for myself with the benefit of having no digital clown hogging up space in the corner. In the end, the gameplay design choices by the developers actively prevented me from enjoying the setting.

However, by the end I enjoyed the narrative of Machine for Pigs more so than the Dark Descent. Either because I am a “creator” in my day-to-day life and I associated with Mandus more or simply because I am pathologically more afraid of powerlessness than the fear of the unknown . In the end, the story and presentation in Machine for Pigs made me overlook the gameplay shortcoming, but I still see it as a worse game when compared to the Dark Descent. It still doesn't deserve the reputation it has but most of that negativity stems from it carrying the “Amnesia” branding so can't do much about it . I looked up if there are any positive reviews of the Machine for Pigs and all that exist are lengthy Breadtube essays focusing on the “anti-capitalist” message of the game and how g*mers are dumb animals who cannot recognise good games even if they hit them in the face. Three separate videos managed to tie in the bad reception the game got at release as a “prelude to G*mergate”. In short:

PS. It's one of those times when it feels like a vortex was created in the noosphere and multiple people got the same idea at once, as on the same day that I finished the Dark Descent Mandalore released a video on it. It seems like a coincidence, as he is doing a retrospective of all of the Frictional Games catalogue, but I can't escape the feeling that we are all connected through mental tethers and ahhhh save me marseeyyy I am losing my mind ahhhh

PSS. Apparently the Chinese Room, the creators of the Machine for Pigs, are the current developers of the Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines sequel? They are essentially a whole new team without anyone from the early 2010s remaining but it is still an incredibly weird choice.