Nintendo’s Treehouse Live @ E3 stream has saved some of the best for last. Today, the stream showed off Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water. The latest installment of Nintendo and Koei Tecmo’s cult survival horror franchise had a trailer uploaded on Nintendo’s YouTube channel and a link on their E3 site, but little else. Now, we finally get some English footage of this creepy game.
The presenters not only dimmed the lights on stage, in keeping with the tone of Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, but prefaced the gameplay footage with a disclaimer regarding its Mature-rated content. And, indeed, there was much in the way of that in this stream. The main setting of this game, Mt. Hikami, is based on what is known to be a prime suicide spot in Japan, the cutscenes did not shy away from graphic gore, and the Fatal Frame series is known for being quite scary to begin with.
In the footage presented, Yuuri, one of the three main protagonists, searches Mt. Hikami for more clues on the disappearance of her cohort Hisoka, as well as a girl named Fuyumi. There wasn’t much in the way of story detail other than that, but the stream did show off some of the new gameplay tricks in Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water. One of the new ways a ghost can hurt your character is merely by way of you attempting to pick up an item. Also, there is a lot of rain on Mt. Hikami, and the water is not exactly ordinary—if your character gets too wet, their defenses will be lowered when attacking ghosts.
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water uses the Wii U GamePad as the Camera Obscura, the ghost-killing device that serves as the hallmark weapon of the Fatal Frame series. The combat system looks to be quite intuitive, as the GamePad’s gyroscope lets players aim squarely at the ghosts to get a Fatal Frame, that eponymous final blow. As in previous installments of the series, survival horror plays a prominent focus, and this means that recovery items are strictly limited. In addition, the main characters in Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water can wear special costumes that have different status effects, which can be unlocked throughout the game.
From the footage in this stream, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water looks to be worth the wait for survival horror fans looking for something new. Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water will release sometime this fall in North America and Europe.
