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A Fascinating Postmortem On ‘Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs’
It truly bums me out when I see all of the unnecessary hate that surrounded Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs following its lukewarm reception last September. It’s far from perfect, but it is a solid horror game with a fantastically unsettling story that was almost immediately written off by many horror fans because it didn’t quite live up to the terrifying legacy of its predecessor.
A Machine for Pigs wasn’t disappointing, there’s no denying that. Even still, I’ve always respected what The Chinese Room accomplished with it, and I feel they deserve a bit more credit for their truly unique — and still mildly terrifying — take on the world Frictional established with The Dark Descent.
This game had the potential to be an unforgettable experience, but the questionable decision to remove two mechanics that were the source of much the tension that permeated every second of The Dark Descent — the oil lantern and sanity system — largely neutered the game’s ability to build suspense. With a lantern that never ran out of fuel and a protagonist who seemed to have a significantly tighter grip on his sanity, A Machine for Pigs lost the ability to be effective as a survival horror game.
Whether or not you’re a fan of the game, Gamasutra has a fascinating postmortem on it that sheds some light on the development process, what went wrong, and why The Chinese Room made the decisions they did. If you have some spare time, it’s a fantastic read.
And if you missed our review of A Machine for Pigs, you can watch it below. I only ask that you forgive the audio quality, I recorded it before I upgraded my recording equipment to the swanky, aurally pleasing stuff I use today.
All of us here at Bloody Disgusting are deeply saddened to learn that George A. Romero Foundation Founder and President Suzanne Desrocher-Romero has passed away.
GARF shared in a statement on socials, “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of Suzanne Desrocher Romero. Suzanne passed away of natural causes on June 24 at her home in Toronto after a prolonged illness.”
The statement continues, “Suzanne was the fierce leader of the George A. Romero Estate and The George A. Romero Foundation. She worked tirelessly to preserve George’s legacy. Her work at the foundation will continue to inspire and live on for generations to come. The family asks for privacy at this time.”
Desrocher-Romero founded GARF in 2018, after her late husband’s passing in 2017, and has been a fierce advocate for his legacy and the arts. It was her mission to “strengthen horror as a serious field of global study,” and she was a tremendous fighter on behalf of Romero’s works and supporting new filmmakers inspired by his legacy.
It was Desrocher-Romero who spearheaded the recovery and restoration of The Amusement Park, and, as the person in charge of the George A. Romero estate, worked closely with author Daniel Kraus on completing unfinished novels like Pay the Piper and The Living Dead. She most recently celebrated the restoration of her favorite of Romero’s zombie films, Day of the Dead, and was hard at work producing the upcoming film Twilight of the Dead.
That passionate advocacy led to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero becoming family to Bloody Disgusting as well.
2023 marked the start of an ongoing partnership between Bloody FM and GARF on The Dead, a scripted audio series spanning multiple seasons that saw Desrocher-Romero working closely with the Bloody FM team and mentoring the series’s contributing writers with GARF. To say her loss will be felt internally is an understatement.
“Anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is,” Desrocher-Romero recently told BD.
It’s the perfect encapsulation of her unwavering enthusiasm for supporting Romero’s legacy and the horror genre, and just a glimpse at how much she contributed to preserving it. She is, in short, an inspiration.
We send our deepest condolences to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero’s family, friends, and GARF.
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