In spite of how many fans Koei Tecmo's horror series Fatal Frame has, it's always been a bit of a niche franchise.
Its last main line entry Fatal Frame Maiden of Black Water launched exclusively for the Wii U back in 2014 and the game's inherently niche nature combined with the extremely limited player base of the Wii u meant that the game was always fighting an uphill battle when it came to mainstream penetration and sales.
Seven years on from its original release though, it's being given a new lease on life with Koei Tecmo bringing the game to modern consoles and for the first time for a Fatal Frame game in a while, to non-Nintendo platforms as well and as we count the days down to its imminent launch.
Here, we're going to talk about a few key details you should know about the game itself followed by the big talking points of what to expect from its upcoming remaster.
Story
Fatal Frame as a series has always been very heavily focused on pure supernatural horror rather than the sci-fi horror of more popular franchises like Resident Evil and Fatal Frame Maiden of Black Water very much sticks to that template.
The game is set on the fictional Hikami Mountain, a place that has a long and notorious history of cases of suicides and supernatural occurrences stemming largely from maidens that would be sacrificed to keep a malevolent power known as the black water, at bay, using their own mystical abilities.
When one maiden in particular failed in her duties in the past though, the black water was let loose and the mountain and its spirits were corrupted by the evil being.
Characters
Fatal Frame Maiden of Black Water tells its story from the perspective of three primary protagonists. There's Miu Hinasaki the daughter of Miku Hinasaki; a character that fans of the series will be quite familiar with.
There's Yuri Kozukara, a descendant of the mountain maidens who can use her abilities to bring people stuck in the shadow world back into the real world.
Last but not least, there's Ren Hojo, Yuri's friend and an author who heads to the mountain for research purposes for his writing but finds himself entangled in a nightmare that he could not have predicted. Various maidens of the past also play a crucial role in the story.
Camera Obscura
The Camera Obscura is a mainstay for the Fatal Frame series and perhaps the one thing that Koei Tecmo's horror games are most commonly associated with but for those who are not too familiar with Fatal Frame and what it's all about, what exactly is the Camera Obscura?
Well, it's literally your lens into the game's world and the horrors it hides.
It serves as your primary means for both defense and attack against the malevolent spirits that you cross paths with once you whip out the camera during combat, the game switches to a first-person perspective and depending on factors such as distance and angles of the shots that you take with it, you will deal varying amounts of damage to the ghosts you're fighting against.
Updated Visuals
As far as playable content is concerned, Fatal Frame Maiden of Black Waters upcoming remaster is going to be largely similar to the original Wii U release with everything from the post-game Ayane content to, of course, the base game itself being brought over as is.
Some other areas of the game are being tweaked though. For starters, as you'd expect from any Remaster, there will be visual improvements curiously Koei Tecmo hasn't provided any concrete details on exactly how visuals will be improved other than promising sharper resolutions but hopefully, they'll take the opportunity to make some notable changes especially seeing as there's plenty of room for graphical improvement for any game that launched on the Wii U several years ago.
Photo Mode
Photo modes have become something of an industry-wide standard in recent years and though by no means, a necessity for something that actively affects a game's core gameplay experience, they're always a nice added bonus.
Fatal Frame Maiden of Black Waters Remaster is going to feature a new photo mode as well which only makes sense when you consider how central taking photos is to the core gameplay loop here.
Players will be able to freely move and place characters and ghosts apply filters and frames and mess around with other options such as depth of field, focal length and aperture.
Upgrade Path
When Final Frame made enough Black Water launches where Playstation and Xbox are concerned, it will receive native versions on both active generations of both platforms.
Thankfully, unlike several other cross-gen releases these days, Fatal Frame will not demand additional money if you want to upgrade from the PS4 or Xbox One to the game's PS5 or Xbox Series X and S versions with Koei Tecmo confirming that free next gen upgrades will be offered to anyone who gets the game on last gen hardware.
PC Requirements
As a seven-year-old Wii U game, Fatal Frame Maiden of Black Water's PC requirements aren't exactly demanding. On minimum settings which will run the game at 720p and 60 frames per second, you'll notice four gigabytes of ram at least an Intel Core i5 750 and either a GeForce GTX 660 or Radeon RX 550.
Meanwhile, on recommended settings which will run the game at 1080p and 60 frames per second, you'll need 8 gigabytes of ram, an Intel Core i7 2600 and either a GeForce GTX 960 or a Radeon RX 570. Meanwhile on both settings, you'll require 25 gigabytes of storage space.
Series Future
The future of Fatal Frame as a series has looked murky for a while and the less than stellar sales and lukewarm critical reception that Maiden of Black Water saw when it released for the Wii U is surely responsible for that to a great extent but if the upcoming Remaster should do well, it might pave the way for more new games in the series.
Speaking in an interview with Famitsu when asked about the possibility of sequels if Maiden of Black Water does well, series producer, Keisuke Kikuchi said “That's what I'm hoping.
We're releasing this game to commemorate the series 20th anniversary and we're hoping a lot of fans will take the opportunity to play the game. We'd love this to lead to a new title.”
Here's hoping that does happen then because you can never have too many good horror games and when Fatal Frame is at its best, it's really good.
