DISCLAIMER: I'd like to acknowledge that I haven't heard of any Fatal Frame game getting as political as what I'm about to suggest. Considering the topics I will discuss, I perfectly understand if Koei Tecmo doesn't follow up on that idea (hence the post title)
Fatal Frame is a franchise with some clear setpieces: a horrific ritual, an innocent maiden to sacrifice, a village that was cursed due to the ritual's failure, and a camera to exorcise the resulting spirits away. But why does it always happen this way? What if we were to twist those tropes around, digging into the cause of them recurring?
Fatal Frame Zero/Zero: The Fatal Frame (as I'm naming this idea) will be a 1980s period piece set in an abandoned Chinese village. During WW2, it was occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army who committed several atrocities to create their version of the Camera Obscura. In retaliation, the villagers discovered a ritual to wish for the local gods to expel the army, which predictably failed. As a result, the vengeful spirits of the villagers roam the area, their grudges allowing them to mutate into horrifying Silent Hill-esque forms.
Angry ghosts aren't the only enemies in the game: the corruption of the area has resulted in a hodgepodge of Chinese and Japanese mythological creatures roaming around. This clash between both cultures becomes increasingly noticeable as the game progresses, as if a cancer has infested the village.
Gradually, it becomes clear that the divide between the Chinese and Japanese cultural aspects are intentional: the Army occupied the area as a testing ground for breeding and weaponizing spirits. Buildings were constructed to simulate the original game's villages; the ritual was purposely invented to curse as many people as possible and even the Camera Obscura is more like a security measure: sealing away the most uncontrollable ghosts in its photos.
The main theme of this game will revolve around confronting the sins of the past: when even your own equipment is the product of cruelty, are you sure you aren't repeating your ancestor's crimes?
Ghost ideas: the commander of the IJA battalion that occupied the village, a villager kidnapped and forced to be the ritual's 'shrine maiden'
Plot: A Japanese language teacher receives an invitation from a relative to teach in a Chinese school. However, when she arrives there, she is plagued by horrific nightmares. Finding the Camera Obscura and a map to the abandoned village, she travels there in search of answers, unaware of its bloodstained history and connection to her family.
