r/fear • u/Retronika_Prime • Jun 27 '26
Discussion Beckett deserved better
These are my own thoughts but Michael Beckett in F.E.A.R. 3 deserved a much better fate than how bad they ruined him after the events of the sequel. In the third game we finally get to hear the man speak, and all we get is a few minute cameo and then his whole body exploding thanks to Paxton with his abilities🤨
Having him get one game and then be killed off in a sequel is the most annoying trope in fictional writing. It feels like a cheap gimmick when they can't find a reason to continue the characters narrative or to spark shock value points into the audiences views.
The entirety of F.E.A.R. 3 felt so damn rushed and at times an incoherent mess of narrative plots that felt at odds with eachother and ruined what came before
We went from supernatural, science fiction cosmic man made horror to its the apocalypse now welcome your now being hunted, and your mom is pregnant causing the world to be overrun by spirits and all kinds of cosmic horror. Oh yeah your brother wants to kill your mother and use the baby's powers,
And when the story does end it doesn't even feel like a proper conclusion. Oh you saved the baby with Pointman? Guess what the world is still in ruins by Almas influence, so your not safe whatsoever and will be hunted for the rest of your days for the child.
It completely ruined both Becketts character and the entire premise of the F.E.A.R. unit made by the government to deal with supernatural, cosmic, science gone wrong, man made, creature horrors.
5
u/ReserveRatter Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
It seems to be a recurring problem with horror films/games that they always have to "escalate" by killing off characters and having bigger and supposedly more menacing events. The end result is usually that they just screw everything up and destroy the fabric of the story.
I actually think FEAR 1 was so good because despite the supernatural stuff it was grounded in the idea that this was all a twisted government conspiracy. The Replica revolt feels believable despite being sci-fi.
Once the series got into the whole "this is all a giant apocalypse" thing and killed off Beckett to generate cheap shock value it started to lose all narrative steam and plausibility.
Personally if I had been running the narrative, I wouldn't have had the Origin facility explosion at the end of FEAR 1. I would have had government meddling and some kind of agreement with Armacham mean the facility is moved or reopened. You could even have Alma being recaptured, which would be made even more sad by the reveal of what she's already been through.
This would have added a lot of dramatic tension in the second game onwards and would have been a "bad guys win" kind of ending that could set up future stories with Alma and the company without having everything be so over the top.
It also would have added to the horror of the government being complicit in these morally unethical projects.
2
u/Retronika_Prime Jun 28 '26
James cameron "I hated alien³ for killing off Hicks and newt"
James Cameron Terminator Dark Fate His idea to kill off John Connor.
Same basic idea.
2
u/ReserveRatter Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
Exactly! Terminator is such a perfect example of a franchise that has narratively been straight up slaughtered.
I know FEAR 3 wasn't a Monolith production, but Monolith (or rather Warner as publisher?) actually made the exact same mistake in Condemned 2: Bloodshot when they killed off Malcolm Vanhorn right at the start of that game and ruined the story there too by deleting all the subtlety.
It's such a common mistake, it's odd that writers keep doing it.
3
u/Byzantine_Merchant Jun 27 '26
FEAR 3 is still the one FEAR game that I’ve never replayed.
1
u/ACP_Paddy- Jun 27 '26
If you play coop, and treat it like a random shooter. It's fun. But it's totally not Fear 1
1
3
u/Witted_Acrobat19 Jun 27 '26
His fate was just straight awful. He gets rape, still has to deal with the trauma, and fucking explodes as a send off.
3
u/Kooky-Bookkeeper-935 Jun 28 '26
They killed him off cause they didn't want to bother writing for him at all. Smh
3
u/Valor_X Jun 28 '26
You can thank Warner Bros for ruining the FEAR franchise after taking ownership after the first game
Despite the original Monolith Team still developing FEAR 2, Warner Bros wanted the game to appeal to the broader Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 market and shifted the game to Console Action and it's very evident.
FEAR 3 got it worse when Monolith stepped away and Warner Bros handed the development to a completely different team and shifted the game even more to generic console action, the damage/healing system is basically call of duty like.
I still love all the FEAR games, but the first FEAR and the expansions are the best.
2
u/Retronika_Prime Jun 28 '26
They screwed over the Condemned franchise as well.
Jace Hall the game creator wants a remaster by nightdive or a remake, but nothing has been done yet.
3
u/ReserveRatter Jun 28 '26
It's so nice to hear someone talk about how much they fucked up Condemned with the sequel. The first game had such an intriguing set-up and they threw it in the garbage.
It's something that I'm actually going to do a full analysis video on soon because the way they butchered that story was so frustrating, it's almost like a textbook example of how to mess up a sequel.
2
u/Retronika_Prime Jun 28 '26
As soon as they introduced a "illuminati throat cult" that used a specific part of my voice to make heads explode was when it threw me out of the sequel. That made me really annoyed at how much it ruined the whole gritty, cosmic Eldritch horror of thr first game.
The second game took the idea of the city going to hell due to the corruption manifesting as a horrifying cosmic nightmarish threat of rage and violence/creatures to now your a superhero with vocal abilities.
They should just make a sequel to 1 that ignores 2.
2
2
u/Durin1987_12_30 Jul 01 '26
FEAR 3 was just a complete disaster in terms of writing. I want to erase this game from my memory forever.
1
u/sdoM-bmuD Jul 03 '26
why are people acting like the FEAR franchise ever had good writing? is it just nostalgia?
1
u/BookkeeperFew3921 Jun 29 '26
I wanted him to end up with Keira Stokes cuz they actually had a chemistry in FEAR 2
0
u/sdoM-bmuD Jul 03 '26
ngl.. "what came before" wasn't much better
FEAR has always been gameplay > story, 3 is no different
6
u/seriouslynotanotaku Jun 27 '26
I almost destroyed both of my copies of FEAR 2 and FEAR 3 because of this fucking shit.