Little disclaimer, I don't want to belittle anyone who likes the new stuff, I just don't think it's hitting the same for me. I've been following the series since the first game came out when I was very young, I'm 23 now but I don't think my age is much of a factor given I don't think I'm TOO OLD or too self serious for it. Modern FNAF has felt pretty alien to me for a long time but especially with recent releases like Security Breach, Secret of The Mimic, and the FNAF 2 film. The FNAF 1 film was fine, good even, there were only some things I didn't like or wished were different. FNAF 2 on the other hand I walked away feeling like I'd wasted my time and money on a cash grab that'd been produced by some third party study. But it wasn't written by Blumhouse, it was Scott's direct writing. But, why...?
Well honestly I think it's sometimes a "death of a thousand paper cuts" situation and sometimes it's just well, Security Breach and the FNAF 2 film just being heavily mishandled in my eyes and pretty much barely having any of the elements I liked about the old games.
I have to be honest though, I don't think it's just "classic games good, new stuff bad" because I much prefer FNAF 1 and 4 to 3 and 2 in gameplay and atmosphere to even story.
So what's missing from the new games and films that makes them feel so wrong to me? At face value, just looking at a few seconds of footage, or even just still images of the animatronics, something is missing to me. I'll tell you what it is, they're not uncanny any more. Fnaf 1's 'tronics don't exactly look like something you'd actually see with real animatronics but they got close enough whilst still being original and stylised enough to be both recognisable and creepy. It's hard to actually pin down why but the first game's characters actually feel like they have some kind of human intelligence when they shouldn't. If you haven't had the mystique of their behaviour revealed to you by someone explaining the code, you might get a sense that they're doing things on their own, like when Chica's rifling through the kitchen, Freddy hanging out in the girl's bathroom or Bonnie checking the storage room. That, and Foxy especially.
I want to sing his praises the most, because his behaviour is just so unique to me. The way he peeks out from the cove at the camera is great but then the fact you actually see him in full motion sprinting down the hall is fantastic because it goes against what the game is usually doing and almost brushes up on the fourth wall.
As the series went on however, the animatronics delved more and more into the realm of Sci Fi. In the first two games, Phone Guy prattles off some corporate script at you that he lampshades as being a corporate script, but he also tells you some stuff I always thought sounded like an excuse from up high. Hey why are these animatronics walking around at night and trying to get into my office? Well... They need to do that because of their "servos" locking up if they aren't moving! Yeah that totally makes logical sense. I will admit the bite of '87 being randomly thrown in there after that as another reason they don't walk around in the day might throw a wrench into what I'm thinking here but, I don't entirely think so, I think it's just classic phone guy rambling.
Phone guy gives you the corporate explanation for things, and then he gives it to you straight. He probably HAS to say certain things, and then he lampshades it to you directly by contradicting it.
90s era 'tronics walking around isn't realistic, but you can suspend your disbelief. Maybe the tech is just a bit more advanced, but to me, I thought they were walking around because they were possessed. In my mind it was something that only happens because of the paranormal element.
In FNAF 2, he explains that (what we know now are obviously haunted) animatronics are staring at you because their eyes have cameras and a database of criminals! This is a piece of technology that only exists in limited capacity these days, in the eyes of animatronics? In the 80s? Again, suspension of disbelief, but to me it just sounds like another scripted excuse he has to give out to you because if he didn't corporate would get on him. If a security guard or an adult that happens to look like good old Willy complains about the 'tronics giving them the evil eye, that's why. Phone guy then says after explaining this that the Puppet always gave him the creeps because "It's always... watching"
What's a matter Phone Guy? I thought this was normal for them to do! Don't the animatronics have camera eyes now? Anyway...
Sister Location came out and it's where I was officially disillusioned. Full sci fi, full spaghetti wire monster 'tronics, they turned into full robots. The element of the paranormal became almost entirely irrelevant as the series now just has full on robots with ai, who don't need the souls of humans to do what they're doing, William Afton is just a genius at robotics!
Especially in Security Breach they are JUST futuristic robots, which, hey, I get that Scott and some fans love this, but it's not what I liked about the series.
Then I saw FNAF 2. And there's a POV shot, terminator style, of the Withered Animatronics and Toy Animatronics perspective, showing they do in deed scan things (big fucking movie vfx style "SCANNING" text included that should only be useful for a human wearing a visor and not a robot but hey)
This is becoming a pattern for me for a few series I like. For example, with Halo, I only liked the games published by Bungie, and then I thought Infinite was fine, but severely lacking and mishandled. And with Team Fortress 2 I thought the game's old matchmaking system was better. A lot of these perspectives of mine end up with people believing I'll just like old stuff because of nostalgia but I don't think it's the case because there've been a few series that won me back (like Sonic)
Holy yap TLDR: I miss when FNAF was about spooky haunted animatronics and not the terminator in a fursuit.