Don’t Stop Filming
HIGH The return of Frank Stone.
LOW That rescue attempt came with some pretty harsh consequences.
WTF This ‘happy ending’ raises more questions than it answers!
There’s a horrific beast at the heart of the Dead By Daylight franchise. It lives in a dimension that it has all to itself, and whenever it feels like it, this ‘entity’ grabs people from their world and pulls them into a playfield where they’re hunted and murdered by tireless killers. Escape is temporary, and death isn’t the end to their torment — no matter what these prisoners do, the entity resets everything to ensure that its dark game can go on. With this knowledge, it’s clear that Dead By Daylight happens in a world where the bad guys have already won, so how can a satisfying dramatic story take place there?
The Casting of Frank Stone is all about answering that question.
A narrative adventure from Supermassive Games, the creators of Until Dawn and the Dark Pictures franchise, Frank Stone is played from a the third person perspective and rotates through a varied cast of characters who must make tough choices to progress a shockingly expansive story that unfolds over the course of a comparatively short five-hour run time.
Taking place in three different time periods, this ambitious story follows a cop who stops the rampage of serial killer Frank Stone in 1963, teens who make a movie at the site of Frank’s killings nearly twenty years later, and the present-day adventures of people haunted by the events of the other timelines. It’s convoluted as heck, but Frank Stone does a magnificent job of keeping things coherent. It helps that the stories are told in parallel, with each chapter swapping back and forth between the present and past, giving the player a chance to see the long-term ramifications of their decisions play out immediately.
Dead By Daylight is known for its relentless brutality, and Frank Stone doesn’t disappoint on that front. After an intense prologue — probably Supermassive’s finest to date — there’s a bit of a lull in the action as the middle section of the story is mostly about exploring characters’ backstories and discovering Frank Stone’s secrets. Things pick up in the final act, however, as the characters find themselves besieged by supernatural entities and forced to make quick choices to keep themselves alive. Whether it’s a bad decision or a failed quick time event, there are dozens of ways to die here, each more gruesome than the last. Frank Stone, the game and the character — does not skimp on the brutality, offering some of the most shockingly upsetting deaths in the videogame horror genre.
This kind of branching narrative only feels satisfying if players have major impact on the story. While the possible options may not be as varied as those found in Supermassive’s earlier work like House of Ashes or the Devil in Me, the developers have finally made those plot paths accessible in a way that none of their other games have offered.
After players complete Frank Stone once, they’ll gain access to the “Cutting Room Floor” — a map of every outcome and variation that they could have experienced while playing. Every death, every location, every twist in the conversation — it’s all there for the player to see. More importantly, the player is able to jump back to the start of each chapter so they can try out the different permutations. Now, all the devs need to do is add the ability to skip dialogue that’s already been heard, and they’ll have created one of the most accessible narrative adventures around.
While the story is conceptually fascinating, The Casting of Frank Stone falters a bit in the execution. With so many characters and multiple timelines to cover during roughly five hours of running time, things can feel rushed at times, and the characters get short shrift. There’s almost no downtime to explore them in detail or their feelings about one another, and a single flashback stands out not just because it’s beautifully realized — which it is — but rather because it’s the only time Frank Stone pauses to let the player inside a character’s head. I’ve played through the campaign a handful of times, and I still don’t feel like I know the characters anywhere near as well as the cast of Until Dawn, for example, which I’ve played fewer times.
At least the gameplay picks up the slack that the character work leaves. In addition to the wealth of branching options, the exploration and puzzle mechanics are some of the best that Supermassive has offered. There are actual puzzles this time, with players having to operate strange machines and work out complex locks to continue their progress. There’s even the equivalent of a first-person shooter sequence, although it’s themed around filmmaking rather than gunplay. These elements keep thing engaging even when the characters don’t, and while they don’t feel like Dead By Daylight‘s core mechanics — only a few generator repair sequences fit that bill — they manage to keep things active enough so that the experience is never just a bunch of talking.
At its best, The Casting of Frank Stone works as an exploration of inevitability. Before the player ever takes control of the teens making a movie in the ’80s, they already have some inkling of how that part of the story will end. What makes the game special, though, is how much latitude it gives the player within that structure, allowing them to play out their version of the story to a truly impressive degree by using Dead By Daylight‘s dimension-hopping Entity as a justification for the wilder swings that can be taken. In this world the bad guys always win, but that doesn’t mean the conflict can’t lead to some amazing drama.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed by Supermassive Games and published by Behaviour Interactive. It is currently available on PC,PS5,XBX/S. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 15 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed multiple times. The game has no multiplayer modes.
Parents: The game was rated M by the ESRB, and it contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language. Keep kids far from this one. It is one of the bloodiest games that Supermassive has ever produced, and that’s saying something!
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are no audio cues that will affect gameplay, I played through once without audio and had no trouble whatsoever. All dialogue is subtitled, and the subtitles can be adjusted to the player’s comfort. The game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Yes, the game’s controls are remappable.
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