We’ve done a pretty good… job
Supermassive has more than proved themselves to have a deft hand when telling horror stories. Until Dawn remains their magnum opus to me, I have yet to play The Quarry; but our very own Drew has told me that its awesome. So, when I had first heard that the team was going to work with Behaviour Interactive to tell a story in the Dead by Daylight universe, I was on board. As a on again, off again fan of DbD’s dark game of tag, I have to admit its world and lore is rich with characters and events that would lend itself very well to a traditional storytelling game. Well, The Casting of Frank Stone is here for better or worse.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
MSRP: $39.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $29.99
For starters Dead by Daylight, if you have been under a rock for years; is the grandaddy of the asymmetrical multiplayer games. In its world the malevolent force known only as The Entity forces survivors to participate in trials against brutal killers. While in the game there are some killers from well-known franchises like Pinhead, Michael Myers and even Albert Wesker. It’s the original killers like the Trapper, Legion and The Unknown which really let Behaviour flex their muscles as these characters come with pages of backstory, usually explaining their life before they were brought into the Entity’s realm.
A large part of my excitement for The Casting of Frank Stone was to find out more about the world of Dead by Daylight. For fans, Frank Stone is full of easter eggs and collectables like little stuffed versions of the killers that can be found. I also found the Huntresses mask and the club of a certain killer who likes to use a cowbell to go invisible. These things are great for fans but I can assure you that playing The Casting of Frank Stone doesn’t require previous knowledge of DbD. The story of Frank Stone begins with a mysterious women known as Augustine explaining to the players that she has been chasing The Entity and a way to make contact with it and its realm. It begins in 1963 at steel mill where Sam Greene faces off against the titular serial killer before moving onto to1980 where a group of dumb teens are trying to shoot a movie at the same steel mill. And finally in 2024 where a group of strangers are brought together to sell pieces of the film made in the 80’s that each of them own.
Atypical killer motif
The story presented here is really kind of a snooze which is really surprising given the pedigree of the developer and it doesn’t help things that Frank Stone himself is hardly in the game at all. Supermassive tries to work their magic with this group of characters but unfortunately fall short as the game doesn’t allow a lot of character interaction, which is a shame because the cast already feels very weak. Most of the ‘horror’ elements happen in the 1980’s storyline, but even then, please notice that horror is in parenthesis. The biggest sin I think that The Casting of Frank Stone commits is just that it isn’t scary at all. Yes, choice have consequences but in the 3rd act all of them feel extremely rigid and only offer extremely minimal changes. I get the feeling that Behaviour handcuffed the writers with how far they were allowed to dig into the DbD lore aside from the Entity’s existence. I think this game would have done much better if it was the story of one of the killers in the game, imagine being able to explore the origins of Evan MacMillian aka The Trapper.
Like I said at the outset I was excited for the possibilities for The Casting of Frank Stone, but sadly that excitement didn’t last. The brightest things about this game were when it was pitting the cast against the supernatural but these things are few and far between and take a LONG time to get to. This is an extremely slow burn, and since the characters feel paper thin; there just isn’t a lot to grab onto here. The Casting of Frank Stone has tons of references for Dead by Daylight fans but the lack of scares and likeable characters makes this one best left on the hook.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
