Remember a year ago when Five Nights at Freddy’s was a thing? Yes, the indie horror sensation about playing a nightwatch guard at a haunted ersatz Chuck E. Cheese that spawned three sequels only released last year. Truly, a great legacy of decent horror games full of convoluted lore, a heavily dedicated fanbase, and cheap yet effective scare tactics can’t possibly jump the shark any further. Well apparently the series creator thought otherwise when he released this teaser trailer yesterday.
That’s right, when Scott Cawthon announced the next installment in Five Nights at Freddy’s was going to be an RPG, this is what he was going with. Not some Slender scenario where you are able to defend yourself from haunted animatronics, but a happy and cheerful adventure where you play as Freddy Fazbear and his friends as they spread joy and pizza across a happy meadow. And everybody is invited, including Golden Freddy and the nightmare variations of the animatronics, now in cute adorable chibi form!
Aside from the vocalized “what the-!?” heard in the video, I still can’t tell if this video is meant to be serious or not. On the one hand, the gameplay looks to be pretty standard RPG combat in the style of Final Fantasy, and Scott does have some game design chops outside of the FNAF series that he might be trying to flex. Or, perhaps something more sinister is at play, like say… a double bluff. Everything is cheery…for now. But then it could get very messed up very quickly. And if that’s expecting too much, let’s just remind ourselves that this is the same guy who was criticized for having scary, uncanny looking animal character models who flipped that into a horror franchise that sold like hotcakes.