GamerEscape

To say that Behaviour Interactive’s Dead By Daylight has had some staying power would be underselling things by a pretty significant margin. Now in its eighth year of operation, the title has expanded by leaps and bounds thanks to a dedicated fanbase, consistent updates, and a plethora of crossovers with major players in the horror space.

The franchise has branched out in quite a few other ways outside of the game itself too, but never quite in the manner it is with The Casting of Frank Stone, an interactive horror drama developed by Supermassive Games and published by Behaviour Interactive for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on September 3rd, 2024.

Seeing the lore for something like Dead by Daylight make a jump in genre while sticking true to its horror roots was an intriguing notion, and one I was curious to see play out as I went through the game on PC.

Welcome to Cedar Hills

As with any game this focused on the narrative department, the less specifics you have going into The Casting of Frank Stone the better, but the overall plot is primarily centered around a group of teenagers based in Cedar Hills, Oregon. More pertinently, the story is anchored by the local steel mill, the highly evil events that transpired there in the past, and how the repercussions of those actions are now coming back to haunt the locals.

From the very start, The Casting of Frank Stone establishes several mysteries to reel the player into wanting some answers. There are a few angles of intrigue from the get-go, but perhaps the most engaging of these is defined by its decided lack of mystery. It doesn’t lay all of its cards on the table, but the player is presented with quite a bit of direct information at face value about things that certainly could have been saved for later. It’s a neat touch that adds a different style of engagement for the player during the introduction.

After a series of rapid-fire developments, as the excitement of the introduction starts to fade and you get to more hands-on gameplay, the pacing falls into a steadier, character-centric rhythm. You end up spending a lot of time with the characters and see the way they interact with one another. These scenes are permeated with character dichotomies, decisions for the player to make, and the occasional quick-time event, and I found myself both impressed by some and baffled in equal measure by others.

In one moment, you’ll get a touching scene of the group opining about their hometown and its past in a way that’s interesting and nuanced to indirectly inform the player of these characters and how they might react in situations later down the line. These scenes are some of the best moments in The Casting of Frank Stone, but it unfortunately does not apply to every scene on offer. There are several others where you’re subjected to predictable teenage drama that doesn’t seem to be searching for a deeper meaning to explore, or a sequence clearly being played for laughs that lingers too long and simply doesn’t land.

Playing a game like this requires a particular suspension of disbelief (having these dumb teenage characters act like dumb teenage characters in a horror film is part of the fun, even) but it does push it a little far sometimes. Worst of all is the way these less-than-stellar scenes undermine the great work done by the better ones, and it’s a shame given the way this likeable batch of characters is let down by their narrative thinness. The player is given chances to get to know the cast on a deeper level, but there simply aren’t enough opportunities to do so—an issue that compounds itself as you get closer to the ending.

Poking Around in the Dark

The Casting of Frank Stone’s gameplay falls thoroughly in line with Supermassive Games’ previous horror efforts like the iterations of The Dark Pictures Anthology or The Quarry. They’re more like interactive films, where you’ll be spending a majority of your time watching events unfold until asked to make a dialogue decision, successfully execute a quick-time event, or guide a given character through an exploratory section.

And for those exploration sequences the camera pans and settles behind your character in an over-the-shoulder view, thus giving you free rein to explore the location at your leisure to search every corner and overturn everything that isn’t bolted down to find collectibles and lore tidbits. The latter of the two are especially fun to discover because the knowledge they bring to the characters can unlock exclusive dialogue options later, some of which feel pretty vital to another feature of the Supermassive Games’ mechanical playbook: keeping everyone alive to the end of the story.

That mechanical relevance is the biggest thing preventing you from rushing through these sequences, but they’re worth appreciating in their own right. The environments are distinct from one another (though the game isn’t completely bereft of backtracking through previous areas) and highly detailed, heavily emphasized by bold lighting decisions, leveraging of darkness, and interesting set dressing. There are also moments of environmental interaction. I hesitate to call them puzzles as they typically just require finding an item and then figuring out where to take it to get your reward, but it’s always a nice bit of gameplay to let you breathe between the action and the stress of making potentially dire decisions with the characters.

Horror is a highly subjective genre that a lot of different people get a lot of different things out of, so speaking purely for myself, I like my horror media to have some bite to it. Suspending my disbelief and getting on board with the thrill ride is a big part of the proceedings for me, but I found myself feeling a bit disappointed on this front by just how not scary things are for a majority of The Casting of Frank Stone’s runtime. There’s unsettling visuals and some really nice designs, sure, but it’s all utilized in a way that feels like the game is saying “look at this cool horror thing” rather than “be affected by this cool horror thing.” It has a tendency to make things feel more akin to walking through an amusement park dark ride rather than watching a horror film.

Lights, Camera, Murder

Striking imagery is an important requirement for any piece of horror media worth its salt, and I’m happy to report there’s no shortage of such in The Casting of Frank Stone. Some horror stories have a tendency to bury the lede when it’s first introducing its characters and setting, holding off its best for later, but not so here. The game is quick to show you some pretty interesting supernatural visual hooks to pull the player into the setting as quickly as possible.

Animations are always going to be a challenge when a game is striving to be as filmic as possible with motion capture, and that’s to say nothing of Supermassive’s signature in-depth facial model rigging. The Casting of Frank Stone does indeed struggle with hiding the give and take on a pretty consistent basis. Some animations and expressions will look nothing short of excellent in motion, perfectly timed with the delivery of the actor and integrated into the environment for convincing movement, only for another animation seconds later to feel more unnatural. It isn’t a constant unevenness, but it happens enough for you to notice it happening, even if it’s just for a moment before it’s gone.

Audio is handled well, especially when it needs to give weight to the chills of the narrative. There’s always an intentionality and variety to the sound design that keeps it constantly at the forefront of the player’s experience, but it’s also easy to appreciate the more ambient, subdued sound work as well when you look for it.

Cast Your Line

If you’ve played any Supermassive Games release in the past, you probably already have a pretty good idea of where you’ll stand on The Casting of Frank Stone. It does not deviate from the expected formula and it struggles to endear its characters to the player, but to leave it there would be doing a disservice to its strengths of presentation, visuals, and incorporation of its source material.

Adapting (and expanding) the lore of an asymmetrical multiplayer game to a narrative-focused interactive drama is a tall order, but it’s one of The Casting of Frank Stone’s most successful elements. It’s brimming with references to Dead by Daylight both subtle and overt, and they’re implemented in such a way that isn’t distracting or confusing to the unfamiliar and pretty fun to experience in their own right.

If you’re already a fan of Supermassive Games or Dead by Daylight you’ll probably have an enjoyable enough time here. There are some exciting sequences when you’re playing The Casting of Frank Stone, but even for their positives, they never coalesce into a strong experience in the long run.

~ Final Score: 6/10 ~

Review copy provided by Behaviour Interactive for PC. Screenshots provided by reviewer. Featured image courtesy of Behaviour Interactive.