![]() ![]() Outlast 2 (2017) is the sequel to the critically acclaimed Outlast (2013), considered by many to be one of the most terrifying games ever developed. The Ubisoft Controversy and Representative Heuristics Given the substantial amount of controversy and fan backlash against the character, my goal is to influence both current and future horror game developers in confronting their conscious/subconscious fears and biases and thus depicting trans characters with sensitivity and respect rather than as deranged, murderous villains. ![]() Based on my own play-through of the game as a fan of the Outlast series and through a critical discourse analysis, I argue that the developers, subconsciously or otherwise, allowed their presuppositions about trans characters learned from other horror media, as well as the castration anxiety produced by the MtF trans body, to guide their development of Val. This chapter analyzes Outlast 2 by discussing the ways in which the cis-het male developers use peripheral processing and representative heuristics to perpetuate the naturalization/normalization of MtF transgender people as psychopathic, which in turn reproduces existing harmful hegemonic discourses. Additionally, positioning Val’s “rebirth” as female so close to their presumed death links transness to punishment. ![]() The ambiguously gendered character of Val in 2017’s Outlast 2 embodies this negative trope of the male-to-female (MtF) transgender person as a psychopath by portraying them as the violent, hypersexual leader of a heretical cult. Horror video games and films often take an unfortunate further step by linking transgender or nonbinary characters with sexual predation and homicidal mental illness, a patriarchal reversal of the reality in which trans people have a 1-in-12 chance of being murdered. Transgender characters in video games, as in most other media, have been treated historically as punchlines or fetishized as abjected sexual objects. Be warned there’s some NSFW content ahead! However, my discussion of the trans body is deeply tied to notions of what is “natural” and “unnatural” paradoxically, many who view the trans body as the latter exhibit a fear or even loathing of nature and the “natural” world. At first glance, this chapter may not seem to have a clear connection to the overall topic of this dissertation. That said, I had issues with almost every character, not the least of which is Val. ![]()
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