The first Amnesia was a game dripping with atmosphere, tension and lore. The game’s environments were filled with tiny details and hidden documents for the player to find, when they weren’t fleeing for their lives. Frictional Games’ excellent 2020 sequel Amnesia: Rebirth is no different. While the story of Tasi Trianon’s struggle in the desert is compelling by itself, the game also contains a plethora of notes, journal entries and memory cylinders that will need to be found in order to truly understand what the grim events unfolding.
Even the most diligent treasure hunters will find it a challenge to comb through Rebirth’s sprawling maps, searching for clues about the characters and overarching lore. With monsters lurking around every corner and a story that is kept intentionally vague, players are unlikely to find everything on their first attempt.
10 Oil In The Oasis
After escaping the cistern and returning to the surface, Tasi stumbles across a beautiful oasis in the middle of the desert. It was here that she and the other survivors of the Cassandra first encountered the Empress Tihana.
If the player wades up to the rock in the centre of the oasis, they can crouch to duck below the water revealing three pots. One of them has a stone over the top, and moving the stone will reveal an easily missed tin of lantern oil and unlock the Trawler achievement.
9 The German Lullaby
While looking for her husband Salim, Tasi discovers the body of her crewmate Eva Ritter, who perished after losing her own husband in the crash of the Cassandra.
Next to a note Ritter left behind is what appears to be a poem written in German, but is actually an excerpt from the German lullaby “Der Mond ist Aufgegangen.” Without the lullaby’s first verse, the peaceful lyrics take on a far more sinister tone in the fresh context of an Amnesia game. Small pieces of world-building like this help make the Amnesia franchise such great horror games (the developers have explained their mastery of the craft): when translated, the note’s second verse could almost be about the Empress Tihana herself.
8 The Previous Expedition
Tasi’s group is not the first to uncover the ancient secrets of the Gatekeepers beneath the sands of Algiers. Throughout the game, players find the remnants of a previous group of archaeologists led by Professor Thurston Aloysius Herbert in 1839. This was famously the expedition where Daniel, the protagonist of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, found the orb and began his own journey into horror and madness.
In the fortress level, at the top of the stairs after fixing the elevator, Tasi finds a letter from Daniel to his sister. She also finds an entry from Professor Herbert’s diary at the base camp in the Tomb of Tin Hinan, detailing how an orb was shattered by his ‘dolt of an assistant.’
7 A Familiar Cave Entrance
After finding the note left by her husband Salim, Tasi travels deeper into the network of caves to find him, beginning her very own descent into darkness. Just before the first entry of Salim’s Diary, there is a stone doorway with a burning brazier next to it. If the player goes through the door they will find a dead end.
However, when viewed from further into the cave, the doorway and the torch beside it are eerily reminiscent of the loading screen for the catacombs from Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
6 The Fate Of The Soldiers At the Fort
When Tasi first arrives at Fort Al-Mamaru, she finds it deserted and strewn with the corpses of soldiers. Since it is here that Tasi has her first terrifying encounter with a Ghoul (one of the scariest gaming moments in some time), the player may suspect the soldiers were killed by the same shambling monstrosity. However, two journal entries written by the fort’s captain reveal they were actually attacked by a vicious tribe called the Kel Hanan.
A separate note found earlier in the fort details the Kel Hanan’s capture and grisly killing of two soldiers in the name of their god “the great mother.” This is one of the many names given to Empress Tihana, and it’s speculated that she herself ordered the tribe to kill the soldiers and put an end to their excavations of the cistern below.
5 A Message In Morse Code
While trying to find a way to contact Doctor Metzier over the radio in the fort (which requires tricky puzzles to be solved), Tasi stubbles across a room with a working telegraph device. She can interact with the transmitter and send messages to an unknown recipient in Morse code.
If the player knows how to send an SOS over the transmitter, they will be able to get a response from the machine. The response won’t mean much to those who don’t know Morse code, of course, and the machine short circuits immediately after. The message returned remains unclear, though it appears to say YOUDIE.
4 Tasi’s Reflection
At the very end of the game (it has a variety of tricky endings to unlock) in the Empress’ tower, players have the choice of looking at their reflection in the fountain, seeing the monster that Tasi has become. This moment is made even more poignant and horrifying if the player also finds the other fountain near the start of the game in the fortress.
Here, Tasi can look at her reflection before the corruption begins to take root, allowing the player to see how far she will degrade over the course of the game. Finding and looking into this fountain will award the player with the Narcissist achievement.
3 The Identity Of Tin Hinan
In The Dark Descent, Daniel discovers the orb while on an expedition with Professor Herbert in the mysterious Tomb of Tin Hinan. The identity of Tin Hinan was unknown at the time and added to the Lovecraftian mystery (a popular motif for horror games) of the orb’s origins.
In Rebirth, Tasi finds herself in the same legendary tomb, where she visits the remains of Herbert’s base camp. Seeing as Tin Hinan’s burial site is directly adjacent to the Portal chamber and the name is remarkably similar to Tihana, it is safe to assume that this another name for the Empress (and further evidence of her meddling with ancient human civilization).
2 Escaping The Grenade
In her efforts to escape the fortress, Tasi has to retrieve a bottle of sulphur from a cage in the arsenal. The door is locked and attached by a hook on a string to a grenade, requiring Tasi to enter via an outside window. On a first playthrough, many will trigger the grenade and hide behind the altar in the cage, blowing the door open.
Even if the player doesn’t reach cover in time, the grenade won’t kill Tasi but simply quicken her transformation into a harvester. To escape without triggering the grenade, the player must retrieve the key, hidden on a corpse to the right of the door. They can then simply remove the hook (carefully) and unlock the door.
1 The Origin Of Alexander
Part of what made The Dark Descent one of the best horror titles of its time (along with the overarching series) was how well it kept the story vague and shrouded in mystery. Little is known about the game’s antagonist, Baron Alexander Von Brennenburg, except that he has knowledge of Vitae extraction and was exiled from his homeland. When Tasi is accidentally teleported to a medical theatre in the other world, she finds a memory cylinder about the arrival of an apostate called Ayandra.
This apostate helped the gatekeepers to more efficiently extract Vitae, by teaching them how to use an extract made of Flower of Emmerysh/Damascus Rose to wipe a subject’s memory (reducing their fatigue and increasing the Vitae that could be harvested from them). Eventually, the apostate was found guilty of heinous crimes and exiled to another world. It’s speculated that Ayandra was Alexander, which would explain his inhuman appearance and otherworldly knowledge of Vitae.
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