We’ve fought off the spirit of Frank Stone in the past. In the present, we’ve encountered the ghost of a Sheriff too young to belong.

What more could await us that we’ve yet to encounter?

It appears the premise is coming more into focus. And next week, we should be able to finish the tale.

Frank Stone has been awakened… in a less material form, and now we have an evil spirit on our hands. How will this monster follow us into the present year?

If you’re going to borrow from Dead by Daylight as source material for your story, you might as well take one of the most well known mechanics from it in the form of skill checks and generator repairs. And if you’re going to have a mystic camera as the MuGuffin of your story, you might as well pull from one of the most famous franchises to make use of cameras as a weapon to fight off supernatural horrors.

I respect the way this game embraces its inspirations and uses them to do its own unique thing in its own unique style. And that goes double since their studio produces one of these games every year, and none of them have been complete misses even if a few aren’t as good as the rest.

Now that we’ve shot all of the major scenes for “Murder Mill”, it’s time for the far more difficult task of gathering evidence of our cri- I mean B-roll. Obviously, I mean B-roll.

Although we’re now at a point where the story is starting to move forward, I would like to take the time to discuss the title and why I enjoy it’s double layered meaning.

The “Casting” of Frank Stone can refer to multiple things. In a literal sense, as the characters in this story are filming a movie, it could be said that they’ve “cast” Frank Stone as the monster in their film by making his story such a significant inspiration for the flick. And yet, Stone can also be “cast” as a form of reconstructing and reinforcing it, so metaphorically it could also refer to Augustine’s goal of resurrecting Frank Stone so that The Entity can use him.

I enjoy these exact types of titles, where the choice of words can imply multiple hidden meanings behind them, and I felt the need to shout it out.

As we’re flung between two separate eras, Acharky and I learn of a link between the strange goings-on and an old independent movie titled “Murder Mill”. No one has died yet, but time will tell if things stay that way.

A few jump scares in this episode, but we’ve still yet to confront and genuine terrors or threats.

Don’t worry though. That’s all set to change soon.

Everything appears to revolve around Murder Mill. What dark secrets could that “cult” classic unfold?

For every question we have answered, the game raises a few more. Right now, our biggest mysteries are who this mysterious figure is in 2024, and what happened to Jamie.

I’m looking forward to getting those answers, and I hope you are too.

What do a cop, a young college student, and an old film director have in common? They’re all potential victims in The Casting of Frank Stone.

I like how the big through-line between the various points in time is already fairly obvious even this early on. The game is doing a good job of seeding questions into our minds before it goes to answer them, to keep us engaged and actively participating in the story, even if those questions are being answered relatively quickly.

Part of me imagines that comes from being the byproduct of a Dead by Daylight tie-in. Supermassive has to know that the vast majority of the audience will at least be some familiarity with the property and its lore. Therefore, they will already know and expect certain details before we even see them in the game. We already know that an Entity governs the world of Dead by Daylight, so to set a story in that lore requires us to already accept that as truth.

It will be interesting to see if that tie-in status changes anything about the Supermassive house style as we continue.

Alright. Looks like there’s a spooky murder cult operating out of an old steel mill. I’m sure that’s nothing we can’t handle.

Not much to say yet because we’re still in the early game, but this is par for the course with a Supermassive project. They take their time setting up so that we have a grounding before the horror starts.

Acharky is with us once more in the spookiest month of the year, and you all know what that means. It’s time for us to play through a horror game together!

Though we don’t have a Dark Pictures entry to look forward to, Supermassive did hand us a game based on Dead by Daylight: The Casting of Frank Stone.

To set the exceptions, like many of our previous streams, we are going into this blind. Additionally, any knowledge I have about the lore of Dead by Daylight comes purely through osmosis, as I don’t actively play the game, and Chris is only slightly above my level in that regard.

In other words, we will be judging this story on its own merits, separate from its place as a Dead by Deadlight tie-in game. All I’m looking for is a good horror game in the Supermassive house style.

So far, it’s a promising start. But we’ll see how it stacks up to the other games from Supermassive’s catalog that we’ve played on this channel.

And as a addendum, we haven’t dropped Assassin’s Creed 2. We will get to the DLC and the finale, but first I want to play this while its appropriate for the season.

Only one name remains on the list: Rodrigo Borgia aka The Spaniard. One more name, and our revenge is complete.

On one hand, I like this as a part of Ezio’s character arc, where he learns that all of his friends have been secretly guiding him over the past decade, but as other voices have called out, this is strange. Stranger even than the fact that Machiavelli is 17 years old when this scene takes place and was 7 years old when Ezio’s family was killed.

I remember at the time being surprised not that all of these characters were secretly Assassins, but that I was supposed to be unaware of that fact despite the fact that Uncle Mario made that pretty clear in the early game. I was also not aware that Ezio wasn’t officially an assassin until this moment. I figured that when he told Mario that he would take on his father’s work, that would come with the implication that he was an Assassin.

Normally, we would be marching straight into the endgame. However, this version of Assassin’s Creed 2 comes with the missing DLC sequences 12 and 13 packed into the game. Therefore, we will begin next week with Sequence 12: The Battle of Forli.

Two more Templars exist in Venezia, and it’s time to strike their names off the list once and for all.

At last, the end game approaches. And next time, all will come into focus.