The Casting of Frank Stone Review (PS5) – Entity Displeased
Ah, Dead by Daylight; the game you play when you hate yourself. I certainly feel like Dead by Daylight (DBD) takes the crown for one of the most toxic relationships I’ve ever been in and I have dated some FROGS let me tell ya. The Casting of Frank Stone marks DBD’s second venture in expanding the franchise. We first had Hooked on You, the very out of left field dating sim, and now we have Frank Stone, and I don’t think Behaviour plans on stopping expanding the world of DBD anytime soon. It’ll likely soon be gaming’s version of the Marvel Universe, especially with the newly announced co-op shooter being developed.
The announcement of The Casting of Frank Stone filled the household with excitement, I couldn’t wait. From someone who has over 2000 hours in DBD (which for this community isn’t even considered loads, but respectable), and is a big fan of Supermassive, it felt like a match made in heaven. I truly trusted Supermassive to do an excellent job of holding the lore and authenticity of the world of DBD. After all, DBD is already a game with so much lore attached, half the work is done for them right? Right..?
Well, I think it will disappoint some fans to know that the decision to take a different direction of lore encompasses the story of Frank Stone. Some fans may have been hoping for an origin story, or an adventure that follows the original characters. Frank Stone follows a host of different characters, some I have no doubt we will see in the future in the main game.
Enter the Fog
After playing the preview, I was ‘hooked’, intrigued and excited to see what would unfold within the game. It was just the right amount of gameplay that wet my whistle for what is to come. It’s difficult to review a narrative story based game, without well… spoiling the game. So I will try my best, but there may be some very mild spoilers ahead. You know how i said earlier, how I truly felt that Supermassive were the ones who could be entrusted with the lore of the game? I think they were probably exactly the right studio to bring an origin story or a story involving the original characters to life.
I think the community would have respected the massive task it would have been to assimilate seven years of the fog, I stand by that. What I no longer stand by is how Frank Stone manages to feel more like something from the world of Stranger Things than it does DBD. I don’t stand by that this feels like your average Supermassive story with a couple of lumped in trinkets and collectables that could be DBD merch to bump its ratings and player base.
It would be very easy to make this a stand-alone story, removing the elements of DBD and it would stand just as average as it does with DBD included within it. This borderlines gimmick-y and I can’t hold the disappointment I have for it, when it could have been so spectacular. You know Fear the Walking Dead is mostly considered over-rated, and only as successful as it was, because of the beloved community of The Walking Dead. This feels like a product copy of exactly what has happened here.
The game consists of 13 chapters over three different timelines. The 1960’s, 1980’s and 2024. Although most of your gameplay will take place between 1980 and 2024. If you’ve played the preview then you’ll be aware of what happens in 1960, watching officer Sam Green take down local serial killer Frank Stone in the local town’s working mill. Most characters will appear in all three timelines, barring one or two and the game follows the journey of a group of teenagers making a film in the location where a once-serial killer was murdered.
Dark Theory
The storyline because it is so bulked out over the timelines suffers a bloated amount of filler scenes and dialogue to make context. So much so that the game doesn’t necessarily get very interesting or recognisable as a Supermassive one until around chapter ten. You’ll have to endure hours and hours of story, diagloue and almost no tension, threat or hard hitting decisions to be made to get to anything where it feels worth your time of investment and consequences to the story.
Once the recognisable tension and stakes hit, the game becomes quite enjoyable for the rest of its short time left. It feels like the threat of characters dying and pinnacle twists and turns to the story only really count from here. I say this with confidence having seen many different endings, and trying to change the course of the story from a very early point. It’s a shame because I actually really enjoyed the last few chapters, but I can’t say the build up and the slow burn is worth the wait for such a short time. Within mere scenes you can go from everyone alive, to everybody dead. It feels like a total see-saw 360 to the previous hours played. The build up is sadly distinctly average and a bit boring for the pay off.
I also noticed on further playthroughs some stuff in the story doesn’t actually make sense, at one point they all talk about the very thing they are all there for (they do not yet know this of each other), but the way they talk about it, make it seem like it was some long lost information they’ve not thought about for years. Yet, it’s the very reason some of the characters have come together.
There is also a particular death that happens regardless of what you do – and it makes no sense why that character moves in the first place and ends up dying. I noticed there is certinaly more narrative heavy focus in this title – at times I noticed a lot of narrative will happen the same regardless of the decision you make as a player, which does feel a bit more present in this title compared to others but some details feel slightly careless.
Background Player
The characters range from quite likeable to sometimes horror movie flick cringeworthy. Some of the writing feels ripped out of a 90’s horror movie – maybe that was intentional but having someone talk their thoughts out loud and then correct themselves, out loud – feels cringeworthy and high school project writing. Other times, I can’t say I ever felt invested to keep some characters alive. This isn’t my normal Supermassive experience.
Usually, I feel a pull to many of the characters, either to make sure they die, because they are rude, arrogant or annoying, or quite the oppisite and I am sad to lose them as part of the gang. My pendulum for characterisation sat solely in the middle. I hope to see Madi in the future of DBD, but I wasn’t desperate to see her out to the end. I did on my first playthrough anyway.
Then you have the likes of Stan, he is actually quite dislikeable and we all have probably someone in our life that reminds us of him. Too arrogant for his own good, a bit of a try hard and selfish to the core. This is where your recogniseable Supermassive writing comes into play where each character whilst distinctly different from one another, still manages to capture the essence of the typical group you’ll see in their archives of game.
Frank Stone will make a decent addition to the Dead by Daylight universe, and I have no doubt there will be plans to add him in the future. His character model in his full form is genuinely quite scary and suits the look of OG DBD killers. It is a shame you don’t see him for a big portion of the game. You can see how they may bring him to life in the main game with the way he is attacked. Although it is not the most exciting fight of your life, it will suffice for a decent trial in the 4 v 1 set up.
However, because of this classic element from Supermassive I fear that the game and the writing is becoming quite predictable. There were times, thanks to the previous games I have played, where I could start to sniff out what may happen in the story, that particular character or where it may be heading. Of course, if this is your introduction into Supermassive games then this won’t be a problem for you. There have been times both in dark anthology and main supermassive titles I have had no idea what is coming next and it has blindsided me with thrill. This was not really the case here at all, and feels like a lost opportunity given the lore of DBD.
There was also one particular occasion it told me to do something ‘before the time ran out’. So I sat there and waited for said time to run out – just to see what would happen and if this would trigger a scene I had not yet seen. Nothing happened. I had to fail the generator for the scene to trigger instead which is just awkward. Don’t threaten me in the writing in an attempt to build tension and pressure to simply not follow through with it. It’s awkward for the both of us.
Iron Will
Okay, enough of that. You get it. Time for some praise: Supermassive have always hit 10/10 on the musical score. This is no different here in Frank Stone, and the music cleverly is mixed with all the recogniseable sounds of DBD, including the theme, the main screen title, and recognisable sound bites like the skill checks, item collection and so forth. It builds tension in the later scenes just right, and sound bites the right type of creepy for those more slower darker scenes. At times I had the odd bug, I imagine this will hopefully be fixed by launch and it only happened a few times where characters would talk over each other in the scene, but it wasn’t part of the script. It gave the impression two scenes were almost playing over each other.
I was struck from the very first scene what a visual spectacle it is. I think I even say it in the preview stream I did of how great the game looked. The art style shows every crease and wrinkle in a characters skin, the background and environment add to the story and there is always loads to look at. It does do a great job of inputting more subtle eggs such as the odd pallet, or recognisable angles of hooks and levels. The nuance that is also designed in facial expressions, such as a burrowing of the brow, or hidden frustration in another characters reaction, displays Supermassive’s spectacular art we love to see.
I only ran into the odd visual glitch, sometimes doors weren’t aligned exposing where the evnrionment ends with a blue screen. Sometimes characters had an odd shake to their stature. I had no idea if this was on purpose but it looked like a medical emergency at times and was quite distracting. Similarly, character’s eye tracking at times made them look as if they were always looking up at something, even if characters were similar heights. Distracting, but not the end of the world.
Before I endured the world’s longest story for a very quick release of atmosphere tension, and exactly what I was excited for. I did really enjoy the Easter Eggs from the very start. Even down to the PlayStation icon looking like an add on from DBD. Some of the Easter Eggs made very little sense, such as one of the main characters having scratch marks in a dream sequence and then this is never ever shown again?
Built to Last
Collectables come in the form of character dolls and these are cool and something I would personally love to own. The Mill itself doesn’t look too recogniseable to the level in DBD but there are some familiar looks.. I do however think, they could have pushed further with the Easter Eggs and included very well known community based things – like why can’t I teabag Frank? There is only one true ‘hook’ in the game. No exit gates to be powered, no pallets to throw down, and not even a flashlight saves (If you include the preview where Frank is hit with a flashlight that doesn’t count – I am sorry but it doesn’t.)
The ending, which I won’t spoil, is a very good touch and probably my favourite part of all the Easter eggs included. However this storyline could survive without the DBD elements and still hold up as a time jump, supernatural-esq tale. Which is why I think I am so saddened such a promising partnership was taken by this. It feels like the storyline was already in place, perhaps already partially or mostly written, and it was shaped to fit the world of DBD, as opposed to the other way around.
In regards to replayability, why have we still not added a skip button? There is a trophy for seeing all 200+ scenes, and the cutting room floor certainly helps with this. The cutting room floor is similar to the timeline feature shown in Detriot: Become Human, where you can see your decisions track among different movie clips. You will be able to see every other possible encounter in said scene also.
These will be hidden until you actually experience them in game, but they are marked with a key to depict whether collectables are present, or whether someone dieing is possible in this scene. It’s helpful and should your first playthrough be lucky, you may be able to see alot of scenes relataively quickly with just a few changes along the way. This also allows you to start the game at different points – preventing you from starting from the beginning every single time you want to see an outcome.
Borrowed Time
This would also have been solved by a skip button. How are we over twenty games deep for a game genre that works around seeing many of the same scene over and over again, and we have not given the option to skip it? Is the worry that we will miss something? That we won’t be as invested in the story? I don’t get it. Even if it was just added following one full run through. Especially when there is such a narrative focus, it puts the choice into the players hands, especially if there multiple playthroughs happening at once. One step at a time as I do really like the cutting room floor element. With this, you won’t lose your collectable progress either. Once collected, it will always be collected.
Speaking of new features, once a playthrough has been completed you, the player, get a perk. For subsequent run throughs you will have Plunderers Instinct. A helpful tool that aids you in finding the trinkets in the areas you may have missed. I was only missing a few, but it was really helpful on my next playthrough. It will also give you an opportunity to nudge you into picking different routes if you think you may have missed some entirely during your run. Additionally, just like any Supermassive game, a breakdown of relationships is also available to view.
I initially tried out the multiplayer and I would say this is well portioned even though there is an odd number of characters to control – the split works quite well. There were times where it switched to player 2 and there would be nothing to do but that simply depends on how you’ve played the game up to then and who’s alive/dead/with you/not with you, so you may have to enjoy the movie for those portions if they happen.
Overall, it pains me to say The Casting of Frank Stone is a distinctly average story, at times, boring and lackluster tacked on to a popular game franchise for what feels like a gimmicky horror fan project. It feels unfamailar to its previous archive of projects. There are some elements of both DBD and Supermassive that feel fun, recogniseable, and exciting. However, the build up through many many hours of context setting and collecting the odd DBD collectable is not worth the final dopamine hit of thrills.
Supermassive is back and teaming up with one of the biggest franchises in asymmetrical horror, Dead by Daylight. Whilst the visuals and sound, among collecting the odd Easter Egg provide the biggest highlights from the game. The storyline is a very slow burn, not worth the end-game final reveal. Although Frank Stone will be an exciting addition to Dead by Daylight, his standalone tale is overshadowed by long drawn out backstory and lackluster excitement.
The Casting of Frank Stone is available September 3rd 2024 on PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC via Steam.
Developer: Supermassive Games
Publisher: Behaviour Interactive
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
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