It’s been more than ten years since the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise entered public consciousness, and the massive multimedia franchise is now far away from what was once a one-and-done indie horror game by then unknown Scott Cawthon. From having a tight cast of characters and a simple yet effective story that made millions get invested into the game, to becoming an entire franchise where characters and plot lines are still being accounted for even by the most diehard fans, the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise has had an interesting evolution.
Even now, more than a decade and two blockbuster movies later, we’re seeing games still used as the main way to expand Freddy’s universe, and almost every recent entry has both me and parts of the fanbase scratching their heads. I only became a casual fan of the series in the last few months, but my outsider’s perspective gave me a unique trip along the line of game releases to experience the shifts the series took in real time. Now I’m left with some key questions: what happened, and what went wrong? What can be done to bring life back to the metaphorical animatronic that Five Nights at Freddy’s has, for me at least, trapped itself inside of? Here are five ways I think the franchise could improve by addressing its key issues.
Bring back the simpler stories
It’s basically tradition at this point that every new Five Nights at Freddy’s game has a more complex story than the previous one, since it always tries to solve the remaining mysteries of the previous one or make the plot bigger and grander. The original Five Nights at Freddy’s featured a narrative that could only really be accessed through random easter eggs when you looked at the cameras, giving you barely any context to know the animatronics you’re surviving against are actually possessed by missing children who once attended that same pizzeria. Credit where it’s due, Cawthon hit the nail on the head by drip-feeding information to the fans leaving them always wanting more. However, recent entries such as Secret of the Mimic and Security Breach have a much more complex and borderline baffling story that constantly fights to justify itself by over-explaining everything to the point where it becomes confusing again.
Whether it’s their easter eggs, audio logs, dialogue or gameplay mechanics, these two games for me feel like they have really no other reason to exist simply than to not let the franchise stall. I want future endeavors to go back to simpler storytelling, focused on one plot line that makes sense when I play it and doesn’t need to be deeply explained via YouTube video essays to work. An amazing example of this are the minigames you used to get between the earlier games in the franchise, where you’d get parts of the story revealed in-game that were easy to understanding, but without getting everything spelled out for you either. We can only hope this storytelling comes back sooner rather than later.
Make the animatronics feel real again
Most will agree that a very big factor as to why people love the designs of early Five Nights at Freddy’s animatronics is the nostalgia of our experience with mascot characters as children, such as in places like Chuck E. Cheese or local theme parks where mascots/animatronics dressed up as animals would serve as entertainment and they’d look… weird! Dead eyes that could stare at you for a lifetime, sudden movements and voices that sound very artificial; the designs from the first Five Nights at Freddy’s capture this perfectly. They let you to create an instant connection with the animatronics and believe they are real robots created by people to serve as child entertainers, not super advanced machines who somehow keep getting better budgets.
However, by the time Sister Location arrives with metallic ultra advanced animatronics, you lose any belief that these pizzerias could exist in real life and it becomes science fiction just as if you were watching Terminator. Why is it that, after the scandals the in-universe pizzeria franchise had following the disappearance of several children, the Fazbear brand suddenly had enough money to make advanced concept, futuristic and highly intelligent robots? I really hope we get to see designs that ground the franchise back into reality a bit going forwards, and not the sci-fi fantasy it’s seemingly trying to be with the more recent characters.
Create villains only when they’re needed
Most stories, but especially video games, feature a good and bad guy, pushing for that ancient narrative of good against evil. However, Freddy’s doesn’t really need to force that, and it was proven by the first couple of games. Do the animatronics work as antagonists? Yes, but are they inherently evil? No.
Ever since the introduction of Springtrap, an undead and explicitly villainous animatronic, many subsequent entries in the franchise tried to replicate this dynamic with a main antagonist that is the one to beat, similar in structure to any generic action game. I think having this focus in the story distracts from what is supposed to be the real story of the franchise, a tragedy about murder and grief. Security Breach even tried to have an alternate ending where it brought Springtrap back once again in a nonsensical Star Wars-style reappearance, to practically nobody’s liking. The story is meant to be a tale of horror, and it should feel like that – not an adventure.
Let established characters have time to shine
It’s tradition that every Five Nights at Freddy’s game will introduce new characters, and in most cases even an entirely new cast. That does probably make the wait for a new release much more exciting, as you have no idea what’s to come. It is also true though that some of these characters, settings or scenarios are too good to be used just once. I personally think that going back for another spin at the iconic Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 Pizzeria with different mechanics would be a great opportunity to expand the lore while clearing doubts and polishing the existing story. As an added bonus, it would validate the feeling of realism this franchise desperately needs as I explained earlier!
An example of characters that were moved on from too quickly is actually the original cast of animatronics in the first game: Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy. Whilst they’re apparently the face of the franchise both in the real world and in-universe, you never get to truly feel it when you’re playing the games as every game has an eagerness to prove you wrong on everything you thought before and “open your eyes” to new pieces of the puzzle, featuring recycled old designs presented as new characters with new lore. In doing so though, it forgets the good ideas and designs that it already had. I would love to see a series of Freddy’s games where the exact same animatronics (no redesigns!) get to have recurrent appearances, and actually feel like vintage pieces that have been lighting up kids parties for decades, and not just some franchise-feeding ephemera.
Make the titular Freddy a character again
Let’s be honest, one of the main reasons these games can’t help but create new redesigned versions of every character is due to how much merchandise they will sell if players like it. This does sound very appealing to fans and casual players, but it has left behind its own essence by literally tossing away the original Freddy Fazbear who gives the franchise a title, along with every other robot that followed. Something I think the first Five Nights at Freddy’s did incredibly well was the fact that Freddy was treated almost like the big bad without really needing to be one. He would activate later than everybody else but be twice as deadly. It gave weight to his presence as a character, and made the game feel like I was spending, well, five nights at Freddy’s.
If you see a trio of dancing animatronics you would probably expect the main robot in the center and in the name to be the main protagonist. That’s how I imagined the series when I was an outsider to it, and what I felt when I was playing the first two games. However, Five Nights at Freddy’s now just can’t stop introducing new faces and animatronics, to the point that whenever Freddy comes back in any version or redesign, he now feels like another one from the pile of wires and pistons rather than this giant animatronic legend that seemingly leads the rest and will actually make sure he stands out. The only exception here is Security Breach, where even though I dislike the fact he’s redesigned to look more like a David Bowie action figure rather than an animatronic, he gets a deserved pivotal role in the needlessly convoluted narrative.
Five Nights at Freddy’s doesn’t look like it’s stopping anytime soon, and that’s a good thing for its fans, however there sure are some problematic things the games are doing that I feel should be stopped before it completely alienates itself from new fans, and strays too far from what it once was. For a supposed horror franchise, there is a lot of fantasy and little to no stakes when everything feels fake and not thought out properly. It’s hard to be scared in a game where I don’t know what’s going on or why I should care. Nothing is ever truly lost though, and with some adjustments and refocusing, I think that Five Nights at Freddy’s could not only regain its past glory but rise to levels of fandom and popularity never before reached by the series. Just please, no more recycled animatronic variants.
