The Haunted Hoard: FAITH: The Unholy Trinity (PC)
Much has been said how horror stories can feed off keeping their monsters and villains out of sight, the terror of the unknown sometimes stronger than what we’d feel if we understood the danger at play. However, FAITH: The Unholy Trinity is unafraid of putting its creatures and demons in your face despite being rendered in a style more suitable for an Atari 2600 game than one released in the 2020s. While a few pixels with some compressed audio doesn’t sound like it would be that scary, FAITH: The Unholy Trinity preys on the fact you often quite make out what you’re facing, there being an immediate fear borne of trying to understand what has just appeared, that knowledge crucial due to how quickly those pixelated monsters can kill you if you hesitate.
FAITH: The Unholy Trinity is a compilation of the three chapters that tell the tale of Father Ward, a priest who failed to exorcise a demon from the teenage girl Amy and is haunted by that guilt. Returning a year later in 1987 to try and set things right, John Ward is able to learn more about how Amy came to be possessed in the first place, the story expanding outward as more details about a cult and the actual demons of Hell come into focus. Of particular immediate interest is Gary, a name mentioned right as the game first loads with the curious assurance that he loves you. Through notes and the places you explore, this cryptic character continues to evade true understanding, the game able to dish out details about the history of the cult and information on demonic rituals to reel you in without the need to put forth the darker truths you immediately crave. With John’s own faith tested by plunging deeper into a supernatural and horrific underside to his world to get answers and set his soul at piece, you also get a tale that feels personal even with the divine and sacrilege often at play.
However, when the game first starts in Chapter 1, it does so rather simply. You mostly find yourself playing as John Ward throughout the trilogy, and for the most part, your means of interacting with the world is simply raising a crucifix. Chapter 1 helps you come to grips with this tool, the player able to use it to purge spirits from objects to find important notes to explain the world, but it also serves as your single lifeline in many deadly situations. Most things you face will be harmed by the mere sight of your crucifix, and holding it towards them is your means of warding them off or dealing damage. When some gaunt white figure scrambles towards you on all fours, shrieking something that sounds like human language but you can’t quite tell what they’re saying, you get that immediate fear of not knowing what it is, but also the assurance that your crucifix can probably do something to it. You need to react in time and point it towards the threat, sometimes while you’re close enough to it, and over the chapters, what you face with this simple means of repelling evil starts to grow more complex. You might need to use visual clues to know an invisible being is approaching or which of many illusions is actually a true demon. You may have to sustain your crucifix on the target for some time to wear it down while it can zip around the room or even fire attacks directly towards you. There is some appropriate comfort in the fact you almost always lean back on this little cross for protection, the faith John puts in the Lord represented by this powerful means of keeping evil at bay with his own death often immediate should he come into contact with the warped humans and demons he encounters on his quest for redemption.
As mentioned, the graphics and presentation are deceptively effective precisely because they look too simple to inspire fear. Father Ward himself walks in a simple loop of two simple poses, his body a bluish human shape with its most distinguishing feature being his priest’s collar. When you run into something dangerous though, there’s often that immediate fear for your life as you can’t be sure how this new threat is going to behave. The basics about your crucifix mean you aren’t going to end up unfairly killed because you didn’t understand some system at play, but that immediate fear, like what a mouse might feel when they know some animal is in the area but aren’t sure what kind of predator it might be, can seize your heart for a bit, sometimes making your actions sloppy or panicked. The sound definitely contributes to this, the game already a touch unsettling for the rough synthesized voices used in cutscenes, but having something shriek something you almost understood puts you on edge, like you know you’re missing some detail that maybe could have helped to interpret it properly. That constant need to try and interpret what you’re seeing means you don’t quite become inured to the horror, but FAITH: The Unholy Trinity also makes some incredible use of cutscenes that are both technically more detailed and just as simplistic.
When certain important scenes or dangerous encounters occur, the game can cut to special rotoscoped scenes that move with an eerie smoothness. What was once a purple human-shaped pile of pixels is now clearly a human being moving with the fluidity of something real and alive despite the fact it is mostly drawn in a single colored outline. It’s a stark disruption that can almost invert the common source of horror, the game suddenly shifting to this nearly out-of-place look to show something with unnerving clarity. Some of these scenes are a little corny, but many more provide striking visuals that are able to render some of the game’s most memorable images in that unsettling mix of limited detail and the smart use of negative space.
Chapter II and III both provide a deeper look at the story as well as many more complicated forms of interaction than merely raising your cross. Puzzles to determine the path onward, enemy encounters where some gimmick might be at play and require more thought to overcome, and a much larger space to explore that, at least in some places like the apartment, can almost feel a bit too daunting if you’re trying to find all the notes or pursue the multiple endings do lead to FAITH: The Unholy Trinity being a more robust game than its old school graphics would imply. Parts may focus on the mundane nature of evil at times while others will reveal something horrible without feeling the need to dwell on it, letting your own imagination do what it has done so well elsewhere and fill in those detail gaps. Boss encounters can actually prove to be fairly strong tests of your movement skills, and while John’s walking speed can sometimes be such a slow shuffle that it might deter going for alternate endings, the boss fights are mostly planned well to pressure you without the speed of your movement being what would do you in. Smart positioning, knowing when to take your chances to raise your cross, and balancing unique features like trying to protect someone else in the fight or dealing with very limited visibility can make these fights to survive tense, although retrying them can occasionally be a bit of a drag due to bosses that can take a considerable amount of damage to defeat. Checkpoints allow the game to be a little rough with you and they are clearly planned to often alleviate some of that potential dismay at losing a long fight at least.
Extra modes are available for unlocking, some like casting Chapter 1 in darkness not too exciting while the Prologue provided upon beating Chapter II continues to play into the game’s strength with more details surrounding the cult you’re slowly coming to know and some new horrors and little puzzles as well. Modes that sound promising like Turbo that could conceivably speed up going for other endings and extras are not so easily unlocked and actually serve as your rewards for doing the very things they’d be good for. Individual chapters don’t have anything carried between them though and range from the short first one to the last being only a few hours still so the ability to pursue different endings for each chapter varies, but FAITH: The Unholy Trinity has some nice secrets worth seeing including special boss fights and extra story details, the already excellent run through the regular adventure bolstered by having these additional depths to plumb even if the game keeps other rewards close to its chest.
THE VERDICT: FAITH: The Unholy Trinity makes expert use of its aesthetic for horror. The absence of details makes some monsters and scenes more striking because you can’t quite make perfect sense of what you’re seeing, while the rotoscoped scenes move with such uncanny realism despite their limited linework they can tap into uneasy simplicity and disturbing detail. Leaning on holding up the cross as your means of interacting with most things keeps you grounded no matter the situation, always able to bounce back from moments of panic and confusion, but the game still requires skill and movement because of the ways its enemies attack and puzzles are constructed. FAITH: The Unholy Trinity ends up a more effective horror game than those that look far better than it because it smartly limits how much information is provided in looks and story while its gameplay doesn’t receive such obfuscation, the player better able to appreciate the plot and action both because of that tenuous but well balanced relationship with clarity.
And so, I give FAITH: The Unholy Trinity for PC…
A GREAT rating. When dealing with matters of faith, clarity is often a resource you can rarely rely on. FAITH: The Unholy Trinity has you questioning what you come across quite often, not only in terms of how it might tie to the plot, but how it might tie to your immediate survival. You need to hold faith that you can overcome whatever strange and difficult to understand things appear before you, your little crucifix feeling so flimsy and simple in a world with bloody creatures rendered in difficult to determine shapes, but you put your faith not in the Lord but in the game’s design and are justly rewarded. It will not give you the easy victory, even its helpful modes only going to those who already mastered it, but it won’t leave you hanging with no way out of a situation. Boss fights can be more demanding because you know, even when the boss’s movements are still being learned, when their tricks are coming into focus, that you are equipped for the encounter. You can still feel quite vulnerable though, what you face is truly deadly quite often and you’ll see the death screen’s morose declaration of MORTIS fairly often because of some fights dragging on or the pressure sometimes being so immediate you might react incorrectly. Most of FAITH: The Unholy Trinity’s incongruities are to its benefit though, like unexpected moments of humor or situations that never really get the most direct answer on their nature. Ultimately, finding enough notes will bring the grander plot into enough focus, the pacing done well to build mysteries without feeling frustrating about what morsels you do uncover periodically, the narrative and the continued impressive wielding of rotoscoped scenes and simple but meaningful pixel art more than enough to keep you on board even during some less exciting moments like the apartment’s navigation.
FAITH: The Unholy Trinity is Christian horror in terms of subject matter, but it can also tackle subjects much broader than the religious iconography it leans on. The dangerous indoctrination of cults, the fear of the inexplicable, the difficulty in maintaining any sort of faith as life throws trials at you again and again that feel like they are bigger than what you bring to bear. FAITH: The Unholy Trinity is a fight for the figurative and literal soul, but its presentation helps to place it in its own realm as well. You can’t always rely on your eyes and ears to show you the truth, and you need to be ready to act even in unclear situations. FAITH: The Unholy Trinity isn’t scary in spite of its retro look, it’s often scary because of it, but even beyond the scares, it wields its look and design for an effective tale and some challenging encounters, this horror game worthy of you putting some faith in it to deliver despite its initially unassuming visuals.