TV NARRATOR: “Where will they go, what will they do?” TV NARRATOR: “All of that and more happening now.” VLAD: “Clara, I tell you, the baby is—” [Mechanical door closes and reopens] HANDUNIT: “Press the red button now to administer a controlled shock.” [Electrical surge] [Electronic ambient music] Welcome back everyone to our “Five Nights at Freddy’s” retrospective series. Today, we’re talking about “Sister Location.” This one really marked the next phase for “Five Nights at Freddy’s” in a lot of different ways. This one is going to be long, and my hope is a little scary, so let’s get started. [Electronic ambient music] Now, it’s important to mention here that a lot of the teasers that were going on around the time of “Sister Location” and a lot of the early stuff was also happening the same time as, uh, “FNaF World” Update 2, so there’s some overlap here. But the first big mystery to solve was the lines. This teaser was released on Scottgames and slowly added letters as time went on. There were plenty of ideas as to what it could be, but then we found it and confirmed it. Someone went digging into the metadata of the image and found the name “Sister Location.” Now for the life of me, I can’t find any actual reference of this happening, I just know it did. I have a clear memory of someone posting on the subreddit that they went into the metadata, like Photoshop data of the image, and they found “Sister Location.” But I couldn’t find anything on the subreddit this many years later, and I couldn’t find anything on YouTube about it, I just feel like I remember it happening. And if I remember correctly, this is what made Scott sort of fast-forward and just release the full next teaser. “Sister Location: There was never just one.” And behind, a new animatronic, almost like the Toy animatronics but not quite. Around this time, there was a lot of other discoveries being made. Someone found Scott Cawthon’s copyright logs and saw that he had added a bunch of new names: Baby, Ballora, Funtime Freddy and Foxy, Bidybab, Ennard, and Minireena. Who exactly these characters were was highly debated, but there was a surprising amount of accuracy with a lot of people’s early predictions. There was also the source code. At this point in the series, I’m sure you know that checking out the source code on Scott Cawthon’s websites is extremely important. Scott had hidden a show schedule in the metadata for the new characters, and also introduced the name “Afton Robotics.” This was a huge deal. For those who don’t know, in the “Silver Eyes” novel, William Afton is the name of the murderer, so his name held a lot of weight. There’s also “Chica’s Party World,” which I think it’s still up for debate what it actually means. One big thing I remember from this era was the Adult Theory, popularized by the fangame creator Popgoes. For a while, this schedule and all of this stuff was connected to this theory that somehow the next game was going to be about a robotic strip club? I remember thinking at the time this didn’t really make a lot of sense for the next direction that Scott Cawthon was gonna go, and I think this is what inspired him to add an extra line to the source code that specified “children’s entertainment.” Now, let’s talk more about the actual teasers. There was the full reveal of Baby, which had a little bit going on. Some people thought they could see the reflection of Springtrap in her nose, and there was a debate as to whether she had hair or just a jester hat. And then there was the Ennard reveal, and that line at the bottom, “There is a little of me in every body.” People quickly caught on to that space: “every body.” However, exactly how it connected to the lore wouldn’t quite be clear until the game came out. Then, the Bidybabs, and the classic line “Don’t hold it against us,” a gameplay hint with the “Get back to your stage” teaser, and then of course, the trailer. In typical Scott Cawthon fashion, the trailer was full of quick flashes of gameplay and cryptic messages. However, this time there’s a lot more to theorize about. The lines “Don’t hold it against us,” the completely new setting and themes, and the audio. Some people thought this was a bunker in the robot apocalypse, or a nuclear fallout had occurred. This also had the opening which referenced all the other games, quite aptly I’d say. Oh, and I almost forgot: “Sister Location” ended up being cancelled due to leaks. Except obviously, it wasn’t. Brightening this teaser image, we get a portion of a news article explaining that Circus Baby’s Pizza World’s opening has been cancelled due to gas leaks, and that the building was sold. However, things aren’t quite over for Circus Baby yet. I could keep talking about all the theories and ideas people had around this time, but let’s just get into it: October 7th, 2016, “Sister Location” was released. [Electronic ambient music] Now, the gameplay of “Sister Location,” there isn’t just a simple loop like there were with the previous games. Each night in “Sister Location” is different and very linear, it’s more story-based. So let’s start with some of the gameplay aspects that stay consistent throughout the nights, and then we’ll talk about each night individually. So first off, the limited movement of FNaF 4 was expanded on in this game. While it is extremely limited in “Sister Location,” WASD movement was added in certain sections: vents, large rooms, things like that. Otherwise, it’s still a point-and-click game. Clicking, dragging, moving your flashlight; those are all your most important tools. Aside from that, how you use all these aspects changes depending on the night, so let’s talk about each night. You start the night by coming down an elevator into the main compound of the game, and walk through a room where you must shock Ballora and Funtime Foxy back on their stage. From there, you move forward into a new room where you have to shock another animatronic, Baby, back to her stage. And then, you’re done. You turn around and leave; end of Night 1. This night starts just like the last one, moving through the areas underground and shocking the characters back to their stage. However, in Baby’s area, the power goes out, and Baby instructs you to hide under the desk. From here you have to keep a metal cover closed as the Bidybabs try to pry it open, and keep your flashlight away from their eyes. Once you survive for long enough, you move to the Ballora Gallery, where you move slowly across the room as Ballora moves around you. Using the sound, you must stop when she gets too close and make your way to the Breaker Control Room. Here, you have to reset the power in the building using a control panel. However, as you do, Funtime Freddy gets closer, but whenever you’re away from the control panel, any power you haven’t fully reset begins to tick back down. To move Funtime Freddy back, you have to play a calming voice recording that you access from outside the control panel. After hopefully surviving this, you move back through Ballora Gallery, but she isn’t actually able to kill you here. And that’s the end of Night 2. Night 3 starts the same as 1 and 2, checking the animatronics in the first room. Then you move to the Funtime Auditorium, where you have to use a flash beacon as you move through the dark room. Move too much, Funtime Foxy will get you, so you have to use a flash beacon to locate Funtime Foxy and stop moving if they’re too close. Once you make it to the next room, you have to perform maintenance on Funtime Freddy by pushing a series of buttons in a specific order. After removing a power module, the Bon-Bon hand puppet from Funtime Freddy begins sneaking around the room. Shining the flashlight directly on it will make it run away, so you have to carefully and quickly press the button on its bowtie to shut it off without shining the light directly on it. If you take too long or let it climb too close, you’re dead. After that, you’re done. End of Night 3. Night 4 starts with you waking up in a springlock suit. From here, you have to keep a series of springlocks wound up while preventing Minireenas from climbing on the top of your suit; if they do, you’re dead. But by shaking them off, you loosen your springlocks as well, so it’s a delicate balance. Night 4 is so difficult, there was actually a patch release to make it easier. Even then, it’s the only base game night out of any of the FNaF games I haven’t completed. It’s just absurdly hard and lasts so long. But after you beat that section, the night is over; on to Night 5. Night 5 starts with checking for the animatronics and then moving to the maintenance area again, this time to fix Baby. Here you have to put in a code that is given by Baby randomly to open a hatch, take apart, and then send Baby down a conveyor belt. After that, Baby leads you through a dark room as an animatronic comes after you. Follow her instructions closely, or you’ll run into it and die. Finally you enter a room where the game ends, which we’ll get into in the story section. As you can see, it’s not quite the same as the other games. Instead of a simple gameplay loop, you’re led through different areas to do specific tasks and have different interaction as the story plays out. There is another aspect of gameplay though, an alternate ending that has an entire other gameplay section. We’ll get into the story significance of that later, but for now, let’s just talk about the gameplay. When Baby leads you through the dark room, instead of following her instructions, you can move to a secret room where things are a lot more familiar: an office, two doors, and a camera system. Like most of the other FNaF games, the goal is to survive until 6am. The main part of this is listening. Ennard can be on your right, center vent, or left. Using the sound, you can keep track of where he is and use the camera to see how close he is. Other than that, it’s pretty simple: keep track and close the door. Things get harder at 4am when you need to close the door before checking on the camera, like Freddy in FNaF 1. While being simple, it’s extremely difficult because you have a very small amount of power. But generally, it’s back to basics: conserve power, check the doors, and be lucky. Aside from all that, there’s not a lot else to talk about in the gameplay. Like I said, it’s very linear and story-based. There is, of course, the Custom Night update, but I’ll talk about that in more detail later. Until then, let’s move on. [Electronic ambient music] When it comes to visuals, it changed a lot for the series, but is actually kind of a back-to-basics for Scott. If you look at his career, futuristic and sci-fi sort of modeling is actually what he’s used to, so the change in look from an unsettling house or creepy restaurant to a futuristic-style bunker with… …well, you can’t even call them animatronics at this point, they’re just full-on robots. It’s honestly the natural progression if you look at Scott’s career. He’s been a sci-fi man at heart this whole time. Moving on to the robots of this place, from the Bidybabs and Minireenas all the way up to the Babies and the Ennards, there’s something specific about them that makes them unique. They most closely resemble the Toy animatronics, but even that is only surface level. While the original animatronics were plush or had fabric on the outside, and the Toy animatronics seem to be made from plastic, the Funtime animatronics are made from metal, segmented into different parts that allows for them to seemingly change subtly. While on the surface this just seems like an odd design choice, it actually makes a bit of sense once we get into the theory section. Either way, the design of these animatronics are no longer relying on the fear of mascots. Now it’s like clowns, robots, and the future horror aesthetic that may remind you of 1950’s horror films and space horror like “Alien.” When it comes to the actual facility you’re in, the sci-fi sort of space theme fits here as well. Wire, buttons, flashing lights, and control panels; this is clearly higher tech stuff than we’re used to. There’s a strong emphasis on the lighting in this game, with a lot of variation. Blue is probably the strongest color used in this, but green and purple also have a prominent space here as well. The feeling of being in a place of entertainment is very much a façade, but I think that’s on purpose. You’re basically crawling through vents and storage containers, but there’s random decorations and masks hung up around, going back to the classic theme of “Five Nights at Freddy’s:” shitty corporate veneer. Oh, and a quick note on the home you go to between nights. Remember how I said there was a 1950’s feel? Well, look no further than the old TV and wallpaper. Plus, we couldn’t talk about the visuals without talking about how there was a whole animated show thrown in just for fun. Amazing. I also want to talk about the animation. This, at least at the time, uh, excluding “FNaF World,” was the most animation-heavy “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game there was. Specifically cutscene-wise, we see a lot; we see the Scooping Room in action, the Minireenas and Ballora, Ennard and Funtime Foxy; there’s also a lot of stark imagery here, from the guards hanging to Ballora’s broken eye staring at you at Night 4; great stuff all around. [Electronic ambient music] Now, in my “FNaF World” Update 2 retrospective, I talked about how important voice acting being introduced would be to the series. We really start to see that here: first off, HandUnit. HandUnit essentially takes the place of Phone Guy in this game, but is not voiced by Scott Cawthon. He goes through more than one voice, actually. Baby’s dialogue is pretty much the most important aspect of storytelling in the game, and the performance is great. And that’s not to mention the iconic voice of Funtime Freddy and the haunting sound of Ballora’s voice talking in the Gallery, and honestly just every other performance. On the sound design generally, while it isn’t quite as gameplay-oriented as some of the others— —with the exception of Ballora Gallery— —it’s where most of the horror comes in. [Quiet sustained hum] Random noises of shifting metal or the voice of the vent notifications letting you know that there is something in the vent with you, the metallic breathing of Ennard or the sudden sound of heavy machinery adds to the atmosphere, but can also cause actual jumpscares. And then there’s the music. Fun fact, there was actually a whole controversy that the “Escapist 2” Lockdown theme had actually been stolen from the “Sister Location” Menu theme, and it just turned out that the drum loop they both used is actually just a really common, like, loop in GarageBand or something like that. But again, like with what I’ve been saying previously, the game’s music is very industrial and fits the new sci-fi aesthetics. Interestingly though, this is sort of how the music has sounded in all the other games too; feels more like the game changed to fit around the music, and not the other way. [Electronic ambient music] Okay, let’s talk about the plot on a surface level. Like I said, it’s a lot more linear and story-based this time around, so there’s actually quite a lot to cover here. The game starts with a cutscene as two voices talk, some investor of some kind, and William Afton himself. They discuss the designs of the animatronics, and the investor seems confused and slightly concerned about the design choices. Then the game starts in an elevator as the HandUnit explains your role here: cleaning, maintenance, and general repair. It’s explained that after the closing of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, Circus Baby’s Pizza World was created, and instead of restaurants, the animatronics are rented out to private parties. The first night goes off without a hitch, using controlled shocks to control the animatronics back to their stage. The next night, however, the power goes out, and the Baby animatronic reveals she’s somehow sentient. She’s trying to protect you from the other animatronics for some reason that isn’t quite clear yet. After surviving the Bidybabs, Ballora Gallery, and Funtime Freddy, we move on to the next night. This next night has a bit of an extra story element that is optional. Instead of going into Funtime Freddy’s Auditorium, you can go to Circus Baby’s room, in spite of what HandUnit tells you. Here, Circus Baby tells you that the only time she was ever on stage, presumably before the gas leaks shut the restaurant down and it was turned into a rental business. She would count the children as they entered until there was only one left. When that child was alone, her stomach opened to reveal ice cream, and then there was screaming. Whatever it is that happened, it doesn’t seem like Baby was in control of herself when it did; but it appears that this is what the “gas leaks” really were. Moving on, on your way back from repairing Funtime Freddy, you get captured by Funtime Foxy and stuck inside a springlock suit. Somewhere nearby, you hear two maintenance workers starting up the Scooper, which guts the Ballora animatronic. Baby tells you to survive inside until the workers rescue you in the morning. In her monologue though, she makes a big emphasis on being able to pretend, how she’s the only animatronic smart enough to fool the humans. The next night, you’re led to repair Baby. She interrupts you and tells you to take her chip out and send her to the Scooper on a conveyor belt. She warns you though, Ballora’s scooped remains are here, and you must listen to her to avoid Ballora. You move to the Scooping Room, and Baby’s true intentions are revealed. As Ennard is revealed in the window, Baby’s voice explains that they’ve been trapped for so long, unable to escape. So basically, they’re going to scoop out your innards and use your skin as a suit to escape. Hm. Interesting. Then you’re scooped, and we cut to a bathroom mirror; eyes open, purple. Now that was all very surface level, but there’s a lot more that we can dive into a little deeper. First, there’s a little girl’s voice between nights. GIRL’S VOICE: “Daddy, why won’t you let me play with her?” Judging by the fact that there're only two British accents in the series, it seems like this is Mr. Afton’s daughter. The general consensus pretty much is that this is the voice of Afton’s daughter right before she gets attacked by Baby, as Baby describes in Night 3. One last element of the main plot here, the secret death mini-games; back to basics. When you die, there is a small chance of getting this mini-game in which you play as Circus Baby giving children cupcakes. It’s pretty simple, but to actually complete it within the time limit is extremely difficult. Finishing this mini-game correctly, however, unlocks the secret room in Night 5 we talked about earlier with the Ennard fight. To beat it correctly, you need to get all of the children cupcakes— —which takes a very precise use of the power-ups— —collect an ice cream cone, and then run all the way back to the beginning of the game. This time, a girl in pigtails is waiting. Baby presents the ice cream cone, and as the child gets closer, Baby’s stomach opens with a claw, killing the girl. So that’s basically confirming what Baby said in Night 3. Doing this opens up the ability to go to the Private Room, which has an entire other set of story elements. Ennard trying to lure the player out, vague references to the player being William Afton; it’s all very confusing, which is why we’ll talk about the secrets and easter eggs from here on to really understand more, starting with the Private Room. In the Private Room, there are a set of static monitors in front of you and a Fredbear plush on the table. There’s also a keypad. Entering “1983” into the keypad switches on the monitors, and we see cameras showing…the FNaF 4 house? It appears that the “Sister Location” building bunker-thing is directly underneath the FNaF 4 house, and this is further evidenced by the power maintenance panel in Night 2. Here, you can see the layout of FNaF 4’s house overlaid on top of the main compound. Moving away from that for a moment, inside the game’s files there’s actually blueprints of the animatronics, which includes all sorts of design choices the investors might have been concerned about. Mimic-slash-luring, storage tanks, parental voice sync and replay; you can even see what has long been thought to be a child inside of Freddy’s storage tank. These blueprints can also be seen very rarely on bootup. In less lore-relevant stuff, there’s a lot of just random easter eggs here and there. Bidybabs and Minireenas popping up randomly, Lolbit’s head appearing, Yenndo—aka Yellow Endo or Golden Endo—appearing in the Funtime Auditorium, and of course the different nose honks. [Baby’s cry]
HANDUNIT: “—rented out for private parties during the day,” [Strange honk]
HANDUNIT: “and it’s your job to get the robots” [Muffled electronic sounds]
HANDUNIT: “back in proper working order before the following morning.” [Muffled electronic sounds]
HANDUNIT: “You are now in the Primary Control Module—” And of course, the more recently discovered random numbers. At this point, it’s not clear if this is leftover debugging or if it’s actually of any lore relevance. [Electronic ambient music] You thought we’d move right on to community and theories? Yeah, all we’ve been talking about is base game. Then there was the Custom Night update. While Scott did say that the gameplay itself of this update was not canon, there is some lore-relevant secrets here that are very important to the story, and it starts outside of the game itself. During this time, Scott Cawthon’s two websites, fnafworld.com and scottgames.com, were having a conversation in the source code. It seems like it’s Ennard, which is the amalgamation of all the animatronics, is arguing within itself; Baby and the other animatronics are having a fight, I guess, and Baby is being ejected. That will be really important for a future retrospective, but for now let’s move on to the Custom Night cutscenes. Before we talk about the secrets in the Custom Night, I want to talk quickly about the gameplay. Here you’re in the Private Room again with the Funtime crew: Yenndo, Bonnet, Lolbit, and different variations of the Bidybabs and Minireenas. Each one has a unique way of attacking the player. You can use the vents and doors like the Private Room, but controlled shocks also to send some of them back. There’s also different presets of game modes you can use, including different hard modes, and that’s where the secrets come in. Beating the different modes on the varying hardest difficulties reveals mini-game-style cutscenes. It’s always the same, someone walking down the street. But as the modes get harder, the man walking down the street gets more… …uh, rotted, until he becomes hunched, purple, and has wires sticking out. Clearly, this is what the skin suit looks like. At the end, he spits out the endoskeleton and falls over. The endoskeleton makes its way into the sewer, and Baby’s voice begins playing, “You won’t die.” And then this purple corpse stands up. Finally, beating Golden Freddy Mode on very hard, you get this cutscene. MICHAEL: “Father, it’s me, Michael.” MICHAEL: “I did it. I found it. It was right where you said it would be.” MICHAEL: “They were all there. They didn’t recognize me at first, but then they thought I was you.” MICHAEL: “And I found her. I put her back together, just like you asked me to. She’s free now.” MICHAEL: “But something is wrong with me. I should be dead, but I’m not. I’ve been living in shadows.” MICHAEL: “There is only one thing left for me to do now.” MICHAEL: “I’m going to come find you. I’m going to come find you.” Wow. So clearly, the community had a lot to chew on. [Electronic ambient music] So, the community. Like I said, this was the beginning of a paradigm shift for the series, and the community could feel it. Let’s-play-wise, it was your standard fare; the big players hopped in, and some new people as well. Because a bunch of stuff was revealed in the source code, MatPat even had a theory video out before the game was even released. The music, as always, was fantastic. Living Tombstone came in clutch yet again, and “Join Us for a Bite” is really catchy. And then DAGames released a “Sister Location” song before the game even came out, and somehow it predicted like the whole plot. But let’s talk about the part you’ve all been waiting for: the theories. This is when stuff became actually convoluted, I mean like really incomprehensible in a lot of ways, so I’m not gonna be able to give a clear-cut “this is what the community thinks,” so I’m just gonna give out some highlights. First, let’s talk about the big one: this whole game taking place underneath the FNaF 4 house. There’s actually an interesting debate around this. Some people think that it’s just that: a bunker built by William Afton underneath his house, further confirming that the FNaF 4 family is the Afton family. William built this room to keep track of his children— —using the Fredbear nanny cams, perhaps?— —after his daughter was killed by his own creations. He’s paranoid. Others think that the disconnect between the layout of the mini-game house and the house in-game means that this is actually a place where William Afton tests his Funtime animatronics out on children, or more specifically, the older brother. After the Bite, William begins to hate his oldest son, who caused it. So FNaF 4 isn’t actually a dream, it’s a horrible punishment-slash-experiment that William is inflicting on his son. But then you think, “Wait a minute, the Funtimes don’t look anything like the Nightmares.” Well, that’s where the next theory comes in. At this point in the series, the second novel had been released, “The Twisted Ones.” As I’ve said before, we may talk about the novels at some point later, but this is all you need to know about them for this. “The Twisted Ones” introduced some animatronics that may not have been the Funtimes, but are very similar: segmented, plasticky animatronics that could open up to hold a person inside. What’s interesting about these, though, is the very futuristic technology that they have. They essentially have a chip that tricks your brain into thinking they either look like monsters or friendly cartoon characters. So while the books aren’t a perfect one-to-one with the games, people took this concept and applied it to maybe Funtime Freddy’s “power chip” and went, “Hey, these could be the Nightmares, just with a new coat of paint.” With Custom Night there was a huge debate now on who Purple Guy even was. While for a long time we had started to assume that Pink Guy and Purple Guy were the same character, now we weren’t so sure. This meant who was Springtrap, and so began the Mike-trap versus Will-trap debate. At present I believe Scott literally curbstomped Mike-trap, but at the time this was a big point of contention. There was also a discussion about why William Afton even made the evil Funtime murder robots in the first place. Some people thought that it was just so that he could continue to murder children now that Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza had closed down, others thought it was him experimenting trying to figure out what it is that kept his victims’ souls alive and attached to these robots in a way to bring back his son, the Bite victim. “I will put you back together.” I also want to talk about a debate that really inspired a lot of fan lore, from full-blown whole theories to “FNaF VHS” fan lore and alternate universes. What is Michael’s intent at the end, when he says “I’m going to come and find you?” The initial thought is that he’s following his father’s orders again, coming to rescue him or report back. But there’s another interpretation: he’s going to go kill him. This sort of intertwines with the idea that all the night guards we play as FNaF 1 through 3, and come to think of it 4, are actually Mike Afton—sharing a name, being fired for odor, all of that stuff— —now seeing the destruction his father has brought, he’s trying to put an end to it. Now of course, there’s all sorts of other theories now about what this game means and the lore of everything, but at the time, these are the big ones I remember. [Electronic ambient music] Okay, so where does this game go on the tier list? Honestly, A-tier. I know some people are probably throwing their hands up in the air and going “why not S-tier,” but when I’m thinking about the quintessential FNaF game, if I want to show someone the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” series, and I want to go “what is the perfect game,” it’s FNaF 1 or 2. While “Sister Location” may technically be the most well-executed or best “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game, it doesn’t capture the feeling and the simplicity that the first two games do. It’s really well-made and unique, but honestly if I want to sit down and play a FNaF game, I’m still gonna go for FNaF 1 or 2. I think it’s a perfect spot. Gameplay and execution-wise, it is far above FNaF 3 and 4, but it just doesn’t hit the right spot that makes it an S-tier like FNaF 1 and 2. It would be a similarly long break before we got another FNaF game. Mostly Scott was working behind the scenes on things like the next novel and the movies and things like that. But when the next game came…oh boy. I am really excited to cover the next game. I mean, I know I say that about all of them, but this next game is literally in my top three favorite FNaF games of all time. Hey, thanks for watching! Uh, if you haven’t already, I’d really appreciate it if you check out my “Little Nightmares” retrospective. It’s one of my favorite video games of all time, and I spent a lot of time working on that video. And my second channel, in case you wanna just see other random shit that doesn’t fit quite well here. Let me know what you thought of this video in the comments, and suggest what I should cover next on my Twitter. You should also follow me there because that is when I announce when I’m streaming at twitch.tv/saganhawkes. I’ll see you all next time.
