The History of Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water (Wii U, 2014), Zero: Nuregarasu no Miko in Japan and Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water in Europe, is the fifth main entry. On fictional Mount Hikami, infamous for suicides and drownings, three leads converge: Yuri Kozukata, who can bring the taken back; author Ren Hojo, researching the mountain; and Miu Hinasaki, daughter of the first game's Miku, searching for her mother. The shrine maiden Ose Kurosawa, and the Black Water she failed to seal, wait at the centre.
THE MAKING
A controller that was already a cameraPlanning began in 2011, during production of the Wii remake of Crimson Butterfly. The project exists because of hardware: producer Keisuke Kikuchi saw the Wii U GamePad and saw the Camera Obscura in it, and proposed the game to Nintendo, which co-developed it through Nintendo SPD. Shibata directed, as he had every main entry. The key themes are water and the fear of being wet, and the key colour is black. Shibata traced the theme to a 2008 visit to Los Angeles: against Japan's damp summer air and the supernatural feeling that came with it, the dry American summer felt empty of ghosts, and the trip fixed dampness in his mind as part of any real haunting. Nintendo suggested the mountain setting, built from real places, particularly Mount Osore and the Tojinbo sea cliffs. The story combined elements from four earlier, unmade Fatal Frame proposals.
The game experiments openly: a wetness meter that makes a soaked character stronger with the camera and more hunted at once, and a post game episode starring Ayane of Dead or Alive, who has no camera at all and must simply not be seen. It carries two theme songs, Tsuki Amano's In This Cage, continuing her run since Crimson Butterfly, and AuJu's Higanbana.
THE EDITIONS
Wii U first, everywhere laterTHE RECEPTION
The GamePad praised, the rest argued overThe Wii U original was greatly praised for its use of the GamePad and for its dark atmosphere, while opinions split on its story, its pacing, and its controls. The 2021 remaster drew mixed responses on the same lines, with the adapted controls and a perceived lack of frightening elements the main criticisms. It remains the series' most widely available entry, and the one most new players now meet first.