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| “ | Kill them! Kill them all! | „ |
| ~ Alma orders Fettel to kill all the humans. |
Alma Wade is the main antagonist of the F.E.A.R. series. She is a powerful demon who seeks revenge against humanity, due to their usage of her in a series of experiments and secret projects with the aim of making her powers financially viable.
History
Background
Alma was a severely troubled child, gifted with tremendous psychic powers, and as a result she suffered nightmares and was attuned to the negative emotions of the people around her. At the age of only three, Armacham Technology Corporation inducted Alma into Project Paragon, where they tested her for every known psychic ability. Alma passed all tests, and, should she appear not to have any power, her father would work tirelessly with her until she was able to focus her powers and complete the objective. She was experimented on tirelessly to discover the source of her powers and how they responded to external stimuli, including being subjected to electroshock therapy.
When Alma was five, she began to fail all her tests, and it was discovered that she was purposefully failing them so that the company would stop experimenting on her. Sometime later, she started a fire in one of their laboratories. Armacham scientists began to have vivid nightmares, sudden mood changes, and delusions, and it was concluded that Alma was psychically attacking them. Soon after, Armacham made plans to keep Alma alive, but to also stop her from being able to harm their employees.
In her seventh year, Alma was recruited into Armacham Technology Corporation's Project Origin with the aim of creating psychics from a psychic fore-bearer, and to keep her from using her psychic powers against Armacham's scientists. Two days before her eighth birthday, she was put into an induced coma and locked in the Vault, a spherical structure located deep inside the secret Origin Facility, blocking her psychic abilities. A note that can be found in F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin suggests Alma may have already killed at least one person before being put into a coma. As well, she is seen with blood on her legs when ATC guards transport her to the Vault. During the project, Alma was impregnated twice with clone embryos, made from her own DNA, combined with genetic contributions from various Origin staffers, including Harlan Wade.
She gave birth to the First Prototype, the Point Man, when she was only 15 years old, and then a second, Paxton Fettel, when she was 16. Alma merged her consciousness with that of Fettel when he was 10, causing a Synchronicity Event and prompting ATC to shut down Project Origin completely and to "pull the plug" on Alma. Her life support system was removed and she died six days later. Alma was 26 at the time of her death.
Biography
F.E.A.R.: First Encounter Assault Recon
The identity and mystery of Alma Wade is the very core of the game. First appearing in the introduction, Alma's presence is felt constantly throughout the game, with hints and glimpses of her life made throughout the game's use of visions and info the Point Man gathers through both Paxton Fettel and several laptops scattered throughout the game. She appears as an eight year old girl wearing a red dress and has a disturbingly blank, mask-like face almost completely obscured by long dark hair. Bloody footprints can be found in some places where she walks, and she is briefly visible on a CCTV monitor in the South River Wastewater Treatment Plant, in the same room where Bill Moody is interrogated.
Alma is seen repeatedly in F.E.A.R., often only out of the corner of the Point Man's eye, standing in the shadows or darting quickly out of sight. Her appearances are usually preceded by a static radio transmission, logged as "Unknown Origin." As her appearances are almost always accompanied by scenes of extreme violence, this rapidly becomes extremely unnerving. Sometimes all that is heard is her soft, giggling laugh, or indistinct words whispered as though in the Point Man's ear.
Twenty years after Alma's death, ATC president Genevieve Aristide reopens the Origin Facility, despite the protests from ATC scientists that tendrils of Alma's psychic powers may still be active. She sends in a team to assess the facility's condition. The team promptly disappears, killed by Alma. Genevieve sends in a second team, but they also disappear. Realizing that Alma's spirit has somehow been awakened by the reopening of the Origin site, Genevieve seals the facility. A few days later, Alma appears to Fettel and creates a second Synchronicity Event, causing Fettel to go rogue and take command of an army of clone soldiers known as Replicas.
Fettel finds and kills Charles Habegger, whom he cannibalizes in the belief that he can obtain his victim's thoughts through their flesh. He and Alma learn about a reportbeing worked on by ATC employees dealing with contamination of water in the Auburn District. The two set out to find the people attached to the report, possibly believing that they may know the location of Alma's body. They first visit the South River Wastewater Treatment Plant, where Alma attempts to kill the Point Man. Despite her efforts, the Point Man survives, and Alma becomes curious about him. She begins to appear to him randomly, always watching him, but never attacking.
Fettel and Alma then move to Armacham Technology Corporation Headquarters. In both the wastewater plant and ATC headquarters, they kill everyone present, whether these people know about Project Origin and Alma or not. There, Alma continues to watch the Point Man, and eventually learns he is her son. Soon after, Alma and Fettel learn the location of the Origin facility, and they depart from ATC's headquarters to find it. Along the way, Fettel is able to kidnap Alma's sister, Alice Wade, and kills her while Alma watches. Genevieve Aristide muses in the field guide that Alma was likely jealous of Alice due to the preferential treatment she received from their father, and so wanted to witness her death.
Inside the Origin facility, Harlan Wade releases Alma's true body, showing her to be an adult woman. Alma immediately kills Harlan, then begins to walk around the facility, expelling Nightmares wherever she goes. After she is released from the Vault by Harlan, her appearance changes to that of a naked, emaciated young woman. Soon after, Alma takes the Point Man into a hallucination, but instead it shows a memory that reveals her to be Harlan's daughter, as well as that the Point Man is in fact Alma's son. In the memory, Alma is reaching out to him, demanding that her child be returned to her, only to encounter stern resistance from her father. She appears to the Point Man, attempting to hug him, but he shoots her repeatedly, not stopping until she disappears. After that, the Point Man walks down a hallway on his way out of the building when Alma again whispers to him, saying "I know who you are" and "My baby."
The Point Man exits the building, only to be hit by the explosion from the Origin facility. The Point Man survives and is rescued by a chopper. Though her body is destroyed in the explosion, Alma manifests her appearance on the side of the chopper the Point Man is riding in, causing it to crash.
F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
In F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, Alma's presence is felt much more than in the original F.E.A.R., mostly due to the psychic connection she bears with Michael Becket, due to his unknowing part in the Harbinger program. This connection grows more and more over the course of the game, in parallel with Becket's telepathic signal.
Eventually, Alma begins developing romantic feelings for him - indicated by changing her appearance to that of a healthy, voluptuous woman - but because her emotions are stunted, she becomes obsessed with Becket. Unable to control her desires, Alma impulsively throws herself at him and repeatedly tries to rape him, though in doing so she inadvertently puts Becket's life at risk, due to her volatile psychic nature and unstable emotional feedback. Fortunately, he is able to drive her away before Alma ends his life.
By the end of the game, her intentions for Becket become clear: after he is strapped into the Telesthetic Amplifier on Still Island, Alma appears before him. The Amplifier begins to activate, and his mind is locked into a hallucination, where he is forced to fight Sgt. Keegan's phantoms. Whether or not this was Alma's way of imprisoning Becket, or perhaps Keegan's own nightmare world, remains to be known. During the hallucination-battle, Alma is heard vocalizing her ecstasy, and in some instances, when her psychic link is broken, she can be seen raping Becket in the chamber, sometimes even physically struggling with him in order to drive his mind back into the hallucination. At the height of the climax, Becket kills Keegan and switches off the telesthetic device, causing Alma to scream as she fades away into particulate matter.
Alma appears to him again, standing amidst a blasted landscape, heavily pregnant with Becket's child. She places his hand on her stomach as emphasis to this fact. A small voice is then heard to whisper "Mommy."
F.E.A.R. 3
In F.E.A.R. 3, Alma is in labor with her child conceived with Michael Becket. Paxton Fettel is allegedly assisting the Point Man, however, he wishes to see his brother embrace his family's power, rather than destroy it. Alma appears before her sons numerous times, mostly in her child form, but also in her adult form. When confronted by the Creep, she reacts with intense fear, as the creature was created by the horrid memories of her late father, Harlan Wade, and not entirely of her own influence.
Throughout the game, Alma can be heard screaming as her contractions intensify, causing psychic disturbances all over the city of Fairport. At the end, when the Point Man and Fettel reach her, Alma is shown to be weak and unable to move or speak. Depending on player actions, her child will be taken from her by one of the brothers. She either disappears (and possibly still exists) if the Point Man kills Fettel, or is eaten and "killed/absorbed" by Fettel if he kills the Point Man.
Interestingly, Alma's appearance and mannerisms are changed drastically in F.E.A.R. 3, with her child form appearing to be much older than in previous installments, as well as having a bloodied face, sleeveless red dress and brown shoes, as compared to her previously seen clean face, long sleeved red dress and bare feet. The reasons for this change are unknown. Her adult form also has much longer hair than in other games, dragging on the floor behind her as she walks. F.E.A.R. 3 is the only game where Alma is never heard to say anything, despite being quite vocal in other games, and where Alma is never seen attacking or killing anyone. Unlike previous games, Alma is not the main antagonist of F.E.A.R. 3, nor even technically an antagonist, as she never attempts to kill or harm the protagonists. Alma appears fewer times than she did in the first two games, as it is mostly focused on The Creep.
Powers and Abilities
Alma is capable of linking her mind with Fettel during a Synchronicity Event, in which she is able to use him as a means to take her revenge; this is clearly shown in the intro of F.E.A.R., where she whispers to Fettel to "Kill them. Kill them all.", and then frees him from his cell. Among Alma's other powers, she is able to kill people with a psychic attack that literally liquefies all their flesh, leaving behind only a charred, blood-drenched skeleton, something she does several times during the course of the games. She can also create a number of different hallucinations that are true and surreal, and can take the Point Man into her dream world where she is even able to summon malevolent phantoms.
Alma also seems to display other powers associated with the mind. It is assumed she can perform pyrokinesis, as seen during one encounter when she sets off fiery explosions through an entire corridor, hurling the Point Man through a window. It can also be inferred that she has some level of telekinesis, as random objects move with her approach, or even in her absence. It is important to note that the Point Man may be simply hallucinating, an effect of Alma's psychic abilities.
The alternate world that exists within Alma's mind is known as the Almaverse. This world is characterized by red and orange hues, as well as floating silver and gold particles. The Almaverse reflects Alma's viewpoint of the world, changing seemingly ordinary and commonplace things into monstrous entities and visions. Characters whose minds are being overtaken by Alma's psychic influence will often see the Almaverse, rather than reality. In F.E.A.R. 3, the Almaverse begins to bleed out from Alma's mind into the real world, overtaking it with each contraction she suffers. With the Almaverse comes an array of monsters borne of Alma's tortured psyche, including the Scavengers, monsters created from Alma's memories of her time in the Vault.
Gallery
Images
Videos
Trivia
- Alma is named after the character Alma Mobley in Peter Straub's novel Ghost Story.
- "Alma" is a word in the Latin languages Spanish and Portuguese that literally means "soul" — an appropriate name, given her character.
- Alma is referenced in the 2012 horror film, The Cabin in the Woods. In the film, a girl in a white dress is seen liquefying a security guard while singing "Hush Little Baby." The scene is an exact mirror of Alma's attack on the guards in F.E.A.R.
- Alma most likely had blue eyes in life, given that both of her sons, her father and her sister all have blue eyes.
- As tragic character with history of being mistreated that led them snapped that they unleashed their destructive gifts, Alma is very similar with Fabrication Machine and in lesser extent, Sachiko Shinozaki, Carrie White, Aggie Prenderghast, and Alessa Gillespie.
- The most distinctive similarities between Alma and Sachiko was Alma's own child appearance in the first game, because their clothings were similar.
- Distinctive similarities with Alessa are both have a parent never mentioned (Alma's mother and Alessa's father) and suffered great abuse at the hands of the other, and the two later use their psychic powers to take revenge on those who caused their suffering. Both exhibit immense psionic powers, including the ability to create monsters from the depths of their minds. At the age of 7, it was decided they would be used to give birth. The two of them were forcibly impregnated through unnatural means and were still adolescents when they gave birth (Alma 16). It's also important to note that both Alessa and Alma delivered newborns to the protagonists in the endings of their respective games before disappearing. Coincidentally, both their names start with 'Al'. In personality and physical appearance, Alma is very closely matched with the film version of Alessa, who is much more emotionally unstable and vengeful than her game counterpart. Like Alma, the film version of Alessa also appears as a child throughout the film, until near the end, where she is seen as a badly injured adult woman. This even inspires a fan art that portraying them confronting each other.
- What Alma shared in common with Fabrication Machine is their tormentors forced them to harnessed their gifts for warfare purposes due to the said gift more potent than conventional weapons with one way or another(Alma's psychic powers that enable her to creating monsters such as Scavengers of Phantoms while Fabrication Machines's high-intelligence allowed it to create war machines like Steel Behemoths).
- WatchMojo.com listed Alma Wade as #3 on their Top 10 "Female Video Game Villains" list.
- Alma has some similarities to the Resident Evil 7: Biohazard main antagonist Eveline.
- Both appear as brunette-haired little girls, although in reality they were something far more dangerous (Alma being a psychic ghost girl, and Eveline being a prototype infiltration bioweapon).
- Both had elements of telekinesis and telepathy and were capable of forcibly manipulating people into doing their bidding. The difference however lies in mechanics and source of their powers: Alma's powers were clarified to be potent psychic abilities that made mankind's current doomsday weapons pale in comparison, whereas Eveline's powers comes from bio-engineered mind-controlling Mold that can be manipulated to simulate psychokinetic force.
- Both, despite being very dangerous and insane characters, were ultimately tragic villains.
- Coincidentally, both characters were also in part created by the same person, Richard Pearsey.