Mount Massive Asylum for the Criminally Insane is the main setting of Outlast and Outlast: Whistleblower. It is located in the remote mountains of Lake County, Colorado, USA.
History[]
After World War II, the O.S.S. initiates Operation Paperclip, recruiting scientists from Nazi Germany to conduct research for the USA. Sometime after, Mount Massive Asylum for the Criminally Insane would be established. Although the exact date is unknown, the asylum has existed since at least 1952, as a diary excerpt from one of the asylum's patients dates back to the aforementioned year. Twenty-two years later, three scientists would be murdered by an unknown patient, causing the asylum to close in 1971.
In 2009, The clinic was re-opened by the Murkoff Corporation, which for the next several years conducts illegal experiments on patients with the sole purpose of gaining profit.
On October 4th, 2012, An anonymous employee, later revealed to be Michelle Haas, files a complaint to Murkoff's Human Resources regarding patient and staff's safety issues at the asylum. Over the course of next few days, The Pauls, the company's litigation officers, discover that Richard Trager had sexually assaulted Michelle and attempted to cover it up. The incident resulted in Haas being given a severance package in exchange for her silence and Trager transferred down to the Underground Lab to be used as one of the Morphogenic Engine's test subjects.
In September of 2013, The Walrider escapes and starts wreaking havoc, indirectly inciting the fatal incident. A few hours later, investigative journalist Miles Upshur arrives to the asylum after receiving an anonymous tip from Waylon Park about Murkoff's illegal activities.
Upon entering, Miles is shocked to discover its halls ransacked and littered with the staff's mutilated corpses. He is informed by a dying officer of Murkoff's private military unit that the hospital's deranged inmates, known as "variants", have escaped and are freely roaming the grounds. The officer implores Miles to escape and reveals that the main entrance can be unlocked from the hospital's security control room.
As Miles moves on, he is suddenly ambushed by hulking variant Chris Walker, who knocks him unconscious. While incapacitated, Miles meets Father Martin Archimbaud, a self-appointed priest with schizotypal personality disorder, who claims that Miles is his "apostle" and sabotages his escape by cutting off power to the entrance. Miles restores power in the control room, but Father Martin injects him with an anesthetic. He also shows Miles footage of the "Walrider", a ghost-like entity that kills patients and staff alike, which he claims is responsible for the hospital's dilapidated state.
Regaining consciousness, Miles finds himself trapped in a decaying cell block filled with catatonic and demented patients. He escapes through the sewers to the main wards, pursued by Walker and two cannibalistic twins, only to be captured by Richard Trager, a former Murkoff executive driven insane. Trager amputates two of Miles' fingers and prepares to do the same to his tongue and genitals. However, Miles escapes to an elevator, inadvertently crushing Trager to death between floors when he attacks him. Miles then reconvenes with Father Martin, who tells him to go to the hospital's chapel.
Miles reaches an auditorium and learns that the Walrider was created by Rudolf Wernicke, a German scientist brought to the United States during Operation Paperclip. Wernicke believed that intensive dream therapy conducted on traumatized patients could connect swarms of nanites into a single malevolent being. Miles also learns that the experiments were originally part of the MKUltra program. In the chapel, Miles finds a crucified Father Martin, who gives him a key to the lobby elevator that he insists will take him to freedom before immolating himself. Miles takes the elevator, which descends into a subterranean laboratory.
Walker arrives and attacks Miles, only to be eviscerated by the Walrider. Miles locates an aged Wernicke, who confirms that the Walrider is a biotechnological nanite entity controlled by Billy Hope, a comatose patient of Murkoff's experiments. Wernicke orders Miles to terminate Billy's life support in the hopes that it will destroy the Walrider. Miles acomplishes the task; however, just before Billy dies, the Walrider attacks Miles and possesses his body. On his way out of the laboratory, a heavily injured Miles encounters a Murkoff private military unit led by Wernicke, which guns him down.
While a horrified Wernicke realizes that Miles has become the Walrider's new host, panicked screams, gunfire, and mauling sounds are heard as the screen fades to black.
Locations[]
- Administration Block: The exterior and interior of the asylum consisting of an outside courtyard, an indoor lobby, several corridors containing offices, libraries, and security rooms, and a halfly flooded basement where the block's generator resides. It also contains a church.
- Prison Block: Where the violent patients are imprisoned. Contains several blocks of prison cells, is glued together by several airlocks, and has a shower room at its heart.
- Sewer: The underground sewer system of the asylum.
- Male Ward: A large system of wards where the male patients are treated. It also contains a cafeteria, laundry room, and a bathing room.
- Courtyard: A courtyard arena where several maintenance sheds are housed.
- Female Ward: A large system of wards where the female patients are treated. It is suggested this is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, building in the asylum as female patients have been absent for some time and the entire building is extremely old and decaying.
- Underground Lab: A brightly lit underground complex of offices, laboratories and security rooms dedicated to powering the complex's heart: the Morphogenic Engine. Can be accessed by either several hangers that lead to outside or an elevator near the Administration Block's church. It is located 122 feet below the asylum's surface.
- Hospital: Resembling a more modern combination of both aforementioned wards, the Hospital is a large network of laboratories, patient rooms, and plastic-wrapped corridors where the patients undergo the Morphogenic Program.
- Recreation Area: A fenced-in courtyard where the patients are given fresh air and a few moments of recreation, including basketball.
- Drying Ground: Another outside courtyard where several guard posts and towers are stationed.
- Vocational Block: A large block containing an old above-ground attic/storage room looking even older than the Female Ward. The Vocational Block has several arts-and-crafts tools housed in it, implying that this building was made to keep the patients busy with artistic tasks like sewing.
Trivia[]
- Mount Massive is based off a real mountain of the same name, located in the Sawatch Range of the U.S. state of Colorado.
- Mount Massive Asylum is modeled after H. H. Richardson Complex, which once served as a mental asylum located in Buffalo, New York.
- Zoran gave all the dead bodies seen lying around the asylum the Dull Machete because they were offscreen.