Artsy horror series Layers of Fear might have called it a wrap with this year's game, but it turns out there's one more treat in this bag of tricks: a new free DLC chapter. 'The Final Prologue' delivers yet another tale of artistic temperament gone all creepy and wrong, this time in the medium of film direction. The unexpected epilogue is part of a double celebration; it's nearly Halloween, obviously, but it's also there to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the founding of creator studio Bloober Team on November 6th.
For the uninitiated, the new Layers of Fear shares its title with the 2016 original, but is neither a straightforward sequel nor a remaster, nor quite a remake. Instead, the latest game reimagines the first 2.5 titles in the series as scenarios in biographical novels being written by the new protagonist, The Writer. This provides a nice excuse to replay the stories of The Painter, The Daughter, and The Actor in spiffed-up and rejigged forms, as well as introducing a new framing narrative that serves to close out the trilogy.
Given that the human antagonist of 2019's Layers of Fear 2 was known simply as The Director, it seems likely that this new chapter will share his side of the sequel's story. 'The Final Prologue' isn't the first gaiden entry into the series: this year's game launched with a brand-new side chapter to the first title called 'The Final Note', which retold The Painter's narrative from the point of view of his wife and adversary The Musician.