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Alma Wade
The identity and mystery of Alma is the very core of F.E.A.R. 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 player gathers through both Fettel and some laptops found throughout the game. She appears as a little eight year old girl wearing a red dress. She has a disturbingly blank and mask-like face almost completely obscured by long black hair. In the final part of the game, however, her appearance changes to that of an emaciated young woman. Right from her first appearance, it is never quite clear if Alma is real, or only exists in the minds of the people seeing her.
She appears to have been inspired by the character of Samara from the movie The Ring a derivitive of the japanese original Ringu. The prequel interview on the DVD version of the game also shows similarities to an interview in that movie. Both Samara and Alma had strong psychic influence, were left to die alone after several days, and harbor an afterlife rage and resentment. They also manifest their appearance in a similar manner.
Alma was a severely troubled child, gifted with tremendous psychic powers, who suffered nightmares and apparently was attuned to the negative emotions of the people around her. Her last name being Wade is revealed at the climax of the game, giving a strong implication that she is the daughter of Harlan Wade, although technically this is never explicitly stated.
At the age of eight she was recruited into ATC project Origin with the aim of creating psychic individuals from a psychic forebearer: she was put into an induced coma and locked in the Vault, a spherical structure located deep inside the secret Origin facility. During the project Alma was impregnated twice, but it is never revealed who the father of her children might be. She gave birth to to a first prototype, the F.E.A.R. Point Man, and then a second, Paxton Fettel, before the project was closed down and life support removed to the Vault, causing ATC to believe she was dead.
Alma is capable of linking her mind with Paxton Fettel during the so called "synchronicity events" where she is able to use him as a means to take her revenge: this is clearly shown in the game intro where she whispers to Fettel and then frees him from his cell. Among Alma's other powers, she is able to kill people by a psychic attack that liquifies their flesh, something she does several times across the game. She can also create a number of different hallucinations, manifesting her own appearance or that of other people, but she can also take the player character into her dream world, where Alma is even able to summon some kind of malevolent phantoms known as "nightmares".
Alma is seen repeatedly across the game, often only out of the corner of the player's eye, appearing standing in the shadows or darting quickly out of sight. As her appearances are almost always accompanied by scenes of extreme violence, this rapidly becomes very unnerving. Sometimes all that is heard is her soft, giggling laugh, or indistinct words whispered as though in the player's ear.
Somber, sleep & blessed be
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