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Highlights
- Amnesia: The Bunker takes place in a French bunker from World War I, where a bestial creature lurks.
- The bunker was used by the French Army to access ancient Roman tunnels, but the soldiers experienced horrifying nightmares and hallucinations.
- The main character, Henri, wakes up in the bunker after being injured and must find a way to escape while avoiding the deadly creature.
Disappear into another tale of terror in the Amnesia series with Amnesia: The Bunker. This petrifying period piece buries you alive in an abandoned bunker from the First World War, but you're not alone down there. A bestial burrowing beast calls your haven from the war home, so you best leave as quickly as you can.
Though it's a fairly short excursion into terror in those tunnels, there's some interesting story stuff going on that you can miss if you're just running from your Safe Room to the next unlockable area. But, whether you missed a note or were too busy running in fright from the Beast, here's the story of Amnesia: The Bunker, explained.
The Overall Plot To Amnesia: The Bunker
The location always changes in each Amnesia game, and this time around, you're on the crater-covered fields of France during the First World War. We follow Henri Clément, a French Soldier who finds himself inside the Bunker, recovering from injuries sustained in a German Mortar Strike while rescuing a fellow soldier.
At first, it seems it’s become an abandoned Bunker, with the troops caving in the entrance to supposedly prevent the Germans from capturing it, but all is not as it appears. Its previous occupants unearthed something unholy in the depths of the Earth while trying to find a way to tunnel under the German lines. Everyone is wiped out or driven mad by what they found, the only way out is sealed, and it's up to you to put the pieces together as you try to leave your new hideaway from the horrors of the front.
The Brief Beginning
Things begin with Henri running through a bullet-filled battlefield. Slipping into a trench, he's ambushed by German soldiers, but he's miraculously saved by his friend and fellow Soldier, Augustin Lambert. The two push through the trench to try and meet the rest of their unit at a predetermined rendezvous point.
After surviving a horrific gas attack, the two are separated, with Henri crawling through the carnage alone and in the dark, with only his trusty Service Revolver at hand. It then fades away to a new scene.
Augustin is found again, injured and alone at the bottom of a large pit. He's rescued by Henri, but as the two try to head back to French lines, they're spotted by the Germans. The enemy troops open fire. As Henri carries Augustin, a mortar shell strikes, and he drops his friend to the ground as he passes out from his injuries.
What Happened In The Bunker Before You Wake Up
Time for a flashback. As Henri goes on his journey, he recovers notes and journal entries left behind by the previous French Army Soldiers. It's revealed that French High Command sent the order to excavate and use derelict and ancient Roman Tunnels found under the frontlines. The Bunker was constructed on top to guard the entrance.
The idea was that troops could travel through them via the Bunker to launch a surprise attack on nearby German lines. While they seemed Roman in origin, they were, in fact, constructed by the Mithraic Cult. Within their walls, profane acts, sacrifices, orgies, and other stomach-churning nightmare rituals were conducted, and it left its mark.
Strange statues line the halls, rocks defy gravity and drift through the air as reality seems to slightly unwind in spots. Any soldier that ventured down into the Tunnels wasn’t attacked by anything, but on their return, they found themselves experiencing horrible nightmares, visions, or full-blown psychosis after only a short exposure to the derelict halls below. Worse still, strange Wraith-like apparitions were frequently seen wandering the tunnels. Though they posed no physical threat, they still unnerved the men.
The Mithraic Cult is a group that’s obsessed with the Other World. A hell-like location in another dimension that’s home to an advanced civilization and has appeared throughout the Amnesia games.
The Mutiny
Unfortunately for the suffering soldiers, the higher-ups did not believe their men with their claims and complaints referred to as nothing but rumors, superstition, and an attempt to sabotage the mission. Some were disciplined to send a message to the others, but this only antagonized the men further.
Tensions would begin to rise. After it reached a boiling point, a group of men began to plot to blow up the entrance to the tunnels. They were successful, and the tunnel was sealed. However, the Officers were exceedingly angry about this. An investigation was launched, and the culprits were arrested, with some being tortured for information on their compatriots.
The perpetrators were given a military trial onsite, subsequently found guilty, and then thrown into a pit in the Bunker to starve to death. The key members of the group were also routinely and sadistically tortured by the Officers for days before eventually succumbing to their wounds and passing away. That all changed, though, when Augustin arrived with a wounded Henri.
A German prisoner taken during a French Patrol of the battlefield appears during this time and is tortured. Henri encounters him and can either protect him from The Beast, allow it to kill him, or kill the prisoner himself. There’s an achievement locked to your decision; that’s about it.
Where The Beast Came From And How It Got In The Bunker
With Henri in a coma for days on end from his wounds, Augustine kept on in the Bunker while waiting for his friend to recover. However, during this time, numerous men, including some of the now-despised Officers, began mysteriously dying in what looked like violent and bloody animal attacks.
As it turns out, when Henri found Augustine in the bomb crater, Augustine drank from water Henri had gathered from a pool that had filled the bottom. This spring, opened by a German shell, had strangely revitalized a previously wounded Augustine but left him with a corrosive curse. At random, he would transform into a huge hulking mole-like creature known as The Beast.
It was something that was out of his control, and over time he would fully succumb to it, lose all self-awareness and permanently become the creature. The surviving Soldiers in the Bunker were slowly picked off by this monster, and though some would put up a valiant stand, it was unkillable. Henri wakes up roughly around the time the last of the survivors are getting killed off, and it’s from there the game begins.
Though it’s unconfirmed, the liquid in the crater may have been Vitae. A terrible and transformative element harvested from terrified or tortured people has also appeared throughout the Amnesia series as a “Magical MacGuffin.”
What Happens In The Bunker After You Wake Up
Awakening in a Medical Ward, Henri finds himself in a shattered and blood-stained Bunker. Its occupants are either missing, dying, or decorating the walls. Verminous flesh-eating rats scurry around, feasting on the decaying dead. The only way out is blocked with rubble, and after a brief encounter with a terminally injured Sdt. Boisrand, Henri comes face to face with The Beast.
To him, it seems like an otherworldly entity that can move through the walls and ground with ease thanks to its massive sharp claws. The entire Bunker and its inky-black passages are now its playgrounds, and Henri, its prey.
Henri tries to escape this new subterranean hell by collecting dynamite and a detonator to blow open the barricaded entrance. But these items are separate from each other in secluded parts of the structure that are blocked or locked away behind various obstacles and doors. This is where the majority of the game takes place and where you can discover the many notes and pictures that unravel this story.
The Tunnel
After finding the components to make his escape, Henri successfully detonates the dynamite and shatters the barricade into splinters. However, doing so doesn’t reveal the bright light of the surface. Instead, it’s the entrance to the ancient tunnels beneath the Bunker: the only way out.
Following this down into the depths, Henri finds aged architecture and the same wandering Wraiths the French Soldiers encountered. There’s also an encounter with Toussaint Beaufoy, a French Soldier that had gone insane after exposure to the Tunnels and had wandered in before they had been sealed up.
Toussaint had been trapped down there for over a month, eventually going completely mad and clawing out his own eyes. Armed with a shotgun, he blindly prowls the halls, firing at any noise he hears before either being killed by Henri or left alone, depending on your actions.
As Henri ventures further, he finds an Eldritch-looking arena over a vast chasm with bridges that can be lowered or raised. The Beast appears on the opposite side, and it’s here that you can choose to either fight it or flee to the exit. Regardless, Henri eventually climbs up from the Arena through a strange structure, and after sprinting down a long hallway, he finds debris blocking the exit.
After clearing the obstruction and exiting outside, Henri trips and stumbles down an unexpected cliffside into a body-filled ditch. The sound of a German patrol closing in on Henri can be heard, and at this point, one of two endings plays out.
The Endings
The two endings of Amnesia: The Bunker are a little bit ambiguous and not drastically different, but they’re varied enough to mention, and they’re extremely easy to unlock. You just need to either kill The Beast in the Arena by dropping him into the chasm or just evade the creature and leave.
Depending on your choice, you’ll be given one of two endings. If you’ve already beaten the game and missed one, or are just curious, here’s what happens at the end of Amnesia: The Bunker for both cutscenes.
Kill The Beast
If Henri kills the monster, he’ll escape the tunnels, fall down the cliffside and lie in the ditch full of his dead countrymen. A German patrol approaches and the game ends. Henri's fate is left unknown, and it’s presumed that he was either captured or killed by the Germans.
Evade The Beast
If Henri chooses to evade the monster, he still makes his escape and falls into the body-filled ditch. But this time, The Beast also appears at the exit, clambering along the cliffs and roaring loudly above Henri. The sounds alert the Germans to their position, and the game ends as the fates of Henri, the monster, and the approaching enemy soldiers are once again left ambiguous.
If Henri falls into the chasm in the Arena, he’ll be devoured in a formless void by a strange and ominous red light. This is implied to be a reference to the Shadow Creature from Amnesia: Dark Descent, as it’s intrinsically tied to the Mithraic Cult.