The Walten Files is what I wanted FNAF to be

Comments · 429

• TH

  @The_Robbing_Narrator · 1 month ago

  TWF is what FNAF felt like as a little kid lol

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• MA

  @maniacmark · 1 month ago

  As an old FNAF veteran, I have to agree, The Walten Files felt more impactful to watch than modern FNAF. It kind of feels like original FNAF with the mysteries and the characters, so yeah, I am officially a fan of this series. I'm not joking.

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• DA

  @DaRealMyers · 4 weeks ago

  I wish Scott abandoned the whole ‘mystery’ bit and gave us a solid story.<br><br>The solving aspect was fun in the 2010’s but now it’s gotten to the point where 90% of what we know about FNAF is head-canon.

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• SC

  @scorpion-halo · 4 weeks ago

  &quot;fnaf didn&apos;t age with us&quot; it didn&apos;t even fail that, it AGED DOWN<br>I was in highschool when the first game came out and I remember how quickly it went from the horror of working minimum wage to effectively sci-fi goosebumps for a new generation. which is fine. it felt bad to be left behind but it got so popular with kids, I couldn&apos;t fault it for wanting to cater to them (especially when Scott made children&apos;s games prior). but it always rubbed me the wrong way how this coincided with the toy lines showing up in stores. kids are profitable and I cant&apos; help but side-eye when something pivots progressively younger over time (I know why I was left behind, but why were YOU left behind with me?). also security breach looks like a glorified toy commercial.

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• TH

  @thatsamboi6068 · 1 month ago

  When you mentioned It&apos;s Been So Long, I 100 percent agree it&apos;s that human, emotional weight that FNAF should&apos;ve focused more on as the story expanded. The harm William caused doesn&apos;t just end at the things he&apos;s done. The trauma it causes and leaves behind bleeds out and infects the people around it. The families, friends, investigators, even the workers at freddy&apos;s have to continue one without ever knowing what happened to those kids, since it&apos;s never confirmed that the kids were found. I don&apos;t think I could ever feel the same working at a place where multiple children went missing, let alone be a family member of said child struggling with that loss, all while the place they disappeared take no accountability, and remain successful for years. Trauma should have been the focus of FNAF&apos;s narrative imo, and I think it&apos;s been all but forgotten under the bloat of the modern lore. If the story stuck with the supernatural, it would have made the perfect vector to explore how trauma can haunt people, things, and places long after tragedy occured. TWF, especially in Faces of Grief, I think is a great example of how it can be done effectively.

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• GE

  @General-supremo-SjDx · 4 weeks ago

  A quote from Matpat that has always stuck with me when he was discussing the similarities and differences between TWF and Fnaf in a GTlive was that Fnaf is a story about robots with humans in it and TWF is a story about humans with robots in it. I’m most likely paraphrasing what he said but I think it perfectly captures why TWF continues to work so well where Fnaf has continued to leave groups of people dissatisfied.

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• PA

  @patchwork_asylum · 4 weeks ago

  There&apos;s a reason Henry Emily&apos;s speech at the end of fnaf 6 hit harder than an atari video game screen of him burning the new pizzeria would have

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• SO

  @Soppingmarmot · 1 month ago (edited)

  I do love how you pointed out the main flaw with FNAF, and that’s how there is no actual direct answer to what is going on. It can work and it did work for a bit, but as more games started coming out and a lot more books started coming out... <br><br>It got to the point to where the fandom was so divided on what the story was that you can easily say that: &quot;if everyone is wrong, then no one is right; and if no one is right, then there is no actual story.&quot; It’s just whatever we think the story is. <br><br>This is why I truly grown to love the Walten Files way more than FNAF. <br><br>The Walton file series has the creators make it very clear to the audience -- especially fans who came from FNAF, and those who look way too much into the lore of any content -- that the Walton files is not like FNAF, where everything is overly complicated, or a big mess. <br><br>The creators made it very clear that the story is actually very simple, even with their mystery.<br><br>Obviously there is mystery in the Walten Files, but it isn’t super complicated that you have to go through metaphysical philosophical approaches or be a top-tier scholar of the series to understand what’s going on. Rather, there is answers that are directly given; whether it be from an episode, content, scavenger hunt, or clarifications from the writers/creators. <br><br>While there are mysteries, Walten Files wants to make sure that the mystery isn&apos;t the story. The story has a theme and direct narrative. Funny enough, there really is just one mystery in Walten Files, and it&apos;s just Bon. The timeline of events are given, names and whereabouts of characters are given, locations and explanations are given; the mystery is just Bon. <br><br>This is where, and how, Scott got himself into a purgatory of writing corners plus endless plot holes. <br><br>It&apos;s the key difference of Walten Files and FNAF theories. The most controversial theory of Walten Files is: Jack is Bon, or, Jack is not Bon. That&apos;s it. FNAF has a library of controversial theories that it&apos;s terrifying. With little to almost no clarifications coming from Scott. <br><br>You could add in non-canon content, and even then, Walten Files creators make sure the non-canon stories make sense. The Pumpkin Rabbit and Boozoo&apos;s Ghost are deeply beloved and understood very well, yet they follow the formula of how the storytelling and mysteries work. There is connection to the main canon, but it&apos;s not meant to be a gospel to how the main canon works. <br><br>When it came to the non-canon content from Scott, it was at first meant to be a non-canon explanation of plot holes; which could work in concept, but we can generally agree it 100% did not work and became it&apos;s own thing ... to the point that many people do not like theories that include the books or non-canon games as evidence. Matpat himself was getting smoked because many were not only growing tired of the books, but because Matpat&apos;s theories started to get crazy due to the books (like Gregory being a robot). <br><br>Scott&apos;s methods of storytelling and developing each product definitely got him to shoot himself in the foot with Security Breach. The DLC didn&apos;t help out much. Help Wanted 2 and SOTM did help out in a way, but rather than Scott pushing his new continuity, he decided to have the New Continuity be the origin story of the Old Continuity, when the main antagonist of the new continuity is nowhere to be seen, and cannot safely co-exist with William Afton during the 80s and 90s. <br><br>It&apos;s how I see it, so I know my viewpoint isn&apos;t the gospel truth. But it&apos;s how I&apos;ve grown to see Scott&apos;s storytelling and content creating. Now if it weren&apos;t for Scott we wouldn&apos;t have the Walten Files, but it doesn&apos;t mean we can&apos;t say &quot;Walten Files is what FNAF could&apos;ve been, or should&apos;ve become&quot;. It&apos;s happen many times where a blueprint of a genre got very popular, and one day a successor of this genre also got popular and is seen as better than the original. <br><br>An example I can give is my favorite Marvel Character: Ghost Rider. The original blueprint of this character had nothing to do with the Devil, fighting demons, divinely punishing evil, and having the powers of a Cosmic/Demonic/Angelic being. Yet, both concepts are still loved. The later concept though received more love than the original, because it&apos;s seen as an improvement (but also because it&apos;s badass too).

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• DU

  @dudes47327 · 1 month ago

  peak vid jean grey

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• CO

  @CodfishStruddle · 4 weeks ago

  On the topic of character complexity, my favorite scene from the Walten Files has to be when Rosemary goes from laughing to breaking down into tears. <br><br>A lot of people could see Bons comfort as fake or manipulation there, but I like to think it was genuine. Hence why in that laughter scene is my favorite, cause it also ties into your other theory about Jack. Like part of his soul is resurfacing so seeing Rosemary cry causes genuine concern in his twisted psyche

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• SI

  @sirnetflix7162 · 4 weeks ago

  I have to agree. I understand Scott Cawthon is a Christian and that reflects in what he is willing to show within the story (I&apos;m Catholic myself so I understand the sentiment, needless gore is needless), however, we DID need more to CARE about specific characters. <br><br>For example, we know all the child killings within the series, but all they are to a fan are names and pixels. We have no emotional connection to them aside from, &quot;damn, that&apos;s terrible&quot; but we keep it moving after that. Even the other named characters like Michael, are hardly characters and I don&apos;t particularly care that he had a shitty fate in the end even though he was innocent of the BS his father did. William is the only character with some personality but he was made into a pure evil caricature over time with no complexity aside from the fact that he cared for his own children (not a good father but he did care at least). I&apos;m not even saying pure evil characters are bad but it doesn&apos;t really work in a universe where it&apos;s supposed to lean more on realism (technology nonsense aside ofc). <br><br>The Walten Files actually make me FEEL something. I feel for Jack, I feel for Rosemary, I&apos;m horrified at the fate that befalls them. That isn&apos;t to say the FNAF story is shit or the Walten Files are perfect because the Walten Files don&apos;t exist without FNAF, but that&apos;s just how it goes for things that come after the creator. People improve upon it and fix the cracks in presentation and there&apos;s no shame in that. <br><br>Not to mention that Scott was basically a one man team without the power of hindsight, releasing these game in quick succession without much time to iron out the kinks. He was basically the guinea pig for mascot horror and later creators can look to him to see what worked and what didn&apos;t, and that&apos;s great!

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• BA

  @BananaBanditos · 1 month ago (edited)

  Biggest issue with FNAF now is that it can never end. It&apos;s gotten so unmanageable and there are so many people with jobs depending on it continuing to exist that as long as it &nbsp;sells, new content will continue to release. <br><br>For all intents and purposes, FNAF is now a new property. It has new characters and a new story. It&apos;s just tangentially related to the original story that ended with three as far as I&apos;m concerned. It&apos;s had highs antelope since then but it&apos;s pretty much milked.<br><br>I do think this new wave of FNAF with the current characters has potential to be far better than the original FNAF story ever was, but FNAF is just a name to it.

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