A bloodied Ada Wong screams as a meat hook pierces her shoulder – for the third time this match – and she’s pulled skyward. The Entity, Dead By Daylight's villain above villains, draws her into its claws before she wakes by the bonfire again, ready to start the process over.
In the real world, as the one controlling Ada, I push my chair away from my desk and put my head in my hands, despairing at yet another team letting me down, another killer tunneling me out, my own poor judgement. I stand up to walk out the room – but not before hitting the button to ready up and start the process over.
Little do I know that, not only is Ada’s tragic and repetitive death feeding The Entity, but so am I.
Mixed Emotions
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We don’t know much about Dead by Daylight’s mysterious Entity, the ultimate evil presiding over the whole affair, drawing killers and their victims into a sick, cyclical game. In a blog post for the game’s tenth anniversary, though, developer Behaviour Interactive gave fans a bit more insight. It turns out that what feeds The Entity in DBD isn’t death itself, or the dead, but rather the emotions felt by each character, both killer and survivor, during a match.
“Consider the various emotions each victim must experience over the course of a Trial,” the blog reads, “The thrill of the hunt. The highs of escape. A fleeting hope like a surge of electricity. The sick satisfaction whenever the light leaves a Survivor’s eyes. It’s speculated that everything [characters] feel over the course of a Trial somehow sustains The Entity.”
Reading this, it occurs to me that this mirror’s the player’s experience, too.
Whether it’s loading into a killer lobby with a tightness in my chest, anxious about going up against a good team or being abused in the post-game chat, or the buzz of getting a four-man escape from a seemingly impossible situation, the DBD player experience is as much of a rollercoaster of emotions as that of the in-game characters. In fact, playing Dead by Daylight is almost exclusively about highs and lows.
As a solo-queue survivor, these feelings are especially elevated. While it feels good as a killer to outplay a sweaty swf (survive with friends) team, it’s even sweeter when a solo-queue survivor squad beats the odds to get every man out. Especially since there are no comms. When wordless communication, excellent game sense, and solid understanding of the HUD come together to result in a narrow escape from a decent killer, the fleeting high is enough to see me through the devastating lows of the other 90% of the trials. The ones when I’m hooked for the first time and see my three team mates creeping around the edge of the map or hiding in a locker, making no effort to rescue me. The ones where I’m intentionally tunneled out at five gens or slugged until I bleed to death.
Meanwhile, when I’m playing as a killer and can feel my heart in my stomach for the entire trial, it’s worth it for those few occasions that I win or even draw. Even then, I just get a “ggwp” in the post-game chat instead of a “ggez”. So every time I’m teabagged at the exit gates, I still ready up again, masochistically putting myself through the ringer once more in the hopes of a close, fun, but wholesome and friendly match.
In doing so, I'm feeding The Entity as much as Ada and the others. By coming back time and time again, struggling and succeeding, lamenting and celebrating, I keep this deadly power alive. Perhaps this was The Entity’s plan all along.
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