Samuel (Sam) Walker is one of the main playable characters in Daymare: 1998.
Official description[ | ]
Samuel is a ranger of the Redcrest Mountains, where the Vermilion Forest branches out to surround Keen Sight. Like some other Keen Sight citizens, he suffers from a medical condition known as “Daymare Syndrome” that causes anxiety disorder, paranoia and hallucinations. Although not proven, there is a possible link between Samuel’s condition and the presence of the government corporation Hexacore Biogenetics in the area.
Biography[ | ]
Early life[ | ]
Samuel was born in Keen Sight in 1952. As result of an apparent hazardous agent leak affecting the maternity ward where his mother was staying, Samuel and numerous other children were born with a condition that became known as "Daymare Syndrome"[1], causing him to suffer headaches and hallucinations throughout his life. Because of his condition Samuel became subjected to constant treatment and medications provided by Hexacore. At some point he became a ranger at the nearby Vermillion Forest and was investigating a series of disappearances in the mountains before the events of the game. In 1993 he met a woman named Sarah Carmichael who moved into town after receiving an administrative job at Hexacore. They eventually fell in love and got married in 1996.[2]. The couple resided in their small cottage on the outskirts of Keen Sight.
Keen Sight incident[ | ]
On August 19, 1998, Samuel was staying at his base in Vermillion Forest when he is startled by a flying helicopter carrying containers with the Castor gas. After contacting a police officer, who informs him that the helicopter was part of an operation authorized by higher-ups, Sam realizes that during the hussle he lost his medication. He contacts Sarah through the radio but reassures her he will manage without his pills. While waiting for his replacement, Cooper, to arrive, Samuel falls asleep and wakes up hours later, on the mid-day of August 20. He contacts Sarah again, who urges him to come home as something terrible had happened in town. Samuel hurries to his car while being haunted by hallucinations and the visions of Sarah being hanged. He finally makes it home in the late evening only to discover an unknown man holding the dead body of his wife by the neck. The man then throws Sam out of the window and steals his car, heading for the hospital as Sam overhears him talking. Sam breaks into tears near Sarah's body whose right arm is missing. He also notices that Sarah packed their bags and a tape recorder with a missing cassette. He makes a promise to avenge Sarah's death and heads off to pursue the murderer.
Sam decides to use a funicular to reach the hospital faster and heads to the nearby farm where he discovers, to his surprise, his comatose neighbor Roland walking again. He soon realizes the citizens of Keen Sight had turned into aggressive mindless monsters, but Sam manages to escape the creatures by arming himself with a shotgun he found in the hands of a deceased farmer Brad. Sam finally reaches the hospital only to witness a horrifying scene where his wife's murderer, major Sandman, brutally murders another man, agent Liev, and consumes a part of his brain. After equipping himself with Liev's gun and D.I.D., Sam enters the hospital to find the place overrun with the infected personnel. He manages to find one survivor, Dr Atherton, who hid himself in the quarantine zone and communicates with Sam via intercom. Atherton reveals he subdued and captured Sandman after the latter had massacred the security guards. He is willing to hand him over to Samuel in exchange for his help as Samuel can get around the hospital. Atherton gives Sam several tasks to complete collect a janitor's ID tag, destroy the hidden archives, and locate his missing colleague. Through his journey Sam comes across multiple evidence of Hexacore performing experiments on the population of Keen Sight for decades. He visits his old maternity ward where he was born and experiences a severe hallucination where he hears Sarah singing him a lullaby.
After losing his patience with Atherton, Samuel heads back but discovers the doctor murdered after Sandman broke free. He leaves the hospital through the morgue and hears another hallucination of Sarah blaming him for her death. When he makes it to Keen Sight and intercepts a call between Sandman and Raven through his D.I.D. where he learns Sandman is headed to the lair dam. Sam reaches the dam after fighting off creatures at the radio tower and finally confronts his wife's killer. Sandman tries to plea with Sam, revealing Sarah was one of the few people Sandman could count on and he never tried to hurt her. Raven tries to explain that Sandman was under an influence of a drug that turned him violent, but he is cured now. He asks Samuel to put down his gun, but the latter is unable to deal with Sarah death as she continues to haunt him, revealing he is nothing but Hexacore's property. When the screen turns to black, a single gunshot is heard, leaving Samuel's fate unknown.
In the epilogue it is revealed Samuel was born as a part of Truman Project designed to test a biological nerve agent that his mother was subjected to as the maternity ward contagion leak in 1952 was staged by Hexacore. Sarah was revealed to be a supervisor for the project who was monitoring Samuel's life and the effects of the Daymare Syndrome. However, Sarah genuinely loved Sam and wanted to reveal the truth to him, knowing that would end their relationship, but she was murdered before she could confess to him. Sarah's severed arm is shown next to a locket containing their wedding photo.
Gallery[ | ]
Sam's promotional art
Samuel's early biography and concept art
Samuel on the game's cover art
Sam is born
Sam in the announcement trailer (deleted scene)
Samuel's gameplay
Sam at work
Sam in the maternity ward where he was born
She's dead
Sam hallucinating Sarah's death
Sam's visions
"The voice isn't Sarah."
Sam's end
Trivia[ | ]
- According to his early biography, he was originally meant to have a son. His full name was stated to be "Samuel Dyson Walker".
- Samuel was designed as an "everyday man" type of character with little combat experience. Early in development his gameplay section was meant to be more stealth based.[3]
- Sam gets additional enemies during his chapters, known as "false enemies". They are hallucinations of Type-7 zombies that do not physically hurt him but can still grab and disorient him. Shooting them once will make them dissolve into a red mist.