Why Lerys Memorial Institute is my favourite map in the game
If you were to ask me what my favourite and least favourite maps in the game are, you will always get the same answer, Lerys Memorial Institute, and both Blackwater Swamp maps
To make a long story long though, Lerys always struck a cord with me back when I started playing in 2018, This was way before Realm Beyond, so Lerys was still the very bright and pretty ugly duckling that it used to be, I didn't like the map that much, i didn't dislike it, after all there were (and still are coughXColdwindandBlackwaterSwampXcough) much worse maps in the game, but it didn't really strike me as being as interesting as it could have been, Doctor was always one of the most interesting killers to me as a character even before I learned he was loosely based off of Wretched Scumbag Yang Yon Shing (Just in the very off chance you're reading this Yang, Hello, Say hi to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and every one of your child abusing ilk in history for me when you arrive in the deepest pit of hell your psychopathic and inhuman self belongs in) and his map really didn't feel like it suited him, it was too bright and really selling the "run down secret government institute" vibe it was going for.
Then Realm Beyond happened and we went from a pretty bright and decent map, to this
It's dark, it's abandoned, marks of age and violence stain the halls, few lights function without flaw, the sounds of machinery still whirr and rattle without much purpose, the central generator is connected to a strange set of TVs, able to be powered on endlessly thanks to the group of tesla coils surrounding the central vent. This is an absolutely S-Tier map from it's visuals and sound design alone.
There are also all of the little details you might miss on a first run around the map
As an example, check the signs you can find around doorways on the map,
Blue ones lead to bedrooms that have a window, yellow ones are bathrooms that have a pallet, and the green signs outside the entrances/exits are lounges that have both, You also notice those big signs surrounding the central gen, the exits, and Stamper's office constantly flickering? They stop flickering and are always bright once all of the gens are completed, then go completely dim once EGC begins, details like these rarely go noticed by the average player, but they help make the map feel more expressive and alive, which is always nice.
But the most important part of any map is balance, the biggest complaint I have with Indoor maps are the claustrophobic nature of the endless hallways and dead ends, combined with verticality and the lack of ways of getting around the map itself, many places on RPD, Midwich, The Game, and Hawkins when it was in the game typically only have one, maybe two ways of getting around to certain places, combined with the amount of pallets and the fact that they are all split into a upper and lower floor makes them a chore to get around for most killers, Lerys doesn't really have that problem, I don't really know how to describe it, but Lerys is a Indoor map that feels like an Outdoor one with how it typically plays
Example, the Central Gen has a bunch of different entrances
Compare this to, for example, the bathroom by basement on The Game, which only has two if the gen is repaired, or the main lobby on RPD, which has about 5, or the Courtyard on Midwich, which has 4, what makes the number of entrances really nice though is that they're all connected to something, the upper section has a bunch of windows and a hole that leads to a window, and the central room itselfhas two pallets and two decent windows that lead off into the rest of the map, The main reason i say Lerys plays like a outdoor map is that, unlike every other indoor map that has 40 pallets and like 3 windows, Lerys has a surprisingly even split between windows and pallets, a few of the windows are even right next to each other, letting you use the same windows without getting entity-blocked, there's only 2 god pallets on the map and they're both very far away from each other and on the edges of the map, learning the map is also quite rewarding, many of the blocked doors change from match to match, learning which ones get blocked and which ones aren't and where they lead can help you survive or cut survivors off, the map isn't perfectly balanced (Have fun playing Billy, Blight, Huntress, Deathslinger, or Wesker on this map lol) but it is easily the most fun and most balanced Indoor map we have, stealth killers benefit from the darkness of the hallways and bits of terrain help keep you hidden, Trapper and Hag's traps benefit from the darkness as well, Trick Blades Trickster is hilariously good, Demo is amazing due to just how many things you can shred around, and you haven't experienced true fear until you play against a good Dredge that teleports a ton during Nightfall on Lerys, pants-shittingly terrifying doesn't do it justice
But easily the biggest reason I love this map is the story it tells through its design and all of the background details surrounding it, Lerys' story is one of tragedy and bloodshed
The entrance halls and lounges are a hint to the place's past as a hospital, a place of healing and cleanliness, but also one of disease and death, people once came here for check-ups, finding out what might be making them ill, Hell I'm willing to bet many people were born here as well. But look at the place now, it's ruined, turned into a government blacksite hidden behind redacted files, erased from maps and all records, dark, filthy, beds that once housed the sick, recovering, or dying began housing people that we don't even know did anything to deserve being stuck in this man-made hell, they could have been POWs that were fighting for their country's independence, they could have been death-row inmates, mentally insane individuals, maybe just petty criminals who did no more wrong then steal a box of cereal, or, they could have been completely innocent and just happened to be in the wrong place and wrong time, what was the place like before Otto Stamper or the power generator on legs called Herman Carter came here? I doubt it was much better, people were tortured to death here, examined like unliving and unfeeling piles of meat and bone, kept in sick and inhumane conditions. The central room has always perplexed me, Tesla coils connected to monitors with a menacing web of televisions above it and what I think is a heat vent below judging from the colour and what I feel is a bit of heat distortion when you look directly at it when standing on top of it, people were probably hooked up to those things and made to watch all manner of #########-up stuff ala Clockwork Orange, did Carter come up with that? Stamper? Someone else? What sick bastard came up with that idea and deemed it entirely okay to get information from people?
And all of that was before the place got torn to shreds
Look around the central gen and you'll notice these prison doors, bent and out of shape, the result of a prisoner riot? Maybe, but notice something else? Look around the institute, Doctor's lore states that he tortured and electrified everyone, Stamper included, to death, before leaving, If that's the case, where are the bodies? Where's any evidence people were kept and worked here? The Institute is eerily empty for a place that apparently lost its entire population, not one body can be found throughout it, not a single one, not a prisoner, not a doctor, no guards, nothing.
Now let me ask you another question, What did Otto Stamper canonically do before he came to the Institute?
I will probably never know what truly happened, but, as far as I'm concerned, Stamper used the suffering of the inmates of the Institute to summon a second Dredge-like entity that we haven't seen yet before Herman hooked him up to the machines in the central chamber and tried to learn how he did it (make this a skin and make me correct BHVR I beg of you).
Even if I'm wrong, the story and mysteries of this map is why I adore it so much, it isn't just "run-down abandoned hospital #3671" to me, it's fun to play on sure, my favourite killers benefit from its design tremendously, but the details and story it manages to tell without a single word is truly amazing, it's not perfect, a good chunk of the killer roster would rather spoon their eyes out then play on it, the gen spread makes playing Demo, Knight, and Skull Merchant feel like cheating (I have had 3 gens all within 4 seconds of each other more then I care to admit), But I am willing to overlook all of that because of all of the fun i have playing and examining it
Anyway, G'Night
Might talk about why I hate the Swamp so much, We'll see
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