F.E.A.R./Headscratchers

Here's a big one: just how unlimited are Armacham's resources? Keeping in mind that all the Replica stuff is originally theirs, the things they have access to include: ...I don't expect a good explanation for this, I just want to know; it is just me, or does it seem like Armacham has more money and guns than the U.S. government?
 * A corporate headquarters at least as big as a major university campus.
 * At least three separate giant underground constructions in and around Auburn Springs.
 * The entirety of Still Island.
 * An absolutely comical amount of top-of-the-line military hardware.
 * An (orbital!?) launch facility that can deploy Replica EP As anywhere in Auburn Springs.
 * Their own private army of security personnel, not counting mercenaries that they also employ.
 * It's a genre convention. FEAR is essentially a Cyberpunk setting, wherein cybernetics is replaced by psychic powers (psychicpunk?), and in said settings, the Mega Corp with ridiculous resources is an ubiquitous villain. The really scary part, though, is that, excepting the orbital resources, some modern corps are or were capable of fielding forces that, while not exactly comparable to Armacham's, were still pretty impressive. Executive Outcomes, for example, was able to field attack helicopters, Mig fighters, and transport planes along with mechanized ground troops. Blackwater/Xe Services' CEO was able to boast, in all seriousness, that he had enough trained troops on retainer that he could have pacified the Darfur situation, on top of helicopters, aircraft, and armored vehicles. So, a Mega Corp like Armacham is implied to be, while farfetched, is not as farfetched as it seems to be. It might be easier to say that Armacham is less of a corporation and more of a nation unto itself, considering their resources.
 * And that's just talking about PMCs. Unless my recollection is wrong, even companies like Boeing sometimes have their own in house PMC setups. When you consider the amount of Seattle metro sprawl real estate Boeing chews up, combine that with their defense contracts, and look at ATC, there isn't much of a jump from one to the other so far as resources and assets are concerned.
 * It's not quite as strange as it seems. In fact, the presence of a Mega Corp with those kinds of resources is scarily plausible, if a Mega Corp wanted to field a major military force. Armacham is probably like many of the corps in Deus Ex or other Cyberpunk settings (some currently-existing corporations have incomes that outpower entire countries' tax budgets) though each game does seem to expand on their available resources and manpower. But yeah, ATC is big. That fits the genre.

Just finished playing the first F.E.A.R. and the Extraction Point expansion, and I gotta ask... What's up with that Blackhawk the clone soldiers are using? Never mind how a single blackhawk could not practically transport a thousand Replicas, or how they got hold of one in the first place; I'm more concerned about how it's ALWAYS there to shoot down your helicopter, or the helicopters you hope to board, over and over again, and neither you nor your superiors makes any real effort to do anything about it. If I were in charge of F.E.A.R or the Special Forces, the first thing I'd demand is that that Blackhawk be shot down. The game demonstrates very well how it gives the Replicas air superiority and ease of transportation, but the brass seems determined that their own aircraft and assault-recon teams can just try to avoid the omnipresent enemy gunship. I really don't blame Alice Wade for not believing that she'd be safer in a helicopter.
 * First, its not a Black Hawk. It's a Hind. Second, the government is trying to keep a lid on the situation without it getting entirely out of hand; that's why you've been sent in with a limited force of Delta operators instead of the military mobilizing the National Guard and Marines to wade in and wipe out the Replica, and why the Point Man's objective is to neutralize Fettel. They don't want to draw attention (well, any more than already has been). Judging by the radio communications, they do a good job of keeping the media from even realizing there's been an attack until you're nearly out of the Armacham building, when they actually shoot down the Black Hawk. Sending a jet to shoot down the Hind(s) (it's implied they have more than one Hind) will pretty much shoot down any pretense of this being some kind of limited, covert operation. Maybe putting a guy with a Stinger or two on the roof to take out the Hind might resolve the issue, but if what Shepard's reports indicate are true, he's dealing with brassholes over him who are giving him sub-optimal orders and restricting him to limited force. Also, keep in mind that you've got actual government officials trying to lock down the entire situation, like the Senator that Aristide was talking to, and are likely limiting what support can be given. Plus, if Armacham is as powerful as is hinted, they might be also doing whatever they can to run interference and keep conventional military forces locked down as well. As for Extraction Point, that's following a nuclear detonation which is apparently seriously screwing up rescue efforts and establishing air superiority. Then again, Extraction Point isn't canon, so I'm really not going to try to justify it.
 * Never mind how a single blackhawk could not practically transport a thousand Replicas, or how they got hold of one in the first place The Replica aren't using the Hinds for large-scale transport. They appear to have armored trucks and APC transport, on top of using civilian vehicles. As for where they got it, there were helicopters in the Perseus facility; you can even see a Hind sitting behind the line of Replica soldiers in the hangar in the intro cutscene, while they're still dormant. This is not factoring in the degree of mobility and transport they have in Project Origin, wherein they are deploying troops from orbital launch systems.
 * I personally find it very amusing that helicopters in this game are apparently the least safe form of transport in all of history. If you see a helicopter, nine times out of ten it gets shot down or just plain blown up. And yet, they seem to have far better safety gear than is apparent given how many times you and your immediate buddies survive the crashes.
 * It makes sense for the most part; helicopters are very, very vulnerable to guided missiles, which drop both of the helicopters in the first game and the one over the school in the second. In the third, there's not much you can do when you've got psychic birth contractions that have a burst radius comparable to nuclear weapons that keep swatting your helicopters out of the sky (and the Phase Commanders are threatening to dismember the pilots if they don't stay in the air to kill you).

Here's a weird one that bugs me: who, exactly, is controlling the Replica in Project Origin? Alma may have activated them, but why are they targeting Becket? My personal theory is that Alma's psychic emanations and emotions are being interpreted as orders from the Replica, which is why they're targeting ATC troops, and they're interpreting Alma's aggressive "advances" on Becket as orders to kill him - or maybe she's just ordering them to attack Becket to slow him down so she can catch and consume him. Any other theories?
 * If Keegan etc had been turned way sooner, you could easily argue that he was doing a bit of the controlling. Otherwise, I think your theory sounds bang on the money. Alma's not quite sane and so having the Replica forces just interpret her "interest" in Beckett as "kill pussycats, kill!" sounds about right. She probably doesn't know any other way to communicate with people.
 * Given that there are some clones that act as controllers, and Alma ended up killing at least one to stop it having soldiers attack you, maybe she just got them going but doesn't have that much direct control over them. Its possible that with nothing to do they're just attracted to the protagonist like Alma is (No, not exactly like Alma is, they're attracted to his psychic-ness).
 * Reborn all but outright says that the Replica are either being controlled by Alma or being controlled by Fettel's ghost.

Does anyone else find it strange that Alma knows how to rape Becket, given that it requires a certain amount of, er, dexterity to do more than dry hump his brains out? How does an 8-year-old locked in a tube for a few decades pick up on this?
 * She may have been an eight-year-old mentally, but she was an adult by the time she died. She grabs him, latches onto him, and does what comes naturally. It's also worth noting that when she does rape Beckett, it is extremely rough and violent and uncontrolled - pretty much what you'd expect from someone who doesn't exactly know what they're doing.
 * Not to mention that Alma may not have been actually doing it physically to him. It may have been a symbolic projection into Becket's mind, just like many of the other things Alma does to him.
 * I think that the moaning pretty much indicates that it actually happened, unless the game was really going for Silent Hill-level sexual symbolism, but I don't think it's anywhere near subtle enough for that.
 * Keep in mind that Alma has been telepathic since childhood. It's entirely possible she's just "listened" to enough people's sex thoughts to figure out how to insert prong A into slot B, as it were.
 * Also, remember Fettel's method for acquiring information in the first game? Alma consumes people as well, Fox, Griffin, Keegan and who knows how many others? It's quite possible that doing so conveyed their knowledge of anything and everything to her.
 * It is never even close to stated that Alma can obtain others' memories by killing them.
 * Doesn't need to be stated; acquiring memories by consuming flesh is an established psychic ability in this setting. If Fettel is capable of doing it, it stands to assume that an much more powerful psychic like Alma can do the same.

Is Alma a psychic ghost? A projection from a dessicated husk? Is she animating her body via her psychic powers? Does she still have a working body? And if she's dead, how does she conceive? Really, it might be easier to not think of Alma as a "ghost." She appears to transcend the concept of a spirit or ghost, instead being a sort of supernatural psychic manifestation that can take on physical form. Less ghost, more demigod or Eldritch Abomination.
 * Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the mindfuck.
 * Apparently, it is a physical body, considering that in F.E.A.R. 3, she actually is physically pregnant and the child took nine months to grow.
 * Remember when Beckett gets locked into the chair, his female squad mate is still in the chamber with him? Granted she had just been shot, but we don't get a chance to see if it kills her or not. If she survived, then she'd have a perfectly good womb for Alma to borrow.
 * That just made the scene a hundred times Squickier. Yet somehow, I don't doubt that it is entirely possible in this setting that Alma possessed Stokes' body and used it to get pregnant.
 * Hey, it could be worse. She could have been using Aristide's body instead of Stokes as a means of payback for all the crap she put her through.
 * Everyone is misunderstanding the ending. She NEVER has sex with him, where do people get this? That would make no sense to the plot. She grabs Beckett's hand and places it on her womb symbolizing that Alma is, indeed, pregnant with somebody's child. Who? How? We will just have to wait for the third game. Think outside the box a little. The two never had sex, because Alma doesn't physically exist - Snake Fists' recording mentions that Alma died when her life support was cut off, but her "psychic-signature", or whatever you want to call it, was powerful enough to live on. Becket was not raped, at least not physicially. The brief scenes where she's moaning and riding your cock were probably just hallucinations or some shit she forced into his brain, like everything else. As was probably the "I'm preggo with your KID!" scene.
 * Alma is physically pregnant and carrying a child as of the third game. Becket is the only person she's had any kind of sexual interaction with. Put two and two together.
 * My main point is I don't think they physically had sex because she does not physically exist. Probably their minds mingling was somehow enough to produce a kid and the rape and pregnant images were just forced into his head, like symbolic visions or something to show that she is pregnant? I don't think anything in the ending is more than a Dream Sequence.
 * Except she's physically pregnant in the third game. And while Alma may not physicly exist, Stokes is also trapped inside the chamber. People don't bleed out that quickly unless hit in just the right spot, so Alma could have a physical body to use. So since Alma is unmistakenly fucking you in the ending, and she is physically pregnant in the sequal, Occaham's razor says Beckhett's the father instead of your idea that it's somehow unrelated to the fact that Alma was fucking him in the ending. So let's take the only facts that we know are canon; Alma is pyhsically pregnant in F.3.A.R, Alma rapes Beckett at the end of Project Origin, Alma shows no sexual lust towards any other character. Whose baby could it be beside's Beckett's?
 * Maybe she managed to physically have sex with him and get preggo by possessing and using Stokes's fresh body?
 * You're all totally overlooking the fact that in the first game, Alma possesses her adult corpse after Harlan unlocks it. She's been a teleporting, psionically reanimated dead body the whole goddamn time. That's why she appears as such instead of the little girl modeled after her ego-image.
 * Its not really clear if Alma was possessing her corpse or if that was simply a projection of her full strength once she was released. And it's not even clear if that matters; psychic ghosts in this setting can create physical bodies judging by how both Fettel and Alma can interact with the material world. Since bullets can influence psyhcic ghosts (by killing/disrupting them) I don't think its a stretch to say that sperm can get a female psychic ghost pregnant.
 * The question here is....where in the lore surrounding this setting does it say that female psychic ghosts can't get pregnant? The only convention that says they can't is some kind of common fictional convention that ghosts are incorporeal dead entities that can't have children - which is an erronous assumption. We don't know the rules and limitations of ghosts in this setting, and there's nothing saying that a psychic ghost like Alma can't be pregnant. This isn't like The Dresden Files where the rules and mechanics of the supernatural are well-established and defined.
 * I'm still missing something. Exactly how the hail can a freaking non-corporeal ghost have sexual intercourse with a living man, much less get knocked up and have a living child? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. You can't pork ghosts, their genitalia (and reproductive organs) are nothing but thin air. I don't get it at all.
 * Because, as was said literally one line above your entry, that's how things work in FEAR. There is no hard-and-fast rule in this setting regarding ghosts, especially the ghost of a psychic so powerful she can end the entire world if she puts her mind to it. And in this setting, apparently you can "pork" a ghost because that ghost has a body that can be interacted with, and Alma has demonstrated capability to give physical manifestation to noncorporeal entities.
 * But Alma does not have a body that be interacted with... she's a ghost. She is dead. Her actual, physical body was destroyed back in the first game; she doesn't physically exist. She is completely without any somatic cells. And how in hay can she get physically preggo when she doesn't physically exist? She has no place for teh physical penis or semen to physcially go. And a ghost producing a totally live, flesh and blood kid when she does not physically possess the necessary, living reproductive organs to create a living thing? Gametic cells are not viable after the death of an organism (even the rich cytoplasm of oocytes would not sustain them for very long). Cells are the building blocks of life, without cells, there can be no life. Even if I just take biology and logic and toss them in the rubbish bin, I still can't think of a way to make sense of this.
 * No. Again, you're making the fundamental mistake of applying the rules of other settings regarding ghosts to a setting where the rules do not work that way (this is like complaining that magic in The Dresden Files does not follow the rules of magic from Final Fantasy or Dungeons and Dragons). Don't assume that because ghosts are incorporeal in other fictional media that they are in this setting, because the rules are not established beyond observable abilities. FEAR ghosts, particularly Alma, can manifest physical bodies that act exactly like human bodies. Fettel can do the same thing. And yes, Alma does have a physical body. The fact that Beckett has to grapple with her and force her away multiple times indicates as much.
 * But she's still dead... how can a dead chick reproduce? With a non-dead, noarmal dude no less? Much less reproduce a normal human child.
 * Spirits in FEAR can apparently do exactly that. Alma's psychic abilities basically allow her to give silly things like death, biology, and the laws of physics the finger.
 * Eh, crazy stuff. But one last thing, why would an insanely angry pissed little dead girl who for some reason doesn't want to just move onto the afterlife or whatever, who hates everything and everyone and wants to explode the world into a big fiery ball in space, who is mentally retarded and has the mindset of a five year old, know anything about sex, or even be at all interested in such things? It was her father who caused it all, and she already killed him, why doesn't this little nutter just go away already?
 * You're misunderstanding Alma's motivations here. She doesn't want to destroy the world and her motivations extend to beyond just getting revenge on her father. She wants children to love and care for. Once she got her revenge, she moved on to having another child that wouldn't experience the same horrors that her other children faced. That's why in the Point Man's ending, when the Point Man takes the third child, she seems to relax and fade away - the Point Man will take care of his sibling, giving one of her children a decent life.
 * But if that's so, why would she want to bring another kid into this kind of world? If she laments what happened to her other kids (which weren't really hers, they were engineered) and wanted a child to be happy, why bring another into such a sad, bleak, unhappy world? How does she know if Paxton/Point Man are going to care about its happiness? (idk about PM, but Paxton clearly does not.) She supposedly wants it so *it* can love *her*, not so *she* can love *it*, because she "wants the love she never got from her father", or so I've read; like I said that is senseless. Also out of curiosity why did she specifically want her sperm donor to be Becket? What was wrong with Keegan, or some other man? If she's doesn't have any ill intentions for the world, why would she go and commit such brutal sexual assault and psychological abuse on someone she supposedly cares about? (though I have no clue why she would even think anything of this man, wth)? On a side note, how is it physically possible for a woman to force sex on a man? He needs to have an erection in order to copulate, which generally does not happen when he is not sexually aroused. (which he certainly was not, being stuck in a mind trap.)
 * You're making the fundamental mistake of ascribing sanity or rationality to anything Alma does. She's not sane (never was, but what was done to her drove her off the deep end). Specific points:
 * If she laments what happened to her other kids (which weren't really hers, they were engineered) Yes, they were. They were created using her DNA mixed with others'. They were implanted in her womb. And she considers them her children.
 * Also out of curiosity why did she specifically want her sperm donor to be Becket? What was wrong with Keegan, or some other man? Beckett was Harbinger's most powerful psychic, underwent the genetic linking surgery, and entered the telesthetic amplifier, all of which attracted Alma to Beckett.
 * If she's doesn't have any ill intentions for the world, why would she go and commit such brutal sexual assault and psychological abuse on someone she supposedly cares about? What kind of insane logic is that? "Irrational sexual desire for one person" != "wants to blow up the world."
 * Why does she want a superubermechapowerful child if she doesn't have evil intentions for it and "just wants it to be happy"? Would she not rather it be "happy" by growing up a completely normal, physically and psychologically healthy child? (the kind of childhood she never had.) Didn't address my question about why she thinks PM/Paxton would care about its welfare, or how it could really be overly happy in such a dark world. And still, why sexually assault him so if she cares for him? You don't get someone to return your affections by inflicting such abuse on them. Surely a person with any knowledge of what sex is would know how that goes? (though I'm quite clueless as to how and 8 year old who spent her life in suspended animation inside a tube would know anything about that, but that's beside my point...).
 * I already explained why! ALMA. IS. INSANE. She was mentally unstable before they drugged her, tossed her in a psychic vault, impregnated her, stole her children from her, and then killed her. All of her irrational actions are because she's insane. How hard is that to understand?
 * So it's all simply because she's just plain out of her mind? Because she doesn't really understand what she is doing, and is unable to forsee the implications/consequences of her actions? Ah, well, that makes sense. (Makes me feel even more sad for everyone involved.)
 * But I thought the reason she went and force humped Becket was because, thanks to the Mendelian laws of segregation and independent assortment being repealed, apparently Her+This Dude = Her and this dude squared. In other words, she wanted him for power, because she wanted some super super powerful Fetus Terrible child...
 * On the other hand, there is the theory that Alma just grabbed Stokes' still-living body and kept it alive and used that to get pregnant with.
 * I think we've already had that theory put on the table, and I feel the need to reiterate what the guys above have said: there's no "rules" in thus universe (or there are, but only the experts in-universe know them, and even then it's probably just enough to track the general location of psychic energy, and partially contain a powerful psychic that hasn't fully developed yet. I compare it to knowing lightning is electricity to knowing how to construct a sentient computer.) So that theory may be valid, it may not, but to prevent the above mess from repeating itself, I'm just going to say "quark".
 * Alma possessing/creating an actual physical body is confirmed in the third game, in Fettel's ending, when he starts ripping into her. You can hear him eating chunks of her body and blood starts pouring out over the floor, so there is definitely an actual body there. Either Alma took over Stokes or created a new body for herself.
 * Alma's one moment of happiness in life was giving birth to Fettel and Pointman. She had strong maternal instincts. That's why she raped Beckett, because she wanted a child. As for why Becket, I guess a strong psychic ability is attractive to someone that is essentially a psychic ghost. As for the body thing, is it really that unreasonable to imagine her willing a physical body into being with her immense psychic power?
 * No, the "why Becket" thing was Aristide's doing. The whole TAC chamber bit was to make Becket a beacon for Alma so that she would go after him specifically.

If Alma was so distraught about her baby being taken from her, why is she trying to kill or allow you to be killed all throughout the first game? Before people say that she didn't know until the end, how could she not have? Fettel knew before you even came face to face with him (in the very beginning of the first level), and she had direct access to his mind throughout the game.
 * She never tried to kill the Point Man. The closest she came was blowing up the warehouse, but you survived that without a scratch, and it can probably be interpreted as her trying to slow you down and keep you away from Fettel. She allows the Replica to try to kill you because again, she's trying to keep you away from Fettel. She interferes with the Point Man and slows him down, but she never directly attacks him. If she wanted him dead, he would be dead and dead very quickly, as all those liquefied Delta troops can testify to. At the end of the game, she's not trying to kill you directly, but simply tryin to embrace you - and being embraced by Alma will kill you.
 * I'd heard that line of thought, too--the part about her trying to embrace you. I decided to accept it as true; it does sort of look like a hug, but I'm too busy freaking out and pumping every bullet I have into her to tell for sure. But trying to kill you directly and allowing others to try to kill you aren't that far apart, really. She just seemed too needy of her child at the end of the game to take a (rather large) chance that he'd get killed trying to get to Fettel.
 * Keep in mind that Alma's primary goal is for Fettel to free her - and your goal is to stop Fettel. Alma is probably doing what she does to slow the Point Man down to keep him from interfering with Fettel's actions until she can be freed. Also keep in mind that Alma's capabilities are probably limited until Harlan Wade releases her from the Vault, so she uses her psychic abilities in a very limited manner to eliminate only specific threats or to delay the Point Man, i.e. taking out his Delta escort while leaving him unharmed, separating Alice Wade from the Point Man, etc.
 * The non-canon expansion to the first game, Extraction Point, seemed to imply that Alma has a schizophrenic attitude towards the Point Man. On the one hand, she tells him how to get out of a subway station and sends Shades (or "spindlies," if you're a fan of Helloween4545's Let's Plays) to attack Replica soldiers that are in Point Man's way. On the other hand, she has no problem letting Point Man and his teammates be attacked by various nightmare creatures summoned out of her subconscious. Given her backstory, it could be assumed that she's simply no longer capable of creating any sort of coherent opinion on anything, so she acts entirely by whim and impulsive emotion.
 * That's probably the best explanation that I'm going to get. Thanks.

Why didn't Armacham ever come up with any sort of external killswitch for the Replicas in the event their commander went rogue? Given their past history with telepathic experimentation (Alma's unhappy childhood, that unspecified "synchronicity event" that happened when Paxton Fettel was a kid), I would have thought that there would have been some plan for quickly shutting down an aberrant Replica force beyond "go on a wild goose chase for Fettel and plug him." Then again, telepathy could be one of those "we can use and manipulate this natural force, but no one knows how the hell it actually works" sort of thing.
 * They do have a killswitch for the Replica. It's called "shoot Paxton Fettel in the head." Fettel himself was contained in a secured facility and he has a transmitter in his head that allows them to easily track him down. It's just that they got hit with the last thing any of them expected; no one guessed Alma would still be down there in the Vault and that she would get loose and take Fettel over. Once that happened and Alma began supporting Fettel and liquidating anyone who tried to stop him, things got out of control.
 * Also, having a killswitch for the Replica can be a problem if you're marketing them as a PMC, which Project Origin indicates was the whole point behind them. If you're fighting a war and the enemy figures out how your killswitch works, they can shut off your entire army with a single press of a button.

What exactly is Paxton Fettel getting out of all this? Is he Alma's puppet or a free man? Does he want to join in this whole "kill everybody" jamboree or not?
 * Fettel himself has no real freedom in the first game, because he's being directly controlled by Alma. In Reborn he is, well, being reborn and is a free entity, and it opposed to Alma's control. His precise motives in the third game are yet unclear.
 * He isn't "being controlled" by Alma, he's just influenced by her. And besides, one can imagine Fettel's upbringing for project Origin. Not exactly that of a normal child, eh? One of the factors that would definitely sway him in her direction is his thirst for family.
 * F.E.A.R. 3 shows that Fettel is basically completely insane from his beyond abusive upbringing by Harlan Wade. In his ending, it looks like his goal is simply Total World Domination and he is most definitely not loyal to Alma in any meaningful way, despite his constant extolling of the concept of family throughout the game.
 * Fettel is loyal to his particular concept of "family" - but his definition of "family" is twisted all to hell, especially considering his upbringing. He seems to view his family as a means to gain power, and anyone who is useless to that end or actively threatening that end (including the Point Man and eventually Alma) needs to be destroyed or...repurposed.

I finally started playing FEAR 2, and I'm starting to wonder if there's some sort of hidden relationship between Genevive Aristide and Alma. I mean, Genevive has a gallery fully of paintings of Alma's dream imagery in her penthouse, she keeps Alma's music box in her bedroom, in her arguments with Snake Fist she doesn't even entertain the thought of trying to kill Alma, and on top of all that it was her idea to reopen the Vault and start the ball rolling. I can kinda explain away the paintings by just imagining them as part of a show by local artists who've been influenced by the bad mojo from Auburn, but not the other stuff.
 * There is one theory running around that Aristide might actually be Alma's biological mother. It is worth noting that we know about Alma's father quite well but absolutely nothing about her mother.
 * The only problem there is, at least according to the voicemails in the first game, she didn't know, or care, about what was in the vault, she wanted to open it up and re-purpose it. Granted she is cold, but that's a bit much. I kind of suspected the music box, and the rest were her trying to figure out how to get rid of Alma. She blows off the plan to kill her because she's already dead.
 * Another hypothesis would be that Genevieve is nothing more than an executive looking for profit no matter what. She may have been conservative towards Alma in hopes of taming her at the right time and using her as a weapon, which is not something we cannot put above Armacham's doings.

Here's a minor one: in the Vivendi expansions for the first game, you can see several bloody graffiti symbols made of stacked triangles, which have a strong resemblance to the Triforce. According to the timeline, Alma couldn't have played even the first game, far from it. So, why exactly are they there?
 * You do know the Triforce is based on real world icons and imagery...right?
 * I thought it was just a stylized "A." A for Alma? Not a great justification, but certainly better than "Alma loves LoZ."

I've just been wondering who was the donor(s) for impregnating Alma? I mean i haven't found anywhere yet that says who Fettel and point man's father(s) is/are.
 * Several members of the science team that oversaw the project contributed DNA towards the two prototypes. Including Harlan.
 * Really? I had actually guessed the F.E.A.R. sergeant what with them looking alike and all but thats just sicker.
 * One of the files encountered in the first game mentions a "genetic reference" being used to create the two protoypes, with Betters guessing Harlan Wade's own DNA was used. The booklet that came with the special edition of F.E.A.R. 2 confirms that Harlan was one of the donors, which Genevieve Aristide finds sickening.

Um, did Alma just die at the end of F.3.A.R? Besides, it's kind of hard for someone to "die" when they're already a psychic ghost anyway.
 * The jury is out until the next game.
 * She definitely did in Fettel's ending, atleast. My thoughts are she dies either way through childbirth, which is why Fettel uncharacteristically devoured her; he was salvaging whatever part of her he could by absorbing her.
 * It's likely she "survived" in the Point Man's ending. The Stinger shows that Fettel appears to have survived being "killed" by the Point man, with his monologue having him swear revenge, and both he and Alma disappear in the same way, by being consumed by that orange glow. It is possible that Alma might have passed on or whatever it is ghosts or spirits do, as she seemed to be at peace in the ending. The only things keeping her around for all three games were a desire for revenge, a desire for a reunion with her children, and to raise another child. She's gotten the first two, and the Point Man will be raising her third child, so she's apparently at peace.
 * I can see the franchise going two ways: F.3.A.R. is either the last game, or the next game has Alma in it. However, her motives as an antagonist (and whatever she was in the third game) are pretty much fulfilled: kill her tormentors, and be loved(I've read that she had the kid because she wanted at least one person to love her, and Point Man sparing his second brother seems to me like him saying "'Kay, mom, I think you've put up with enough crap so far, so I'll take care of your kid for you." To be honest, I think, if they do make more games, they should expand on the Alma family, with her watching over them from wherever F.E.A.R. ghosts go as its spirit matriarch (which I think would be pretty freakin' cool)

F.E.A.R was founded for paranormal encounters right? So why is it that the investigator in the first game always suspects a non-paranormal cause of death or cause of danger?
 * Probably an Occam's Razor thing. The first assumption is it will be something non-paranormal because, honestly, that's the most likely scenario. Also they're looking for psychically controlled clone super soldiers, not ghosts. So the causes of death they should be seeing would be mundane ones from less than mundane sources.
 * Because that's part of basic investigative procedure. Determine of something has a mundane origin, then move on to more extraordinary causes. A room full of liquiefied bodies might have been caused by a psychic ghost, or it might have been caused by a chemical weapon. Determine if what killed them was due to a rational cause before moving on to supernatural ones.
 * I was refering more to the "they locked the highly dangerous thing in a vault" situation, where she speculates it might be a chemical. In a company that produces psychic super-soldiers and automated war machines. In a situation with zero evidence and a company that produces genetic experiments, she still speculates it's a chemical.
 * First, Jin never speculated that whatever was inside the Auburn facility was chemical. Betters was suggesting it in passing because he was reading vague ATC reports that the Auburn facility was shut down due to an industrial accident, and that he had also been reading reports from Bill Moody and Alice Wade about possible chemical contamination coming from that facility tainting the water around Auburn. And again, the very first step to dealing with this sort of thing is to investigate mundane causes before moving on to extraordinary ones. The ATC experts investigating the situation were concerned about chemical leaks; that alone gives Betters reason enough to at least suspect chemical-related problems until he has more information. The moment he knows more about Auburn and what's really going on, he drops that and shifts to investigating the psychic end.

So the project to produce psychic commanders was cancelled. The only succesful test subject was vulnerable to external influences. Why did they continue the project to create troops for the psychic commanders to command if they weren't going to create more psychic commanders? And yes, in fear 2, they attempt to create a new psychic commander through project harbringer, but Beckett was the only use of that project, and there were about 10 to 20 years between stopping producing psychics through Alma and the creation of Beckett, while all the while new replicants were created.
 * Replica troops can be controlled by a psychic commander. But they can also receive orders from ordinary commanders. This is explicitly stated in the Replica brochures. Fettel also was not originally created to be a psychic commander; Project Origin was simply trying to create psychic soldiers in the first place. Replica troops that could be controlled by psychic commanders came much later as part of Project Perseus. Also, keep in mind that military contracts can drag on for a long time; just look at the procurement and development cycle for the F-22 and F-35. The notion of a corporation working on a military contract for many years before delivering it is not unusual, and that's with proven technology like aircraft. A government contract to deliver psychic weaponry, which is a new field altogether, would take even longer simply because the technology is new.
 * I think that only applied to the series 7 replica troops, since series 6 shut down if they aren't in contact with a psychic commander.
 * It applies to all of them. Both the Series VI and Series VII can be controlled by either psychic commanders or authorized voices; the VII units were offline until either a Harbinger psychic or Alma activated them.

What exactly was the reason (in that continuity) why the fear sergeant looked so much like the point-man? We know Alma had only two kids, and the fact that he is a sergeant suggests he got into F.E.A.R. a lot earlier than the point-man.
 * There's no evidence he looks like the Point Man. Fettel says that the Sergeant "reminds" him of his brother, but that's it.


 * ... The "adult Alma" from F.E.A.R. bugs me. Yes, it's likely what she looked like when she died... but she was unconscious almost constantly since childhood. She has no reason to envision or represent herself as anything but a little girl.
 * Actually, she does. Remember that just because Alma was "comatose" it doesn't mean that she wasn't aware, and she was fully aware of what they were doing to her. The first Synchronicity Event was happening while she was supposed to be unconscious, after all. Mentally, she may be a child, but she physically is an adult and is aware of this to some degree. When she gets released, you are seeing Alma herself being released, emaciated corpse and all.