Benjamin (Onlooker)

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Benjamin is an unseen villainous character from the indie horror game Onlooker.

Biography[]

We start out with the phone conversation between Gale Smith and his boss. Gale is quite interested in the letter he received earlier from a mysterious Ben, asking to visit a certain hotel. The boss dismisses the story as an attempt of some attention-seeker to gain easy fame, but Gale believes the letter to be legitimate and is ready to investigate the matter, bringing his own camera there. The boss agrees and asks whether he has the title for the article. Gale replies that he will figure it out.

We see that he had titled the article as "Benjamin's Sin". He arrives at the hotel and notices sign with his name on it and a room number 203. Beside it lies a key. Someone has been expecting him. Gale grabs the key and proceeds to the room, hearing disembodied footsteps and pointing out several posters about a missing dog named Bob Bingi. He goes up the ladder, passes a few rooms, while pondering about the hotel's long-gone glory, and enters the room 203. Gale finds it to be empty. However, there is a letter on the table left by Benjamin explaining that he will have to show something to Gale before they can meet in person. A small note attached to the bathroom mirror points out the ventilation shaft entrance in the corner of the room. After he inspects the note, a door to the room gets shut by someone and locked, startling the protagonist and forcing him to move through the vents. Entering there reveals a narrow space between the walls. To the left we see a note with the name Isaac Stevens written at the top, documenting a lodger staying in his room, his favorite activities being eating, walking around the room and watching TV, while Benjamin expresses concerns about his wife being left alone and remarks that it's almost comforting to watch him. Near the note is the peephole covered by a wooden panel that reveals a view of the couch in front of the TV and Isaac sitting on it with his back turned to the hole. Gale mentions that the guy had normal life and was visiting the hotel just to have a time for himself and it turned out he wasn't. Further through the passage Gale finds a locked door to the left and a small note urging him to find a key. To the right lies a ventilation grid with a view of the hotel's kitchen below and a note attached to the wall near it. The note describes two "lazy and dirty" workers and how Benjamin is displeased with their mistreatment of food and constant complaints. He also mentions their dog Bob Bingi that keeps barking at the ceiling, which might compromise his hiding spot, and that he will have to do something about it. Next we pass by the peephole showing us the bathroom of the hotel room where the lovers Mary and Michael, as stated in the document near it, spend weeks on end and seem to be in an abusive relationship. A small note with "Shut up!" also hints that. Gale also stumbles upon a table with a cake on a plate and candles, indicating that Benjamin was practically living behind the walls, coming out rarely and only when it's necessary. We drop into the communication system and a trap door is shut behind us once again, most likely by Benjamin. In there we find a mattress slumped beside another peephole, revealing the reception room and the fact that Ben has been watching us since we'he arrived, through the hole made behind the painting of Peter the Great to mask it. Another ventilation grid to the right shows us a drunk sleeping man named Beau who spends all his time drinking and watching porn, sometimes making calls to an unknown person. The passage leads us into the closet of the room 204. It is turned upside-down with furniture and clothes strewn about the place. A key to the secret door lies on the table near the knife and a note, directing Gale to take the key. In the bathroom we find Bob Bingi, lying dead in the bathtub, blood surrounding the body and another knife. Gale now heads back into the room 203 with his newly obtained key, squeezes through the secret little entrance again and unlocks the mysterious door to the left. He finds himself in a dark room, with only lit lamp near the peephole and two notes attached. We finally get to know Benjamin's most profound deed. Through the peephole Gale sees Isaac Stevens from the front. His body is motionless and in a state of decomposition. He has been choking on a grape for three minutes, and Benjamin was just standing there, watching until he suffocated to death. A note near the letter to the attic has several phrases "I LET HIM DIE" crossed out. Gale climbs the ladder and walks down a long hallway with a table at the end. A single lamp illuminates a final note from Benjamin. "This is the end of out story. Make it a good one". We hear a shot and something heavy dropping to the floor. A wall to the left now has a bullet hole in it. Gale looks through and gasps, seeing a corpse of none other than Benjamin himself. He shot himself in the head. The game is finished by Gale's monologue about the remorse and obsession of a lonely man who has seen too much and couldn't live with the guilt. He has tried to make him see what he saw, and since it wasn't enough to escape, he took his own life. Gale realizes, how much he understands Benjamin and that his own situation is not that different, having seen too much and nobody to share it with. Gale calls the boss and tells him that he has the title.

Personality[]

While not an exceptionally vile or sadistic human being at heart, Benjamin has definitely made a plethora of questionable choices. He has been watching many hotel guests for months (if not for years), even though the true reasons behind his bizarre "hobbies" have never been unraveled. His notes suggest that perversion and sexual gratification had little to do with spying on others, since his people of choice and places of observations are vast and range from couples to ordinary men without partners. His notes indicate that it might have been just a hint of morbid curiosity and boredom combined. To put it simply, Benjamin's loneliness and lack of other things to occupy himself with have led him to get involved with other people's businesses.

He has shown himself to be highly paranoid, yet playful and mischievous. He murdered the dog Bob Bingi since it was annoying him and could have revealed his position to the unsuspecting workers in the kitchen. He even tried knocking on the wall several times to attract Isaac's attention while watching him, which implies that the murder of the dog was not only due to precautionary measures.

Benjamin's elaborate plan of luring Gale into the hotel and leading him slowly to the truth, coupled with the fact that he was able to stay unnoticed by the protagonist even when following him right behind his back and always staying close indicate a skilled tactician and a quick thinker. He was also able to swiftly move through the entire hotel and had a deep knowledge of his surroundings.

Despite these qualities, all the things he has seen, especially the death of Isaac, have taken a toll on his sanity and rooted a heavy guilt into his soul, making him unable to cope. It is unclear as to why he chose to do nothing while watching Isaac wasting away, but he has took upon the responsibility of his death on himself and decided that there was nothing left to live for, choosing to kill himself. Before the suicide, however, Benjamin entrusted Gale to tell his story and tried to share it with him to lower the guilt, but quickly realized that it wasn't of any help and the remorse couldn't be erased that easily.

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Benjamin (Onlooker)

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