There’s nothing quite like being in control of the characters in a horror game. The player makes the decisions, and the player must suffer any consequences as a result. Resident Evil managed to utilise this in its Inventory management.
Do you use a handful of bullets for that zombie, or try to find a way around it? Each decision, or indecision, creates tension. Now, imagine wrangling multiple characters at once (albeit without an inventory system) and you have an idea of what Supermassive Games hopes to achieve.
Supermassive Horror…
Inventory slots aren’t the only difference when it comes to The Dark Pictures Anthology. Following the success of Supermassive’s Until Dawn, they released the first of the series, The Man of Medan, on August 30th, 2019. Much like Until Dawn, its heavily story-focuses with a central cast of characters.
The player jumps around, in control of each character for certain sequences. Sometimes these are nothing more than a Cinematic in which the player may have to perform a quick-time event or two. Other times it can be a “stage” requiring exploration. The one thing they have in common however, is the ability to lose any and/or all characters throughout the narrative, without it stopping. You can check out the trailer below.
Little Hope looks to continue those trends, including using a Hollywood actor. Instead of Rami Malek, or Shawn Ashmore, this game stars Will Poulter. It follows a group of college students stranded in a town shrouded in fog. Unfortunately, the town also has a past similar to that of Salem and will jump between at least two timelines.
Just like Man of Medan, players will be able to participate in multiplayer modes like “Movie Night” and “Shared Story”. In the first, players will pick one or two characters and share a controller, playing when that character is on screen. For “Shared Story” two players experience the same story, with certain branching points to give each player a different perspective.
The Dark Pictures: Little Hope will release on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One sometime this Summer. For more reviews and gaming news you can keep up to date at Informed Pixel. Want to speak to the team and interact with other gamers? You can do so over on the Informed Pixel Facebook page or on the Informed Pixel Twitter account.
