Whether you’re buying snacks for that big house party tonight, packing to go on a lovely hike through the wilderness, or just hanging out with friends in a picturesque remote cabin, you know you’ve got at least half an hour before the killing begins. It’s a horror movie trope that characters have to be established, tension slowly built, so the audience can identify their heroes as well as the doomed couple who will later sneak off and die horribly. It’s something which Man of Medan, Supermassive Games’ first entry in its Dark Pictures Anthology series, played into with its opening, which starred fratty teens drinking beers on a boat.
Little Hope, as its name might suggest, dispenses with all of that.
This second, standalone chapter opens with a much darker and more startling introduction – one which reveals plot points trailers have not hinted at so far. We’ll avoid going into detail, but suffice to say this story’s focus on different time periods – historical events during the witch-fearing 1692 and a group of students in the present day – will play a much larger part in the game’s mystery than expected, with links between them that run a lot deeper than those seen in Man of Medan.
There’s something else too, an immediate sense that where this story is going cannot be tied up as neatly as the explanation Man of Medan eventually gave if you uncovered enough of its clues. There was a sense, there, that its horror was grounded in a reality Little Hope is happy to leave behind for a deeper dive into the dark and weird. Was Supermassive intentionally setting out to break its own rules? “There are no rules in the Dark Pictures Anthology,” company boss Pete Samuels laughs when I ask later on a video call. Each episode is designed to be very different in style, influenced by the many subgenres of horror.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope – Launch Date Trailer | PS4 Watch on YouTube
That’s not to say there aren’t similarities. Little Hope will feature a storyline set mostly in the modern day with a cast of characters whose fates are completely under your control. The tale is another book in the library of the series’ mysterious Curator, the bowler hat-wearing spectre of Death played with dark relish by Pip Torrens. And while the style is different, the love for the genre in nods to films and video games is evident (Silent Hill fans, this one’s for you). Oh, and the well-received Shared Story and Movie Night modes plus later Curator’s Cut option will all also return.