1692. A small rural community in the town of Little Hope is gripped by fear and suspicion. There are witches among them, and the evil must be rooted out.
1970. A family in suburban America suffers a horrific and unimaginable tragedy one terrible night. There's only one survivor.
2020. A small group of college students is on a field trip break down in the foggy, forgotten town of Little Hope. Something awful happened here, and the memory of those brutal events lives on.
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That, to me, sounds like the synopsis for a great Stephen King book, or a particularly memorable episode of Doctor Who. In reality, it's the latest game in The Dark Pictures Anthology, the collection of interactive horror experiences from Until Dawn developer Supermassive that kicked off with last year's excellent Man Of Medan.
If you've played Until Dawn or Man Of Medan, you'll already be familiar with what Supermassive has proven so adept at delivering. Its titles are essentially playable horror movies, fascinating stories packed with twists and branching paths in which your only goal is to make the right choices and get all of the characters out alive.
Of course the "right" choice isn't always obvious, and it takes multiple playthroughs to really see the bigger picture Supermassive has crafted. They're like David Cage games, except without dialogue and themes that make you want to push your own head through a metal grate.
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Little Hope, then, is more of the same. Except it also absolutely isn't. Just as Until Dawn and Man Of Medan both mashed up and subverted various horror subgenres, so too does Little Hope offer a tasty blend of unique scares. This time, it seems, we're headed towards the occult. That means creepy ass little girls, demons, and some good old-fashioned satanic worship. You know, the usual.
With influences that range from everything between Silent Hill, The Omen, Blair Witch, and even Arthur Miller's seminal 1953 play The Crucible, Little Hope promises to be another grab bag of brutal delights. Except where Man Of Medan was inspired by an urban legend, Little Hope is very much centred around a truly awful chapter of history: the 1692 Salem witch trials.
"It's a brutal time period," Dark Pictures producer Dan McDonald tells me over video call. "Some horrific things were happening, and that was really challenging for us, incorporating that into the way that we see the different characters, the way they get executed and how that plays out throughout the whole game. We're all about horror, so much of what we do is reading and watching and talking about horror. It's a pretty horrific period. As dark as it can be."
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He's not wrong. Between 1692 and 1693, the witch trials in Salem led to over 200 finding themselves accused of witchcraft. Twenty-five innocent people were murdered during this time, all in the name of the law. It was, as Dan explains, a brutal period rife with paranoia and hysteria - something Supermassive really wants to capture in Little Hope.
"We want the language of it and the feel of things to be real, and this was, as I said, a pretty nasty time," Dan says. "All of our games are actually about relationships and characters and the journeys that they go on, so it's taking some of those brutal elements and the way people treated each other and putting that into our game."
While that doesn't mean we'll be seeing characters hung drawn and quartered, or ripped into shreds on screen, this is a Supermassive horror game, and there'll be some fairly grim moments. During the brief demo I saw, there were some nasty deaths. People burned alive, impaled on spikes, and dragged to their deaths in truly alarming fashion.
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"We want the players to empathise with the characters that we've put on screen and that they're playing with," Dan explains. "So when something horrific happens to them you want them to feel that. Feel a sense of loss. So yeah, I don't know that we've watered [the witch trials] down. We've taken what we've wanted from it."
The real horror fans among you will also be glad to know that there are some really quite nasty demons waiting for us in Little Hope. Metaphorical ones, naturally, but also literal ones - and they look utterly terrifying. Think Hellraiser meets Silent Hill 2 and you've got the picture. The grim, decaying picture. But what role do these alleged minions of satan play?
"I have to be careful I don't spoil stuff on this one," Dan says. "We've got a bunch of different monsters in this game and they're really all quite different, but it's not 'just let's make a monster', or 'what makes a horrific monster?' - it's a journey.
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"What's built this thing? What actually is it? Why does it exist? A bunch of really interesting questions for us to ask each other and always then filter back through, so you start with that and you get a bunch of concept art drawn... but then you have to ask that question: 'Does this hit what it's supposed to be and why it exists?'"
"We need these things to tell a story as well," he continues, "and there's some quite interesting layers to the creatures that you see in this game, why they exist and what they're doing."
If that sounds intriguing to you, you're not alone. I'd absolutely love to know what's going on with this one. As I mentioned earlier, Little Hope jumps between three time periods that are all connected - by characters who look the same, but are ostensibly completely different people.
Man Of Medan and Until Dawn both presented themselves as one type of story before careering off into completely different directions. It's clear that you must always expect the unexpected when it comes to Supermassive. Dan tells me that there are other sub-genres and influences in Little Hope that he couldn't discuss without spoiling the game... but does a commitment to "shocking" twists become predictable after a while?
"There needs to be a mystery to it," he says. "A twist is... we wanna be careful. I mean I love M. Night Shyamalan and his movies personally, but that became his thing. We wanna be known for these horror games and hopefully they get a lot of respect and love from fans out there, but it doesn't have to have a twist.
"There's a lot of core ingredients that go into it. It has to have a mystery, there has to be something for you to figure out. We don't want it to be completely clear. What we are working really hard on is making sure that every version of the ending has a resolution for you and you understand what's happened.
"You understood what you needed to when we wanted you to and we've not been too clever and hidden things away. We want you all to enjoy that journey and go, 'Okay I've figured that out now I wanna play it again and keep them all alive or kill 'em all off.'"
A lack of clarity is, perhaps, something that was a bit of an issue in Man Of Medan. Admittedly though, this was mostly through the fault of the game's innovative but nascent multiplayer mode in which you and a mate could experience the story as different characters at the same time via online play.
While this was a brilliant idea that (usually) worked incredibly well, there were a few hiccups that meant one player might find themselves switching characters with little to no explanation as to how the story had progressed or where there were, losing key context which threatened to derail the entire experience for both players. Thankfully, this is just one of the many things Supermassive is working to improve in Little Hope.
"All games in Dark Pictures are built from day one as being multiplayer," Dan reminds me. "We knew that with Man Of Medan. It started out as a very early prototype that we tried and it proved to work for us so we thought how can we turn that into a bigger game.
"A lot of stuff we've learned is on the technical side, so rules that are sort of hidden away from the player that bit us quite late on in Man Of Medan like making sure other players catch up to relevant information and they've been shown what's happened and understood what's happened.
"For example, you might not have played with that character for a while and then you're snapping back to them and they're in a completely different location so there's a bunch of technical stuff that we've learned that we're getting to do better each time."
Other improvements being implemented in Little Hope included listening to fan feedback and reviews from Man Of Medan. So expect a "lot more contextual information" around things like what players can interact with - as well as better communication of those life-or-death quick time events. There are even, based on what I saw, a few more slightly open areas with free cameras that should make exploration a little more engaging.
"There's stuff that we're constantly picking up," Dan says. "It won't stop evolving, there's stuff we're trying on the next one and that's way into development right now, we've shot a load of the third one. It's a core part of what we're doing."
On the future of The Dark Pictures Anthology, I had to ask Dan what Supermassive has in store for us. We already know that the next six games are all planned out, but what awaits? While he couldn't go into too much detail, it seems there are big plans in store for one character in particular.
The Curator, who served as the mysterious narrator in Man Of Medan and returns in the same capacity for Little Hope, has a story all of his own. At least, that's the impression I got when I ask Dan about the connective tissue that hold The Dark Pictures Anthology together.
"The curator is going to be a big part of the series," Dan explains. "He's a great device for us to talk directly to the players in a way that the cast and main characters can't, and he's got his own arc and journey that he's gonna go on. So you'll continue to see him and see the space that he lives in evolve, and you'll grow to understand where he is as he becomes a core part of the action that's happening. I can't say much more than that."
Based on what I've seen from The Dark Pictures: Little Hope so far, it's already positioned itself as one of the most intriguing releases of this summer. I don't know what exactly is waiting for me in that foggy town, or what shocking discoveries I'll be uncovering alongside the Curator; but I do know that Supermassive are no slouches when it comes to horror, and this particular tale of witches and demons has the potential to be the studio's most terrifying game yet.
Featured Image Credit: SupermassiveTopics: bandai namco