Oh ye of little faith.
Supermassive Games have taken on quite the undertaking for themselves in their 'Dark Pictures Anthology' project, something which ties them down to having to make a full spooky narrative each year in time for Halloween and have it be good. Of course, this is their way of making themselves eminently relevant and becoming a regularly discussed name in the industry, but making a game from practically scratch each and every year has to take a toll on the process or the team working on it. Rarely do you hear about games with a one year development cycle, even when we're talking about none gameplay-contingent games like these, and that's because it's a descriptor often attributed to disaster games. However, I suppose if they've got a solid enough team with an ironclad schedule and a engine which can handle it, they could pull off turning themselves into the premier Halloween studio. I just worry that unless it's handled appropriately we could be looking at diminishing returns, and in fact we might already be starting to see that from their second instalment in the anthology: (Yes, I'm saying second because I'm now confident that 'Until Dawn' has absolutely nothing to do with these stories) Little Hope.
But first a little recap. Supermassive Games are a studio that create exclusively story-driven QTE games (And not amateur Blackholes, like one might assume) that revolve around a core concept of 'actions have consequences' in a manner that they are slowly starting to become more skilled with. However, unlike Telltale before them, Supermassive haven't been making their name by securing high-profile licenses and trying to turn them into quick adaptations, rather Supermassive has stuck themselves strictly to the realm of horror/intrigue and bought in the odd famous face in order to be a sales point. Faces that would then be accurately rendered into the game because these titles are also not stylised in the way that Telltale's games always were. I cannot say whether this is going to be more sustainable then the now-defunct Telltale games model of 'buy licence and then turn it around for a profit as soon as humanely possible, sometimes several times a year', but I have hope for them. The industry needs more narrative-driven stories in her kennel and Supermassive provides.
Their fame was first cemented with the slasher-film homage 'Until Dawn', and though they initially started to further explore that world through the VR titles 'The Inpatient' and 'Rush of Blood', they've since diverted to a style of turning their games into events. (Not like how 'Live services' do, more akin to how the movie industry does; through design and marketing.) 'Hidden Agenda', for example, was marketed as a party game of deception, (Before Among Us blew up) wherein people would watch as a team and one player would be given the wild-card job to... well, essentially ruin the scene through rogue choices. Which is questionable because a style built on 'actions have consequences' would imply that no choice is a bad choice, but this pigeon-holing made it evident that one option was exactly that. I just personally attest that 'Hidden Agenda' was a bit of a mess, and not just because of the twist that *Spoiler* the obvious choice was the guilty one. (I mean I understand leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the audience but they made it so obvious that they expected the Scooby-Doo effect to take hold so that we all immediately assumed it wasn't them. Which, to be fair, actually worked on me. Kudos, I guess)
But now they've moved onto an amalgamation of all their previous marketing ideas (except for VR, I guess) to create a series of story-driven horror titles with built narratives that also have minor, sometimes disruptive, party mechanics built into them. This 'Dark Pictures Anthology' appears to be their gaming equivalent of a 'Tales from the Crypt' or 'Twilight Zone' sort of project, where each story is it's own self-contained adventure with her own characters, supernatural threat and- lessons? (Not sure what lesson 'Man of Medan' was trying to share, to be honest.) As the premise goes, which the more inquisitive side of the gaming community has vehemently rejected as red-herring lies, these tales will be entirely unconnected with one another aside from the fact that the host will be this passive aggressive figure known as The Curator, who I'll admit I'm starting to really love. For the Man of Medan he seemed a little like a background fellow who was still trying to get his feet, but in Little Hope they've settled on making him this almost stand-offish guide who sprinkles slight hints about being under the supervision of some higher power. Real points for The Curator stuff, I think he's really getting interesting.
As for Little Hope itself, the story seems to be a lot more recognisable to the general audience than The Man of Medan was, seeing how that concept was so niche that most had no idea the idea was based on a real ghost ship story. (Even I had to do a research blog on it) But Little Hope firmly sets itself in the world of the Witch trials, which seeing as how that's part of the regular School curriculum around here, is pretty accessible. This was a very wise choice on the part of the developers, as it's a time in history of real horrors, just stemming from base human nature, thus making ideal grounds for a narrative wherein 'The real monster is man' is not so much a cringe-worthy mission statement as an expected course of the tale. And Supermassive sort of take that approach, however there is an entirely unique context and direction that they ended up going with the story that is both unexpected and oddly flimsy. I want to keep things as spoiler-free here as possible, but I will say that when it's said and done, I'm unsure if the Witch trial premise was used as effectively as it could have been- or even justified at all given the conclusion.
This time around the story follows a modern day group of University students (All of wildly diverging ages) who find themselves haunted by the ghosts of the Witch trials that occurred with this town of Little Hope. Solid premise with a good potential for real monstrosities but just as with every single one of their games apart from 'Hidden Agenda', this is a story premised around "Things are not as they seem", so players will likely be hyperalert for the rather obvious red-herrings this game throws their way from the beginning. (Although I'll be honest, the twist still threw me for a bit of a loop. Wasn't expecting a turn that hard left.) The gameplay is improved, and made significantly easier, with the inclusion of pre-emptive QTE markers that tell you what action you'll be performing before the prompt appears, and in doing so the game sort of loses it's 'gotcha' charm that these QTE narrative stories provide. I also think the 'consequence' of this story runs a little deeper than any of their previous stories, but in manner that serves to frustrate more than excite. ("Oh, so that matters now? I wish you'd told me that from the get-go!")
However none of those are the reason why I think this game seems to have suffered from a case of diminishing returns, because indeed it appears people haven't flocked to this nearly as much as they did with The Man of Medan. I think part of that comes from the faded spectacle of these sorts of games, whilst another comes from the way in which 'The Man of Medan' sort of disappointed with it's length and overall twist. To that effect, I will say that 'Little Hope' seems objectively better by most calculations, but that's something hard to really market with a game type like this. Even the online VOD community seems to have overlooked it. (Which I've heard one expert on the matter attribute to a lack of creepy and clickable imagery from the game to fuel thumbnails.) And that's a bit of a shame.
That being said, I will point out that, even more than their previous games, this was title that was just dripping with jank that I think really shows the one year development cycle. Whilst these games never had a brilliant cinematography to them, in this game it's downright awful and genuinely bewildering at times, leaving the audience confused as to what is going on. The script also seems to stumble upon itself in situations where a heavy amount of choices occur. (such as action scenes) There'll be times when characters just become straight idiots and forget events that literally happened in front of them, or repeat themselves a couple seconds after they first said something, because this particular chain of events just wasn't covered by the script, and it just makes you wonder if this single year development cycle is feasible for the team. Honestly, I think that his has to be one of the clumsiest narratives told by Supermassive too, with the end twist failing to justify the events of the story nearly as cleanly as previous titles did, making the scenario feel like a bit more of a wish-fulfilment jaunt from the creatives than a necessary tale. Additionally, the co-op play sections were bumped up in importance to a level where key story details (and maybe even decisions) are blocked off to be only viewable by two players at a time, (with one seeing one event whilst the other is distracted) which has the effect of cheapening the experience for a single player
And yet, having just dunked on the game as hard as I did, I still think that Little Hope is worth the time of people who like these sorts of games. Don't get me wrong, there are important parts of this game that could have really used some more time in the oven, but even then I still think it was better and more complete than The Man of Medan, with a conclusion that I can respect, even I didn't think it was handled as well as it could have been. If nothing else, Little Hope has stayed with me much more than the Man of Medan did, (Which I stopped thinking about pretty much during the credits) so I'd call the pitch a successful one. I just hope that the lukewarm reception this game received wasn't enough to cooldown the excitement of the team and jeopardise future entries, because I'm invested to see where this, allegedly Eight-part series, heads as the talents behind it evolve. I still attest that there could serve to be a few more cooks in the kitchen to keep the quality up, but aside from that I'd call this an easy recommend. This here is a solid C+ Grade story game here (whereas I'd retroactively grade Man of Medan as a C-) so take that into account if mine is an opinion you at all respect. Until the next tale, where we head to a world of Sumerian Myth- wait a second, does that mean they're going to be touching upon the same mythology that 'The Exorcist' did? Pazuzu is coming to The Dark Pictures Anthology? Well I can say I eagerly await 'House of Ashes' then!
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