Written by Tom Moore
Back in 2017, Supermassive Games unleashed a new horror hit onto PlayStation that basically let players create their own horror movie through fatal decision-making and horrifying twists and turns – Until Dawn. The game not only allowed players to craft their own story and build relationships through dialogue and action choices, but also featured very well-known names and faces – including Peter Stormare, Hayden Panettiere, and recent Oscar winner Rami Malek.
The game was very well received by critics and fans alike and, personally, it’s easily in my top five horror games of all time. However, I’ve been patiently waiting for news on what their next project would be outside of the VR titles they’ve been developing. So, when news broke that they would begin developing an anthology series that would tackle different sub-genres and topics of horror – my excitement was palpable.
Anthology isn’t new to the horror genre as there have been many books, like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales, Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, and Clive Barker’s Books of Blood, that have contained short horror stories. Film has even had it’s share of anthology films with Trick R’ Treat, V/H/S, Creepshow, and this year’s Nightmare Cinema.
Video games, though, have not seen the likes of anthology and that’s what makes Supermassive tackling it so important. It’s definitely a tough task, especially with them wanting to release two games per year, but if they continue to produce the kind of story horror content and storytelling that’s found in Man of Medan, then The Dark Pictures Anthology is going to be revolutionary for the horror genre.
The debut of The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan, takes players on a haunting voyage as they control the fate of a group of scuba divers. While their trip started out as planned, finding sunken voyages and swapping ghost stories, things take a dark turn as unforeseen events eventually lead them to board the ominous WWII warship known as the Medan. Although, the ship seems to have been vacant for decades, it holds frightening secrets and terrible history that’s about to make this group’s trip a fatal one.
The setting of the Medan is what makes Man of Medan so unique to other horror games and is explored to great lengths. There aren’t many horror stories that come to mind that take their horrors to the high seas except for, well, Ghost Ship, but the Medan ends up being a perfect place for paranoia to set in and for dead spirits to haunt it’s those who enter it.
The experience is actually just as scary as Until Dawn thanks to some perfectly timed jumps scares, great pacing, and great use of atmosphere and camera angles to constantly keep players on edge. There’s also a deep, dark history with the Medan that players can uncover through collecting secrets that not only help players understand what exactly caused all of this chaos on the ship, but actually makes the group understand their situation better and better their odds at surviving.
But who is this group of divers that players will be making decisions for and attempting to keep alive as they escape every horror they encounter? For the most part, the characters fall into tropes seen throughout the genre with Conrad (Shawn Ashmore) being the entitled rich kid, Alex (Kareem Tristan Alleyne) and Brad (Chris Sandiford) being the polar opposite brothers with Alex being a jock and Brad being a nerd, and Julia (Arielle Palik) just being the sister to Conrad and girlfriend to Alex.
There is also Fliss (Ayisha Issa) the boat’s captain who’s got a tough and stubborn demeanor, but athletically capable when she needs to be. While they can seem a little one note and kind of annoying at first, especially Conrad, the voice performances from everyone make them an absolute blast at times with some campy charm and solid development that helps them break their molds. The relationships that are tested at times are quite interesting as well with player choices heavily influencing how characters interact with one another.
While Until Dawn introduced players to the ideas of keeping track of their characters attributes and relationship, Man of Medan takes it even further. For instance, if Brad says something about Julie to Alex that he doesn’t approve of, not only will players see that their relationship has taken a toll, but they can actually look at the specific details on why it happened. This is a great update on already great mechanics as it allows players to get to know characters without having to directly talk to them and gives players another detail to base their decisions on. So, if players want to have Alex and Brad bond more as brothers or break-up Alex and Julie, they can and will have to face the consequences of doing so.
Each character also comes with a set of traits that adapt to the choices you make. While Brad can be shown to be innocent and witty or Alex can be insecure and courageous, player choices can influence these traits to be more dominant or submissive and even make new ones appear. For instance, when I found a knife playing as Alex at one point, I unlocked his aggressive trait. The importance of unlocking new traits and finding a balance between the ones you start with is that they can play a big role in how your characters approach situations. With these characters traits and relationships, players can craft their own story, but they are not the only strong part in doing so.
As said before, finding secret documents and items along the way can give you and your characters a stronger understanding of what’s happening on the Medan. Bearings replace the idea of the Butterfly Effect from Until Dawn and can help players understand the weight of their decisions. For instance, if I’m playing as Alex and take the knife but not the stun stick on the dive, I could be forced to use the knife to open a rusty door and not have it for a later time when I need it to survive.
Players can also find “pictures” along the way that will show them a clip of a possible future that could happen or not happen based on how you craft the story. They also replaced a mini game from Until Dawn where players have to have their characters stay still by holding the controller still with a heavily improved heartbeat rhythm game. Personally, always found holding the controller still to be unfair as the prompt would pop up so randomly that you wouldn’t have time to prepare and while I still think that the rhythm games plays to heavily in the deaths of certain characters, it’s a great improvement that adds some fun skill difficulty outside of quick-time events.
Players can also utilize the advice of a new character to the series, The Curator (Pip Torrens). Essentially, The Curator is the replacement to Stormare’s Dr. Hill, but makes an impression all his own through Torren’s devilishly fun performance and his neutral attitude. He basically serves as a narrator for the series and he can offer players advice about events that they can either take or refuse. He perfectly fits as someone who wants players to make the story their own yet has an omniscient presence on the story as a whole. Eagle-eyed players might even notice him just hiding in the background of certain scenes. Frankly, this addition is easily one of the favorite things about Dark Pictures and I’m excited to see him in future games.
Overall, the story penned by returning Until Dawn writers Graham Reznick and horror legend Larry Fessenden is great with excellent elements of horror and deep storytelling. With the ability to change the story based on choices, there’s a lot of depth that players can find within the characters and unique moments in the story that make replaying very rewarding. Players can legitimately make everything their own and the weight of your choices can spell either doom or delight for your characters. There’s also an added option of saying nothing rather than one of the two options that I love as it can play a unique role in the fate of your characters. Like Until Dawn, players can finish the game without killing everyone, killing everyone, or having any amount of characters survive and the choices you make can either lead to a happy ending or some brutal death scenes. Fessenden and Reznick also add some great horror elements through the Medan with some great doppelganger moments, horrifying looking corpses, and perfectly timed scares. Not to mention, there are new ways to experience the Man of Medan story with friends and great behind the scene bonus content.
Normally, behind-the-scenes content doesn’t interest me much, but the content that came with Man of Medan is actually pretty awesome. From a clip that delves into the history of horror anthology through books and film to casting Torrens as The Curator, there’s a lot of cool behind-the-scenes content that’s worth checking out. There’re also two new modes that players can play with friends and make choices together. Players now have the ability to play with a friend online and make choices together as well as the “Movie Night” option that allows groups to play and pass the controller around to make decisions. Personally, while I think both of the options are great additions, I question how much the “Movie Night” option can be utilizes as the game is about 8 to 10 hours long and I doubt a group of friends will sit around and play it for that long. If they can create a more condensed experience, I think it could be a great addition that groups would utilize to the fullest.
What Supermassive also needs to fix is some of the technical issues that can be seen throughout the experience and are hard not to notice. While character models look incredible for the most part, they can look off at times, especially some of the female characters, and it’s hard not to feel distracted by it when certain characters talk. There’s also clipping, very choppy frame rates, and some transitions that don’t match that need to be fixed in order for players to have a smoother experience. I also noticed some of the same models, like the undead looking very similar to the Wendigo in Until Dawn, and I hope that for future installments that each one can have more of a uniqueness to it.
Despite its technical issues, Man of Medan is an excellent start for The Dark Pictures Anthology with a solid amount of room for improvement. With the next installment already in development and a glimpse of it being shown at the end of Man of Medan showing players that it will be called Little Hope and will star Midsommar’s Will Poulter, there’s plenty to be excited about. From what the glimpse showed, Little Hope seems to have Silent Hill vibes, and if it and the rest of The Dark Pictures Anthology can match the horror fun of Man of Medan, then we’re in for one hell of ride.
