The Haunted Hoard: The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope (PS4)
When Supermassive Games committed to a new interactive horror story game every six months with their Dark Picture Anthology I was certainly skeptical that it would work out for them, and their first game in it, Man of Medan, showed some cracks by trying to accommodate too many branching story paths without ensuring all of them reach satisfying conclusions. However, it was an enjoyable horror experience overall, and with more time to work on the next entry in the series following around a six month delay, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope is able to fix some of the little issues its predecessor had while still providing a unique and well-realized horror tale.
The Dark Pictures Antholoy: Little Hope takes place in the fictional town referenced in its title. Little Hope is a mostly abandoned town in the game’s present day, but a brutal series of witch trials in the 17th century hangs over the town’s history. While embraced for its historical value with many heritage sites and a museum focused on the infamous past, the town still seems plagued by supernatural horrors, the game opening on a family whose house burnt down in the 1970s. While this rather warm cold opener seems disconnected from the game’s events at first, you’ll soon notice some similarities between the small cast of the opener and the characters you’ll be controlling over the course of the game. Things get even more unusual when the main characters start being pulled into flashbacks of the witch trials (unfortunately with a fairly cheap jump scare each time it happens) and see people who look similar to them as well. This odd generational connection between many people destined for a dark fate in Little Hope is one of the driving mysteries of the experience, but since you as the player will be making decisions and needing to react to the horrors you encounter there, you’ll be the one to determine if the small group in the current day will survive to the end of the story.
While there are essentially three fairly similar groups entangled in the mystery of Little Hope’s past and present, the game does keep things simple in that you mostly need to keep track of the group in the present and the young girl who seems to be connected to every generation. In the 1600s flashbacks a girl named Mary has begun implicating members of the community as possible witches, but based on the behaviors of the accused and the townsfolk who turn against them it becomes clear that there’s an additional layer beneath the historical accounts to unravel and doing so is important to helping the characters in the present survive. The game does lay it on a little thick to help you pick up there’s more at play but they don’t give you too many obvious hints on what the right decisions are so there are elements to the mystery to uncover yourself with the right dialogue choices.
The character group in the present gets a lot more focus on who they are as characters and they are the group who ends up in actual peril you can influence. A group of college students and their professor end up trapped in the town of Little Hope after their bus swerves to avoid a little girl, and thanks to some supernatural fog they aren’t allowed to leave without investigating the town’s dark past. When pulled into flashbacks by the ghosts of those affected by the witch trials they find they can influence the past some, but as they work out how to make the right decisions to end this curse, they are pursued by a group of fairly creative monsters. Each one of the undead pursuers following after the group still retains some part of their execution method, the many horrible ways people met their end at the witch trials leading to some twisted and gruesome but clearly human creatures trying to catch up with the cast to share their fate with them.
In those moments where your small band of characters is in danger it can be remarkably tense as the game asks for quick button presses, proper aiming for a quick attack, or making the right decision to avoid leaving yourself in a bind. Compared to previous work from Supermassive Games, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope makes these feel a bit more fair despite the potentially lethal consequences for failure. You’ll get a little indicator telling you what kind of button press or action will be expected a bit before the precise button or target zone appears, meaning that you have a bit more time to prepare yourself and are less likely to die because you didn’t expect a button prompt to appear. If you do fail at key moments, either with one big mistake or a sequence of wrong decisions, a character can be completely removed from the story. That always present concern that a character can meet their permanent end because of your failures can make the action moments incredibly tense and suspenseful, the game quick to save after a decision or action to ensure you can’t reset to undo it and a few sequences really wearing on the nerves as action after action must be taken without any long breaks. It is still possible to go back and change events if you like and its systems for doing so are more flexible than Man of Medan’s, but it’s still not so easy that it feels like choices and actions lack weight, especially since some payoffs only come up down the line. Certain outcomes feel a lot less fair than others, but that looming dread of knowing you’re never too far from such a deadly error helps the player feel the same mortal dread the main cast do as they escape from their tormentors.
The five main characters you control in the present aren’t truly the most likeable bunch though. I’m reminded of how some slasher films make a small cast of jerks you are meant to dislike so that them seeing their end doesn’t sting, but having a character’s death represent your failure does mean it is easier to stick with this bunch of characters long enough that you soon can see a bit more to them than their attitude and sour interactions. Andrew and Daniel are the more upstanding characters, Andrew somewhat passive but fairly kind while Daniel is affable but a bit more willing to put his neck out for others. These two are a pair of nice simple characters to serve as the core, sometimes reacting angrily or impulsively but never seeming to come off as grating. The other three main cast members can feel like the level of character conflict they introduce jeopardizes your ability to get attached to them. Taylor and Professor John both are bullheaded, stubborn types who whip up conflict over small concerns a bit too often, making it harder for them to endear themselves to the audience as they squabble often and sometimes illogically. Angela rounds out our group with an older lady who seems like she could be described fairly well as a grumpy passenger, voicing her disapproval often with sarcastic commentary that seems a little too mean-spirited at times. While it can certainly be said the stress of the situation should draw out some negative qualities, the three sourer members of the group feel like they slip into them before the stakes really hit the point where you’d expect such disagreement and discord.
Luckily, since you are in charge of how they reply in conversations at times, you can start to steer them towards more friendly behavior. As you swap between controlling characters you’ll have a small set of dialogue options appear during key conversations. There will be two that are direct responses, often favoring a different approach to the situation such as a pair that leans more towards logic with one reply and emotion with the other. Sometimes it can feel like both answers box you into a potential negative situation though, and choosing to be silent is always provided as an option. Silence can be read poorly at times and at others you’ll have wormed yourself out of making things worse, but it does feel like you have an opportunity to steer the group to more cooperation and trust. Some moments call for you to pick a reply quickly though, the choice all the more agonizing when these moments can lead to an unintended fate if you choose poorly. Certain character traits will ebb and flow based on how a person behaves and the level of trust can make them reply in different ways when the game controls a character, so while not everyone in this group is always likeable, managing the social relationships properly pays off and knowing that the right behaviors might be key to getting along at high-pressure moments adds more importance to these interactions.
Little Hope is designed not to be played alone, not so much because you need someone on board to have the game unfold in an optimal way, but because the story is written so you won’t always have a direct perspective on the action as it unfolds. The cast ends up splitting into smaller groups at various points, and if you play online with someone else, there are points where you’ll be seeing parts of the story the other person never gets to view. In Man of Medan this was used to increase the paranoia but here it just feels like sometimes you don’t get to a see an interesting flashback to the past or a small character interaction to humanize group members a bit more. The game does at least make sure everyone has the important details for understanding the overarching plot and it doesn’t deny people key looks at the past necessary for solving the mystery of Little Hope. In fact, if the groups wouldn’t come together after these split moments and talk about what they experienced separately the game would feel pretty cohesive and complete, but if you choose to play alone or do the cooperative movie night mode where players on one console pick characters to make choices for, you will miss a few scenes.
Atmosphere, mystery, and danger end up being a lot of what sustains The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope. There are scenes where characters hide and you need to press a button to match their heartbeat so they won’t be found, the increased speed and ramping tension working even though they’re often less difficult than the scenes where you need to keep reacting to deadly attacks. Little Hope itself is an abandoned old town blanketed in fog and left to rot, only one man still living there and even his behavior is suspicious. There are moments where you can explore an area at your own pace, finding both historical documents and artifacts tied to the town’s past and special illustrations that give you a sudden glimpse into a possible fate for your characters. When you view a potential death in these pictures and reach the moment where you realize it can happen the pressure feels greater than ever to perform everything right and make the right choices. It won’t matter that Angela’s cranky or John and Taylor always seem at each other’s throats when in the moment you know a slip-up can lead to a snowball of consequences for the entire group.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope has multiple endings tied to both how well you can hold the group together and if you can assist in solving the mystery hanging over the witch trials, but rather than trying to splinter into wildly different conclusions, the results of your adventure influence the exact shape of the finale. The main crux of all the endings can certainly be a contentious one due to a reliance on interpretation, and I can very well see some players entirely dismissing it if they only think about the surface level information gleaned from it. I do think the game could have gotten away with a more clear cut finale to the events but the one it does choose to pursue is one with meaning and impact that doesn’t rob the adventure of its important moments if you take a moment to consider your path to the ending. It doesn’t feel like there is a perfect interpretation to be had and embracing that might allow you to find a version of events you are happy with, but if you came to the game for a simple ghost story it might throw you for a loop.
THE VERDICT: Certainly a step up from Man of Medan in terms of narrative cohesion and guaranteed story payoffs, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope may have some hard to like main characters and little quirks like hiding bits of the story from players in co-op, but the horror succeeds in spades. Tension feels incredibly high thanks to the framing of scenes and the looming threat of failure removing a character from the plot. The mystery of the truth behind the witch trials keeps pulling you forward as you influence the course of events in the past and present, the game peppering moody moments of explanation with the dangerous monster encounters and fights for survival. It may have some contentious moments like its ending, but the consistent sense of dread makes for a high pressure horror experience that can easily hook you for its approximately 5 hour ride.
And so, I give The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope for PlayStation 4…
A GOOD rating. While I definitely think Taylor, John, and Angela should have waited to show their true colors until you’ve had some time to get to know them, the focus in The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope was put on the plot’s mystery and scares and the game succeeds at both. While you can start to keen onto what’s going on fairly early, there are still more details to uncover as the game continues on, and trying to figure out why multiple generations of characters look the same despite no relation on top of how to change the past keeps you guessing up until the big reveals at the finale. You may feel like you have the pieces to the narrative puzzle only to keep finding more or having a small swerve in how things unfold, but the game does try to keep you on the right path so you don’t feel cheated if you are working towards the right conclusion. The danger hanging over the exploration of Little Hope is really where the game seems to find its energy and major appeal though. Encounters with the living dead are never trivial, the player always able to feel a palpable sense of danger, especially since the game can be ruthless and tear a character away if you’re not on the ball when it comes to reaction times. The social interactions can be a little rough at times thanks to a cast that can feel a little unreasonable or selfish, but keeping them working together is important and they average out to a group you want to keep together since they do need each other to have a hope of escaping this situation.
Atmospheric at times and pulse-pounding at others, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope manages to have a tidier plot than its predecessor despite being more complex and makes small alterations to make its timed reaction segments more frightening while also being fair. Just like Man of Medan though it feels like there are a lot of conditional statements to add on top of the praise, the love put into elements like the mystery coming at the cost of the main cast’s personalities. There are some clear detriments to the design, but the way other ideas come together means you’ll want to keep moving and investigating while doing your best to keep the whole gang alive. The aesthetic and mechanical pieces are here to help the story of Little Hope come alive, and the danger of death makes it a nail-biter right up until the credits role and you finally know how your actions paid off.