The second part of the series The dark pictures noticeably delayed, and this was due not only to the pandemic, but also to certain difficulties within the development studio. After a slight disappointment of the audience in Man of Medan Supermassive Games tried to offer a loyal audience a richer and more varied story with horror elements.
The Dark Pictures: Little Hope takes us away from ghost ships and the open ocean towards more traditional legends of witches, cursed places and witchcraft. At the heart of the new chapter of the dark anthology are students forced to take a detour through Little Hope due to traffic problems. The sheer darkness of rural America, a girl running onto the road, and then an accident. The bus is turned over, and five heroes find themselves in the middle of the wilderness, where they will meet with the unknown. And then some kind of devilry is happening – breaks in time with scenes from the past, thick fog, which does not allow you to return to the bus, and a terrible secret connecting the city and its inhabitants. “Silent Hill” in a new way.
As in Man of Medan, in Little Hope’s single player mode, you can control each of the characters in short segments and exclusively in sequence according to the scenario idea. Long dialogues and cinematic scenes are interrupted by possible branches, where the developers let the hero choose his response and basic mood for the hero. Aggression or positivity affects the relationship of the actors to each other, but not the gameplay. And all these connections, dives and mood swings will give you a maximum of several additional fragments – the ending will be the same.
In addition to interactive scenes, there are quite annoying QTEs, where you have to hold the pulse or fight demons, hitting the crosshairs with the controller and sequentially pressing the necessary buttons.
Despite the fact that you are given a choice to save one or another hero, the authors have prescribed only one correct scenario. Even after completing all the QTEs perfectly, you will not be able to save the character if you chose the wrong hero to save at the fork or if you didn’t find the right item before and didn’t leave it to a specific character. And it is depressing to proceed from the logic that a woman is weaker, and to run to save her instead of a man or a teenager is a very strange and limited interactivity.
