The Dark Pictures is a series of titles by Supermassive Games with eight games planned to release in total and two already available, Man of Medan and Little Hope. The next installment, House of Ashes, is due to release next year in 2021. All of the games fall into the interactive survival horror genre, similar to some of Supermassive Games’ previous releases, such as Until Dawn.
Even those who have played one or both of the released titles so far for The Dark Pictures might find that there is a thing or two that they didn’t know about this interesting series of games, read on to find out.
10 Familiar Faces
Interestingly, developer Supermassive Games re-uses many of the same character models for its titles, leading players to see more than one familiar face if they’ve played more than one of the titles from the company’s roster of games.
For example, the character of Fliss in Man of Medan shares the same model as the nurse character Victoria LaBoucher from The Inpatient, and the widow character of Jody Johnson from Hidden Agenda. It’s likely that Supermassive Games will continue doing this in its future releases for The Dark Pictures.
9 SS Ourang Medan
Man of Medan’s plot has the characters discovering a ghost ship adrift at sea, the perfect setting for any horrifying jump-scare-filled game. This particular element of the gameplay was based on a very real ship – the 1940s Dutch freighter the SS Ourang Medan. “Ourang” is the Malay word for “man”, hence the name of the game.
The SS Ourang Medan was discovered after a garbled distress call was sent out. All crewmates aboard were found already dead, all of which had terrified expressions on their faces and no visible injuries. The plan was to tow the ship closer to land so that it could be investigated, but unfortunately, it exploded and sank before that could happen.
8 The Curator’s Hidden Appearances
The Curator fulfills a similar role to that of the narrator when it comes to the stores in The Dark Pictures, he is an omniscient character that sets up the plot and introduces the characters to the players while inviting them to help him complete the story.
He appears in cutscenes throughout, providing hints and cryptic messages, but he also appears randomly in the background as the tale unfolds. The characters do not react to his presence and this only seems to happen when the characters are about to make a drastic decision, be it for better or worse. This event happens frequently throughout Man of Medan, but only once in Little Hope.
7 The Inspiration for Little Hope
The second installment to The Dark Pictures, Little Hope, released recently in October. Unlike its predecessor, which was based on one strange event, Little Hope‘s plot was inspired by other games and films in addition to its core theme of the Salem witch trials.
Supermassive Games found their inspiration in similar witch-themed works, such as The Crucible, The Blair Witch Project, and The Omen, but equally were influenced by less witchy tales, such as the Silent Hill series, It Follows, and Hellraiser, to name just a few that the team has credited.
6 Little Hope Foreshadowing
Man of Medan has several hidden hints that allude to the theme and plot of its sequel being about the Salem witch trials. Most noticeably, Conrad‘s tank top says “Salem”, “Massachusetts” and “1692”, which is the year and place of where the trials took place.
Additionally, in a random note, players can discover information about a soldier by the name of “Arthur Miller”, the same name of the author who wrote The Crucible. Players can also find a book titled “Shroud of Innocence” in Julia’s belongings, which follows the same theme.
5 Which Little Hope?
Interestingly, there is a very real location in America that goes by the name of Little Hope, in fact, there are four in total. They are located in Massachusetts, Alabama, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. However, despite Massachusetts seemingly being the best location based on it being the location of the witch trials, Supermassive Games did not choose this community to base its game on.
In actuality, none of the real-life Little Hope towns were chosen. Supermassive Games created an entirely fictional town of Little Hope and based it in Andover. Naturally, this is where the game gets its name from.
4 Finding Charlie
Charlie is an American soldier stationed aboard the Ourang Medan who appears in Man of Medan. He is not one of the main cast of characters, but there is a short time in which players control him during the prologue scenes.
Interestingly, in Little Hope, players are able to find a memento of Charlie in The Black Cat bar. Easily missed in the bar is an old wartime photo and closer inspection of the photo shows that one of the soldiers on the right is Charlie from the first game.
3 Gold Pictures
Throughout The Dark Pictures, players can discover pictures that yield a premonition, similar to the totems used in Until Dawn. In Man of Medan, these pictures are framed images that can be found while playing, while in Little Hope the pictures are postcards. White pictures give the player an opportunity to avoid a future bad mistake by revealing the outcome, black pictures reveal a possible future death, but what’s more interesting are the gold pictures.
Missed by many players, there is only one gold picture in each game. Gold pictures reveal a scene from the next game in the anthology, so Man of Medan shows a possible death from Little Hope, and in turn, Little Hope shows a possible death from the forthcoming House of Ashes.
2 House of Ashes
House of Ashes is due to release in 2021 and although it’s the third title in The Dark Pictures, rather interestingly, it is set to be a prequel, and therefore, the first game chronologically. The trailer gives some insight into the plot of this next title, with the setting being the Iraq war and elements of ancient Sumerian temples and supernatural creatures.
Man of Medan actually contained a clue to House of Ashes in the chapter “Trapped”. There, players could find a newspaper clipping talking about a “Hodgson experiment” that took place in Iraq, where 12 archaeologists went missing in their quest to find ancient relics.
1 Death Personified
The character of The Curator is an interesting one and there are many players who believe him to be “Death” itself. There is evidence to support this theory, and likely future titles will reveal more supporting facts also. Firstly, he refers to the characters within the games as “mortals”, implying that he himself is not a mortal. He also appears whenever the characters make a life-changing decision.
The Curator claims that he will meet everyone “once”, and naturally, death only comes to someone once in their lifetime. Further support of this is that The Curator claims to have met several famous people, including the poet and playwright Oscar Wilde. More importantly, he states that he met Wilde in Paris, which is where the playwright died.
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