The season of spooks has once more returned to amaze and terrify in equal measures. And like clockwork, Supermassive Games, the makers of Until Dawn, have released a new entry in their incredible anthology series: The Dark Pictures Anthology. We’re going back to 2003 Iraq, where US and Iraqi soldiers confront the horrors of the House of Ashes.
And naturally, I would never stream a Dark Pictures game without my Dark Duo cohort, Acharky. Only this time, things are different. Acharky has purchased a copy of the game for himself, and we’re playing together online. I’ve been told this is one of the best ways to play a Dark Pictures entry, so I’m looking forward to seeing how our experiences change with this new playstyle.
Now that we’re two hours into our campaign, I can safely say that this is one of the coolest ways to experience such a narrative-heavy game. Because we’re not using the same screen like we were in the previous games (in a manner of speaking), House of Ashes is free to show Chris and I entirely separate scenes at the same time, briefly pausing in the event one of us needs to “catch up”.
It also means that what Chris is experiencing is likely additional scenes that were added to provide new context that wasn’t part of the original game. If we did something similar to this for Man of Medan or Little Hope, I imagine we would see scenes that were not in the original playthroughs we did for those games.
As for the plot itself, the premise has all the potential to get one of those uncritically jingoistic military fluff pieces that glorify the violence and horrors of war. Thankfully, it does not seem to be going in that direction. Nor does it seems to be mere set dressing. I look forward to seeing how the story progresses as we continue our experience.
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