The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes is a 2021 interactive drama and survival horror video game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. It is the third installment in The Dark Pictures Anthology, after Man of Medan (2019) and Little Hope (2020). Like earlier games in the series, House of Ashes features a cast of five playable protagonists and a multilinear narrative influenced by player choice. The game's decision-making scenes, of which there are several, can significantly alter the trajectory of the plot and change the relationships between the main characters. Due to these choices, any of the five protagonists can die permanently.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes
Box art featuring Rachel King, one of the game's five protagonists
Developer(s)	Supermassive Games
Publisher(s)	Bandai Namco Entertainment
Director(s)	Will Doyle
Producer(s)	Dan McDonald Dom Ireland
Designer(s)	Lee Robinson
Writer(s)	Andi Ewington Khurrum Rahman
Composer(s)	Jason Graves
Series	The Dark Pictures Anthology
Engine	Unreal Engine 4
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Xbox One Xbox Series X/S
Release	22 October 2021
Genre(s)	Interactive drama, survival horror
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Ashley Tisdale stars as the game's leading actress, portraying a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) field officer named Rachel King. Set during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the story focuses on five characters—four Americans working for the US Armed Forces and one Iraqi working for the Iraq Republican Guard—who fall into a subterranean Akkadian temple after the two parties clash during an ambush countering a US military raid. The protagonists must find a way out of the ancient structure and cooperate, together with their adversaries, to outmatch the vampiric entities that infest the area. The proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" serves as the game's central theme.

Many gameplay mechanics from the series' earlier games, such as quick time events (QTEs) and collectable "pictures" that allow players to see visions of possible future events, return in House of Ashes. The title introduces features, such as a more interactive camera system and three difficulty levels to manage QTEs. With a soundtrack created by the series' composer and Supermassive Games's long-time collaborator Jason Graves, the game contains major influences from various media texts. The developers looked at several works, including the book At the Mountains of Madness and the films Predator and The Descent, to draw inspiration for their story.

House of Ashes was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on 22 October 2021. House of Ashes garnered mixed reviews from critics, being compared with Supermassive Games' previous work, including the 2015 video game Until Dawn, and was dubbed a "step in the right direction" for The Dark Pictures Anthology. The multiplayer modes, and choice-and-consequence system were praised and critics said the story and characters improved in quality compared to earlier games in the series. Technical problems with the gameplay and the visual design of the monsters, such as bugs and glitches with textures and animation, frequently drew criticism. Its upcoming sequel, The Devil in Me, will be the final title in the series' first season.

Gameplay

House of Ashes is an interactive drama and survival horror game[1] that is presented from a third-person perspective and is set during the Iraq War (2003-2011).[2] Players take control of five protagonists who are enlisted in the armed forces of their respective countries; the characters fall and become trapped in an underground Mesopotamian temple. Bat-like monsters awaken to hunt the characters.[3] A core element of the gameplay involves the management of relationships between the characters, and their allies and enemies. Players can choose to be courageous and ensure the creatures do not kill anybody, or to continue alone and be concerned with their own personal safety.[3][4] Facing a common foe, the Iraqi and American characters must decide whether they should ignore their differences and become allies to survive the attacks. Characters often quote the proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", which is one of the story's recurring themes.[3][5]

House of Ashes introduces two gameplay features that are a departure from those of Man of Medan and Little Hope, previous entries in The Dark Pictures Anthology. The camera is no longer fully fixed and has been replaced with a controllable, 360-degree one.[6] House of Ashes is the first game in the series to feature difficulty levels, such as "forgiving", "challenging" and "lethal", which affect the game's quick time events (QTEs).[1] To further adjust difficulty, players can choose which buttons to press for specific types of QTEs,[1] and can customise the speed at which these prompts appear.[7] The remainder of the features are consistent with those of the other two instalments. The game's developers at Supermassive Games said players will immediately understand House of Ashes' mechanics if they have played either Man of Medan or Little Hope.[2][4]

Players must make several choices that can have long-term consequences on the narrative's progression and the characters perceptions of each other. In these scenarios, there is a limited amount of time in which one can choose an action or a line of dialogue with which to respond.[5] Protagonists may choose to say or do nothing when they are prompted to make a decision.[8] An anatomical drawing of the brain and heart accompanies every choice in House of Ashes, indicating the player character may choose actions based on either rationality or emotion.[9] To track the narrative branches in one's playthrough, the game's menu has a "butterfly effect" system called "bearings", which lists all consequential courses of action associated with each branch and their eventual outcomes.[2] The story is interspersed with cutscenes featuring a character called the Curator (Pip Torrens), who converses with players about the choices they have made[10] and provides clues about what will happen next in the plot.[11] The survival of all five protagonists depends on these critical decisions,[10] and the game continues without the deceased characters.[12] As a result, House of Ashes has multiple endings[3] and includes over 60 death scenes.[13]

Several scenes in the game, including ones that are combat-heavy, make use of QTEs that can lead to penalties like a protagonist's death in case of failure to provide a precisely timed input.[5] Many types of QTE involve pressing specific buttons—either once or repeatedly—to trigger actions from the player character, such as dodging an obstacle[5] or keeping calm when hiding from a threat.[14][15] Another type is the moving of a crosshair onto an on-screen target to shoot it.[16] The game displays a notice whenever players are about to perform a QTE, illustrating the type of action the QTE is intended to perform.[17]

House of Ashes includes elements of exploration and allows players to pick up collectables while searching and moving through locations.[18] A new light source mechanic aids players in underground navigation and inspection by illuminating dark paths that lay ahead.[1] The eponymous "pictures" mechanic of earlier titles in the series is used. Pictures, which are either "black", "white" or "gold", trigger a vision of possible future story branches to help players make decisions.[19][lower-alpha 1] Pictures work in a similar fashion to the totems in Until Dawn, a 2015 game that was also developed by Supermassive Games. As in earlier games in the series, 50 "secrets"—items that are scattered throughout House of Ashes, provide background information and context to events that happened in the temple and preceded the main plot.[20] Secrets partly consist of journal entries written during the 1940s that, when picked up, activate a cutscene in which the author's voice recounts a contemporaneous archaeology mission that occurred in the temple.[1][20]

As in Man of Medan and Little Hope, players can enter House of Ashes in four modes; the "Theatrical" and "Curator's Cuts" modes are single-player, and "Movie Night" and "Shared Story" are multiplayer.[7] Customers who pre-ordered House of Ashes gained access to the "Curator's Cut", a version of the story that shows mostly the same scenes that are viewed from the perspective and control of another protagonist, as well as the default "Theatrical Cut" mode.[3][lower-alpha 2] "Shared Story" and "Movie Night" offer the option to control the characters with another person; "Shared Story" actis as a two-player version of the game and "Movie Night" accommodates up to three more players.[5][22] The multiplayer concept was inspired by live streamers' collaborative manner of playing Until Dawn, which prompted the developers at Supermassive Games to incorporate such a feature in their next releases.[22]

Playable characters

Nick Tarabay (pictured 2014) voices Salim Othman.

Ashley Tisdale (pictured 2018) voices Rachel King.

House of Ashes has an ensemble cast that includes Ashley Tisdale and Alex Gravenstein, who play the married couple Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative Rachel King and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Eric King, respectively. The pair have been apart from one another for one year.[23][24] Their distant relationship at the beginning of the story serves as a plot point, of which players control the progression.[4][25] As Eric finishes work on a military tracking system, Rachel begins an affair with another main character, traumatised Marine Corps Sergeant Nick Kay[23][25] (Moe Jeudy-Lamour).[24] Players's decisions control the development of her relationship with Nick.[4][25]

The other two protagonists are US Marine First Lieutenant Jason Kolchek (Paul Zinno) and Iraqi Republican Guard soldier Lieutenant Salim Othman (Nick E. Tarabay).[23][24][25] Salim is a father who wishes to reunite with his son after escaping the temple.[24] Jason is trying to find his purpose in life, having enlisted in the military after the September 11 attacks in an attempt to do so. Like Nick, Jason regrets his actions in the Iraq War, during which the pair shot an innocent civilian at a checkpoint.[26] Once vampires begin attacking the characters, Jason and Salim may turn their initial mutual animosity into friendship as part of the story's core theme; "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".[5][11]

Synopsis

Setting and prologue

House of Ashes' plot is set predominantly during the Iraq War and in the former territory of the ancient Akkadian Empire that existed in Mesopotamia around 4,000 years ago.[27] A small portion of the game takes place in the fictional Massachusetts town Little Hope as a nod to the previous eponymous instalment.[28] In the game's timeline, the Akkadian Empire is the site of the crash-landing of a spaceship that carried thousands of large, bat-like aliens from the Cetus constellation that flew near Earth's atmosphere.[29][30] A parasitic infection that gestates within the host's body took over the craft's crew, resulting in ship-wide disruption that led to the crash. The disease caused the aliens to mutate into vampires[29][31] that are vulnerable to ultraviolet light and controlled through the nervous system by the parasites. The aliens have been hibernating underground for millennia, occasionally venturing to the surface to feed on the adrenaline of animals, including humans.[29][32] A temple, which was built at the behest of the Akkadian god-king Naram-Sin to appease the Mesopotamian gods,[33] stands above the crash site.

The prologue takes place in 2231 BC in the temple, which is located in Akkad.[27] The Akkadians are dealing with a curse of famine and plague after Naram-Sin has angered the wind god Enlil.[3] As a Gutian army prepares to invade the city, Naram-Sin orders the mass sacrifice of Gutian prisoners in the city's temple to "nourish the sands" and help the Akkadians win the battle. During the assault, a solar eclipse allows the vampiric creatures from the spaceship beneath the temple to begin slaughtering both armies.[34] Two survivors, Akkadian general Balathu (Zaydun Khalaf) and Gutian soldier Kurum (Waleed Hammad), ignore their differences and work together as they flee into the temple catacombs to escape the creatures. Balathu and Kurum are quickly overwhelmed and presumably killed.

Following the prologue, the game cuts to a scene of a library owned by the Curator, an omnipresent observer of the player's decisions. The Curator introduces himself to the player and provides information about parts of House of Ashes' gameplay, including the decision-making system[23][35] and the pictures system.[36]

Main plot

During the invasion of Iraq in May 2003, USAF Lt. Col. Eric King arrives at Camp Slayer in Baghdad to debrief a team of Force Recon Marines, who are led by CIA officer and Eric's distant wife Rachel King, about a mission to raid a village[lower-alpha 3] in the Arabian Desert. Eric believes he has found a facility underneath the village that stores Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons.[23][37] The team includes Rachel's lover Sgt. Nick Kay and Nick's squad leader 1st Lt. Jason Kolchek. Other minor characters on the team are Cpl. Nathan Merwin (Alex Mallari Jr.),[lower-alpha 4] LCpl. José "Joey" Gomez (Sammy Azero),[lower-alpha 4] and Eric's assistant Dr. Clarice Stokes (Clare McConnell). Meanwhile, Iraqi Republican Guard soldier Lt. Salim Othman returns home and searches for his son Zain, carrying a birthday gift for him, but his commanding officer Cpt. Dar Basri (Nabeel El Khafif) forces Salim to intercept the raid led by Eric.[39][40] Salim's squad ambushes the US troops when they arrive but several sinkholes plunge everybody into the ancient Akkadian temple, which is now buried beneath the sand.[39]

The five protagonists are separated during the fall; inside the temple, both Iraqi and American forces are frequently attacked by the vampiric creatures, which include reanimated humans who succumbed to the parasite—the "Ancient One" is either Balathu or Kurum depending on player choices in the prologue.[9] A similar fate befalls Joey, who was mortally wounded in the ambush.[39][41] Clarice and Rachel can also catch the infection.[42][43][44] Throughout the game, the protagonists learn about the temple's history and about the remains of a failed British 1940s archaeological expedition. Led by Randolph Hodgson and antiquarian Lady Bradshaw in a supposed search for Alexander the Great's tomb,[45] the entire expedition team was wiped out after encountering and studying the monsters.[46] Hodgson subsequently tried but failed to destroy the temple with dynamite.[47]

As the surviving marines regroup, Salim explores the temple alone. He encounters a vampire and retrieves a metal bar from a fallen truck to use as a weapon against them. Rachel is separated from Eric after a stand-off with Dar, and falls into a blood-soaked pit. While the US forces search for ways to signal for help, Rachel comes across an ill Clarice, who was earlier abducted by the vampires. Rachel and Clarice climb out of the pit but due to Clarice's worsening health, Rachel must choose whether to abandon Clarice or continue accompanying her to medicate the illness.[48] Rachel reunites with her allies in the temple and the group are violently assaulted by the vampires.[49] As they escape from the vampires towards the catacombs below them, the Americans again encounter Dar,[lower-alpha 5] who is now joined by Salim. Salim suggests they unite to fight the monsters chasing them, to which the others reluctantly agree.[50] The vampires continue attacking the protagonists in the catacombs, killing Dar and separating everyone once more.[51]

After the assault, Salim comes across Jason and decides to team up with him. At this point, Salim and Jason can choose whether to be cooperative-but-distrusting to one another or become close friends. Salim and Jason explore the temple, fighting creatures,[52] and go deeper into the remains of the alien spaceship, where they find the partially preserved remains of either Balathu or Kurum.[53] Nick, and possibly Rachel and Eric, follow afterward. Once the survivors flee from another close encounter with the creatures, they further explore the spaceship and learn about the vampires' origin.[54]

The survivors talk about a gigantic nest of hibernating vampires they earlier found in the spaceship and agree to incinerate it with explosives. As the cocoons burn, the characters escape to the surface to await extraction by a rescue team.[55] They escape the temple but a total solar eclipse allows the vampires to again attack the group until the eclipse ends and the dispatched team arrives. The player's choices and performances in QTEs determine how many of the protagonists survive. During a post-credits epilogue, at Camp Slayer, the located protagonists are transported—and interviewed if found alive—inside the base.[lower-alpha 6] The US military,[58] planning to cover up the entire incident, begins analysis of the vampires.[59]

Development and release

Gameplay and story

House of Ashes is the third game in a series of eight planned for The Dark Pictures Anthology.[61] The films Aliens, Predator, and The Descent; the book At the Mountains of Madness; and the myth of the Curse of Akkad serving as inspiration for the team.[3][62] House of Ashes is the first title in the series to be available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, making use of the next-generation graphics and resolution the new platforms provide.[63][64][65]^: 05:56 Game director Will Doyle described House of Ashes as a creature feature and an exploration horror game about an ensemble cast of "trained experts" who are "beyond safety" and unable to get backup for a "critical" mission in a secluded location, where they encounter threats Doyle described as "horrible" and "inhumane".[3][62] Like the other instalments, House of Ashes was designed to be a standalone story[4][66] but Supermassive Games included Easter eggs and callbacks to previous and future instalments to create a kind of shared universe within the anthology.[28][64] Character models from House of Ashes' predecessors were used in this game. Sara Rechena from the Portuguese edition of IGN said the design choice is reminiscent of American Horror Story.[11]

Supermassive Games spent an extensive amount of time designing the monsters, the most complicated of their kind the team had made as of the game's release. To make the creatures lifelike, developers used both motion capture and hand animation.[3][67] Executive producer Dan McDonald, in an interview with PCGamesN, said Supermassive focused on determining the monsters' physiology to achieve an "otherworldly" effect, which they did using "a bunch of props, stilts, and other things".[67] Doyle also said the monsters' designs were created to be faceless so they would appear incomprehensible and unempathetic, and inhumane enough to "bring out the humanity" in the protagonists.[61][65]^: 04:54

The developers implemented two new gameplay features for House of Ashes as a result of fan feedback on prior instalments in the anthology. The team created a difficulty level system for the game and overhauled the camera to make it freely movable.[3] Because many scenes in House of Ashes involve "spookier" and more spacious areas, Supermassive found it appropriate to give players total control over the camera, which would aid in exploration and allow players to appreciate the cavernous locations.[6] Doyle said after the release of Man of Medan and Little Hope, he noticed fans were divided about the difficulty of the QTE mechanics; many found the prompts "too easy" but others found them "too hard".[68] In House of Ashes, players are able to toggle the speed at which QTEs appear and remain on screen.[61][68] After Little Hope's limited number of endings due to its use of hallucinations as a plot twist provoked a backlash, the developers incorporated a wider variety of narrative branches into House of Ashes' story.[69][67][70]

Usage of the Iraq War as setting

Left to right: An Iraqi and American soldier during the Iraq War. Supermassive Games thought that the invasion of Iraq would help with the characterisation of House of Ashes' in-game military personnel, initially making enemy forces hostile towards one another but bringing out the characters' humanity once they had to face a common threat, the vampires.

McDonald said while the game is set during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, they did not intend war and politics to be its primary focus.[4][70] The developers tried to treat the setting with respect.[4] According to Tom Phillips, Doyle thought movies depicting conflicts like the Iraq War tend to dehumanise people from opposing nations. With that observation in mind, he and his team wanted to include an Iraqi protagonist in the main cast so they could represent people from both sides of the war in a nuanced light.[61] To add further complexity, Supermassive also tied several aspects of the characters' backstories, such as Salim's desire to leave the war and go back to his son, to the invasion.[4] During the game's production, the team consulted military specialists and Arabic speakers to ensure their depiction of 2003 Iraq was "grounded in reality" and the plot's script was of good quality.[4][70]

Supermassive attributed the decision to set the game in Iraq to the country's abundance in myths and folklore the team could incorporate into the story.[70] The developers believed the 2003–2011 Iraq War would make an "interesting" departure point for the development of the five protagonists, allowing them the opportunity for character motivations, relationships and dynamics the developers found compelling, sympathetic and complex.[4][61]

Casting the lead

Supermassive Games approached actor Ashley Tisdale, who is known for her appearances in the High School Musical series, during the game's development and asked if she could portray protagonist Rachel King. The developers wanted to cast someone who could exhibit a "tough" personality but was simultaneously capable of showing a "soft side".[71] Tisdale agreed to provide Rachel's voice and likeness because she felt the project would expand her career experiences outside of her usual roles in comedy.[4] She became the installment's female lead actor,[72] making her debut in the video games industry.[24]

During the filming process, Supermassive recorded the Tisdale's physical movements and those of the game's other actors to create animations for the character models.[73] To comply with social distancing protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic, actors had to avoid bodily contact with one another while enacting their scenes; their movements were digitally edited in post-production to give the impression of contact.[61] In an interview with the developers, Tisdale recounted her experiences while acting for House of Ashes and expressed her excitement in her role as a CIA operative in the game:[74]

I'm obsessed with the CIA, and so I was very excited to play a character [like Rachel] because I haven't gotten to do that on TV or movies yet ... I am more known for obviously doing comedy, but this is like, you know what? For me I've always wanted to do an action film, and I am living out my action dreams [acting for the game] because, yes, it is scary, but there's so much action adventure in it, and it's pretty cool—it's pretty wild ... Everyone's really cool; I mean, we all have so much fun and we kind of are just like here kind of killing it.[74]

According to Kimberley Wallace from Game Informer, every game in The Dark Pictures Anthology series includes one high-profile actor as the game's lead. Apart from House of Ashes' Tisdale, she said Man of Medan's Shawn Ashmore and Little Hope's Will Poulter had also starred in the series.[4]

Music and sound design

The soundtrack for House of Ashes was composed by Supermassive Games's long-time collaborator Jason Graves, who had previously worked with them on music for other games in The Dark Pictures Anthology. Before the series' inception, he composed music for Until Dawn, another survival-horror game the company developed.[75][76] During the early stages of House of Ashes' development, Graves composed the game's the score during the UK's COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. The score makes use of string and percussion instruments, including hand drums and distorted guitars, as well as flutes and synthesisers.[76][77]

The game's sound director Barney Pratt used a combination of film- and game-music editing techniques to create a cinematic, immersive atmosphere for House of Ashes. Pratt's team wanted the score's style to be shaped by the plot and gameplay.[76][33] A percussive, Sumerian-style composition was used for the prologue; it progresses to a horror-themed orchestration of other instruments,[33] adding the synthesisers after the game's twist to evoke the image of highly advanced technology.[77] In these scores, Pratt made use of the game's "signature sound" that could convey a wide variety of emotions, ranging from "unnerving" to "dramatic". He also planned the signature sound to be subtle and encompass a vast range of "time zones, cultures, and locations", in line with the story's "consistent element[s]".[77][33] Graves started working on this sound using a sample of a dove's coo, which he used as the basis for the other arrangements.[77]

In an interview with music magazine Spin, Graves said working with Supermassive Games is "a treat" and that he enjoyed coming up with unique compositions for each game in the anthology.[76]

Prelude and release

House of Ashes was first revealed in a hidden post-credits teaser trailer at the end of The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope,[78][79][80] which was released on 30 October 2020.[81][82] Supermassive Games and Bandai Namco Entertainment published another teaser trailer on 19 May 2021[83][84] then officially revealed the gameplay next week, on 27 May.[84][85][86] Two story trailers provided glimpses on the game's plot; one trailer premiered at E3 2021's Summer Game Fest on 10 June[87][88] and another at Gamescom 2021 on 25 August.[89][90] The Gamescom trailer contains an advertisement for the game's "Pazuzu Edition" and a link to a fictional US military website that gave further details about House of Ashes' lore.[90][91] The Pazuzu Edition, which is the name for the game's collector's edition, included the Curator's Cut, a collector's box, an art print, a set of stickers, a figurine of one of the vampiric creatures and an eclipse-shaped button.[92]

In early September 2021, Supermassive and Bandai Namco made a playable demo of the game available to the public.[93][94] On 7 October, the companies released a character trailer introducing the main cast.[95][96][97] House of Ashes was released for Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on 22 October 2021.[98][99] Its release was accompanied by a trailer that includes live-action scenes of the Curator.[99]

Reception

Compared with the previous title Little Hope, House of Ashes sold 27% fewer physical copies in the United Kingdom upon its debut. The game entered the UK boxed charts at number six, with 48% of boxed sales coming from PS5 users. The PS4 and Xbox versions made up 36% and 16% of physical sales at the time, respectively.[109] House of Ashes dropped to number 21 on the week of 30 October, denoting a 52% decrease in sales.[110] Factoring is both download and physical purchases, House of Ashes reached the GSD Top 20 Games monthly chart for October, where it was placed at number 11.[111]

Critical response

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According to Metacritic, a review aggregator, The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes received "mixed or average" reviews from critics.[100][101][103][102] Upon its release, it was widely regarded as the anthology's best game to date and as an improvement over the two previous games, with a few reviews calling it a "step in the right direction" for The Dark Pictures.[lower-alpha 7]

The characters of House of Ashes were the subject of commentary in several reviews.[lower-alpha 8] Many critics praised Salim, one of the game's five protagonists, attributing his likability to his empathetic persona and friendly interactions with the other characters. Rachel Weber, a writer for GamesRadar+, appreciated the way he comes across as a "good impression" of a human being, a trait that made her invested in his survival.[12] Richard Wakeling from GameSpot expressed admiration for Salim for the same reason, and he commended Supermassive Games for doing an "excellent job" at making the character sympathetic and humane.[27] Reviewing House of Ashes for the website VG247, Tom Orry said Salim had the saddest backstory among the game's characters and believed he was a standout among the game's cast.[16] Similarly, Polygon's Cass Marshall described Salim as a noteworthy character with a "heartwarming" motivation to return home to his son. Marshall enjoyed many of Salim's actions and feats, such as accumulating an "enormous vampire kill count" and being willing to help the American characters despite their hostility, during House of Ashes's story. As a result, Marshall called him "an absolute legend" and the game's "most valuable player".[25]

GameSpot's Wakeling said Salim's relationships with the game's other characters are House of Ashes' "best and most poignant moments". He admired the developers for choosing not to portray Salim in a villainous way because of the US-led war in Iraq.[27] In a review for the news website Destructoid, writer Jordan Devore praised Salim for his pragmatism, which is demonstrated by his prioritisation of escape from the underground temple and his insistence he and his adversaries must stop fighting if they all wish to get out alive. As a result, Devore considered Salim the most likeable and relatable of the protagonists.[104] Two reviews on the game mention Salim's relationship with Jason. Polygon's Marshall was critical of the game's tendency to focus on the Americans' mistreatment of Salim but felt satisfied by the potential "buddy cop" dynamic that could develop between Salim and Jason, calling the relationship "bittersweet".[25] According to Game Informer's Marcus Stewart, Jason's interactions with Salim appear "cheesy". He lauded the portrayal of Jason's character, and called his war trauma and character development "endearing" moments that drew Stewart close to the protagonist.[18]

Accolades

Sequel

The series' next title has been announced as The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me, which will be the final game in The Dark Pictures' first season.[117] The first trailer for The Devil in Me, which was shown at the end of House of Ashes; depicts an automated human-like mechanism created from a rotting corpse.[118] The trailer is about a minute long and features a voiceover monologue about the "art" of serial killing.[119] A gold picture found in a chapter of House of Ashes previews a scene from The Devil in Me, showing a man being incinerated by an explosion caused by a mannequin.[28]

After Bandai Namco and Supermassive announced the trailer for the upcoming game, they gave an overview of the plot. The Devil in Me is planned for release in 2022, and will follow a five-person crew of documentary filmmakers (including Irish actress Jessie Buckley) who tour a replica of H. H. Holmes Murder Castle and are subsequently stalked by a malevolent force.[120]

Notes

References

External links

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