All aboard
Until Dawn creator Supermassive is giving us more of a good thing with The Dark Pictures Anthology, a collection of standalone cinematic horror stories. It’s precisely what I hoped the studio would work on after digging into its chilly teen slasher and now all we have to do is show up. The first Dark Pictures release, Man of Medan, is scheduled for August 30, 2019 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
The first player-choice prompt we’re shown in this release-date trailer is whether to “flirt” or “ignore,” so you know we’re in for more of the fun stuff. And unlike Until Dawn, I’m not going to play Man of Medan alone my first time through. I won’t make that same mistake twice. Supermassive’s brand of horror is far more enjoyable to me as a shared social experience than a lonely, paranoid fright fest.
“There are scenes that only exist on specific narrative paths; different combinations of survivors possible before the final scenes; more significant and in some ways more surprising consequences of’ mismanaging’ relationships; and endings that vary significantly depending on the paths you take,” Supermassive CEO Pete Samuels said on the PlayStation Blog.
“Man of Medan has the most branching and possible outcomes of any of our games to date. In Until Dawn there were 38 death scenes for the characters and you could see up to 10 on a single playthrough. In Man of Medan there are 69 [nice], and the most you are likely to see on a single playthrough would be nine. That means you’d need to play the game a minimum of nine times just to see all of the death scenes, let alone all of the other possible story events.”
More interesting than the trailer itself, publisher Bandai Namco has detailed an enticing pre-order bonus for Man of Medan. The supernatural adventure title will offer a Curator’s Cut that shines a light on “an alternative path through the game” after you’ve wrapped up your story playthrough. As a quick refresher, the Curator (played by Pip Torrens) is an “omniscient observer” of our words and deeds.
The Curator’s Cut promises “new options and choices” in each scene as well as previously unseen scenes and secrets. Per Bandai Namco, “The contents of the Curator’s Cut will be made available to players who do not preorder Man of Medan at a later date.” There’s no word on pricing yet.
I always got the feeling that Until Dawn took a while to find its audience, so I’m curious to see how the launch goes for not only Man of Medan in August but also the wider Dark Pictures Anthology.
