He looked at us in silence.
It was a little late in 2015, but it’s still here today. 7 feet high. A larger-than-life, amazingly accurate recreation of Until Dawn’s psycho, complete with blue jumpsuits and the gruesome dummy mask we’d spent months designing to look as scary as possible. We’re all used to him now, but he still gets a reaction from new signings and visitors.
The psychopath monitored everything. A group of us sat in the plush theater seats in the Supermassive offices, while CEO Pete Samuels laid out his plans for a new concept: the Dark Pictures Anthology. A series of branching cinematic games that would explore different horror subgenres. The games lasted 4 to 5 hours, short enough to be played in one session. Each game would feature two multiplayer modes – an online connected mode where you could play the entire game with a friend, and couch co-op where a group of friends could get together and play a horror movie.
It was a simple and convincing idea. But it was also extremely ambitious. Creating a new franchise from scratch is no small feat, but the two-player co-op was also very intimidating – no one had done it before.
I remember very clearly thinking, “I to have to work on it.
And I got to work on it.
I was lucky enough to be the game director on the spooky story of the ghost ship Man of Medan. And now I’m lucky enough to be the game director on the brutal serial killer story The Devil In Me. And it’s been a fantastic run.
Between those games we had the psychological and historical horror of Little Hope, set in the eponymous New England town, and we had the action-horror of House of Ashes, battling hordes of terrifying buried vampire monsters deep under the desert.
There’s another psychopath in The Devil in Me. It’s the story of a team making a documentary about American serial killer HH Holmes, who gets trapped in a “murder hotel” by a serial killer. inspired by… HH Holmes.
Looking back on our first four games, there are many highlights in the series and it’s hard to pick a favorite. Is Conrad being chased through the rusty corridors of the WWII freighter by a living manifestation of his worst desires and fears? Or the stunning character designs of the demons of Little Hope, each inspired by a vicious, long-forgotten murder? Or maybe it’s the touching and charged relationship between Jason and Salim, mortal enemies finding mutual respect and brotherhood in the blood-soaked monster-infested caves? Or is it one of the gruesome, over-the-top deaths from The Devil in Me?
For me, the most exciting thing is that we found an audience for these games, and they found us. Cinematic horror with an emphasis on relationships and storytelling is an acquired taste, but those who love it love it.
And we loved watching our growing community obsessed with fan art, tier lists, theoretical romantic character combinations (Jalim, Conbrad, Johngela!), clues we sprinkled liberally across games, crazy theories of fans (some of which are exact scary). Sometimes it seems like the community knows our characters and our games better than we do. They love what we do and we love them for it.
We are always looking to improve the Dark Pictures formula. We’ve developed new ways to tell stories, revamped the way we capture performances, and improved our art pipeline so that textures and lighting are more grounded and realistic.
And with each game, we’ve introduced gameplay improvements and tweaks: 3rd person cameras, difficulty levels, QTE warnings, accessibility options. Quality of life improvements that make it easier and more fun to enjoy the experiences we do.
For The Devil In Me, we’re introducing a num ber of significant gameplay improvements.
There’s a suite of new exploration actions – climb, leap, leap, crouch, crawl, shimmy, and balance – that allow the player to be more active when exploring the terrifying environments we’ve created. Players will also be able to run, explore at their own pace. And when danger is present, they can hide from it – if they can find a safe place.
We’re also introducing a simple inventory, with tools characters can use to help them survive the horrors of the Murder Hotel. Players will be able to use items that the film crew takes with them, but can also find other tools in the environment. And sometimes these tools can be upgraded, broken or lost.
And there will be puzzles to confuse and confuse the player. Fuse boxes to rewire, hidden codes to find, objects to move to create new paths in the world.
All of this will be packed into a new 7+ hour runtime. One of the things we’ve learned on this journey is that sometimes we get a little more time with our characters to tell the story we need to tell.
So, from The Devil In Me team, we hope you enjoy your stay at The Murder Hotel. We hear that some rooms are to die for. We’re proud of what we’ve done and can’t wait for you to play it.
But before I finish, I’m going to turn it over to other members of our team to talk about what’s come before and what’s coming next.
“Dark Pictures Season 1 was an absolute blast. As the audio team, we have the most fun figuring out how to make each game’s soundscape as different and fresh as the next. We had the opportunity to creating completely different audio experiences for newcomers and horror fanatics alike, while of course adhering to horror audio principles, because the game designs, narratives, and subgenres are so varied.
Musically, working closely with Jason Graves, we started with Man of Medan and a whole score in ¾ to reflect the movement of the waves; through Little Hope looking for the end of 17e centuries-old instruments from New England, building a whole soundtrack around choral songs, broken pianos and out of tune hurdy-gurdies; in House of Ashes shifting from orchestral instrumentation to synths as the narrative exposition leaps into Act 3, timelessly connecting starkly different universes across the larger narrative arc with a single pitch-like pattern always terrible reminder of an imminent threat; and now The Devil In Me, a soundtrack inspired by scores by Bernard Herrmann, mixed with classical and lyrical pieces by Schubert, Pergolesi and Rossini juxtaposing tragic deaths, all wrapped in a plot of random orchestral horror.
Authenticity is key and we have ventured to capture key environments from an audio perspective for each title in the anthology. Whether it’s steel-hulled military vessels, small ships taking heavy gusts in the open sea, deep forests and most recently a stately home, like the characters in the game, we capture all their sounds, doors , switches, footsteps, motors, hull slams, splashing water, and most importantly, we pulse the spaces so we can replicate the acoustics, materials, and reflections unique to these spaces for all in the game’s diegetic sound. It’s a huge team effort across all audio sub-disciplines and by combining that work with a full spatial audio implementation, we were able to bring hyper-realistic immersion without precedent to the cinematic experience.
Using the haptic feedback features of the PS5 controller to further immerse the player in environments, the action and scares are incredible in The Devil In Me. Improved subtlety allows us to bring weather, wind and rain closer to the game. player experience through uniquely authored haptic assets, giving the feeling of actually being there. We infiltrate players’ personal space to reinforce growing dread and dread, adding force to those key areas of horror with carefully timed haptic feedback, playing with force, timing and frequency adding another layer of immersive content to the experience, and the subtlety allows the player to differentiate between all the unique haptic signals we send them. »
– Barney Pratt – Audio Director
“As the first season of Dark Pictures Anthology draws to a close, we feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment as a studio. We started this series to tell stories – horrific, monstrous stories that refused to be buried. in our pile of slush. Now that our first four games have crawled to the land of the living, it’s amazing to look back and see how they developed from concept to release. Our talented teams have infused the Our dormant ideas came to life and unleashed them on the audience. And audiences want more! We started this journey with eight games in mind, but new stories are piling up faster than ever. As Creative Director of the series , I can’t wait for you to see where we are headed in Season 2 and beyond. We have such sights to show you.”
– Will Doyle – Creative Director