Board 8 > Beat House of Ashes (Spoilers!)

(+) Yeah! (+)

@Suprak_the_Stud

I remember there was a topic about it a few months ago and while I didn't read any spoilers I remember the overall impression seemed negative. Suprak is the only one I remember commenting in the topic.

And now I want to know why people didn't like it, because I loved it! I thought it was the best of the Dark Picture Anthology games so far, although still a step below Until Dawn. The characters were all well fleshed out, I was scared, choices mattered and most importantly the supernatural stuff was actually supernatual in the end.

I thought it was fine. I appreciated that there was no dumb twist this time, but the plot was kind of whatever and I only liked Salim and Jason. The other characters were dull or unlikeable and they revealed the monsters too soon, so most of the action was repetitive.

It didnt help that the backstory of the previous expedition sounded way more interesting too.

It was probably the best Dark Picture in retrospect but my personal gripe is I think the directing of the game fails its own premise. There are too many times I feel where you're just left scratching your head with how certain characters got where or what just happened due to bad cuts and not having enough sense of place and orientation.

Yeah there were a few times, primarily with Eric, where I could tell the game kind of assumed he would have been dead by then. He had one line he said in a conversation that was awkwardly included and none of the other characters responded to him.

The weird thing is that there were still times after that he fit in fine.

I liked it well enough. Definitely the best of the anthology so far, but still below Until Dawn obviously. Though Salim and Jason are best duo. Salim in general is top tier

Salim and Jason were definitely the best characters and I'm devastated that I called in air support so Salim might never get back to his son.

I thought Nick and Eric were both fine when they weren't dealing with Rachel.

Rachel... I think the game had a different idea for who her character was and what they presented. They had her dramatically say in the ending that she learned that she's the strongest one and that she didn't need to rely on others when the entire game she just tried killing herself and others and constantly needed to rely on others.

TotallyNotMI posted...

Yeah there were a few times, primarily with Eric, where I could tell the game kind of assumed he would have been dead by then. He had one line he said in a conversation that was awkwardly included and none of the other characters responded to him.

The weird thing is that there were still times after that he fit in fine.

Haha I call it "Telltale syndrome" - in those games you could ALWAYS tell when a character was past their due date, because they would just awkwardly stand around and not say much or say generic dialogue any character could say.

Oh! I forgot about the thing that bugged me the most in the entire game.

After Nick and Salim worked together to kill a vampire, Eric started approaching and Nick could tell Salim to go hide or wait and trust that he'd be okay.

Eric, seeing Salim, pulls his gun on him and demands that he gets tied up.

Nick, after just telling Salim to trust him, doesn't explain the situation to Eric at all or say one single word.

That was so dumb.

Although that scene I just mentioned was the first time I noticed the Curator watching the scene from the background which prompted to research and discover that the Curator is hiding in the background of any scene where a PC can potentially die which is just about the coolest easter egg and I'm glad I found out about it.

Yeah Curator is great

Yeah, The Curator is about the best thing in the series.

Related, anyone picking up The Quarry in a couple of weeks? Supermassives proper follow-up to Until Dawn.

I have THOUGHTS that will have to wait until Im at a computer.

TotallyNotMI posted...

Oh! I forgot about the thing that bugged me the most in the entire game.

After Nick and Salim worked together to kill a vampire, Eric started approaching and Nick could tell Salim to go hide or wait and trust that he'd be okay.

Eric, seeing Salim, pulls his gun on him and demands that he gets tied up.

Nick, after just telling Salim to trust him, doesn't explain the situation to Eric at all or say one single word.

That was so dumb.

Yeah this was confusing to me as well but from a slightly different angle since I played it differently.

The first choice in the scene is should Salim hide or wait in the open and I selected hide assuming I would then have an option to calmly explain the situation to Jason and Eric without an enemy combatant with a gun just standing there. But then the options are nothing suspicious here no sir lets leave or HES BEHIND THE ROCK TAKE HIM AWAY BOYS.

Ive come to peace with the fact that some of the choices in this game arent ideal because of the nature of the game but this one stood out to be as particularly poorly thought out.

JackMan posted...

Yeah, The Curator is about the best thing in the series.

Related, anyone picking up The Quarry in a couple of weeks? Supermassives proper follow-up to Until Dawn.

I'm kind of confused why it's not just part of the Anthology but yeah, I'm excited for it!

The Quarry is presumably going to be longer and more fleshed out like Until Dawn (I hope!)

Salim and Jason are awesome.

Salim was far and away my favorite character. My second favorite was nobody. My third favorite as a guy that the game introduced to me as "confident" and "intolerant". I hated the other three, especially when they were together. Being stuck in a scene with Rachel and Eric was a lot like being stuck in a car with a couple that hate each other and just haven't decided to break up yet.

Also, while I appreciate there isn't quite a "twist" like in the other games, what is here is almost worse. They keep trying to overexplain stuff in these games, and this one was no exception. Monsters are vampires? Cool. On board. Monsters are alien vampires? Uh. Ok. Monsters are zombie alien vampires? Wait, hold on. Monsters are IMMORTAL ZOMBIE ALIEN VAMPIRES. That's a bridge too. That's like three bridges too far, honestly. The whole third act in bonkers insane, and while I get that there is a level of suspension of disbelief you have to go in with when you're playing these games, IMMORTAL ZOMBIE ALIEN VAMPIRES is something I'm just not willing to ignore.

This was probably the best "game" of the series so far, and I'm still invested enough that I'm excited for the next one. But the story was a bit worse to me than the other two for a variety of reasons. They show the monster right away and take away all mystery. The heroes here all have enough ammo to make a Montanan separatist cult blush and training to make it feel like the vampires aren't even that much of a threat. There's that same weird tendency where scenes don't smoothly flow into each other or you have a character just awkwardly standing in the background because they may or may not be dead in the play through.

Nothing has really captured the magic of Until Dawn for me yet.

I am super excited for The Quarry though.

Little Hope>House of Ashes>Man of Medan, for me. But all are a huge step down from Until Dawn.

Little Hope would probably be my favorite without the last minute twist which turned it into a 2/10 game at best.

House of Asses

wait that's a different thing

I mean, I'm interested, go on