The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes Preview

It’s almost time to return to the The Dark Pictures Anthology and this time we’re going underground to the House of Ashes. Like previous title in the anthology series, House of Ashes is based on real world legends; Man of Medan was based on the story of the Ourang Medan, Little Hope explored the Salem and Andover witch trials, but House of Ashes goes back much further in time to uncover its creatures that are lurk in the darkness.

Despite the source of its ancient horror, the game itself is set in the year 2003, near the end of the the Second Iraq War. A team comprising of the C.I.A., Air Force, and U.S. Special Forces, is trawling the Middle East hunting for those elusive weapons of mass destruction we all heard about at the time, sniffing around for an underground chemical weapons depot that has been located by a satellite scanning the area. Obviously there’s no WMDs to be found, but they do find something else.

“The Dark Pictures Anthology means a lot us and we’re always tring to find new ways to frighten you, to challenge you, and to suprise you” says Will Doyle, Game Director at Supermassive Games. “With House of Ashes we think you’re in for a real treat.”

The game starts with the team encountering Iraqi forces, the ensuing battle cracking open the earth and dropping both the Americans and Iraqis into a deep cavern. Here they find a massive temple from the ancient kingdom of Akkad, a civilisation located in what was Mesopotamia and was built by the self-proclaimed God King of the Akkadian empire, Naram-Sin, who ruled around the year 2250 BC.

During his rule, Naram-Sin ransacked a temple belonging to a god, Enlil, so the gods decided that, rather than give Naram-Sin a spanking, they would curse his innocent people with plagues and famine. In case you didn’t know, ancient gods are always awful. From the Christian God deciding to wipe out the entire population of the planet with a flood, to Poseidon raping Medusa, which in turn infuriated Athena to the extent that she decided to curse Medusa with snakes as hair and a face that turns anyone who sees it in to stone rather than giving Poseidon a good kick in the nuts.

Naran-Sin tries to appease the gods by building a massive temple, but ancient gods being the dicks they are, they are unimpressed, the Akkad kingdom falls and the temple is buried under the sands of time. That brings us up to today where the team is trapped in the temple, caught between the Iraqis and the blood thirsty monsters that lurk in the shadows of the temple. Only by combining forces the two groups of humans have a chance to escape.

Ashley Tisdale will be playing C.I.A agent Rachael King, and you will be controlling her along with two marines, Jason Kolchek and Nick Kay. As if being trapped underground with monsters who want to eat your face wasn’t stressful enough, Rachael’s husband, Colonel Eric King, is also part of the team. Finally, the fifth playable character is an Iraqi officer, Salim Offman. The five characters will have to set aside their prejudices to try and escape what lurks below. “When all breaks lose, is there any place for compassion, or is it just look after number one?” asks Will.

Due to the current state of the world we could not go hands on to preview the game, but have seen a short gameplay demo taken from near the beginning of the game. It finds Nick alone in the caverns searching for Jason, creeping through dark tunnels with the camera hovering close over Nick’s shoulder, making the game feel very claustrophobic and tense. The game looks stunning, the graphics and lighting are superb and along with the throbbing ominous music, it feels more like a movie than the game.

Unlike the previous games, House of Ashes includes vast open spaces where the team are exposed as the creatures watch them from the darkness, and it’s here where the new unlocked camera really comes in to play, contrasting the cramped tunnels with wide open spaces. While the game mechanics are the roughly the same as the other titles in the series, the team have made other improvements based on feedback. The game now has player-controlled camera angles, a new flashlight button to help you discover new paths, and there will be difficulty settings for the game which will change the speed of the quick time events in the name of accessibility.

Once again the title will have four modes: Movie Night where you can play with friends on the couch, Shared Story is the online mode, and a Theatrical and Curators cuts, each with different scenes and different characters to play. The Theatrical cut will be part of a pre-order bonus, as usual.

While the gameplay demo was short, if House of Ashes is anything like Little Hope we’re in for another treat. It looks and sounds fantastic and I love the setting, especially the flashbacks to the reign of Naram-Sin.

House of Ashes will be out later this year, though an exact release date has not been revealed.

Source: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2021/05/27/the-dark-pictures-anthology-house-of-ashes-preview/