rionaleonhart | There Is Plenty Here I Don't Want To See.

I'm back in the UK!

Umbria was beautiful, and I was a little worried London would feel claustrophobic on my return, but I'd forgotten how much I love this weird ugly city. I look out at the graffiti and the mismatched architecture and I go, 'Ah, yes, I'm home.'

Having spent a fortnight unwinding in Italy, I decided it was high time I stressed myself out again, so I got home and promptly finished playing The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope.

Little Hope is a horror game I was playing with Tem at the end of last year, but I was compelled to take a half-year break from it because it was scaring me too much. It kept giving me nightmares, and I caught myself shaking during play sessions.

The extended break from playing was a good decision! It gave me a little emotional distance, so I was able to come back and finish the game in a calmer frame of mind. Tem and I also took the sting out a little by singing 'Call Me Maybe' over scenes where it got too scary.

Tem called the Curator 'Professor Butt' and I am delighted about it. I still don't understand why sixty percent of the game's budget went into modelling this one character's arse.

I'd been spoiled before starting the game for the fact that Andrew is the only 'real' character amongst the five, and the others are figments of his imagination. I know it was an unpopular twist, but, I'll be honest, 'a broken character tries to process his guilt by forcing himself to relive the deaths he blames himself for in vivid hallucinations' is exactly my sort of thing.

It seems a little weird that he's processing the death of his family by hallucinating an AU in which his brother and sister are a couple, but, you know, whatever works.

Playing with the knowledge that Andrew was the only person who was actually physically there made for some interesting moments. For example, at one point Daniel needs to move a crate to progress. He finds it too heavy to move and has to ask Andrew for help, because, of course, Andrew is the only one of the characters capable of affecting the world around him.

I thought maybe knowing most of the characters weren't real would take some of the stress out of trying to keep them alive, but I was extremely stressed out by the knowledge that getting these 'unreal' characters killed would have a very real impact on Andrew's mental state.

Everyone survived the night, but I can't really take credit for that. Because I was so distressed by this game, I cheated pretty extensively. I made some good decisions under my own power, e.g. the decision to be nice to any potentially dangerous little girls I encountered, but I did end up looking up tips online and therefore knew it was important to play characters as their best selves if I wanted them to survive. I saved everyone legitimately in Man of Medan, which I played in one session with no foreknowledge, but I doubt I'd have saved everyone in a blind playthrough of Little Hope.

The 'play characters as their best selves' mechanic is an interesting one; it means that regular dialogue options are absolutely crucial in a way they rarely are in Man of Medan and Until Dawn. The only 'choose the right dialogue options or you're screwed' sequence I can think of off the top of my head from those games is the part where you have to talk Junior down from shooting in Man of Medan.

I still definitely want to experience the remaining Dark Pictures games - it's an imperfect but fascinating experimental horror series - but I think I might have to resort to Let's Plays, rather than playing them myself. I can't play Supermassive horror games; I just don't have the constitution.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Welcome back to London! I'm glad the graffiti feels like home.

"Call Me Maybe" is a good tension-fighting strategy.

Thank you!

It was very effective for dispelling the tension! The demons in Little Hope were absolutely horrifying, but it was hard to take being pursued by them too seriously when we were asking them to call us maybe.

Welcome back! I was in a discussion recently about how hard it is to pull off "turns out none of it was real" endings, and one person was saying they thought the true test was whether it still works if you're spoiled for it going in--i.e. it's engaging enough on its own and doesn't rely solely on a twist ending. I don't know if that's always the case, but I do think sometimes things can work better if you take out the element of surprise so you can appreciate the hints of where it's going without feeling like the rug got pulled out from under you at the end.

the true test was whether it still works if you're spoiled for it going in--i.e. it's engaging enough on its own and doesn't rely solely on a twist ending.

This is a really interesting thought! I definitely think Little Hope worked in that regard. Knowing the twist in advance, I could appreciate what the game was telling us about the hallucinating protagonist, and it still felt like there were stakes; the other characters were already dead, but whether the hallucinatory versions of them 'survived' determined whether the protagonist would be able to come to terms with their deaths and remember them well. I wonder what I'd have thought of the ending if it had come as a surprise to me.

Welcome back to the UK! I missed you.

I have nothing to say about Little Hope other than I hope you continue playing Supermassive games so I can continue reading about you playing Supermassive games.

♥!

I'm just not strong enough to play Supermassive games! I can't handle them; they're too stressful for me. It's a tragedy.

Tem and I are embarking on watching a Let's Play of House of Ashes, so I'll probably continue talking about Supermassive games, at least, but I realise that's not the same as getting to watch me have a meltdown over whether I'm making the right decisions.

Welcome back from your lovely holidays! I'm glad you enjoyed them.

It sucks when games give you nightmares! My last instance of this was when I was playing Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) but I'm not sure if that was all the game or if it was the fact I ended up playing the game while feverish (not entirely aware of that at the time) and then really couldn't let go of it! My earliest instance of it was LeChuck's Revenge because the swamp water texture creeped me out!

I'm glad the break helped and that you hit on a good strategy! I find it's often audio that sends me over the age into a panic so my go to strategy is to mute the audio when I get very scared in a game but it does spoil the atmosphere a bit! I've also shamelessly checked whether or not you can die in games to know how much I need to fret about that.

The plot sounds like it could work or not depending on how well it's executed. You seem to have liked it, though! I like your observation about the cruciality of dialogue options; the one you reference from Man of Medan sounds like the equivalent of the Kate chat in Life is Strange, which I failed at hard due to the bible (I know that syntactically this sentence is not good, but explaining it makes it sound less funny so sorry, grammar, but you do not win today!).

The Zodiac Trial LP is wrapped up, if you saw it or not, and I'd be interested in hearing your final thoughts! The creator's next game, The Divine Deception, is going to be LPed soon by the same person so I hope you follow along with that one too; it's quite interesting to compare and contrast it to The Zodiac Trial and how it presents itself and while it isn't always successful (like The Zodiac Trial) it does a really nice job given how tiny of an indie game is (though not tiny in terms of hours; it's certainly longer than The Zodiac Trial).

I watched a video of someone doing a solo run challenge of FF8 with Squall and it was quite fun! They'd also done a similar one of completing FF9 with just Zidane.

-timydamonkey

Thank you!

Wow, yes, it does sound like unknowingly playing games while feverish could probably lead to weird dreams.

My earliest instance of it was LeChuck's Revenge because the swamp water texture creeped me out!

I love this. Sometimes small details really get to you!

I like your observation about the cruciality of dialogue options; the one you reference from Man of Medan sounds like the equivalent of the Kate chat in Life is Strange

Now that you mention it, there are definite similarities: a high-stakes conversation, with multiple potential failure points, where you need to get through to someone in order to prevent a death. (And the Bible verse you're supposed to reference is definitely counterintuitive!)

Oh, I'll have to catch up on The Zodiac Trial! I think I lost my momentum a bit when they got thrown into a second death game (and also my favourite character got killed off, booooo), but I still definitely want to see how it plays out.

I watched a video of someone doing a solo run challenge of FF8 with Squall and it was quite fun!

Impressive, but the thought makes me weirdly sad! You're never going to learn to connect with people if you go through the game solo, Squall.

I look out at the graffiti and the mismatched architecture and I go, 'Ah, yes, I'm home.'

Huge mood <3

Having those London feelings actually made me think a little of you!

... aW?!?

"Umbria was beautiful, and I was a little worried London would feel claustrophobic on my return, but I'd forgotten how much I love this weird ugly city. I look out at the graffiti and the mismatched architecture and I go, 'Ah, yes, I'm home.'"
This is my goal this year (well, this is my goal every year, but so far it's never worked xD). I'm going on holidays the day after tomorrow (:D), and every time I came back in the past I had this visceral reaction of 'damn, I can't stand my city' which brings my mood down, and ~~once again~~ I hope this time it won't happen. I made some peace with my city last summer and found some prettier, calmer parts of it, so I have some hope (but I didn't go on holidays last summer, so who the hell knows how it works in practice). :D

"Tem and I also took the sting out a little by singing 'Call Me Maybe' over scenes where it got too scary."
This is fantastic strategy. :D Also I have no way of playing any new-ish game (no console or anything, just an old-ass laptop that I can play stuff like Sims 3 and Skyrim on) but I'm so curious now because for years I've been on this lowkey quest to find something fictional that can scare me. xD Well, it used to be a highkey quest, but after watching movies from the top of several 'scariest movies ever' lists and feeling absolutely nothing, I kinda gave up on it. At some point after I stopped being a kid I became unable to be scared of anything that is not happening to me in real life, and it's kinda boring tbh, to have this one seemingly big aspect of fiction just not work for your brain.

"'a broken character tries to process his guilt by forcing himself to relive the deaths he blames himself for in vivid hallucinations' is exactly my sort of thing"
Mine too. :D

Have a great holiday, and I hope your city feels welcoming when you come back!

I've never been great at handling horror, and Supermassive games are particularly stressful for me because they go 'if you make a bad decision or mess up a button press, the character you're controlling might die, and the story will just keep going without them! good luck!'

When I was a kid, I couldn't even play Sonic the Hedgehog games because I couldn't handle having responsibility for Sonic's life; I just felt so bad when I got him killed. And, if Sonic dies, you can just restart the level! It would be so much worse if you get Sonic killed, he's gone, and you have to play the rest of the game as a grieving Tails!

There Is Plenty Here I Don't Want To See.

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