HomeFeaturesThe Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me
The Devil In Me is mixing Saw, The Shining, and “really horrible” murders with a dash of true crimeGame Director Tom Heaton says this year’s Dark Pictures Anthology game is the most gruesome
Game Director Tom Heaton says this year’s Dark Pictures Anthology game is the most gruesome
“What I think we decided with The Dark Pictures games early on was that the next game in the series would be very different from the last game, because we want to keep it fresh, we want to give the audience new,” Heaton explains. So, after a zombie ghost ship in Man Of Medan, the psychological witch hauntings in Little Hope, and military squad vs. vampire aliens in House Of Ashes, Heaton pitches The Devil In Me as kind of Saw meets The Shining. It’s a serial killer slasher in a weirdo hotel, and it has a true crime element. And I have to say, it’s probably the most excited I’ve been for a Dark Pictures entry.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me – New Features Gamescom TrailerWatch on YouTube
The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me – New Features Gamescom Trailer
I think if anything it works even better with the story idea for The Devil In Me, which follows a small, low budget documentary team working on a series about American serial killers. They’re about to run out of money when they get a call from someone who’s just inherited a replica of the Murder Castle. In the footage I was shown, the group has been split up and are exploring the building, and because we don’t know what it was like in real life, it can be like anything in the game. It’s run down, littered with debris, and the modern-day killer has set up dummies of a construction crew posed as victims, with recordings that sounds all too real… It looks like a great haunted house atmosphere, in other words. This all sounds like we’re crossing into the myth vs. realtiy aspects of modern day true crime, and Heaton says they do “double down on that, to some extent”, though he clearly doesn’t want to give much away.
But their true crime credentials - having studied a lot ofotherserial killers - has given them knowledge that, says Heaton, could be useful to them if they can work out how to use it. In a first for a Dark Pictures game, each character also has a tool that can be helpful. Kate has a directional mic that can hear through walls, while Charlie has a business card he can use to break open some locks, and in the demo footage you could find and pick up someone else’s business card. Tools get broken, or lent to other characters with a very simple inventory system (Heaton says it’s additive, as they didn’t want to distract from the core of choices and dilemmas). Those aren’t the only changes, either. The Devil In Me is a bit longer than previous entries, running to 7 hours, and exploration has been expanded. You can climb up obstacles and squeeze through gaps, meaning there are secret areas to find. This allows for puzzles: the player can see a place they want to get to, but how to get there? And, in a move that many will be excited about, your characters can run!
Heaton says adding running was a bit of a challenge because of the cinematic presentation of the games (often the camera is fixed but will switch to a different angle as you, for example, walked down a corridor). “It’s nice to be able to take exploration at your own pace. I think a lot of the time people will still be walking but they’ll run to specific things,” he says. “And it’s also of course, drawing on the Saw franchise. So once you’ve got puzzles in, then you actually do want to go back and forth around the level a little bit more; you maybe you have to find a code and you have to look for where that code is, or you have to different things in a puzzle to get it to work. So you’re moving back and forth across levels and, yeah, it’s nice to be able to run in that situation.”
It sounds like running won’t help you, though, as Heaton avers that The Devil In Me has some of the most gruesome deaths of the whole series. He’s keeping any examples under wraps to avoid spoilers, but in the gameplay footage a character is forced to choose which of her companions will die, as they’re trapped in sealed chambers and there’s only enough oxygen for one. Not especially bloody, perhaps, but pretty horrible. “We’ve got a terrific cast and they did a terrific job with the performances,” Heaton says. “There were a couple of deaths where some of the actors went, ‘Oh myGod! Who thought this up?’… And slowly everyone would look at me. They are really horrible.”
