Making choices, daily life depends on it. Sauce on top or sauce on the side. By car to work or even by bike. Do I shoot that Iraqi sheep farmer hard through his pan or do I just let him run away? Okay, you won’t experience the latter as quickly as Jantje Modaal, unless you make the choice to get House of Ashes – the third part in the Dark Pictures Anthology – into your home.
A well-known recipe
In that regard, the concept of making difficult choices and suffering the consequences is the modus operandi of Supermassive Games. Since the British studio came up with Until Dawn in 2015, the developer has been mentioned in the same breath with making choices and Quicktime Events. We’ve grown accustomed to the ultra-realism (which can be quite tricky at times) and the storylines that have more ramifications than an Alabama family tree. Anyone who bought a Supermassive game pretty much knew what to expect.
Still, the studio’s reputation has been getting a bit tarnished lately. The bar was immediately raised to such a high level with Until Dawn that The Dark Pictures Anthology immediately had to get off to a strong start. Part one – Man of Medan – generally did that too. Its successor – Little Hope – already gave us less ‘hope’ and was a lot less popular due to its mediocre character development. But with part three called House of Ashes, the studio manages to get back on track without changing the recipe too much.
Rank and file
What Supermassive has clearly worked on with House of Ashes is that character development. Within ten minutes, almost every main character is introduced and you already get a bit of what drives them. With his Caelus program, Lieutenant Colonel Eric King has “assuredly” found Saddam Hussein’s underground weapons facility and is doing everything he can to dismantle it. Sergeant Rachel King—his estranged wife—has given up hope for some reason since her deployment to Iraq that her marriage could be salvaged and has recently started dating Sergeant Nick Kay, a romantic battling the guilt the war left him. .
First Lieutenant Jason Kolchek is your quintessential jarhead who seems to live for the military and wants to assert his loyalties constantly. “Hoorah” and “Semper Fi” were the first words he uttered as a baby, values he still lives by today. Lieutenant Salim Othman, a doting father who is just about done with the war in Iraq, is pulled by his dour Iraqi captain at the last minute to drive the last of the American troops away, all while he is only to celebrate his son’s birthday.
“I wish I had stayed at home”
In that respect, House of Ashes has an immediate advantage over its predecessors. Where previous games introduced characters that you didn’t care about after a few hours, this third part presents a cast that you usually care about. And that’s a good thing, because there’s quite a lot going on in House of Ashes. That “almost certain” weapons facility is not there at all, but what one does find is an old Sumerian temple with a violent history. If they thought the war in Iraq had already presented them with horror scenes, oh man. That’s nothing compared to what they have yet to process.
How many of the five protagonists introduced will see the Iraqi daylight again, as usual, that strongly depends on your sleight of hand and the choices you make. Through QTE sequences you largely deal with the direct dangers that House of Ashes throws your way, while a truckload of (sometimes) damn difficult choices can indirectly save you from an early death. The power of Supermassive is that it hides the outcome of each choice very well. Just when you think you did the right thing, a later revelation makes you regret that “right” choice. Only after an hour or six you will know how hard you screwed up.
The best intentions
Anyway, that’s probably exactly what Supermassive Games itself has to contend with. After writing and developing for quite some time, it is only now that people really find out to what extent they have made the right choices. Fortunately for them, House of Ashes consists for the most part of successful choices. On the PlayStation 5 it often looks pico bello and when you play the game in Performance Mode, it also runs like a charm. That does not alter the fact that Supermassive also drops some stitches here and there. Dialogues sometimes contain weird transitions and the characters seem to spontaneously have a triple double chin from time to time, something that we sometimes encountered in previous parts and which can throw a little ashes in the food. And that camera… oh my. In the claustrophobic corridors of the Sumerian cave system, this one wants to be a blood irritant.
But there are also things to list that make some of us happy. They’ve made Quicktime events a lot more forgivable, if that’s what you want. Those who go for the easiest difficulty level will receive a notification in time that one is coming, and you still have all the time in the world to complete it. If you like a tough challenge, you can also let go of House of Ashes’ helping hand. But then you don’t have to whine when everyone goes out.
In addition, you do not necessarily have to make the choices alone. Like its predecessors, House of Ashes offers the option to go through the storyline entirely in co-op, something that is even recommended. I mean, making disastrous decisions together is always more fun than suffering the consequences of your actions alone, right? Then you don’t feel so bad when the Curator lets you know in a passive aggressive way that you’re having a good time again, something he fortunately only does a few times in House of Ashes.
Conclusion
Of the three existing installments in the Dark Pictures Anthology, House of Ashes is arguably the best part yet. Where Man of Medan still struggled with the “is this Until Dawn 2.0?” syndrome and Little Hope was simply hopeless in its storyline and build, House of Ashes once again shows the true nature of Supermassive Games. The characters you’re dealing with are emotionally a lot neater and with the power of the current generation of consoles they make it all look even more realistic, with exceptions. Also in terms of story it is a bit tighter this time, where you can’t deny that it has quite the Until Dawn vibe again.
Still, at the end of the day, House of Ashes mostly does what the rest of the Dark Pictures Anthology already did. It’s still about making one choice after another, hoping you’ve made the right one. If you’ve gotten tired of that pattern before, it’s better to let it pass you by. Let me make that choice for you. There’s no point in throwing sand in your eyes.
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