The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes

Similar to its predecessor, the game is an interactive drama. The player controls 5 characters who are trapped under an underground Mesopotamian temple during the 2003 Iraq War where they are stalked then hunted by monsters awoken by the chaos. The 5 characters include CIA officer Rachel King (Ashley Tisdale), her husband, USAF Lt. Colonel Eric King (Alex Gravenstein), USMC Force Recon 1st Lt. Jason Kolchek (Paul Zinno) & Sgt. Nick Kay (Moe Jeudy-Lamour), and Iraqi Republican Guard Lt. Salim Othman (Nick E. Tarabay).[2] Throughout the game, players need to make different decisions which can have long-term consequences as they influence how characters perceive each other and the course of the narrative. All five characters can survive or die depending on the player's decision. As a result, the game has multiple endings.[3]

House of Ashes introduces several gameplay changes. The game camera is no longer fixed and is replaced by a 360-degree player-controlled camera. Each player character is also equipped with a tactical flashlight on a specific firearm which can be used to illuminate dark areas and discover new paths. The game also introduces various difficulty levels for the quick time events. The game features 4 main modes. In addition to the main theatrical mode, players who pre-order the game also gained access to the Curator's cut, which allows players to experience the story from the perspective of another character. "Shared Story" and "Movie Night", the two multiplayer modes from the previous games, also return in House of Ashes.[2]

In ancient Akkad during the year 2231 BC, the Akkadians are at war with the Gutian people, while also dealing with famine and plague. The Akkadian King has fallen into madness, taking refuge in his temple and executing Gutian prisoners as blood sacrifices. As the Gutians assault the temple, a solar eclipse occurs and unknown creatures begin slaughtering both armies. Two survivors, Akkadian general Balathu and Gutian soldier Kurum, flee into the temple catacombs to escape the creatures but are quickly overwhelmed and presumably killed.

In 2003, USAF Lt. Colonel Eric King arrives in Iraq in the midst of the Iraq War. He briefs a team of Force Recon Marines, led by 1st Lt. Jason Kolcheck and Sgt. Nick Kay, about their mission to raid a village compound believed to be holding weapons of mass destruction. The team also includes King’s estranged wife, CIA officer Rachel King. Meanwhile, an Iraqi Republican Guard soldier, Lt. Salim Othman, is searching for his son but is forced by his commanding officer to intercept Eric's team. Salim's squad ambushes the team shortly after they land, but the fighting causes a cave-in that causes everybody to fall into the ancient Akkadian temple buried underground.

Down inside the temple, both sides are assaulted by giant, bat-like creatures that they dub vampires. They find the remains of a British archaeological expedition led by Randolph Hodgson (who discovered the temple in 1946 but was killed by the vampires), and discover that the bodies of slain humans can also be reanimated as vampires (most notably the Ancient One, which has possessed either Balathu or Kurum). As the vampires continue to attack, Salim teams up with the Americans to flee deeper into the ruins. By following Hodgson's path, the team find the remains of a massive alien spaceship and learn that the vampires were originally a space-faring alien race that was afflicted by a parasitic infection. After crashing to Earth, the infected aliens mutated into feral monsters. Trapped underground and vulnerable to sunlight, the monsters went into a state of hibernation for thousands of years, only occasionally venturing to the surface to feed by using a strange fluid that can preserve even humans for centuries.

The team then finds a chamber holding thousands of hibernating vampires. After destroying the chamber with explosives and returning to the surface to await extraction by a rescue team, another solar eclipse occurs and the surviving vampires attack the team until the eclipse ends. Player choice determines how many of the five protagonists survive. Afterwards, the American government seizes the ruins and begins studying the vampires while debriefing the surviving team members, planning to cover up the entire incident.

House of Ashes is the third of the eight installment planned in the Dark Pictures Anthology series.[4] Developer Supermassive Games listened to players' feedback and introduced various gameplay changes, such as overhauling the camera system and introducing various difficulty levels.[3] The game would also be less linear when compared to Little Hope.[5] The team spent an extensive amount of time designing and motion capturing the monsters.[6] The game was inspired by the story of Naram-Sin, a Mesopotamian king cursed by gods. Game director Will Doyle described House of Ashes as an "exploration horror" game, about "a group of trained experts, beyond safety, with no backup, and they encounter something horrible". Alien, Predator, The Descent, and At the Mountains of Madness were important sources of inspiration for the team.[7]

While the game is set during the Iraq War, Doyle added that the game was not about war and politics, and the team only chose this as the game's setting due to its story potential. The team consulted Arabic and military specialists during the game's production to ensure that their depiction of the setting is authentic. The team believed that using the war as the setting helped build interesting dynamics and tension between the five central characters. Supermassive approached Ashley Tisdale to play the lead role early during the game's development, and Tisdale agreed to provide her voice and likeness to the character as she felt that the project was outside her comfort zone.[2]

The game was revealed as a hidden trailer in Little Hope.[8] Publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment revealed the game officially on 27 May 2021.[9] The game was released for Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S on 22 October 2021.[10]

The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.[11][12][13][14]

The next title has been revealed as The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me, starring Jessie Buckley. It will serve as "season finale" for the first part of the anthology.[26]

• Official website