“The enemy of my enemy is a friend” is a line of dialogue that gets tossed around quite a bit in The Dark Pictures Anthology’s House of Ashes, the latest release by Supermassive Games in their interactive survival horror series. This feels fitting, given how the past two years of a pandemic has pit one another against each other. It’s a sentiment that feels politically at home in a series that, just days prior to the November 2020 election, released Little Hope – an entry that deals with the 17th century Andover Witch Trials and features characters immediately at odds with one another. Flashbacks, amidst a modern landscape of antagonism, show the spurious and accusatory nature of its characters that plague their choices to the detriment of its gameplay, one that feels all too bogged down by a story more concerned with political statements than pagan scares.
House of Ashes understands to its betterment that horror is by nature inherently political, yet it also manages to bring the series forward with great leaps by effectively embodying the interactive diversion and dread introduced in its earliest game, Until Dawn.
Beginning in 2263 B.C. in the ancient city of Akkad (now central Iraq), House of Ashes introduces us to the Akkadian Empire, the first ancient kingdom of Mesopotamia that is at war with the Gutian people, and believes the land has been cursed by the Gods with famine. Severed heads of the King’s enemy line altars within the temple as blood sacrifices, while a massive battle wages outside under an impending solar eclipse. Players briefly assume the role of Balathu, a soldier who seems beset with doubt over the actions of the King, whose madness may or may not have brought unwelcome guests into his Empire. Here you must make morally-imbalanced, yet perfunctory, decisions spurred on by orders of the King that will, to an extent, set in motion key plot points. And like any solar eclipse within the horror genre, nightmarish events quickly unfold that set the stage for the game’s main storyline, putting players within the boots of soldiers during the 2003 conflict in Iraq.
As with Supermassive Games previous entries – the Ghost Ship inspired Man of Medan in 2019 and The Crucible influenced Little Hope in 2020 – players are introduced to 5 key characters, each with diverging traits who we must guide through a hellish event that puts our moral compass as well as response time to the test. In House of Ashes, every character feels essential and an integral part of the story, where in Little Hope there was, for the most part, a lead role that took center stage. It might seem an obvious choice who would receive the greatest screen time, given the most notable face being that of Ashley Tisdale (High School Musical), who plays CIA officer Rachel King, a young woman with a troubled marriage who sparks up a physical relationship with fellow Marine Nick Kay (Moe Jeudy-Lamour). Yet creative director Will Doyle wisely keeps much of the decision-making within the scope of a military team going beyond enemy lines, where splitting up is more luck of the draw than a clear horror trope.
Rounding out the remaining cast is Lieutenant Colonel Eric King, the estranged husband of Rachel who haphazardly leads a team to investigate the potential satellite discovery of what appears to be an underground missile silo, 1st Lieutenant Jason Kolchek (Paul Zinno) – who along with Nick is grappling with the fallout of a mission gone wrong weeks prior – and Salim Othman (Nick Tarabay); an Iraqi Army Lieutenant who desperately wants to be reunited with his son. And like before, the character designs all feel relatively fluid.
Without giving too much of the plot away, our cast of characters unearths the ancient tomb of the Akkadian Empire – after an altercation involving both sides erupt in chaotic gunfire – now buried beneath the grounds of an unknown village. Once below and without any air support, the misplaced soldiers must navigate the dimly lit tomb in search of a way out. Unfortunately, the commotion has awakened primeval beings that begin to prey on them one by one.
While the Dark Pictures Anthology games have remained relatively similar in structure and design throughout their releases, the biggest change with House of Ashes is the player’s ability to pivot the camera in a 360-degree motion, which developers dabbled with for choice moments in Little Hope yet, for the most part, kept a fixed angle. Being able to observe your surroundings whenever you see fit marks a significant improvement in both look and feel here, as the shadow drenched tombs can provide a very limited and claustrophobic feel to the player’s experience. This isn’t to say that the tight corridors don’t impart a rather suffocating sense of dread, but more so provide a freeing understanding of where you are and what might lie around the corner, which makes roaming around a luminous structure a much more enjoyable experience than either of the two previous releases. Another improvement is the game’s ability to indicate when and what type of quick time event is about to besiege you, with various icons popping up along with a light rumble in the controller to alert you that your attention is needed for a particular action. It may feel like a slight addition, but in a game that’s as cinematic as it is interactive, it’s relatively easy to become lost in the story and miss a split-second decision that can alter the lives of those in your control.
Additionally and probably my favorite alteration to the mechanics is the more in-depth allowance to forego any immediate action during a particular quick time event; consider it the “Say Nothing” option of actions. Where in before, players were strictly offered a slowed-down action with either a positive or negative consequence – depending on one’s ability to think and act quickly – where here you’re choice to do nothing is far less black and white. While those key moments still exist, as when players must line up their crosshairs with oncoming danger in order to prevent it, there’s more of an incentive to do nothing; an instance highlighted when Eric, with Rachel dangling from a rope beneath him, begins slipping towards a rocky edge and decides his only course of action is to cut her loose; do you go along with Eric or do you see what might play out if you resist that urge just a little bit longer? Not only does this freedom allow for greater tension, but it places much more appreciable importance on moral decision-making within scenes of conflict.
Speaking of conflict, House of Ashes ratchets up the action throughout its story, where fight or flight decisions feel generously peppered in-between moments of horror. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of dread to be found within the tombs of this ancient ruin, where confined spaces and damp atmosphere immerse you in stifling trepidation, yet Supermassive Games has decidedly livened up the action, allowing particular stages to feel like interactive cut-scenes in a game titled Call of Duty: Iraqi Freedom. It’s a vast improvement over the by-the-numbers jump scares littered throughout Little Hope, where much of the slow-crawl of uncovering the truth in a fog-laden ghost town now feel invigorated with set-pieces designed for stand-offs and abrupt encounters.
However, don’t go in expecting genuine scares amidst its thrills, because House of Ashes, like its two predecessors, is still ultimately lacking in hair-raising scenes, instead tossing more of the same limp jump scares at audiences that ultimately felt successfully and succinctly part of Until Dawn. Here, the games heavy influences can not only be felt but seen, with more action-leaning films such as Aliens and Predator encoding the various design work with an H.R. Giger level of awe. This is an entry that knows more how to move and galvanize its players with bursts of excitement than fill with slow-burn terror, which unfortunately never fully worked in their previous entry.
While there’s a lot to appreciate, players who previously found much of the interactive element lacking won’t be won over, as there’s still a significant portion of its cinematic moments that leave players simply watching and wanting. Still, this is a vast improvement over previous entries in The Dark Pictures Anthology, with its pacing and kinetic dose of immersive horror feeling refreshed and palpable. Even if you don’t have a group of friends to play “Shared Story” or “Movie Night” with and make split-second decisions, House of Ashes is an engaging and invigorating night in that gives players reason to anticipate the future of interactive survival horror.
House of Ashes review code provided by the publisher.
The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes is out now on PS4/5, Xbox One/Series X/S, and PC.