Quick Look: The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes

Abbyyyyyy!! <3

Great group.

Ybbaaabby!

oo what a fun group. nice

This intro is great.

360p video quality is a bit low

reunion tour going these days

Abby Russell? On MY Giant Bomb stream?! It's more likely than you think!

And I've played both the previous Dark Pictures Anthology games, and...they're a fun slice of spooky fun. Nothing has come close to "Until Dawn," but as a yearly Halloween tradition, it's been incredibly fun to have these every year.

And they're honestly STILL better than whatever Quantic Dream keeps somehow getting money to put out, at least these are fun, stilted, and often scary on-purpose.

That's my wife!

Bummed I missed this live, but what a great crew. Good to see Abby from Brooklyn from LA on for the annual Dark Pictures entry.

As long as this doesn’t have a complete “fuck you” of a twist, it *has* to be better than Little Hope, right?

This is a great crew! It's fun to see my favorite Brooklynite stopping by

watching this instead of dune because *that's* how excited i am about a jess+abby quick look

It would actually have been rad to see Josh Hutcherson in this. has he ever done snobby evil man stuff?

Edit: also something about the way the faces look in this game is... off. Almost everyone looks uncanny in a way that the other games from this developer managed to avoid.

what a powerful group assembled for this can't watch to finish watching

I know WFH messed with some stuff but did the face tech get worse in this one? A lot of those faces look like textures didnt load in right.

So happy to see Abby again!

Jess and Abby are the best!

What a crew! Always great to see Abby back on Giant Bomb, especially during the spooky season.

What a killer lineup for this QL! Oof! I'm so excited :D

I understand the decision but it’s so weird to not see Abby’s name tagged in the cast videos.

Not that it’s wrong, just weird.

Anyway, I know she loves these games. Hopefully there is an Extra Life play through of this in our future!

Fuck yeah Abby!!

Enough with the excitement over Abby appearing on GiantBomb, not enough appreciation of of her cattle-forward wardrobe!

@nodima: it's not new if you follow her on twitch

Abby's microphone mishap was the greatest jumpscare.

I skipped the second of these after enjoying Man of Medan but I'm very intrigued by the setup for this one.

This game was the perfect amount of dumb for some great commentary. Really had fun watching this! Thanks!

ABBY!

Why is the gameplay window so tiny?

Great crew! Game seems boring! (and this is coming from a Man of Medan/Little Hope apologist)

Despite the numerous crashes I see while playing these games, they are pretty damn cool. Not quite as good as Until Dawn, but still interesting and fun.

According to their website, 8 of these are planned and the next one is titled: The Devil in Me

It will be the finale of the first "season"

Saving this for my birthday, which I'll be spending all of at the DMV, but boy, am I excited.

Jess AND Abby??? :abbydance

Fun banter from the group. I'm pretty sure all the characters in this game are written to be unlikable, so dunking on them feels appropriate.

I really like those games and it was a fun quicklook.

I understand people and @voidburger (not a knock against you to be clear, I really appreciated your presence on this ql) not liking the twist of Little Hope, but for me the best thing about these games is that they lean into the horror clichés and tropes without acting knowing or smug about it. I've seen criticisms against them being "too serious" but I don't think they really are, they just avoid acting self-aware and meta in a way that'd be grating (like a Cabin in the Woods is, imho). In a serious dramatic game the twist of Little Hope would've made me angry, as it kinda destroy the stakes of what happened, but in the context of the game it worked as being a dumb "gotcha" that's very similar to the creepshow vibes this series is going for.

Still, Until Dawn is the one that succeeded the most at incorporating the clichés but using them in a novel way, but I appreciate supermassive leaning into the tropes still. I think House of Ashes lacked the dumb scares but it also has one very dumb twist that I enjoyed quite a bit.

He tries to sheathe his sword here: https://youtu.be/mi1oQxIcq5s?t=1199 but it glitches

Abby's Mic! LOL