Overview
The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes is a cinematic horror adventure game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Bandai Namco for the Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC on October 22, 2021.
The third in the Dark Pictures series (after Little Hope), House of Ashes follows a group of soldiers during the 2003 Iraq War after a botched attempt to find Saddam Hussein's hidden chemical weapon silo in the Zagros Mountains leads them into the buried ruins of an ancient Sumerian temple. After a prologue involving two warring soldiers (in 2231 B.C.) attempting to survive monsters in the cursed temple, the story chronicles the modern group (including USMC Force Recon marines Lt. Jason Kolchek and Sgt. Nick Kay, USAF Lt Col. Eric King, CIA field officer Rachel King, and Iraqi Army lieutenant Salim Othman) as they try to survive the monsters inside and find their way out.
Like its predecessors, the game focuses on timed dialogue choices, quick time events, and third-person exploration, and includes multiple multiplayer options, multiple endings, and no losing condition (as the story proceeds to the end, even after an untimely death of one or more protagonists). New to the series are multiple difficulty options, a free-looking camera system (rather than fixed cameras), and the "Bearing" system (showing which choices lead to certain consequences, based on the Butterfly Effect system of Until Dawn).
The game will be followed up with The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me.
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