This article contains spoilers for Little Hope’s short prologue. For a more general overview of how the game begins, our Little Hope preview from April is spoiler-free.
To date, Supermassive Games has shown only snippets of Little Hope’s opening, which sets up the fact this chapter of its Dark Pictures anthology series will mix sections set in the present day with moments from the Salem witch trial era of the late 1600s. But the studio has also been teasing a couple of other story secrets which set up the wider mystery of the game. After going hands-on with the demo in a recent remote hands-on, we’ll talk about both of these surprises below.
Little Hope’s action begins with a coach crash in the present day – the driver distracted by a sudden commotion in the back of the vehicle and then surprised by the appearance of a young girl in the middle of the road. Cut to black, and a shift in time to… the 1970s.
This third time period is the setting for the game’s opening prologue, a section which feels both a tutorial for what is to come and a miniature Supermassive Games horror story all of its own. Characters are quickly established, tension rises – and then the deaths begin.
Little Hope Gameplay Comparison – THEATRICAL AND CURATOR’S CUTS COMPARED! Watch on YouTube
There’s a lot to pick apart in this opening 20-minute slice, which introduces all of the game’s main cast in alternate roles. Bandersnatch and Maze Runner star Will Poulter plays the younger son in a family being fractured by tensions of the day. His dad is an alcoholic, driven to despair by the prospect of losing his job. His brother is an arsehole, who disapproves of his older sister Tanya’s new Black boyfriend. Finally, his troubled kid sister Megan is being neglected – and instead seems to be in communion with the devil. Yeah.