The Dark Pictures Anthology will end first season in a Murder Castle
Visiting a replica of the horrid hotel built by America's first serial killer
If you've already finished House Of Ashes, you'll have seen a wee trailer revealing that the next part of The Dark Pictures Anthology will be the "season one finale", named The Devil In Me. Bandai Namco have since publicly announced the next game in Supermassive's interactive horror story series, explaining a bit more of what's going on with the animatronic corpse. Bad news for would-be survivors: it's set in a replica of the infamous 'Murder Castle', a hotel built with traps and torture chambers by American serial killer H. H. Holmes.
"In The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me, a group of documentary filmmakers receive a mysterious invite to a replica of the 'Murder Castle' of H.H. Holmes, America's first serial killer," Bandai Namco explain. "They soon discover that they're being watched, and there is much more at stake."
The 'Murder Castle' was a real place, in Chicago in the late 19th century. Supposedly named the World's Fair Hotel (because of its proximity to the 1893 World's Fair), it was rigged for Holmes to freely torture, murder, and dispose of victims, with airtight and soundproofed rooms, torture chambers, secret passages, chutes to the basement, and other awfulness. Some folks question how accurate reports of all this were, mind. Holmes confessed to an iffy figure of 27 murders, and was executed for one.
The story has been bounced around fiction a fair bit. I've seen the Murder Castle and Holmes in an episode of time-travel show Timeless, and it provided partial inspiration for the Hotel Cortez in American Horror Story's fifth season. Next, this video game.
"Step into the anthology's most bloodcurdling story yet, where players' choices, more than ever, determines who lives and who dies," Bamco say. "Players will watch in horror as their unfortunate crew falls prey to a twisted game master who is observing their every move."
A twisted game master? Unsettling to think that all these people might die because one of them kept having their bard try to seduce treants in a D&D game. Completely undercut the grim tone the GM had so carefully plotted. I bet the final straw was the bard ruining an homage to the 'Red Wedding' by sticking a table centrepiece shrub down his pants.
Episodes from The Dark Pictures Anthology tend to arrive a year or so apart, so I'd guess perhaps we'll see The Devil In Me round Halloween 2022?
The horror series still falls short of the high point Supermassive hit with Until Dawn, but it's coming on. Alice Bee said in our The Dark Pictures Anthology: House Of Ashes review, "It's still too serious for its own good, but it's going in the right direction". The subterranean spook-o-rama came out on the 22nd of October.