By the time I figure out how to run, the danger has passed. It's my first foray into The Cassiopeia, the spacecraft where Directive 8020 is set, and my first duty is to learn the slightly baffling controls as I struggle to elegantly run away from Supermassive Game's newest slice of horror. But, there is something fitting about scrambling with the controls during my first taste of the upcoming horror game's stealth gameplay, desperately crouching-walking from behind a desk while a pulsating red aura around the edges of my screen warns me against it.
These moments of hide-and-seek stealth are a first for the series. Supermassive Games' The Dark Pictures Anthology, alongside Until Dawn and The Quarry, are cinematic horror narrative games where choice, consequence, and branching timelines govern everything. Enemy encounters are scripted, and save for some quicktime events and shotgun trigger-pulling, you're at the whims of a director like in the best of slasher flicks. Perform badly and blood and guts will spill no matter how stealthy you try to be.
