Small Details You Missed In The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope Trailer
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope is the next upcoming title by Supermassive Games. The latest chapter in the studio's The Dark Pictures Anthology series, Little Hope carries on Supermassive's tradition of providing Twilight Zone or Tales from the Crypt-esque scenarios where your actions determine who lives and who dies, and each choice reveals new secrets, endings, and extras. At least, that's what the latest trailer indicates, but the video's biggest takeaways aren't what you see but what you miss.
The new Little Hope trailer, labeled "Secrets & Premonitions Trailer," dives into the game's features. If you've paid attention to the game's announcements and updates, many of these features — such as the game's story, release date, and inclusion of two-player co-op — are old hat. However, the video also includes tiny details hidden in blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments.
The first such detail materializes around the 0:28 mark, when we see the cause of the bus crash that strands the main characters in the town of Little Hope: A phantasmal little girl appears in the middle of the road. No, the detail isn't that this scene is eerily similar to the car crash at the beginning of Silent Hill. Instead, the detail is the girl's face. The girl and the crash seemingly premiered in the release date trailer, but her face was hidden behind a scene transition. The new trailer displays the girl's face for a fraction of a second, and if you look closely, you will notice she is the same little girl that graces the game's advertisement campaign, Mary (and Megan, who also shares the same face). The plot surrounding the girl thickens.
Tiny detail number two comes in at 0:32, when a roaring house fire engulfs the trailer. Throughout the house fire snippets, most people are trapped, burning alive and suffering, but not everyone. Two people-shaped silhouettes neither burn nor react to the fire. What could this mean? Your guess is as good as ours.
If you closely examine the trailer starting at 0:45, you will notice a spear piercing the ground and one character hiding behind a dumpster, followed by another scene with this character crouching behind the dumpster but with no spear in sight, and finally followed by the character being killed by a creature wielding the same spear. Between the clips that introduce the spear to audiences and the character's jugular, respectively, the character is given two choices: "Confront" and "Escape." "Escape" is highlighted. The detail here is pretty clear: The three snippets are probably an in-game event told out of order. The character hides behind a dumpster because a creature with a spear is chasing him. He tries to escape but is killed. That's probably the correct order, but we won't know for sure until we play Little Hope.
The fourth detail is probably the most important, as it ties into in-game secrets. At 1:16, the video displays a huge web of secrets. Some are grayed out, and others are colored and have the word "NEW" floating above them. When the cursor hovers over the secrets, the gray ones are labeled "Locked," while the colored ones feature the label "Not yet found in current play-through." While difficult to decipher, the web could indicate which collectables you can obtain during a playthrough and that you need to finish the game numerous times to collect all the secrets. Moreover, the board probably implies that if you miss one secret, the game won't spawn any tangentially intertwined collectibles. Or perhaps the board shows how Little Hope's collectibles tie together via "string theory." Every new answer seems to produce more questions.
Last but certainly not least, 1:22 reveals what might be an important plot point. Apparently, you can unlock bonus material in Little Hope that takes you through the design process behind the game's main antagonist. The bonus video is called "Designing the Demon," and that right there is the detail. "Demon," as in singular, not plural. The game might feature only one demon that, if gameplay previews are any indication, will hound players constantly. Or maybe "demon" is just a codename and doesn't have any bearing on Little Hope's plot.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope likely hides far more tiny details than the trailer, which is devoted to secrets, could ever divulge. After all, the crux of the game is the mystery behind the town of Little Hope and why the main characters share faces with past Little Hope citizens. We will have to wait until the game launches on October 30 to find the remaining secrets and details.