The first

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan is the first in a series of interactive drama and survival horror games produced by Supermassive Games and published by Bandai Namco. The game, released in 2019 and available for PC, Xbox, and Playstation, tells the story of a group of friends who meet up to enjoy a vacation and go deep-sea diving. In the midst of their outing, they are ambushed by bandits and a storm that throws them toward a large drifting ship. Inside the ship, all they find are the bodies of soldiers from World War II and the certainty that they should not be there...

The story in the ship

Man of Medan is a game whose narrative is clearly inspired by horror classics. A group of friends gets together to enjoy their time together but something goes wrong and they must fight for survival while a greater evil floats around them. From this understanding, it would be possible to say that Man of Medan has a generic and predictable plot, but this is definitely not the case.

The game's storytelling is structured to present freedom and meaning to the player. Freedom in the sense that it is possible to plow through the possibilities and come up with unique paths, as far as your own choices are concerned. This is evident in the consequences that the player must face and that are a direct result of their actions within the game. Perhaps this thought is obvious and expected, however, what makes the difference in Man of Medan is the meaning of your choices.

Unlike games with a similar proposal, the game presents choices that reflect consequences throughout the game, demonstrating a very interesting effort regarding the complexity of the script. For me, who also works as a game screenwriter, it is evident the effort made by the team to tell a cohesive story without minimizing the relevance of the player's choices, especially in important moments of the plot. These usually present options with no real impact because they need to direct the player toward a more objective outcome.

In this way, we can see that the plot is, in fact, a sum of choices with real meaning and consequences that impact the trajectory in a particular way for each player.

Moving on to the construction of the characters, it is possible to notice a lot of personality in all of them. We have from the traditional archetypes, such as the inconsequential jerk, to more innovative molds, such as a villain who loses himself and goes crazy throughout the game. You will undoubtedly get involved with the characters, whether you like them or not. So be sure to make good choices and make sure they return alive to the safety of their homes... Or maybe you just want to see the end of this little group that snuck onto the ship.

Still talking about the characters, there is one that deserves special attention: The curator.

He is an intriguing figure who is not inserted in the main plot, but who knows everything that happens in the story, to the point of even giving some hints that we cannot tell if they are good or bad. This omniscient being keeps his stories in a kind of library that he calls "repository" and talks to the player with great confidence as if he were in control of everything. The choice of actor Pip Torrens to play this character was a brilliant choice since the British touch allied to his narrative characteristics transformed the curator into a kind of Peaky Blinder of Horror. He is a very endearing character and one that (spoiler alert) will be present in the other games in The Dark Pictures Anthology series.

Dealing with the characters and their fears

The gameplay of Man of Medan is simple but manages to transmit to the player at all times a lot of anxiety and claustrophobia. The cramped and poorly lit corridors make us want to leave that environment immediately, but the heavy and slow movement of the characters prevents us from doing so. The feeling of "I want to get out of here" is present at all times, but there is nothing the player can do about it. However, I think the characters could move a little faster, as sometimes the anxiety is exchanged for the frustration that the slowness causes. In addition, I think the movement could be a bit better refined since sometimes I noticed that when I tried to turn to look somewhere else, the character would spin around its own axis.

A positive point is a way the story is told through gameplay. The elements of the scenery, as well as the collectibles and the boards containing "premonitions", make us immerse ourselves a little more in the narrative and try to understand what really happened in that place, like a detective who connects the dots to sew his own story. This form of storytelling worked very well in the game because as we progress, we notice very different nuances that completely change the perspective of what, in fact, could be happening on that ship. I thought this was very well put together and makes perfect narrative sense.

Some points could be improved, such as the interaction with the menu. We access the game menu with the standard C key. When we enter a specific area of the menu, we can't go back to the previous screen directly, so we have to press ESC to go back to the game and then C again. This is a bit of a hindrance because the game has several collectible items that we could see at once, but we need to make this back-and-forth movement whenever we want to analyze them. It is worth mentioning that I did not come across any bug, crash, or glitch of any kind throughout the game.

The “beauty” inside a ghost ship

Man of Medan managed to convey to the player what it would be like to be in an abandoned ship full of supernatural beings. I felt involved by the story and the atmosphere, both graphically and in terms of sound effects. The art direction did very well in transforming our experience into something close to an interactive horror movie and the sound team was responsible for all the tension I felt, as well as the scares in some very cool jumpscares!

The facial expressions of the characters are very convincing, especially the looks. The Curator is a spectacle in itself. I would pay just to hear him tell stories and ramble on about his worldviews. He is certainly an intriguing and very rich character. Supermassive Games needs to explore him further, as he is one of the most intriguing characters of the current generation and has the potential to become something greater than he is.

The PT-BR subtitles have some translation flaws. Some are simple errors, such as swapped letters, but others have to do with the translation directly, as in a moment when the character asks for help to open a door and the speech is translated as a request for help, which was clearly a misinterpretation of the English word, help.

I also wish I could play it with the dubbing in PT-BR. Despite the excellent dubbing of Pip Torrens in the role of the Healer, I believe the other characters did not perform as captivatingly in this regard.

For this review, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan was played on PC through Steam.