This review contains spoilers
I wanted to love this game, I really really did. I thought the concept was really cool as I'm very interested in the old Witch trials stories and when I saw the trailers for this game I thought it looked really spooky and like it'd be a lot of fun to play so I thought it would be a big improvement over Man of Medan, I was almost correct. OK first off if you've played Until dawn or Man of medan then you've pretty much already experienced this kind of gameplay so I'm gonna skip straight to the story, once again spoilers will be present.
So the story begins with a prologue where we meet a relatively normal family living in the 1970's, there's the two parents and 4 children. One night the house catches on fire and all but one of the people in the house are killed, this doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the story at first but we'll get back to it. Afterwards we meet a group of college students and their professor who are riding a bus and need to take a detour through a town called Little hope which is famous for its history in the witch trials of the old days. The bus crashes and the bus driver is nowhere to be seen when everyone wakes up so they must travel through the town in order to find a way out, along the way they find a bar where a strange man is seen drinking alone and says some rather strange things to you when you go in there, you encounter him a few more times throughout the game but he doesn't pay a big role just yet. Afterwards the group splits up and begin exploring the town together, as they do they encounter spirits that take them into the past to witness the witch trials that occurred and many of the people from the flashbacks represent the people in the modern world, as you make choices you can influence what happens in the flashbacks and the modern world. While exploring the town you also encounter some strange looking demons that all look like they've been killed in some gruesome way. You will often have to do quick time events and make decisions to help all your characters survive their encounters with these demons and it can be easier said than done. Anyways the game up until this point was pretty interesting and spooky for me but then we get to the ending and that's what ruined it for me. When the game ends you find out that all of the characters besides one are just illusions that the kid who survived the fire made up in his head, based on all his family members that died in the fire, the demons that chase them are all based on how the people in the fire died and so none of them were ever in any actual danger, it was just some guy hallucinating the whole time. Turns out he was the bus driver, driving an empty bus and the man in the bar was his sisters boyfriend back in the 70's, all the people you encounter from the witch trials are also hallucinations. The reason I didn't like this is because I feel like the whole "It was all just a dream" ending is so stupid and overdone that it just ruins whatever story is being told, I realize the developers basically just wanted to blow our minds like they did in Until Dawn but it just doesn't work here and honestly it disappointed me so much that I really have no desire to every try this game again even though it has multiple endings.
So the story begins with a prologue where we meet a relatively normal family living in the 1970's, there's the two parents and 4 children. One night the house catches on fire and all but one of the people in the house are killed, this doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the story at first but we'll get back to it. Afterwards we meet a group of college students and their professor who are riding a bus and need to take a detour through a town called Little hope which is famous for its history in the witch trials of the old days. The bus crashes and the bus driver is nowhere to be seen when everyone wakes up so they must travel through the town in order to find a way out, along the way they find a bar where a strange man is seen drinking alone and says some rather strange things to you when you go in there, you encounter him a few more times throughout the game but he doesn't pay a big role just yet. Afterwards the group splits up and begin exploring the town together, as they do they encounter spirits that take them into the past to witness the witch trials that occurred and many of the people from the flashbacks represent the people in the modern world, as you make choices you can influence what happens in the flashbacks and the modern world. While exploring the town you also encounter some strange looking demons that all look like they've been killed in some gruesome way. You will often have to do quick time events and make decisions to help all your characters survive their encounters with these demons and it can be easier said than done. Anyways the game up until this point was pretty interesting and spooky for me but then we get to the ending and that's what ruined it for me. When the game ends you find out that all of the characters besides one are just illusions that the kid who survived the fire made up in his head, based on all his family members that died in the fire, the demons that chase them are all based on how the people in the fire died and so none of them were ever in any actual danger, it was just some guy hallucinating the whole time. Turns out he was the bus driver, driving an empty bus and the man in the bar was his sisters boyfriend back in the 70's, all the people you encounter from the witch trials are also hallucinations. The reason I didn't like this is because I feel like the whole "It was all just a dream" ending is so stupid and overdone that it just ruins whatever story is being told, I realize the developers basically just wanted to blow our minds like they did in Until Dawn but it just doesn't work here and honestly it disappointed me so much that I really have no desire to every try this game again even though it has multiple endings.
LJ_90
3 years ago
Now, when you get 100% of the information, you realize 2 things: a)there is enough evidence to suggest everything that happened in the flashbacks was real, so all the witch trials and killings indeed happen. b)The bus driver had a doll of his own. We do know that he developed an interest in magic and witchcraft. And when you get all the secrets, you find out that Carver was actually in league with the devil, and that his murders, the people he executed in the name of "God", are doomed to relive their suffering for eternity.
If you get the ending when the bus driver dies the trophy is "No escaping Fate". He didn't die in the fire, but he did die, as it was his fate because of the curse.
The curator says, if we reach the ending with some characters dead and others "alive" that "some didn't found redemption, others did". Why would he say this if it's all in this guy's head?
We find a clue as well that explains the difference between a soul and spirit, and how one needs the other to find peace, one is pure while the other not.
If you manage to get people to condemn Carver, and make the other character confront their demons, then they are "redemmeed".
The curator even mentions they all avoiding condemnation, eternal suffering.
I don't know, I think that's enough information to get a feeling that maybe it was a "they are all trapped there and need to fight their demons to break the cycle and move on" and they needed Andrew/Anthony to get back to Little Hope to be able to do that. But of course, you only get to all of that with 100% the game, so it makes you work for it.
Now it's only a theory, but I think that the language the curator uses is key, after all, he did used very specific language in Man of Medan as well.