Man of Medan

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Man of Medan is the first in a planned series of games under the title of "The Dark Pictures Anthology." Much like Until Dawn, a previous game developed by Supermassive a few years ago, Man of Medan is an interactive horror story, where the decisions you make and the actions you take will determine how the story plays out.

I'm going into this game blind, so I do not have many details I can offer you about the plot, but as I understand it at this time, the story is about a group of divers that find themselves exploring the wreckage of a ship from the 1940's. They attempt to uncover the mysterious history of the ship, and also try not to get killed by... whatever might actually be happening here. I don't know, and that's part of the fun! Come watch me totally not get scared by this game.

For more information on the legend this game is loosely based on, please watch Part 0. And while you're at it, please also consider watching my playthrough of Until Dawn if you haven't already. Or hey, watch it again. Tis the season for spooky, after all.


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Last edited by James Plays Games on Fri Oct 01, 2021 7:15 pm, edited 18 times in total.

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Well, this looks interesting.

And your pixel sprite looks appropriately wide-eyed for a horror game.

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When I played this with some friends, one of them picked the "say nothing" dialogue option for their character every single time. It was much funnier than it ought to have been.

clearcardinal wrote:
Wed Oct 28, 2020 8:21 am
When I played this with some friends, one of them picked the "say nothing" dialogue option for their character every single time. It was much funnier than it ought to have been.
It's an interesting change to add that as an option for seemingly every dialogue choice, but I don't plan to abuse it though.

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Only now catching up to this. It does seem to me that the game is trying to encourage replay by ensuring that you can't explore everything the first time. The problem is that if the game isn't letting you luxuriate and enjoy those details, you're less likely to be engaged to the point that you will want to replay. By frustrating your expectations, it's causing you to dislike it a bit more, and they'd have to work harder to get you to continue. It also has the problem where you don't really know what you're missing out on by choosing particular options.

I would wager it's a consequence of the multiplayer system (ensuring that if you're in co-op mode you both keep the story moving). I think they want the narrative to maintain the pace of a movie, without really getting that it shouldn't move that quickly if they want it to be an actual interactive game (in the sense you move an avatar around in the world) as opposed to something more like a choose-your-own-adventure. In that mode of play, finding 'hidden' details wouldn't really be a thing, except by making alternative choices.

The one game that I can think of that did do something like this almost perfectly is The Last Express, which for my money is still the most cinematic game I've ever played. That had a timer, but it was far more generous, in that each long segment of the game had a running clock, and specific actions you had to take before a certain time. For one, it had a great save system for rewinding (which you'd probably have to do a few times before learning the correct sequence). The best feature was that the entire game space actually was alive - the other characters would have interesting conversations, and you could often choose to talk to them about things as well. You knew for sure that if you did one thing , you were going to miss out on something else somewhere, but it was so well made you did want to go back and see it.

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I figure it's not something they would want to budget in, but it'd be kind of awesome if, in the case that you somehow never get air or figured out the chemical leak, you can keep up the whole hallucination and end up setting up some elaborate ritual that you as player might potentially believe is how you complete the game. You might then capture Brad and 'sacrifice' him.

I mean, for all I know, something like that is already in the game. I don't think it's entirely outside of reason that there would be a scenario where the characters fully succumb to the chemicals without catching on to what it's all about, and who knows how far it could get taken. But I also think that the developers had a certain narrative they wanted for the game and didn't want to stray too far from that no matter what decisions you made, so a scenario like that might be too much of a shift in story.

Anyway, new video time.

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Haven't caught up with Ep 13 yet, but I can see how there could be options based on who's been exposed and who hasn't. It could be that when Fliss is 'chasing' Conrad(? or whoever it was) that the correct option would actually be to jump, if she is still under the influence of it.

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