The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan Release Date Announced

Bandai Namco announced on Tuesday the release date for its new game called The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan. It’s the first part of Bandai Namco’s The Dark Pictures anthology, and it’ll be released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on August 30th. Man of Medan is developed by Supermassive Games, a studio that’s known for creating Until Dawn, and like the horror-adventure game from 2015, Man of Medan players will have to make tough choices to survive a trip gone wrong and save as many people as they can.

Man of Medan’s release date announcement trailer that’s seen above previews some of those decisions that await players. During a trip to the North Pacific, a group of friends will start by making mundane decisions like whether or not to joke or flirt with someone, but those calls soon get much darker when they have to choose between running, hiding, and other options.

A description of the game offers more details and explains how the group of friends found themselves in this decision-filled scenario.

“Man of Medan is the first game in The Dark Pictures anthology, bringing supernatural horror to the South Pacific,” a summary of the game reads. “Five friends set sail on a holiday diving trip with a rumored WWII wreck to find. As the day unfolds and a storm rolls in, their trip soon changes into something much more sinister. Who will live? Who will die? It’s down to you. Can you save them all?”

In Until Dawn, you may remember that there were multiple endings that differed depending on how many people you were able to save. It looks like Man of Medan will boast a similar level of replayability since different actions will determine who lives and dies on the ship. Speaking to how replayable the game is, Supermassive CEO and executive producer for the game Pete Samuels said in a PlayStation Blog post that players will only see a fraction of the death scenes in one playthrough.

“In Until Dawn there were 38 death scenes for the characters and you could see up to 10 on a single playthrough,” Samuels said. “In Man of Medan there are 69, and the most you are likely to see on a single playthrough would be nine. That means you’d need to play the game a minimum of nine times just to see all of the death scenes, let alone all of the other possible story events.”

Samuels said that the first three games in the anthology are “well underway” with work already being done on the fourth and fifth as well.

The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan releases on August 30th.