The latest game in The Dark Pictures Anthology, Little Hope, has arrived and fans of Supermassive Games‘ distinct choose your own adventure horror games have another story to plow through. The story of Little Hope goes through quite a few twist and turns across various time periods. Thus, it can be a bit difficult to follow. So whether you’ve completed Little Hope and need the story and ending explained, or you’d like to just follow along to make sense of what is happening, this guide is for you.
Note: Little Hope’s story is changes depending on the choices you make. We have not yet explored every single possibility at the time of this writing so your experience may vary a little to greatly from the below.
Little Hope Story Summary
The Beginning
The story of The Dark Pictures: Little Hope begins in the 70s as you observe a family on the verge of being torn apart because of financial troubles and other issues.
The parent’s adoptive daughter, Megan, is struggling both with school and fitting in with her two brothers and one sister. The father, a manager of sorts at the town’s factory, is hitting the bottle hard because of the stress. This has put strain on the mother who feels she is alone in keeping the family together.
You briefly control Anthony, a seemingly good kid who is trying to make everyone in his family happy while being kind to Megan.
It isn’t long though that the troubled and frustrated Megan decides to burn the whole house down and doom her family. Everyone appears to die with Anthony’s fate left ambiguous.
Little Hope Story Summary
Present Day
Now in the present day, we join a small group of people that suspiciously look like the family from earlier. They are not, however, the same people.
The are all college history students under the tutelage of their professor, John, that are going on a field trip. From left to right in the picture above they are: Tanya, Daniel, john, Andrew and Angela. They aren’t originally heading for Little Hope, which is now a ghost town, but a forced detour sends the group in the town’s direction.
The bus driver, distracted by arguing going on with the students is barely able to swerve of the way from a girl, who appears to be Megan, shows up on the road.
The bus crashes but fortunately everyone appears to be mostly OK other than the bus driver, who is missing, and Andrew (who looks like Anthony from the earlier family) who is complaining of a bit of memory loss but is otherwise OK.
While some members of the group such as Tanya, prefer to stay near the bus, ultimately the group decides to head into the town proper of Little Hope to try and find help. Unbeknownst to them, they are being watched by creepy shadowy figures.
They head to the only place that seems to have any sign of life in it, the old town pub. This is where they find a strange, and drunk, older man by the name of Vince.
While Vince is mostly polite, he’s not interested in helping the group all that much.
Their phones have no reception and the bar doesn’t have anyway to reach anyone outside of town. So in a sense, they are stuck. They decide to keep wondering around town, trying to find a place that may have either someone that can help them, or at least a working phone line.
Tanya and her sort of boyfriend David want to try and head back to the bus to wait for help that perhaps the bus driver may bring there. However, the fog is intense. So intense, in fact, that when they try to walk through it they all end up back in the same spot. Clearly something supernatural is going here and that’s not all.
Little Hope Story Summary
The 17th Century
Members of the group all one by one start to experience bizarre and unexplainable flashbacks of sorts where they appear to be in Little Hope in the 17th century. Except, it’s not really a flashback as they are actually able to communicate and interact with the people they come across.
They are only there for a few moments but are able to glean that Little Hope doesn’t appear to be a fun place. They see a girl that looks like Megan and the girl that showed up on the road that caused the bus crash, but this time in a Purtian 17th century form where she is known as Mary.
Mary is quite strange and is suspected by some of being involved in witchcraft. Afraid for herself, she deflects her own strange behavior onto others, accusing them of witchcraft. These accusations start a chain reaction that you’ll see play out over the course of the game.
Little Hope Story Summary
Chasing Mary/Megan
The group, out of ideas split up and come together at various intervals throughout the story while continuing to be stalked by shadowy figures.
Things start to escalate as they see the mysterious girl that looks like Megan/Mary appear before them again. She appears to be leading them somewhere and short of any better ideas, they decide to follow her.
Fueled in part by the visions that they have been receiving, professor John is vocally distrustful of Mary while Andrew is vocal in his opinion that she’s just a kid and isn’t likely the cause of all their problems.
As they follow her around town, though, their visions start to escalate as they one by one start to see their lookalikes put on trial and summarily executed because of the accusations that Mary has levied against them.
The trials are being pushed forward by a priest named Carver that appears to have a lot of influence over Mary.
Little Hope Story Summary
Witch Trials
These witch trials in Little Hope’s past has consequences in the present day it seems. As their lookalikes are murdered, the shadowy figures emerge into the open as demons and begin to actively try to kill them in a way that is similar to their manner of execution. Now they have gone from just exploring the town to surviving and being on the run.
They do run into Vince from the bar again, who attempts to help them, but it doesn’t appear he can see the same things that they see, and isn’t of much use to them so they keep going.
Your choices and ability to hit QTEs in time while playing Little Hope will determine whether or not all of members of the cast survive.
It starts with Angela’s doppelganger who is drowned for being a “witch.” Tanya’s lookalike is then burned at the stake while Daniel’s is impaled. Finally John is then crushed by stones. What’s especially eerie is that the manners of death in the 17th century are quite similar to how the family in the 70s died and how the characters in the present day are dying as well.
By the time you reach the late part of the game, these similarities are not lost on the characters. They know something is up by still do not know what exactly. However, all but Andrew are as suspicious as ever of Mary and this comes to a head when the final accusation is made… and it’s against Mary herself by Carver.
Little Hope Story Summary
Accusation of Mary
The surviving members are transported to the past one final time. Carver is making accusations against Mary and the townsfolk, tired of the needless deaths are buying into the idea that Mary is the source of the devil and witchcraft going on in Little Hope.
Mary denies this and secretly pleads to Andrew and his past self Abraham for help. It’s worth noting that to this point Andrew/Abraham is the only one yet to be accused by Mary.
With your help, Abraham is capable of convincing the judge and the townsfolk that Mary is not the one responsible but instead has been manipulated by Carver the whole time.
Carver is found to be engaging in witchcraft himself, and Mary is off the hook.
It appears that for those still alive in the present day, whatever curse had been afflicted on them is lifted and everything is OK now as day breaks.
Little Hope Ending Explained
The Bus Driver
A reminder before we begin at this is just one possible ending and there lays the possibility that more exist. However, here is a general explanation about how the bus driver twist in Little Hope plays out and its implications. If you’d like to share how your experience differed, please email [email protected].
If you were only here for a story summary, and do not want to be spoiled on the twist at the end of the game, please leave now.
As day breaks and the survivors gather at the diner, they lament how they wish everyone could have made it.
Soon, though, it is revealed that the only one actually standing there is Andrew and he’s not really Andrew he is in fact the bus driver the whole time.
The bus driver is actually Anthony from the beginning of the game, clearly still traumatized by the death of his entire family. The whole story had, essentially, been a figment of his imagination as he passed through Little Hope, reliving all of the terrible memories that he has tried to forget and coming to terms with forgiving his sister, Megan, for what she had done.
The only person who was actually real was Vince. Vince is revealed to be the boyfriend of Anthony’s older sister Taylor, whom was shown briefly at the start of the game dropping Taylor off at home.
Vince the whole game was trying to convince Anthony to snap out of this episode he was in and get him to leave town, and eventually find him help after it was clear that he was having a breakdown.
While more subtle than Man of Medan’s ending, if you elected to receive hints from The Curator during each intermission, you may have been able to figure out that everything was not what it seemed.
Published: Oct 30, 2020 12:00 am