Little Hope: Fate Worse Than Death
I love this game so much, that I want to explain the plot and help process my emotions about Fate Worst Than Death ending.
Little Hope is a game about processing grief and finding acceptance in loss. (Note all first letters of names mean that they are, in spirit, the same person Anthony/Andrew/Abraham are meant to be the same person and have the same character model).
In the prologue, the game shows a dysfunctional family through the eyes of Anthony. There is James, the drunken father, Anne, the neglectful mother, Tanya, who wants to run away, Dennis, the dickhead bother, and Megan, the troubled young daughter. Anthony uses a match to start the stove and then gets locked out of the house. Megan put her doll near the stove, and it catches fire and starts to burn the house down (Anthony does not know this at the time). Anthony breaks a window to let his father escape but he watches as his father gets crushed by the collapsing ceiling. He watches as Megan runs up stairs and burns to death. He tell his sister, Tanya, who is currently on the balcony to ether go back in the house to try to escape, in which she will dies from the flames, or to try to climb down, where she will slip and get hung. He then sees his brother, Dennis, fall from the roof and land on the metal rebar fence and died. After all three are dead, Anthony falls to his knees and looks in his hand to see the matches. A random stranger also sees the matches and asks Anthony what did he do. Anthony, completely distraught, runs into the house to try to save his mother (as the player, we see that she died first). The screen then cuts to black, leaving Anthony's fate unknow.
The pre-prologue shows a bus driver, which is reveal to be Anthony in the last moments of the game, dives an empty bus into Little Hope, his home town. As he is driving, he hallucinate his little sister, Megan running into the road, and he crashes the bus to not hit her.
I believe its Megan who is the main 'problem' in the story because she is the only family member that Anthony didn't try to save (He wanted her to live, but wasn't able to do anything to try to help her, like coaching or talking to). His guilt for losing her is much more than another family member... And its heavily implied that Megan is being groomed by Reverend Carson (which is why accusing him leads to good endings),
The game follows Andrew, Angela, John, Taylor, and Daniel (aka the main party) as they see vison of there doubles in witch trials in the 1692 and get haunted by demons (very on the nose).
At the end of the game (The chapter is called Full Circle), if all family member are dead, and Andrew said that the doll is evil or Reverend Carver is called out, the Fate Worst Than Death ending can occur (I'm going to talk about the version where Vince forgives Anthony and doesn't call the cops and the gun has ammo).
A callback happens if after the final court room 1692 flashback i where if Mary is announced as evil or if the rest of the party is not redeemed, the house that there in (which is the same house in the prologue. AKA Anthony's house) has some debris fall and block the doors, separating Andrew from the rest of the party. He runs to the same window that he watched his dad died in and bangs on it the same way. The party then gets killed by the demons and Andrew has the same reaction/movement/distraught as Anthony did all those years ago. He falls to his knees and everything.
Andrew sits on his porch when Vince comes up near him and forgives Anthony for the fire, and sympathizes with Anthony for all the pain he went through and tells him how to get help. The final line shared between the two is Vince telling him to never come back (In a "this place will only bring you pain" kind-of-a-way). Andrew is then left alone. Andrew then pulls out the gun and points it to his head. Right before he pulls the trigger, the camera move behind Andrew to reveal Megan who does a very faint shake of her head (as to say don't do it) and puts her hand on his shoulder. The camera cuts back to Andrew, only he has different clothes on: a bus driver uniform and he puts down the gun (the surface plot is finding the party finding the lost bus driver and getting help to escape Little Hope) After a recontextualize scene plays out where Andrew's character model gets replayed by an older Anthony model, and the other member of the party do not exist, it makes it very clear that the events of the game were Anthony's way to process the lost of his family. The final scene of the game is of Anthony's burn house with old Anthony sitting on the porch with Megan in the background comforting him. Anthony never turns around to address Megan nor acknowledge her existence.
This is genuinely my favorite story of all time, beside the whole Taylor and Daniel trying to date... The game is pact with symbolic meaning and call back that I strive to write as good as the writer of Little Hope. I believe that Little Hope is not only the best Dark Pictures game, not only the best Supermassive game, but the best interactive story game.
The good ending is also really good, but this one just hits so much harder.
kaledo-art
origamiaround
areudirty
gummygunk
ellievsbear
