Man of Medan has no ties to Until Dawn, developer confirms

Man of Medan, the first instalment in Supermassive’s “The Dark Pictures Anthology”, will have no connection with Until Dawn the developers have told us.

Despite some very obvious overlap between the two games, the Until Dawn and Dark Pictures universes are completely separate entities explained Pete Samuels, series director and executive producer. 

When asked about the possibility of a crossover, or whether the Until Dawn characters and setting had been retired, he said “The Dark Pictures Anthology is standalone, with every game in the series a new experience.”

It should come as no surprise, really. Despite having worked on the fledgling Until Dawn franchise for the best part of a decade, Supermassive’s upcoming horror series is being published by Bandai Namco. It’s safe to assume that Sony owns the Until Dawn IP which it could end up passing on to another studio in future.

Samuels told us that the team at Supermassive Games immediately concocted the idea for The Dark Pictures Anthology as soon as it finished work on Until Dawn though didn’t begin work on the new project for another year.

Understandably, Samuels didn’t want to go into too much detail surrounding the studio’s pre-existing partnership with Sony and Until Dawn, wanting to focus purely on the team’s newest venture. We asked how The Dark Pictures Anthology ultimately ended up with Namco Bandai, to which he responsed:

We created an early prototype of the two player online mode to help explain what we were talking about. This had a great reception from publishers and we were delighted to partner with Bandai Namco.

If you haven’t been keeping up to date with Man of Medan, one of its tentpole features is a suite of multiplayer options – this will be the standard across all futures games in The Dark Pictures Anthology.

“Don’t Play Alone” is more than just a marketing tagline. Man of Medan allows two players to share the story together online, whether they’re friends of strangers. There’s also a Movie Night mode ripe for groups of up to five friends, prompting you to select a character then pass the controller around, sculpting a narrative through your individual choices.

For more, be sure to read our Man of Man multiplayer hands on preview. The game launches on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on August 30th.