Jason Graves scares the players and listeners again. The second part of The Dark Pictures Anthology titled Little Hope came out in October last year and has another amazing soundtrack created by this composer after the previous installment of this horror series, Man of Medan.
The soundtrack gives the player the real chills.
The game takes place in a mysterious town of Little Hope, covered with a thick fog. Five protagonists decide to look for help in the town after their bus crashed. Soon they realise that a lot of weird things are happening there. They start experiencing events from three hundred years before, when Little Hope was a town where witch trials and executions had place. The game has a slightly better storyline and the atmosphere than Man of Medan and the unsettling vibe of the abandoned foggy town really affects the player’s imagination.
Jason Graves scares the players and listeners again.
That unsettling vibe was reflected well in the game’s soundtrack. While there were several soothing pieces in the score for Man of Medan, here there is nothing that makes you feel peaceful and safe. The soundtrack gives the player the real chills and when not being scary it is unnerving and mysterious. Low parts of male choir, gloomy pads, detuned piano, sudden orchestral strikes after long eerie takes, bowed surfaces and of course dissonant, abstract strings, this is what makes you feel endangered while exploring Little Hope. You can experience that in tracks like Something Wicked or The Devil’s Grasp.
Furthermore the composer’s daughter took a great part in creating this creepy atmosphere. Her haunting whispering, chanting and other sounds she made besides humming the main theme add a lot to this hair-raising score. Jason Graves also used her processed voice to create some unsettling pads. I am a fan of horror movies and games where creepy little girls appear (yes, the unforgettable F.E.A.R.) and Little Hope has even two creepy little girls, so adding a girl’s voice to the score was an accurate and interesting idea.
The composer did a great job again.
The game is about witch hunting in the late 1600s so that time period and those terrible events were also portrayed in the soundtrack. The use of a hammered dulcimer (Little Hope, Witchcraft) sends us back to the dark times after the Middle Ages and the choir, both mixed and male, indicates dealing with something unholy. The epic sounding Prologue track with the orchestra and choir is a great homage to the classic of horror and tells by itself a story of dealing with forces straight from hell.
Little Hope OST is another interesting score by Jason Graves. It is more versatile than the one for Man of Medan, also less melodic, which I obviously enjoy, and might be really scary for the players. The composer did a great job again. Too bad that the soundtrack has not been officially released yet. It is available only on vinyl published by Bandai Namco (buy here) and in-game of course. Enough said, with that scary OST there is no hope for the town of Little Hope.