Hidden Agenda: 7 Things You Need To Know About Supermassive Games' New IP
Group-solving crimes where one of you is the criminal? Bring it on.
Supermassive Games is certainly busy.
Along with creating The Inpatient, a prequel to 2015's Until Dawn, the small British developer is also working on Hidden Agenda. The new PS4 exclusive was quietly announced during Sony's E3 pre-show, and already looks incredibly promising, despite a lack of footage shown thus far.
Information about it is still fairly limited, given that the three minute announcement video mainly featured the developers talking about the game, instead of giving away an abundance of footage.
This certainly makes sense on two fronts. Supermassive Games' projects are incredibly narrative-driven, with plot and characters being given the most attention. Showing too much could provide some story spoilers. Giving away the plot too early will quickly turn off any interest.
Furthermore, it is possible that releasing a full trailer during E3 could have caused the game to slip through the cracks, being overtaken by the other games in Sony's bloated showcase. After all, with such future blockbusters as God of War, Spider-Man, and Days Gone having extensive footage shown, a brand new IP from a small developer was bound to get overlooked. Hopefully a full trailer will be released soon.
Keeping all of that in mind, here's what we know so far.
7. It's Partially Influenced By Until Dawn
Supermassive Games' biggest modern success story comes from Until Dawn, so it makes sense that there is a lot of inspiration pulled from the horror game.
The atmosphere, choice-based mechanics, and presence of fully fleshed out characters all look to make their crossover between the two IPs. Given that the narrative and characters of Until Dawn were among the best parts of that game, we can expect that Supermassive will put the same amount of care and work into Hidden Agenda.
One of the biggest appeals of Until Dawn was how everybody can die, everybody can live, and all scenarios in between are a possibility. Hidden Agenda will replicate this, with "everybody" expanding beyond playable characters and into other characters featured throughout the story.
Speaking of atmosphere, all gameplay footage was shown to be in dark, filthy areas. Hopefully there will be more variety in the final product, erring more towards Until Dawn's spectacular mountain vistas than Outlast's endless disgusting hospital rooms.
Gritty realism appears to be the approach Hidden Agenda is taking. Given the plot of the game (more on that later), it certainly does seem like this is the right decision. We can only hope that Hidden Agenda doesn't go off the rails into the supernatural halfway through like Until Dawn did.