[Interview] Supermassive Games CEO Pete Samuels Talks About ‘Man of Medan’, ‘Until Dawn’, Horror Anthologies, and More

It was a long day on the high seas (well, dockside in Hamburg anyway) for the Man of Medan press event. I’d played through the Man of Medan multiplayer twice in the bowels of a big boat, encountered zombies and a creepy 1940’s hostess in the engine room, and to finish off, I was interviewing Supermassive Games CEO Pete Samuels. In the interview, we discussed Man of Medan, The Dark Pictures, Until Dawn, horror anthologies, mixing sub-genres, and who Shawn Ashmore should be in a biopic so he can win an Oscar.

Bloody Disgusting: Being an anthology series, you have an overarching theme from episode to episode that ties things together, what would that be in The Dark Pictures?

Pete Samuels: It’s not necessarily an overlying theme, but it’s all tied together by the Curator, who is like a Rod Serling or Cryptkeeper type that holds it together.

BD: It’s interesting you mention Rod Serling, because the Curator does bring up a bit of a Twilight Zone vibe in terms of anthologies…

PS: Well, we use it because people are familiar with that, everybody knows it. If someone says ‘name an anthology series’ Twilight Zone is up there, as is Tales From the Crypt.

BD: It’s certainly a good reference point to have. Were there any anthology films that also came to mind?

PS: A few actually! Southbound being one of them! we actually have done a special piece of content before that features a short history of horror anthologies, which featured you guys, among others such as out friends Larry and Graham. We definitely do our research, we go heavy on tropes as everybody knows, we’re not embarrassed about it.

BD: You embrace it if anything, Until Dawn that was the whole thing of it where you are the director and you can play with those tropes to decide how this horror movie will play out, and you’ve definitely expanded on upon that with Man of Medan, it’s already feeling more nuanced, more detail-orientated than before.

PS: I’m glad to hear you got that from it.

BD: Talking with others who had played the demo build today and finding so many different paths and scenes between us was surprising considering the relatively short nature of it. Even in Movie Night mode there were new things to see. That mode is going to cause a few arguments by the way!

PS: (Laughs) We hope so!

BD: So with Until Dawn, you started to build this mini horror franchise (Until Dawn, Rush of Blood, The Inpatient). Did that give you ideas of how to go about The Dark Pictures?

PS: This has always been a different thing for us than Until Dawn, and we know people will look at the similarities more than the differences. From the outset, we wanted to have stories with deeper, more meaningful relationships, and to have people play it together online or in local co-op if they wanted to. Right from that moment, it was very different from what we’d done before.

BD: Until Dawn gained an audience in part through streaming and YouTube videos, did that have any say in how The Dark Pictures was shaped?

PS: I totally understand and appreciate that, but honestly, it hasn’t really influenced our approach to how we designed or wrote the games. We like to think its popularity through that medium because it was well done. I don’t want to misremember history, but back then I’m not sure everyone really got what we were going for with Until Dawn, whereas now people get us more, and it’s common knowledge what we do with tropes is very deliberate.

BD: With Until Dawn you had a very meta take on the slasher genre, there were comparisons to Cabin in the Woods due to the bait and switch. With Man of Medan and the future Dark Pictures titles, are you trying to subvert certain horror sub-genres again?

PS: Absolutely yeah, we’ve got a list of like 38 or so sub-genres we reference, seeing what we can put together in interesting ways, and sometimes you’ll look at them and go ‘what if we put this with this? Or ‘yeah, we can’t do that, that’s not going to work as a video game’.

BD: You can certainly see nods to a few things with Man of Medan, there’s a very Return of the Living Dead bit during the prologue, and the ghost ship angle clearly pulls inspiration from several boat-themed horrors.

PS: Yeah, and a bit of the home invasion genre in there too!

BD: Just a tad, yeah!

So a less serious question here, Rami Malek was in Until Dawn, and won an Oscar later for Bohemian Rhapsody, so for Shawn Ashmore (one of MoM’s stars), who do you think he should play in a biopic to bag himself an Oscar?

PS: [Laughs] I might have to think about that

BD: Okay, final question. Until Dawn had a tough development cycle, starting on PS3 as a Move game before ending up on PS4 years later as a different beast. I’d imagine it was difficult getting it to that point. I assume it’s gone a bit smoother this time around? Perhaps had a clearer vision of what you wanted to achieve from the start?

PS: The vision for The Dark Pictures hasn’t changed from the start. We had a very clear, very solid view of what it is we’re trying to make, so much so that the next four games in the series are already in some stage of development (The Dark Pictures is set to have eight entries) and the following three have log lines and we know what they’re gonna be.

BD: So definitely much clearer! Well I think that’s the end of my questions now…

PS: Who would you have Shawn Ashmore play?

BD: The name escapes me, I remember someone suggested a UFC fighter, but the name I’m thinking of has escaped me.

PS: Why not have him play Rami Malek?

BD: Shawn Ashmore winning an Oscar for playing Rami Malek in the story of how he got an Oscar for playing Freddie Mercury?

PS: [Laughs] Yeah, why not!

BD: Oh, the one I was thinking of was to have him in a biopic for people he gets mistaken for, like Dominic Monoghan…

PS: Or his brother! (Aaron Ashmore is Shawn’s twin who has starred in Smallville and the horror Fear Island)

BD: That’d probably be perfect.

Doubly so because Rami Malek also has a twin.

Man of Medan is out on August 30 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.