The story of Until Dawn starts with the disappearance and assumed murder of two sisters. After a humiliating joke sends Hannah Washington running into the snowy scape of Blackwood Mountain, her twin sister, Beth, is sent running into the night after her. Both fail to return to the lodge and both are never found. The worst is assumed, a family is distraught and a year goes by.
Josh Washington, brother of Hannah and Beth, decides to get the group back together to try to patch things up emotionally. All parties involved are messed up from the prior year experience, so Josh assumes getting together will help to put the pieces back together. Sadly, the calmness of the situation doesn’t last long, as a killer is on the loose and systematically picking off each member, and leaving clues of involvement with the disappearance of the Washington sisters.
You know what’s sad? This game has a better horror story underneath than most big budgeted jump-scare fests. The main drive of this game is the horror story. It leads things, it makes the game interesting and it keeps the player motivated to uncover what happened a year prior with the Washington sisters. It doesn’t give much away three-fourths through the game, which is brilliant. Sure, you MIGHT be able to guess who the antagonist is in the story, but all is not what it seems. There’s a deeper, darker, more evil part of the story that doesn’t get revealed until closer to the title’s conclusion, which makes the payoff a bit more worth the trouble.
Of course, the story is enhanced by the actors involved and Supermassive Games makes sure to get the perfect combination of young talent (and old). Led by former Nashville and Heroes actress Hayden Panettiere, who plays Samantha, the story works and flows better than most games of its type, though this is a pretty unique game, but we’ll get to that in a second. All parties involved seemed to have bought into their respective roles, which bodes well when you’re trying to sell the story to the gamer. You even get a creepy-ass Peter Stormare as Dr. Hill to make sure you understand how uncomfortable the game is going to make you. Collectively, as I stated above, the actors bought into the story, which makes the story experience that much better.
Since the actors are there, as is the story, the other element that ups the ante in Until Dawn is the ‘finally we’re there’ graphics. The textures, the face capturing and the environments all play into the beauty of this horror adventure. When you see snow blowing randomly or when your character is leaving foot prints in the snow, or even when you see very stated fear on the faces of the characters, you’ll understand how good things can get on the PlayStation 4. It’s on par with The Order 1886, if not in some instances better. The presentation value of Until Dawn is out of this world through the roof. You’ll see it when your character walks near a puddle and there is a perfect reflection or when ominous lighting is shining down through a dusty cabin window. It’s detailed, it adds atmosphere to the experience and it gives hope of what’s to come on this Sony system.
Having said all this, there are some cons with this game — and some to drive a good majority of reviewers nuts.
Let me just say for the record that I’m a fan of quick time event driven titles. I know a good number of you out on the interwebs don’t particularly care for a game led by button pushing at particular times, but having been raised in the Dragon’s Lair/Space Ace days, I don’t mind this a bit. This is a game that is half QTE and half linear exploration (meaning, you don’t get to wander off the beaten path too many times).
The QTE stuff comes during the action scenes. When time is of the essence, and the game has your characters running for their lives, it will give you simple choices to make at certain times. For example, if you’re wanting to climb up from a mountainside that will certainly have you plummeting to your death, you might get the ‘triangle’ button indicator flashing up on the screen for a limited time. If you hit the wrong button or you fail to hit the triangle button in time, there are consequences. Sometimes it’s just damaging a character, other times it’s straight up death. The game will do this to you over and over again in intense situations. If you can handle that fact, and it’s a fact that Supermassive Games has been open about since the announcement of this title last year, then you know what to expect from the gameplay, though, I have a feeling reviewers will certainly bitch about this the most, so expect it.
The other half of the game is Resident Evil-esque linear exploration through various places. Hell, the controls even feel like Resident Evil, as the camera angles will have you spiraling the wrong direction once in a while. Besides happening upon objects here and there, and occasionally whipping out a gun and shooting an object, enemy or a potential character, there isn’t much to this component of the game. There isn’t an inventory for the character, you can’t choose items to carry, rather it’s all very basic and with hand holding components firmly intact. The story in this game was the focus, and that is clear through all the QTE and exploration components, so freedom to do what you want, at least physically, didn’t seem to be the focus.
Now, a gameplay element that did play heavily in the title, one that was pushed the most when Until Dawn was advertised at E3, is the butterfly effect decision-making that the player must do throughout the game. How it works is that at any given time the game will give the player a choice to either respond to another character, or to a situation. The decision made by the player will affect the outcome of the story as it goes forward, so you have to think hard about what you do when situations arise. For example, there is a moment where two couples are fighting. The boyfriend of one couple has the choice to defend his girlfriend or try to defuse the situation. If he defends, that changes the dynamic of the relationship between the couples. If he tries to defuse, his girlfriend gives him grief. Literally, there is no good choice — just like in life. Kidding aside, this is one element of the gameplay that keeps it incredibly interesting and possibly gives a reason to re-visit the title again. I’m not sure that will be enough for players to enjoy this game, but it adds an interesting dynamic to the entire gameplay design.
So, having said all of the above, is this game fun? I’ll be honest, after the first couple of hours, I wasn’t exactly sure it was going to get better. It started a bit flat, even after the opening sequence, which acts as a set up for the impending story, as well as a good tutorial about what to expect with the controls. Introducing the couples getting together after a year was painful to get through. It was robotic, stale and reminded me of why horror films have a good amount of editing (so we don’t have to watch the people go from place A to place B in its entirety). Anyway, once the introductions are done, the game just gets going and doesn’t let up. The time between couples, which cuts back and forth, became a lot shorter and shorter, until all the couples came together into one group. You get lots of jump scares that lead up to bad situations. Sometimes the story feels like no matter what the choice you might have made, the situation might end up the same. There is enough fun here, at least in predicting the horror in the game, that it’s probably worth your time and money. The second half of the game is fun, the first half is split into boring to good, but it does end up being somewhat enjoyable overall.
Supermassive Games did a good job with bringing the viewer an interactive horror story that is shaped by the gamer’s choices. They kept focused with their task and pulled it off just fine, though there are some hiccups here and there. I guess the big question is, is that the type of game you’re looking for as a gamer? It certainly isn’t shy about showing you what it is and doesn’t apologize for what it becomes from beginning to end. If you like horror films and enjoy manipulating storylines through choices and QTE moments, this game is made for you. For those of you looking for a fancy Resident Evil made by Sony, this isn’t that at all. That’s neither a bad or good thing, rather it is what it is.
Anyway, let’s get to the summary.