Release Date: 25/08/2015
Played On: PS4
Available On: PS4
Time Played: 7h 27m
Progress: Completed
Developer: Supermassive Games
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
There aren't many genres that I tend to avoid like the plague, but horror has never really been my bag. The closest I get to modern day horror in media, is classical gothic literature, which is a different beast entirely. When it comes to movies and games, being scared is not something I find enjoyable, and my active imagination always ensures that I feel the spooks.
Hence why I ended up playing Until Dawn only during daylight hours when there was plenty of light, and never when I was alone. I'm sure the experience is a lot more intense if you're into the lights out kind of scares, but I really wanted to play this game so I needed to ease off the pressure where possible. It's what I do with any game that creeps me out: play it in small bursts, in a well-lit room, with other people nearby.
Trust me, I stopped worrying about whether my weakness toward horror made me look bad a long time ago. I actually consider it to be more of a bummer, as I always read about some scary experiences that sound like a lot of fun. Games like Resident Evil have always seemed like a good time, but I know for a fact that my brain won't let me chill out once I'm done.
Besides, we all have different ideas about what makes something scary or "too much" to experience. I have friends who can't handle gore and violence in their movies and games, but I've never had an aversion to gratuitous violence. Others say that psychological horror scares them more than monsters and disasters. However, the thing that I've learned about my own tolerance of horror, is that it's almost as low as anyone can possible get.
I remember years ago when I was working night shifts and I went to see I Am Legend at the cinema on weekend. For the next few weeks I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being watched and chased by those creepy zombie dudes as I walked to my car in the middle of the night. I call it an overactive imagination, because no matter how irrational these fears may be, I still manage to psych myself up and get the nerves as a result.
Hence why I tend to avoid the horror genre as a rule, because it keeps things simple and easy to deal with. Every now and then though, a game comes along that looks so enticing and/or soft on the scares, that I dive in and give it a go. These are usually games that very few people consider scary, like Bioshock or Doom 3, but they're scary enough to make me think long and hard about whether I want to play them.
The same can be said for Until Dawn, which is arguably much more of a spooky horror game than anything else I've mentioned so far in this post (with the exception of Resident Evil). Except for the fact that I had a long introduction to this particular game, so I knew exactly what I was getting into before I even picked up a controller.
I don't usually watch a lot of gameplay footage online for games I haven't played, simply because I don't want to be spoiled and would rather experience it for myself. Even when I really enjoy someone's videos on YouTube, I'll avoid the ones that feature games I plan on playing for myself someday - a real problem when some of them always play the new releases!
Until Dawn was a game that I never thought I'd be interested in, so I actually watched a couple of full playthroughs from different channels I follow. They each offered a different take on the experience and I found watching this game in particular, very entertaining. There must be something about a largely narrative and cheesy teen horror game that lends itself to being riffed on in amusing ways.
Plus, this game is precisely that: it's story is one hundred percent from the 1990s teen horror movie play book. I was a teen in the 90s and I actually watched most of those trashy teen horror movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legends, Disturbing Behavior, and of course Scream. If you're familiar with these movies then you already know what to expect from Until Dawn.
The basic plot is that there's a group of teens who are at someone's big old house in the mountains for a weekend to party. They're all horny and stupid, and generally dumb American teens who eventually figure out that they might not be as alone as they thought. Without spoiling anything, this is the kind of movie where they're not just on a mountain at their friend's house to party, but there's also an abandoned sanatorium and mine at the same location. You know… just because that sort of thing always happens.
We play through the story over the course of a single night, as the name implies. Everything is broken up into the hours that lead to dawn, when help will eventually arrive. Until then though, we have to keep our gang of teens alive as they navigate the perils of being hunted in the middle of the night, alone on a mountain, next to a sanatorium… and an old mine.
There are some fairly obvious twists and turns to the plot along the way, but if you haven't already been spoiled, then I'm not about to do it here. Just remember those 90s movies and how they like to change things up right at the end and mess with your expectations and you're half way there.
It might sound like I'm ragging on Until Dawn for being a cheesy teen horror story, but it's actually why I was interested in the first place. Like said before, I watched all those movies with my friends when I was a teenager, so this is kind of up my alley. I still find them creepy and scary, but there's usually enough goofiness to keep everything light and easily ignored. What's more, having already seen the plot unfold once or twice is a great way to lessen the impact of jump scares and some of the more intense moments.
I get that it probably seems a bit weird to watch a highly narrative game online, then want to play it for yourself, even though everything's already been spoiled. However, what really appealed to be about Until Dawn was its branching narrative that meant different choices would lead to different outcomes. What I watched online was one particular path through the story, but my own experience ended up being different enough to feel like a fresh take.
In fact, playing through Until Dawn felt a lot like the kind of experience I think David Cage and Quantic Dream are trying to aim for with their games. Until Dawn could actually be called a bit of a Quantic Dream "light" game, as it's very much a cinematic experience with branching paths, but without the complexity of Cage's stories. There are definitely fewer branching paths in Until Dawn compared to the large trees available in something like Detroit: Become Human, but that might not be such a bad thing.
What you end up getting from Until Dawn, is a much tighter narrative experience that has fewer plot holes and confusing leaps of logic. A game like Heavy Rain requires so much suspension of disbelief that you actually have to consciously ignore some major plot inconsistencies if you want to finish the game, which doesn't happen in Until Dawn. Instead you have a set of very clear paths with ambiguous choices along the way that will influence what you end up seeing.
Perhaps if I really had to draw a comparison, I might say that Until Dawn has more in common with a TellTale game instead of a David Cage game. Then again, many TellTale games only have the appearance of choices meaning anything, but there are actual consequences in Until Dawn that could make or break your own story.
I'm pleased to say that I managed to keep everyone alive throughout the game, but that's partly because I had already seen others make mistakes and get people killed along the way. I knew some of the hazards to look out for, so I'm not sure I would have managed the same success from a blind playthrough. Thankfully though, I knew what I was getting into and was free to enjoy the schlocky horror for what it was.
Mechanically speaking, there's very little to do in Until Dawn. It's essentially a very detailed walking simulator, as there are a few mechanics that go beyond movement and exploration, such as: not-doing-anything-at-all. This is one occasion where being exclusive to the PS4 offers an interesting gimmick to be used with success. There are certain times in the story when the character you're controlling will need to hide from a pursuer. In these moments a prompt appears on screen instructing you to hold the controller as still as possible. Even the slightest movement gets picked up by the DS4's accelerometer and your character will move and give themselves away in-game.
Maybe it doesn't sound like much, but this is actually one of the more interesting aspects of Until Dawn, as it uses this hardware gimmick well, and sparingly. There are only a handful of moments throughout the game where you have to really hold still, even though there are terrifying things happening on-screen. It's an elegant little bit of immersion and I'd love to see other games come up with creative ways to use these little gimmicks we already have installed on our hardware.
Alternatively, I hope you like quick-time events and are aware of your controller's face button layout, because Until Dawn loves throwing up a quick-time prompt out of nowhere. Often these are employed to make the in-game cut scenes feel more interactive, and for the most part they work, but every now and then you'll get caught out by a prompt appearing out of nowhere and disappearing seconds later.
Despite the annoying prompts, there are some other systems at play that feel really good to interact with, like the collectible totems that can be found all over the place. Some are out in the open and hard to miss, while others will take a little bit of exploration to find, as there are entire sections of the map can be missed if you don't take a look down certain hallways and into certain rooms.
The totems are one of the key systems that feed into the game's narrative, as they act as predictions and warnings of future events. Picking one up will give you a short bit of footage that shows something happening. This could be a vision of someone dying, the location of a helpful weapon, or anything else that could end up being a decision to make further on in the story. Depending on the colour of the totem found, the message will either act as a warning, or helpful advice, or something else entirely.
To make things a little more interesting, most of the visions are kind of unclear. Often you'll get part of a frame where you can't tell which character is in focus. Others are clearly in locations that you haven't visited yet, so when you finally get there you end up being on hyper-alert in case you run into the same vision along the way.
It's actually a pretty interesting system that I haven't seen very much in other narrative games. It simultaneously gives you confidence and puts you on edge for what might be to come. For the purposes of a horror game where choices can mean life or death, seeing the possibility of future events can be inherently disturbing. However, it feels really good when you recognise a situation and act in accordance with previous advice in order to succeed. It's like you suddenly felt the power of seeing into the future for a few moments… at least until you miss another quick-time prompt.
At the end of the day though, it's clear that Supermassive Games were trying to make their own version of the "interactive cinema experience" with Until Dawn. For the most part, I'd say that they've been pretty successful, but also because I've since seen the kind of thing they've been able to do since. Their latest title Man of Medan is doing some really interesting things with asymmetrical multiplayer, where two players see different things in the same scene. It's really interesting stuff and I suggest checking it out online where you can see both perspectives, because it's actually really cool.
However, I don't think I'll be playing another Until Dawn game, as I've now had my fill. I'm glad that I was able to make it through the whole game, even if it took me ages (playing a couple of hours every now and then really stretches it out). If anything about this game seems interesting, then I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys a 90s horror flick and wants to play an interesting take on the narrative genre.
It's not the greatest narrative ever made, but I don’t think it's trying to be that. Instead Until Dawn manages to pull of just about every trick it's trying to perform. At the end of the day, this is just about as entertaining as watching Scream back in the day, so I have to commend Supermassive Games for that alone.
Capturing the spirit of not only a genre, but an era in time, is no easy task. Until Dawn may have very little when it comes to depth and game mechanics, but what it has is enjoyable and well put together. Sometimes that's all you need.