"I did something. I MADE you believe in the world I created and I showed you parts of yourself you were too afraid to visit."
--Josh, Until Dawn
"There was a tribe that lived in these mountains. The Cree. Their shamans tell stories of a tall creature, "BORN IN ICE" . . . It can perfectly MIMIC its prey . . . But try not to kill them."
--The Stranger's journal, Until Dawn
As evidenced by my reviews of the Saw films, I cherish the horror genre, yet video games can struggle to create an atmosphere that is truly terrifying and brimming with dread and suspense. Until Dawn actually escapes this and unleashes a creative and at times truly chilling horror narrative. This game is legitimately not for children* and I usually don't emphasize things like this. Seriously, this game received an M rating for excellent reasons.
And now we will proceed to my usual categories of assessment.
Production Values
The production values for this game are so phenomenal and astonishing that I have never played anything that equals its motion capture realism and its excellent graphics. It utilizes the graphical capabilities of the PS4 in a fantastic manner that dramatically heightens the immersion. Pausing the game brings up an image of the face of whichever character you're playing as, further showcasing the exceptional lifelike quality of the facial animations. The voice acting and sound also match the visuals in quality. Professional actors, including one from Agents of Shield, produce great performances in both voice acting and the motion capture recording. Hayden Panettiere in particular did a great job at expressing her character.
Gameplay
Not so much a traditional video game as an interactive cinematic experience, Until Dawn allows the player to move a character from one location to another but reaching the destination introduces cutscenes, which occupy the majority of the game's time. In between walking sections and cutscenes are quick time events and segments where a choice must be made by tilting the right analog stick left or right. So in one sense, little about the game besides the quick time events and scattered walking moments resembles a normal gaming experience. However, the developers executed this well. A level of immersion so unique it surpasses other games of its type compensates for the different gameplay style. For instance, to grab a weapon or flashlight or open or lock a door the player must press the correct button, rotating the analog stick to twist a doorknob, (optionally) shifting the gyroscopic controller to aim a shotgun, or holding the controller very still to avoid being noticed or seen by pursuers.
As crucial as the unusual style of gameplay is, the story needed to succeed for Until Dawn to work.
Story
Sam, Chris, Ashley, Jessica, Mike, Josh, Emily, Matt. Eight college (or high school?) students who journey to a remote mountain property to party and relax. There's the intelligent and kind female lead, the sex-obsessed couple, the black guy, his girlfriend, the funny and "nerdy" guy, the nerdy girl, the creepy friend. So many slasher cliches. With all of these tropes, what could go wrong, right?
Everything could, of course!
It turns out that a year ago this group of friends plotted and enacted a humiliating prank against one of Josh's sisters named Hannah while his other sister Beth walked around downstairs. When the prank backfired and Hannah ran from the house in frustration, Beth pursued her to calm her sister, but she witnessed a stream of flames in the distance and dropped her phone, soon finding Hannah. Then they both heard an imposing shriek and fled to a cliff side drop off. After stumbling off and grabbing a handhold, a man clad in black gloves and a mask extended his hand. The player, as Beth, can choose to let go of Hannah and seize the stranger's hand or to simply fall along with Hannah into the darkness below. Regardless of the choice, both sisters plummet into a mine.
A year later, the same group of friends return to the mountain lodge to, surprise, party and bond. When they all gather, it becomes clear that another person resides with them on the mountain. Multiple appearances confirm that this person is indeed following and perhaps stalking the protagonists. Then everything disintegrates as a character is kidnapped and a strange figure chases a different character through the lodge, with Mike running into a sanitorium after an unidentified man. A Jigsaw-like killer has arranged some scenarios that seem borrowed straight from the Saw universe, but I will not divulge their exact nature here.
Characters can sporadically find messages like "LET US OUT! WE ARE STARVING. FREEZING!! I WILL MAKE YOU PAY STOP TESTING US NOW!!" in the different environments. Apparently something far darker and more terrifying than a prank has occurred, and far longer ago than a year. Lost sisters. Isolated miners. An abandoned sanatorium.
The relentless cliche jump scares one expects from cheap horror continue until true dread replaces them.
(SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!)
Eventually Josh unmasks himself as the killer who has tormented the friends. He concocted a VERY elaborate revenge prank to force his companions to experience the emotions he presumes his sisters did a year before, earning him the anger of those he has "tested".
But the game shows that Josh was not responsible for kidnapping the missing character earlier in the story and that he is not the man in dark clothes periodically depicted observing the protagonists in silence. The man who Mike followed into the sanatorium--the same man seen at the beginning of the game as the group arrived--has been using a flamethrower to combat and frighten away a horde of malicious creatures called Wendigos. The Stranger, as he is then called, enters the house to converse with most of the remaining survivors. "Should any man or woman resort to cannibalism in these woods the spirit of the Wendingo shall be unleashed", he says. The player can then deduce that Hannah, an assembly of miners trapped in 1952, and the former inhabitants of a sanitorium have all succumbed to cannibalism and transformed into Wendigos. Beth, it turns out, died upon striking the ground after her fall from the cliff, but Hannah survived and buried Beth only to excavate her corpse for food.
From there, everyone can either live or die as they progress to the fitting final scene. Everyone who survives until dawn can board rescue helicopters and leave the entire situation.
Intellectual Content
(There are some spoilers throughout this section.)
Michael Crichton's masterpiece science fiction thriller Jurassic Park first introduced me to a detailed explanation of chaos theory and the butterfly effect, the butterfly effect referring to how something as simple or unimportant as a butterfly flapping its wings may create conditions or a chain reaction that triggers a hurricane on the other half of the planet. I have since noted that the ramifications of chaos theory extend into every dimension of the natural world and human life and can affect practically anything that occurs after an initial even, however seemingly minor. Until Dawn incorporates this by elevating even trivial decisions--like whether or not a character hurls a snowball at a bird in the opening scenes--to a status where they can alter major moments hours later. For instance, offending a character by opting to kill her at a time when one of two characters must die (even though she encourages the player to do so) leads to the death of someone near the finale of the game. Even different dialogue options or obtaining collectibles change the relationships between characters and can avert or cause negative situations or bouts of good fortune. Entire levels can be accessed or skipped depending on the characters that die and survive, meaning multiple replays are necessary to view all of the combinations for the end scene alone. Do you want to defuse verbal fights? Split up from the group to follow a voice that seems to belong to a lost friend? Hide from a pursuing creature or continue fleeing on foot? Befriend a hostile dog or attack it in anticipation of it possibly harming you? You can choose the reactions and fate of every playable character. All of them can live, or all of them can die.
The butterfly effect, of course, is perhaps presented no better than the times it affects moral choices or moral choices affect other events. For instance, would you:
1. Defuse a possible verbal fight, side with the person attacking your significant other (perhaps they are in the right), or support your significant other despite his or her potential fault in the discussion?
2. Shoot yourself or someone else in a situation where one of you must die or you both will?
3. Be able to choose which friend to direct a saw blade toward if two of your friends were restrained and a rotating saw blade will kill one for sure but you choose where to direct the blade?
4. Kill someone bitten by a Wendigo if you don't know whether or not a Wendigo bite triggers a transformation?
5. Shout at a Wendigo to distract it away from a friend if it meant endangering your own life?
6. Investigate the voice of your friend calling for help if you know that Wendigos can imitate voices?
7. Cut off your fingers to free your hand from a bear trap or attempt to pry it open with a machete, breaking it in the process and thus depriving you of a usable weapon for later?
Games like this force reflection on the significance and unforeseen implications of our actions we choose with our own volition and the moral aspects of those actions. A submenu logs significant choices and their aftermath, which connects sometimes obscure examples of cause and effect that don't become obvious until much later.
Some of the most intriguing and fascinating parts of the game are the periodic sessions where an initially unknown character is interviewed by Dr. Hill, a professional psychiatrist. As he asks you which of several images frightens you the most or which character you like the least, the player realizes these choices can affect gameplay in subtle ways. Whatever you claim to be more afraid of will appear during gameplay more often. But as the game continues, Dr. Hill seems to become more morally judgmental of the unknown interviewee's actions elsewhere in the game, especially when the game reveals Josh as the subject of the interrogation, and later on a clip shows that Dr. Hill only existed in the mind of Josh. It seemed to me once the psychiatrist is shown to be a figment of Josh's imagination it becomes apparent that the imaginary "doctor" served as his conscience during significant points in the story. "What gives you the right to play god in these people's lives?" he asks Josh. "You psychopath!" he charges. Josh even physically strikes the psychiatrist once in a sequence, perhaps representing the violent suppression of his conscience as he continues his malevolent prank. During the second half of the story Hill asks if Josh is contrite or unrepentant, with the player selecting the answer. Eventually, the psychiatrist embodying Josh's conscience informs him that their sessions have produced no results and it is time to end them.
Speaking of mental illusions and questions of the mind, during one level Chris and Ashley explore the basement of the Washington home and Ashley repeatedly claims to see a ghost, which Chris predictably fails to turn around and witness. Chris is skeptical about the ghost Ashley reports to him about, replying that their minds are so "fried" that he doesn't even trust what he's been seeing. Josh later exorcizes illusory voices of accusation from his head in a scene that perhaps shows him confronting his own guilt amidst horrific hallucinations, and then he shouts at a Wendigo that arises out of water to attack him. "NO you're not real! No, you're not", he cries. After all, following the hallucinations about the psychiatrist, his sisters, macabre visions (near the end), and the voices, could he truly discern reality in the material world from the illusions of his mind? Can we trust our minds, senses, and experiences in moments of prolonged and intense stress and terror? Unfortunately Until Dawn does not try to answer this question.
Of course, the story doesn't mention alleged actual cases of Wendigo existence and activity. As someone who has long enjoyed studying cryptozoology--the study of mythical or unconfirmed animals (Bigfoot, Owlman, etc)--I had heard of Wendigos years before playing this game. I had partially suspected that the game would feature Wendigos because of the Indian totems and unexplained deer sightings, because the Wendigo is an Indian legend about humans that transform into a humanoid entity with a deer-like skull with antlers upon engaging in cannibalism. Some parts seemed to confirm my hypothesis, especially random red drawings in caves of a skull with antlers that resembled that of a deer. But the Wendigos turn out to appear more like bipedal bluish-grey Gollums than the traditional depiction of the creatures. I would love to learn the true origin of the Wendigo mythology (or the first record of their existence?). Did someone suffering from a severe case of demonic possession kill and cannibalize another human or just eat a corpse? Did Indians contrive the story to explain the dark action of cannibalism? Did they see or experience something that really convinced them of the legend? I don't know.
A brief conversation between Chris and the Stranger ("flamethrower guy") ponders whether or not Wendigos, as possessed or former humans, can be killed ethically. Chris asks if a cure for the Wendigo transformation exists, to which the Stranger says "They surrender human rights the moment they eat one another. There is no cure. There is no redemption," he explains to Chris that he can take "the high road" and refuse to kill them in self-defense--he just won't be on that road for very long.
One more thing--Ashley has an interesting comment about the prematurely-ended prank on Hannah and Beth at the beginning of the game:
"I can't imagine doing anything worse to somebody."
Really Ashley? I guess a prank ended before almost anything even happened is worse than murder, kidnapping, rape, robbery, or torture. I always find it hilarious when people say some miscellaneous evil is "the worst thing they can imagine" because it usually isn't. I see these claims all the time. Logic, people. It is helpful.
Conclusion
Part Saw, part Heavy Rain, and part Friday the 13th, Until Dawn succeeds on almost every level--the visuals, immersion, terror, cinematic presentation, voice acting, story, and effectiveness of the butterfly effect. I thoroughly enjoyed the unique story and game mechanics, with the undeniable terror enhancing the experience in every scene it appeared. Until Dawn truly earns its title as an actual horror game that teases but then defies the plot cliches that fans of slasher films and horror tales expect from this genre.
*Content
1. Violence: With violence ranging from minor blows to grotesque killings, this game displays an abundance of violent and sometimes surprisingly graphic deaths. The Wendigos can decapitate the protagonists if the player doesn't use caution and precise timing to save them, and they can also impale them through the throat or eyes, rip their jaws off, fasten them on meat hooks, and crush their skulls. In addition, a character is sawed in half regardless of the in-game choice pursued.
2. Profanity: There is a great plethora of profanity including a wide variety of specific words. "D-mn", "sh-t", "f-ck", and many uses of the words "God" and "Christ" as profanity are frequently heard throughout the entire campaign. I estimate that there are possibly 130+ uses of profanity in the game.
3. Sexuality: As expected from a slasher style story, the teenagers in the game (really, more like two or three of them honestly) make frequent sexualized jokes and innuendos in the introductory levels. This leaves the game as events become more serious and humor becomes less appropriate for the circumstances.
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