I’m playing a game and my wife is pissed.
Not for the usual reason though. I’m not ignoring her for
some Rocket League competition. I’m not grinding away in Destiny.
I’m breathing in syncopated, hurried rhythm after a
particularly intense moment in Until Dawn.
“You shouldn’t have killed her!” My wife exclaims after I’ve
just made a fatal decision about the fate of character late in the game. To be
fair, neither of us had a particular affinity for this character, but still,
her sudden and brutal death – for which I was solely responsible – was probably
the most shocking and affecting moment in Supermassive Games’ horror genre
romp.
My wife, who is admittedly not a gamer by any definition of
the word, agreed to watch me play Until Dawn in its entirety and help with the
game’s various decisions, from the miniscule to the monumental. In this
particular moment, I didn’t wait for her suggestion and pulled the trigger just
as the words “don’t do it,” flew out of her mouth.
This turned out to be one of the best shared entertainment
experiences we’ve had together. All those times we’ve watched suspenseful shows
together, yelling at the screen for characters that are too stupid to just turn
around when the killer is clearly standing right behind them! Turn around you
idiot! HE’S RIGHT THERE! All those times pale in comparison to my experience
with Until Dawn (I can only speak for myself, though my wife enjoyed it enough
to want to play through again).
So as I sat there, with my palm sweat coating the
controller, my guilt only became heavier when I looked over to see her sitting
there, with a disappointed, judgmental look on her face. I’ve killed people
countless times in games in far more brutal fashion, but few really moved the
needle quite like this. Maybe it was the presence of my wife, uncorrupted as
she is by the decades of desensitization that games have wrought on me. Maybe
it was because I quickly found out that this character’s death was all for
naught. Most likely though, it can all be attributed to the masterful pacing
and storytelling that led to this moment.
That’s what Until Dawn does. It’s a cliché horror story that
tries to subvert the cliché of subverting horror clichés, by adding player
agency to the formula. And it works wonders. As the story unfolds, every choice
you make, down to whether you take the left path or the right (maybe wrong?)
path, has some sort of effect on how the story plays out, sometimes small and
sometimes catastrophically large.
The story itself does its best to pay homage to the horror
genre while also providing an intense, unnerving experience from start to finish.
One year after the mysterious disappearance of two of their friends, a group of
teenagers return to the site – a friend’s family cabin – in an attempt to move
past the guilt and grief of that event. We know – though the characters do not
– that someone, or something, sinister lives on that mountain. If this sounds
like a flimsy excuse for a party, that’s because it is. The characters in Until
Dawn make reckless decisions constantly, in service of the plot, which could be
seen as another clever send-up of the genre or just a lazy and easy plot device.
Throughout the roughly ten hour adventure, as you guide
these characters through the longest (or shortest, depending) night of their
life, you’ll pick up little clues that hint at the true nature of this place. Your
main means of interaction with them is through limited movement controls and
quick-time button presses that are rather excellently handled. Notably the few
instances where the game instructs you not to move by reading the Dual Shock
light bar, are particularly gut wrenching.
The writers sprinkled in plenty of red herrings along your
path that keep you second guessing every action you take. And while some of the
characters certainly fit their respective horror clichés a little too well,
others have surprising and fascinating character arcs – just another way that
Until Dawn plays with your expectations. All the while though, the on-the-nose
butterfly effect system runs in the background, guiding the plot with every
choice you make, notifying you in a very “Clementine will remember that” sort
of way, when you’ve made a decision you’ll probably end up regretting three
hours down the line.
The fully motion-captured performances, from notable names
like Hayden Panattiere and Peter Stormare are all generally well done,
particularly Stormare, who provides a wonderfully unnerving presence in his
limited screen time. Though the performances are all well done, some of the
motion captured faces are a bit… off, in a very uncanny valley sort of way,
detracting from some of those otherwise compelling performances. Elsewhere, it’s
all quite pretty, and had me often wishing I had more time to just sit and
admire the exceptional lighting and landscape design.
It is possible to finish Until Dawn with all of the
characters alive, or none of them at all. We ended up with one character alive,
and we’ll be going back to try for a perfect playthrough and to see what variations
occur based on different choices and actions. This is a testament to the fact
that Until Dawn is not only a compelling story, it’s also fun to play. Enough
so, that going back to play it a second time doesn’t feel like a chore, but
rather a compelling prospect.
Until Dawn does the interactive movie thing better than any
game I’ve ever played. It seems to have an endless amount of possible outcomes
and routes through the story, allowing for a rewarding replay experience. I’ve
talked to many players who saw sequences that I never did and who had different
characters with them during other scenes. Sure, they all lead to bottle neck
moments that everyone will experience, just like Telltale’s The Walking Dead
and Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain, but the way you get there seems to have much
more variation than those games ever do.
I have no qualms recommending Until Dawn to anyone who has
ever binge watched a season of a thriller series on Netflix and certainly to
anyone who considers themselves a fan of the horror genre. As was proven with
my wife’s experience, even those people that don’t typically play video games
will find a lot to like here. Just consider yourself warned, it’s best not to
go alone.
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