UNTIL DAWN (2024)
Game: I would like to say that as a horror fan I am not 100% sure how I missed out on Until Dawn’s release in 2015, but I was probably due to this reason: Call of Duty.
My video game experience at that point was solely online: Call of Duty and Battlefield were my thing all day and all night, so Until Dawn slipped right by me. I’m older now and my tolerance of online personalities and also the fact that I’m ten years slower than what I was then so my online gaming avocation is coming to a close and I spend more time playing games solo and a few weeks ago I discovered the remastered redo of Until Dawn that was released in 2024.
My discovery of Until Dawn came after I spoke highly of a game called ‘The Quarry’, less a video game but more an animated Choose Your Own Adventure experience like the series of books of the same name, you know the ones you would read as a child… or as an old man like the fact I read one last week, and a friend told me I needed to try this.
Until Dawn isn’t like you average game: you don’t run and shoot, or drive in cars or get a victory Royale, instead, you get to play it how you want to play it. A scene is played out and through the course of it you are given decisions, and these decisions don’t just effect the gameplay, they change the characters as you play them, so the gameplay evolves as the characters evolve. This means the games have lots of opportunities for replaying them.
Until Dawn started with a bunch of friends away on a trip at their rich friends snow lodge, which honestly is massive, like an old hotel, labyrinthine like the Overlook in The Shining and some of the members of the group decide to play an awful prank on one of their own, Hannah (Ella Lentini), that is so cruel she runs into the forest at night, her twin sister, Beth, in hot pursuit. They quickly find themselves being chased by a flamethrower wielding man (Larry Fessenden), who causes them to run blindly off a cliff, and are never seen again.
12 months later, their brother Josh (Remi Malek), invites the friends back for a party to remember the sisters, but after separating, they quickly find they are being hunted by a man in a mask. Who is this man hunting them? Is he the same flamethrower wielding man from the previous year, and what do any of them have to do with the mysterious asylum further up the snowbound mountain, and the miners who went missing over 50 years ago?
Cut in between the scenes of the game are sections where you are being interviewed by a psychologist, played by Peter Stormare, who asks you questions about what scares you, and this, in addition to the decisions you make, taper the game to your personality.
The game is extraordinarily clever in its play. If the decisions made cause a character to die, the game will continue without them and will adapt to their absence. This is a game mechanic called ‘The Butterfly Effect’. This makes for a clever scheme where you can replay the game and try to save everyone, or like the replay I’m currently enjoying (on Twitch: www.twitch.tv/jurm1969 )where I am not just trying to make everyone as awful as possible, which can be shown by their constantly changing personality profiles, but I am also trying to finish the game with everyone dead. Sounds easy but the game, as I’ve stated, adapts, and it’s not just as simple as walking off a cliff like any other game.
There are 10 chapters in the game, represent the ten hours ‘Until Dawn’ and in amongst them are 22 critical decisions which mould the games outcome. The game had an auto save feature that stops the player from being able to simply go back and try to save a character, instead, you’ll have to start the game over. This could be frustrating but if you are trying for a PlayStation Platinum trophy, you would be used to this repetition. There is also a bunch of totems one must collect throughout the game which are also a fun way to give it longevity. Clever stuff.
I was pleasantly surprised by the cast of this game also, as I said previously, I went into it quite cold. The aforementioned Fessenden, Malik and Stormare are joined by other actors like Scream’s Hayden Panettiere, Meaghan Martin (10 Things I Hate About You), Jordan Fisher (The Flash Tv series), Brett Dalton (Agents of Shield), Nicole Sakura (Superstore), Galadriel Stineman (The Middle) and Noah Fleiss (Josh and S.A.M.). Fessenden also co-wrote the game with Graham Reznik for Supermassive Games.
Funnily enough, this game is what I want from a modern horror movie but don’t get anymore. Fortunately, or unfortunately, a film adaptation is being released in 2025 which rather than tell the story straight, will seem to have a ‘groundhog day’ effect for the feel of multiple play throughs. I liked the look of the trailer so I’ll cross my fingers and dance around the wishing tree for it to be good.
It’s a great game and I can see myself actually attempting to get all the trophies on the PlayStation Network even though I don’t normally give a crap about that kind of stuff.
Extras: Extras… on a video game? What kind of clown shoes bullsquirts is this? As you finish the game you actually unlock a bunch of DVD extra type stuff which sees cast and crew talk about the creation of the game. It’s such a fun thing and really fascinating.
Game: 8/10
Extras: 6/10
Replayability: 9/10
Digital Retribution 