Freview - Until Dawn
Modern gaming appears to have taken a bit of a shift, though one that some may be more familiar with than others. Studios like Sierra Entertainment and Lucas Arts have long been bastions of adventure, bringing us games such as King’s Quest and Monkey Island, respectively. Games with little in regard to the pulse-pumping adrenaline-fueled mayhem that is action fare; ducking and dodging behind cover as you engage in one shoot out after another with enemies numerous and probably from the same family, given how much they tend to look alike. Adventure games are slower and more contemplative - finding clues and piecing the puzzle together bit by bit until the story unfolds. In this thread, I thought I’d take advantage of a recent GUI playthrough I was privy to and plunge into a horror thriller called Until Dawn.
Sony Computer Entertainment
Sony and Supermassive Games take a page out of such books as Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy (which I will not call Fahrenheit because I’m American and shut up [editor note: 'Murca]) to bring us a murder mystery that, much like a Simon Pegg film, starts out innocently enough before taking a left turn straight into crazy town! This is an interactive story-based game, and you play a group of rich, horny teenagers, as is often the case in horror, who spend some much needed R&R at one of their parents’ vacation retreat up on a snowy mountain that just so happens to be silver mine and insane asylum adjacent! Remember, when deciding on real estate, gotta think about resale. Location, location, location. Hannah, being a teenage girl in a horror movie, decides to get her naked on with her boyfriend, gets pranked by the others and runs crying into the dark, snowy mountain wilderness. Sony totally knows women, am I right? Anyway, long story short, her twin sister goes after her and they both end up going off a cliff, shuffling off this mortal coil like so many parrots pining for the fjords.
Sony Computer Entertainment
A reunion assembles the cast again a year later, and the game begins. The gameplay operates in classic adventure game style, relying on exploration to tell the narrative and exposition, giving you little glowing markers that become clues to your surroundings and situation. What’s interesting about Until Dawn is the Butterfly Effect System, which takes various choices you have the kids make throughout the game and alters their fates accordingly. Where one choice might cause a gruesome death, another might lead to salvation and Nathan Drake-esque panicked heroism. Needless to say, I was out for as much teenage carnage as I could get. What’s particularly interesting about it is that one doesn’t necessarily have to make a choice at all. Most of the decisions made by the player are under a timer, meaning you can simply let the time run out without deciding on anything and that actually becomes a choice in and of itself. Sometimes it leads to death, but other times it leads to survival. One can never actually be certain. Obviously this doesn’t pertain to things like conversation or quick-time-events, however screwing up a QTE can lead to its own alteration of future events. I learned that the hard way along with my discovery that drinking does not go together with quick reaction time.
Sony Computer Entertainment
As the kids explore around their mountain retreat and the surrounding locals, they happen upon totems that have a range of prophetic events attached to them. The totems range between five categories, Death, Guidance, Loss, Danger, and Fortune, all of them showing a short clip pertaining to the possible fate of one of the other kids. It’s interesting to note that, during your first playthrough, it’s damn near impossible to tell just when these totem prophecies are going to come into play. They might come during the next big event or they could be so far down the line that the kid the totem was prophesying ends up dying before they even get to that point. It adds a fair amount of replay value to see all the possible fates if you don’t mind going through the story multiple times considering that’s the one thing that really doesn’t change at all. All of the kids can survive, some can, or only one of them can, but all in all, the plot twists remain the same. Fortunately, the tedium of going through the story multiple times is lessoned somewhat by the ability to jump forward to a particular chapter.
Sony Computer Entertainment
Something that struck me as particularly interesting to think about with this title is the amount of control you have over events. I mentioned before that I was out for as many teenager deaths as possible, but I’m actually filled with a morbid fascination that I have that option open to me. Having control over 8 separate protagonists doesn’t necessarily impose upon you a need for survival. If one kid drops, there are 7 more who can continue on without them, each practically enjoying their own personal character arc as they uncover the terror befalling them and find a way to survive it. You are both salvation and destruction for these kids, playing your hand in a perverse power fantasy that only The Sims could possibly match. Personally, I hope this is a trend that continues to be explored and eventually overtakes the “moral choice system” that’s been pervading gaming for so many years now. Quit thinking you’re so high and mighty, inFamous, maybe I don’t care what you think of me and my total disregard for human life!