Playdate: Until Dawn - Part 03

That ending man.. Alex.. you done monked us.

I am adoring these!

Will watch this once the real horror show is over #GOPdebate

Yessssss this series is awesome

Between this and Contradiction I feel like they've set the bar pretty high for future Playdates. I'm looking forward to what they do next!

welcome to the bone zone

BOOM!

oh god when did this happen noooo i can't watch tonight

I liked that what's-her-face made it.

For people who have seen Mary's or others' playthroughs of this game:

I already know the whole story, but man I get tense watching Alex play this game.

#TeamEm

#EmilyForPresident

"Understand the palm of my hand, bitch."

Butterfly effect

Came in on the stream left immediately to enjoy the full video! Yes!

Woah, when did this happen?

Vinny laughing at the ending makes me laugh too ahahahaha

Literally just finished watching part 2. So glad this is up!!

I somehow completely missed this livestream, but I'm glad I can devour it whole now.

@wonderva:

It's impossible for Mike and Sam to die before that final scene. It might also be impossible for the other characters to die during that scene. The game is not as flexible as you'd think unfortunately.

Wow, Austin believes in my ability to kiss!

Thanks, Austin. I really needed to hear that today. :')

The final chapter

Yeah, this is what sours me on the game. I know its probably really difficult or almost impossible to have a truly free game, but this is kinda hurts me

I genuinely had a nice laugh when I saw the ending. Definitely a fun series to watch the east coast crew go through. Looking forward to more fun playdates in the future. :D

Man, the lamest characters survived.

Aw HAIL yeah.

The monster in this is pretty silly looking but I always appreciate it when stuff from Native American lore makes it into games and movies.

So is that Tim Robbins? or what?

The most intense game I've played in a long long time, and probably the most GB content has made me laugh out loud in a long long time. Thank you guys so much for playing through this.

I absolutely love GB series like this. I want more of these!

That went better..and yet worse then I expected.

Honestly I wish Vinny could upload his own "everyone Lives" play through of this game, just to be able to compare and contrast. There are a few characters in this I have yet to see make it to the final hours of the game, and I wonder how they play into the story, if at all.

Like if you save Mike/the jock, does he show up during that 'shoot the bite victim!' scene, and if so how does that effect things" or, if you don't see her jaw ripped out..where and when does the 'slutty character' arch-type girl whose name I forget actually come back into the story if at all?

It would be a real shame if the answer is "You only see them again being interviewed during the credits."

Understand the palm of my hand, bitch.

:O

I am so bummed. I didn't know this was happening. I really wish these streams would have more warning...

Great feature, thanks guys!

@bladededge: It's not quite that lame, for what it's worth I think the way the game handles those two characters is alright.

Basically, If Matt has the flare gun (found in the Fire Tower, Alex just happened to miss it) he shoots it off the escape the Wendigo that's dragging him. After that he disappears until act 9 or 10, I forget which off the top of my head. Similarly, if Mike is fast enough in chasing after Jessica, he finds her before her jaw is ripped off, but the grate she's on still falls and also disappears until later in the game. Either way, jessica wakes up and starts wondering the mine shaft, if Matt is alive she finds him and vice versa, they have a "Run/Hide from the Wendigos!" segment, if they survive the escape the mine shaft as the sun rises.

This is way too entertaining

I really like the play date videos. Please keep making them.

Ha. Great job right at the end, Alex.

I watched half of Mary Kish's stream, and watching a second take makes me want to play this a bunch. I actually had to look up the developer because it was brought up in conjunction with David Cage so often - apparently they were a port house for the longest time (unless I already forgot the wiki entry).

To be fair, they all suck in their own special way. Hayden P is pretty cool though, speaking as a lapsed Heroes fan.

I kind of hope they do something with SOMA. I can't wait for that to come out. Only a few more days!

This was a great end.... ahem... Playdate series. Ya'll are on the ball with these games.

So, did Vinny give up on Vinnyvania for right now? Last I recall he said he was afraid he wont be able to beat the game. I understand if he's relaxing on that for a bit. I don't think I ever beat Castlevania 3. I played it all the time as a kid, though.

Keep on keepin on GBeast!

man, this Maniac Mansion reboot is weird.

I played through the other parts after watching the playdates, but finished the rest of the game before the stream today. My playthrough went differently and I had even lamer characters survive. Just Sam, Matt and Chris. I also made the terrible light switch mistake, but didn't savescum it. Awesome game. The guys seemed to figure out the twist before it happened, but it caught me totally by surprise.

I worked on DA2 and DA Origins a bit. Having any branching choices in your game leads to hugely increased amounts of work. It kinda always has to wrap around to the same end points or you'd never be able to finish making it. Each segment has a couple different paths that eventually rejoin. There are some visual novels that do truly branch and have several stories in them but I don't think we'll see that in an AAA game any time soon. Kind of any attempts to create elaborate choices and branching structures are impressive.

That was fantastic. Brett Dalton was superb throughout.

I was going to hold out on the last episode of this Playdate so I could experience this game for myself, but now that it's here for my watching, I don't think I can keep myself from just going through with it. Gah.

Man this last section of the game gets real stupid. Always a fan of wendigos showing up, but man this is just like several hours of stupid decisions and not great gameplay. Characters just go places for no reason, do nothing, then go back and continue to do nothing. That extended shooting sequence with Mike was really unnecessary. All the characters who could have died up to this point do nothing at all. Chris finally gets the love of his life and he doesn't even mention that she gets toasted in the finale, he's too busy reminiscing about flamethrower-senpai.

I really really like the way this game starts, but it just can't sustain itself. Maybe that's the curse of the "choose your own adventure" format.

I also expected the psychiatrist to be the wendigo spirit, and end the game convincing Josh to cannibalize something. Oh well.

How come they didn't get the post-credits scene? I definitely remember Mary getting a post-credits scene.

It's insane how much more enthralling this game is than anything David Cage has done since Omikron (which I'd probably hate if I played it again today).

Great Playdate guys.

Spoiler stuff from somebody who played the game earlier:

So for me, I had a very similar playthrough. Jessica died. Matt died. I flipped the switch early and cooked a lot of people. I didn't save the wolf. (I actually didn't even walk through the Wendigo prison. I have to figure out what Alex's main difference was) So overall, I really enjoy games like Until Dawn and had a lot of fun with it. That said...I'm a little bummed by two things, and they both happen in this episode.

1) The back and forth ending stuff. The gang leaving people behind (presumably so there's a one or two at most decision path that leads to one character being killed off. But once the gang comes face to face with the mightiest of foes, a wall, they split up and let Sam do everything. Then Sam and Mike get together, but then split after finding Josh....So she can tell the others they're safe...?? Why not just go back together? It might be different if everybody was alive, but I have a feeling it's so Sam couldn't be in the water when the Wendigo appears. The game separating people back to back like that was just weird and made no sense and I didn't feel like the rest of the game had any other moments like that.

2) For a game that keeps talking about the Butterfly Effect...It doesn't seem like a ton can change. I'm planning on doing one more "Perfect/let's try and get everybody out alive" run, and then one final "Ok now let's kill everyone" run (So I don't want to look up YouTube videos for what otherwise could happen quite yet) but it feels like from what I've heard from hearsay and other comments from people on the site/stream, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of branching paths. Like it seems as if Josh is always the "psycho", the "traps" can't actually kill Chris or Ashley, and it feels like the only two characters who feel like could die in a more natural/butterfly effect sort of fashion are Jessica and Matt (For me, Matt died because he didn't have a way to protect himself / Alex didn't find it, but when you play as Emily, you could find a flare gun on top of the watchtower / If Emily gives Matt the flare gun, he could theoretically use that to protect himself. That's why Matt died in mine and Alex's playthrough, according to the Butterfly Effect page anyways. Maybe there's another way to save him? <shrugs>)

Maybe there are some really different runs out there, but it was just weird seeing a run that was so similar to mine, whether it was Alex coming to the same conclusions as me, or taking a different approach (like having Chris shoot himself, or not closing the door when the Wendigos are running through the basement), but there was no major consequence (in terms of having another teen drop dead or somebody ending up anywhere else). And just seeing the game play out again, I have my doubts if you can even kill Sam or Mike before the final showdown in the cabin. I feel like in games like this, anyone should be able to die.

<Yeah I went a lot of different places with this. Here are some random Heavy Rain spoilers too>

As an aside, I love Heavy Rain, but my biggest complaint with that was you can only kill off Madison or Jayden. It's impossible to kill off Scott or Ethan outside of the endings/the warehouse scene. You can try to drown Scott or have him go through a gun battle with the mafia, or have Ethan bleed out in the pipe full of glass, fall off a building, get in a car crash, etc. etc. but you can't kill him. Now he has like 3 death scenes, but those are just endings. That game is great with branching paths, but shouldn't these games have more branching paths in the game itself. If death is a factor or a gameplay mechanic, shouldn't it apply to everyone? So maybe my complaint with Until Dawn is more of big deal to me, since I tried to break Heavy Rain and know that that game is designed so two people can die pretty easily, while the other two can't until the ending. Until Dawn's shortcomings just felt oddly similar to Heavy Rain's to me, so it feels like I've seen this issue before.

Again, I still really like this game for what it does (story, graphics, characters, character movement/animation, cinematography, and the overall experience), but I feel like there should have been like two more branching paths or have more multiple endings based on this game's premise. This game still delivers a really enjoyable and fun experience, but the Butterfly Effect elements feel lacking.

Ok rant over! Believe it or not, I still think this game is really good!!

This actually ended up filling in a lot of holes with the plot for me. And I even got to see a few scenes I missed in my playthrough.

Austin had some really interesting and remarkably on point theories. And like usual Vinny had some of the best lines. And Alex actually saved 1 more person than I did in the end. Despite him burning alive 1 more person in the end than me.

Great show!

Oh my godddddddd my face at the ending.