Until Dawn

There's a love of the "teen slasher" sub-genre of film that is extremely obvious in Supermassive Games' Until Dawn, as it tells the horrifying tale of one night that eight friends find themselves trying to survive as they are trapped in the woods in the mountains of Alberta in Winter. The stereotypes found in these films are all present in Until Dawn; among the characters there is the obligatory "funny guy", the "popular guy", the "bitchy girl" and, of course, the "slutty girl". As well, the usual tropes and plot beats of the slasher film find their way into the game, from the couple that leave the group for their own "sexcapades" (their words) and end up on the wrong end of danger, to the poor decision-making of the group that decide to split up and leave the safe room for no apparent reason. However, unlike the films that the game is trying to emulate and pay homage to, the audience needs to interact more directly with a game, and it's there that the grand ideas and intriguing concept can fall apart and create something that frustrates more than fascinates.

The player takes control of one character at a time, switching up between the eight snowbound friends at a steady pace as they find themselves separated around the different locals of the increasingly mysterious mountain. Although there is some light puzzle-solving and quick-time button presses (which I'll get to later), the bulk of the gameplay - and the narrative itself - is built around making binary choices, mostly in terms of selecting dialogue. Sometimes after a choice is made a butterfly logo will pop up in the corner to let you know that an this was an "important choice", and that it's ramifications will be felt further down the line. What becomes clear the further you get, however, is that these choices are often not as significant as you are lead to believe. There is at least one instance of a major choice from the first third of the game being revealed to have been manipulated in some way. This revelation ended up not causing the desired effect of shocking me into the thinking the tables had turned, instead serving only to spotlight where it's own choice system was all just for show.

This feeling of choice that's not real is a critique that has been launched at the recent outings from Telltale Games, and with Until Dawn's penchant for letting the player know when decisions are supposed to have impact, and when characters will remember what you've chosen, the comparison is at least a little fair. Only playing though the game once, there were still numerous times when I was presented with two options but ultimately only one would ever happen; whether this was through a later reveal that something never actually occurred, or even choosing option A only for another character to look directly at my player character and refuse to go along, forcing us to take option B.

There is something admirable to the way this works, after all, you can't ever truly know what another person is thinking, but when I'm given two options and another character decides to audible out of the plan immediately, it served only to make wish there had never been a choice at all. At least then I wouldn't feel like my input actually meant nothing, or that the game had asked me something and then ignored my response.

The other key component of the game are QTE sections that happen every now and then at tense moments, but even these often seemed to be obscuring the fact that nothing was happening that could affect the outcome. Missing the prompts - which sometimes appeared to give less time to hit them than indicated - rarely seemed to matter, including one stretch where I missed all of the prompts in one section and watched in horror as... nothing happened and the game continued on unabated.

With the choices often feeling empty, and the reactionary button mini-games actively just giving the illusion of being engaged when I really wasn't, I eventually lost all investment in the game. And with a game like this, investment in the plot and characters is the most maybe the most critical thing to have in order to keep going. This was doubly a shame as the performances - done by TV's own Hayden Panettiere, Brett Dalton and Rami Malek, among others - are actually quite good, with especially good facial capture and likenesses. As well, the writing tended to feel organic and just as petty and superficial as I would expect from a group of people that age who don't all necessarily like each other, although when it was stilted or awkward, it was VERY noticeable.

The last aspect of the game and it's performances come in the in-between chapter segments where the player is talking to a therapist named Dr. Hill - played by Peter Stormare - as he asks questions of you that will in some small ways inform the game to come. While Stormare puts in a delightfully hammy performance that rarely failed to at least make me smile, these segments stopped feeling like they served a purpose about halfway through the game, and quickly became little 30 second long scenes where Dr. Hill shouts at you incoherently while making meta references to the "game" you're "playing", interrupting the otherwise tense and moody fight for survival.

With such a unique spin on horror games, and with such an earnest appreciation for the material that inspired it, Until Dawn is a game of good intentions that doesn't come together like it should. The poor choices and at times downright moronic behavior of the characters that would be eye-rollingly goofy in a film end up causing more work for the player as I felt responsible for their safety, and giving my pause to wonder why I couldn't have control of THOSE moments rather than determining whether or not to call someone an asshole for talking to a girl. However, with its interesting ideas and enjoyable premise, it's hard to not recommend to anyone who might be interested in it, even if just to see if they can't find enjoyment in the systems it provides. Supermassive have such a cool morsel of a concept, that I would eagerly play whatever they make next - provided it was at least a little bit fresh and not the same thing again - because with a game like this, it's just as hard to guess what someone might be thinking as it is to outright say someone wouldn't enjoy this game.