UNTIL DAWN REVIEW: A NEW TAKE ON VIDEO GAMES
Long gone are the days of video games with simple story lines, where the only inkling of a plot was to rescue a damsel in distress from some horrible beast. The idea that the plot is a side character to the gameplay has also been brushed aside in modern games.
A majority of video games that hit the market in the past year have relied more heavily on story elements over game mechanics. Contemporary gamers even joke that video games have become nothing more than playable movies shaped around cut scenes with quick time events. No other game released in the past year has represented this new style quite like Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn. This Playstation 4 exclusive took the gaming world by storm, not because of the superb game play, but because of the choice-driven storytelling.
Until Dawn falls into the survival horror genre that game franchises such as Silent Hill and Resident Evil have made popular. Unlike its predecessors, Until Dawn does not have the genre’s typical elements of having the player hack, slash, and solve puzzles. Instead, the only weapon the player has is the power of choice.
The choices the player must make in Until Dawn feature more far-reaching consequences than in most games. The game’s entire story hinges on the idea of the butterfly effect, which helps to add weight to seemingly easy choices. Choosing to pick up a photo could be the deciding factor as to whether a character lives or dies. This paranoia-filled choice system, mixed in with tongue in cheek horror movie tropes, leads to a surprisingly satisfying gaming experience.
The plot stays true to the horror cliché that the game loves to poke fun at. Eight friends, all attractive and covering different stereotypes, have gathered in a remote cabin on the top of a snowy mountain in order to mark the one-year anniversary of the mysterious disappearance of their friends in the same place. The cast is full of familiar voices such as Hayden Panettiere of Heroes fame, who voices Samantha, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. actor Brett Dalton, who voices Michael. The player, over the course of around ten hours, controls seven out of the eight characters in order to progress the plot.
Between each in-game chapter, the player visits a psychiatrist in an office. While controlling an unknown person, the player answers the analyst's questions that range from what the player themselves are afraid of to what the player’s opinions of the characters are. These little sessions help to change the environments of Until Dawn to match the players’ own fears. Did you answer that needles scared you more than gore? Then be prepared for a large needle to make an appearance in your play through. However, with a game that so subtly inserts player choice into the narrative, these sections seem to be shoehorned into the story.
Until Dawn is a gorgeous game. Although the game world is small, it is packed with breathtaking views of the mountainside and a color palette that helps the player feel even more isolated than they already were. The characters, modeled off of their respective voice actors, land in the uncanny valley, making the game footage look more like a movie than a video game.
Since the game is driven by plot and not so much by quests, sometimes it can be hard to tell when it is time to play. A majority of the game play, aside from conversation choices, is the lengthy action sequences filled with quick time events. The react time for many of these events is just as short as the characters react time on screen. Unlike many other games that use quick time events, missing a command results in actual consequences, such as characters stumbling as they run and falling to their death.
Although Until Dawn is not heavy on the game play, the little sections that it does have play extremely smooth. The game is particularly responsive, which is great in a game when returning to a past save file is not an option if the player messes up. The game even turns gimmicky controller functions, such as the gyroscope that tracks motion, into useful game play mechanics, like having to hold the controller perfectly still when hiding from a serial killer.
Until Dawn is one of those games that is breaking the idea of what a video game must be. The game itself could be described as an interactive movie, but the lack of game play does not take away the intuitive use of controls and story elements that Supermassive Games has given to the gaming community. It is a game that is said to have a thousand different endings so it has great replay value as well, making it well worth the initial sixty dollar price tag. Perhaps Until Dawn will be the first of many games that ditch the traditional ideals of what makes a video game and instead will make gaming a story-driven experience.
Sarah Alstrom is a senior English major with a concentration in Writing. She enjoys shopping, road trips, and searching for vampires.
