The Future of Interactive Games Is Scarier Than You Think
‘Until Dawn’ Gives Horror Movie Fans the Chance to Create Their Own Nightmares
Until Dawn is certainly not the first interactive video game to give players the chance to essentially sit in the director’s chair and change the fate of the narrative, but it’s easily the first one to execute it as well as it does.
Developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, the PS4-exclusive game sticks close its horror roots by dropping eight teenagers into an unforgiving environment (where something tragic happened a year prior) and putting them through hell.
Yet, despite the game’s adherence to well-worn horror movie tropes, Until Dawn tackles them in a unique way that makes the narrative both refreshingly nuanced and pretty damned terrifying.
The third-person horror movie experience allows players to take the reins as each of the eight main characters, forcing them to make snap decisions about what to do, who to do it to, and when to do it. There are the basic decisions to be made that gamers will be most familiar with — things like what to shoot, which door to open, and what items to inspect, but there are also difficult moral decisions that players will be confronted with during their approximately nine hours of gameplay (at least for the first run-through).
Each and every decision makes a major difference in how Until Dawn’s narrative plays out. Even seemingly mundane choices early on in the game’s story can mean the difference between life and death for one or more characters as the player progresses.
With the myriad choices available to gamers, Until Dawn is meant to be played through to completion more than once. Different decisions lead to different outcomes, different numbers of survivors, and a wholly different experience.
More seasoned gamers will notice the similarities between Until Dawn’s decision-based engine and previous games like Quantic Dream’s hit 2010 game Heavy Rain and even their less-successful 2013 game Beyond: Two Souls (which played so much like a movie that it actually premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival).
Beyond: Two Souls starred Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe and, although it might be the closest the melding of games and movies had come prior to Until Dawn’s release, but it’s storyline and gameplay couldn’t quite live up to the interactive experience’s lofty ambitions.
Until Dawn, however, takes some of Quantic Dream’s core ideas, expands them, and puts them to use in a fun, engaging, and mostly well-executed gameplay environment. It’s almost as if the folks at Supermassive Games played the living hell out of Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, pinpointed all those games’ shortcomings, and corrected them in their very own horror-centric environment. This dogged dedication to getting it right is what makes Until Dawn one of the most unique and fun games to hit the scene in recent years.
The other aspect of Until Dawn that makes it so successful is the near-perfect team that Supermassive Games assembled to helm the game’s story and performances.
Larry Fessenden might not be a household name to gamers, but horror movie fans know the man well. He’s written and directed some of the most interesting independent horror films of the last few decades including 1997’s Habit, 2006’s The Last Winter, and the deliciously freaky 2001 film, starring Patricia Clarkson and Jake Weber, Wendigo. He’s even acted in over 30 films since 1991, often making a quick appearance to rightfully steal a scene or two.
Teamed up with another Glass Eye Pix (Fessenden’s production company) alumni Graham Reznick, the duo knows their horror like few others do. They meticulously sprinkle the typical teenager horror film tropes throughout Until Dawn’s narrative before blowing them all to smithereens and sending the player spinning into a truly unique horror experience.
“I think we were very interested in taking genre tropes,” Fessenden says in the game’s bonus content, “and refreshing them.”
It’s a delight to see Supermassive Games give the reins on one of the year’s biggest games to an indie horror film stalwart like Fessenden, but it’s even more impressive to see just how much trust they had in the vision that he and Reznick brought to the game.
But it’s not just the folks behind the camera that make Until Dawn work so effectively. A lot of the credit should go, as well, to the eight actors that dared to don the motion capture suits to create such an immersive, interactive experience.
The most recognizable names, of course, are Hayden Panettiere (Heroes, Nashville), who plays Sam, and Rami Malek (Mr. Robot, Short Term 12), who plays the impetus behind the group’s gathering, Josh.
Beyond those two actors, viewers will also likely recognize Brett Dalton from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nichole Bloom from Project X and the Showtime series Shameless, and Peter Stormare (who plays a psychiatrist in the game) from the classic 1996 film Fargo and the Fox TV series Prison Break.
There are plenty of games that bring in acting star power to bolster their reputation amongst gamers, but there are few that have assembled such an eclectic and talented cast as Until Dawn.
Dalton’s performance might be the most nuanced and interesting, but everyone from Panettierre and Malek to Bloom and Stormare bring their A-games to the material, giving each and every character a unique, but relatable, personality that makes the game incredibly immersive.
These are true motion capture performances. It’s not just a group of actors in a booth recording ADR for actions they’re watching on screen. The performances in Until Dawn rival that of the universally praised trio in Grand Theft Auto 5.
“One of the things that Larry [Fessenden] does really well is make these multi-layered characters,” Antonella Lentini (who plays Hannah and Beth) says in the game’s bonus content, “and I think for, just the story in general, it follows these quintessential horror movie plotlines. But the characters are so unique in themselves, and I think that’s really cool.”
Yet, even with all of these positives going for it, Until Dawn isn’t quite a perfect game. There are a few things that will have gamers unimpressed (and one thing that will have them pulling out their hair).
Until Dawn’s choice mechanic, environments, graphical details, storyline and horror movie elements (all the way down to Jason Graves’s fantastic score) are among the best you’ve ever seen in the gaming realm.
But, for the uninitiated gamers who don’t watch horror movies, the storyline’s spiral into madness during the game’s second half might not be quite as appreciated. Horror fans (particularly Fessenden fans) will delight in its pure insanity, but we’re a special breed and we’re fine with that.
And while Until Dawn provides the player the opportunity to control the direction that the narrative goes, the game’s overall plot is linear to a fault. If you’re looking for an open world experience, Until Dawn is not the game for you. There are some forks in the road, to be sure, but most of the game consists of checking off certain boxes, following straight lines through the story, and doing what Supermassive wants you to do.
The one aspect of Until Dawn that will likely having you pull out your hair, however, is part of the game’s control scheme. Horror fans like me love darkness. It’s scary and unrelenting and full of tension. But we also like to be able to see what we’re doing when we’re playing video games.
Maneuvering your characters around a dark forest or a cabin basement seems like a fun idea, but when you also have to swing around a flashlight to see what’s in the distance, it becomes decidedly less so.
Camera angles can be infuriating at times, having you push the left joystick up to make your character walk forward and down five seconds later to continue walking in essentially the same direction.
Luckily, most of the fast-paced action set pieces don’t require the player to actually maneuver your character around (instead you’ll be fast-punching specific buttons, before a timer runs out, to do certain tasks), so the controls won’t hinder your progress much. They’re just frustrating — especially for a game that is so much horrifying fun otherwise.
All that being said, Until Dawn is an absolute must have for anyone that likes being scared silly, loves the idea of crafting their own video game destiny, and wants to experience one of the most unique games in recent years.
This is a game built by horror fans for horror fans. It’s a whole new way of gaming that should lead the way for interactive games for the next few years.
The terrifying future of horror games is now, folks, and Until Dawn is here to usher it in. Too bad only four of the original eight characters I started with in the game will be around to see it.
Until Dawn is available for PS4 right now.
