Eight teenagers hole themselves up on a remote BC mountain in the middle of a nasty winter storm. They’re trying to regain a piece of themselves in the shadow of a tragic death of some friends that happened there one year prior and, hey, hopefully get some solid partying in too. Such is the thought process of the horror film teen, and Until Dawn wastes no time sending these ideas up in some clever and very grotesque ways.
Following the lead of Quantic Dream adventures like Heavy Rain or Beyond: Two Souls — and made by a different developer, Supermassive Games — Until Dawn is a modern adventure game that uses performance capture technology in attempt to have its starring characters move and emote as believably as possible. The game frequently shifts perspective between its eight leads, and you’ll spend most of your time steering them around moody areas, looking for any items or clues that will help your odds of survival. The game often slaps you with some tough dichotomous choices as well, many of which can have rippling consequences for how your playthrough goes.
During their tragic anniversary rager, you see, a masked murderer shows up. A number of other worrying omens around the mountain suggest that more awful happenings are in store for our horror film teens. The wildlife seems agitated. Distant gurgling screams wind through the trees. Every so often, jets of flame appear in far-flung corners of the screen. The game takes its time with jump scares and fake outs for a while, the truly ominous pieces of the story spooky set dressing. Then comes the clear moment where shit gets irrevocably real, and it’s the commitment to go deep and dark into the confines of horror storytelling that makes Until Dawn such a treat.
It’s impossible to save these people from some pretty rough hardships as you piece together what the hell is going on, but it is possible to save their lives. A lot of choice-based adventure games try to sell the efficacy of their branching paths, but few make as hard a sell as Until Dawn does. Any moments of action are handled through quick time events, and a crucial missed button press truly could mean the permanent death of any of the eight leads by the end of the game. A single rolling autosave slot does its best to ensure that there’s no do-overs (at least until you finish once and unlock a scene selection). You can finish the game with everyone alive…or dead.
Often choices feel like potential for a tense diversion or clever connection to a moment from earlier, and a lot of the time that potential pays off. My girlfriend and I did a playthrough each before I wrote this review, and each offered plenty of distinct set-ups for how scenes were arranged and which were included at all. The particulars of how or if characters met their grisly ends were likewise fresh. What struck us most was how seemingly insignificant details made a big impact time and again. Gestures made in a scene played for laughs can save or damn a character’s life hours later in ways we’d never have expected. These turns of fate are cleverly bookended by a psychiatrist played by Peter Stormare, whose unhinged performance thoroughly unnerves (and adapts to play on some of your personal fears in neat ways, too).
He’s not the only one you may recognize here. Hayden Panettiere plays Sam, a strong survivor type who ends up being one of most developed and likeable characters. Rami Malek turns in a fun and energetic performance as Josh, whose sisters’ deaths set the spooky pretext for the tale to come. He delivers some of the game’s best lines. Celebrity or not, the cast does a mostly good job of selling the story with a knowing theatricality that celebrates the design of the horror film. Emily dutifully plays the entitled brat of the group, staying positively insufferable in even the most dire circumstances. I often felt bad for her new but already long-suffering boyfriend Luke, who’s trying to keep things together around her old flame, Mike. Then there’s Chris, dudebro and abbot addict who won me over once he was placed in some of the game’s funniest and most affecting scenes. Some scares and goofs inevitably fall flat, but without giving too much away the game is more successful than not in operating that stress-and-relief rollercoaster. Getting to know — and mourning the loss of — the cast is the game’s strongest suit.
The first playthrough of Until Dawn is the best and most taxing on your nerves, but it says a lot for the quality of the ride that immediately playing again serves up an almost as entertaining result. It’s fun to watch scenes diverge as you experiment with different character relationships and choices, even if peeking behind the curtain like this also reveals a number of choke points designed to wrangle up narrative threads and survivors regardless of how you’re playing. A few parameters surrounding how many people survive a playthrough can feel a little cheap and sudden, too, especially if you’re taking your time and expending the extra effort to keep everyone alive. Losing some friends along the way is part of the horror sojourn, of course, but sometimes their fate is determined by a seemingly arbitrary decision or picky motion-controlled mechanic that demands you physically remain still to succeed.
A few other burrs rest on the periphery of Until Dawn, mainly visual in nature. This is a great looking game, filled with impressively rendered and slickly framed shots of winter wilderness and cabins turned torture chambers, but the performance can struggle to keep up. Framerate dips were common and a little jarring but didn’t impact playing at all, in my experience. More distracting are the occasionally dead-eyed, elastic-faced visages that show up to interrupt what is otherwise a totally engrossing moment. Things are certainly convincing enough to draw you in most of the time, but when the game does decide to twist up someone’s facial features or make them crack an unexplained split-second smile like some kind of lunatic, it’s the rare time the game feels silly and unnerving in an unintended way.
Until Dawn is made up almost entirely of familiar adventure game components, buts its intense production and grisly linkage to horror lore make it one of the more interesting and accessible games of the year. There are a few bruises here and there, but nothing that can keep a great ride down. Certainly nothing compared to the bruises those teens take.