The game follows a group of young adults (teenagers maybe? they might be high schoolers I forget and they look older than the game is telling me they are) having a weekend getaway in a snowy log cabin on top of a mountain. The group pranks one of the girls who then gets upset and runs half naked into sub zero weather where she is then set upon by something or someone and ends up falling off a cliff with her sister to her death. One year after the prank gone wrong, the group re-unite to try and have another party but this time with a bit less death and shenanigans ensue.
You, the player, are effectively watching this teen horror flick and every so often you get to make decisions for the characters or attempt to clear QTEs to see if they live or die. There isn't quite as much weight to each choice or action as the game might have you believe in a lot of cases but some decisions are quite severe and do effect the plot in major ways and even a few of the QTE's will result in a character just outright biting the dust when failed which is a lot more than I can say for other games that I've played in this genre. On your first go through you learn pretty quickly that this is the case but you aren't sure which decision will lead someone to their doom and which you can fail for the funnies so there is a decent sense of tension on that first run
I'm going to get into spoiler territory so if you haven't played it and you give a shit, stop reading here and go play it.
For example there's a part sort of early on where a boy and a girl are tied to a couple of chairs and one of you must die so the other may live. The boy has a free hand and a gun on the table and you must decide if you are going to shoot her or yourself. No matter what decision you make, no one dies because this is where the first of the games major twists takes place, where the whole thing is an elaborate prank being carried out by another character. The two characters who were tied to the chair don't really talk about the effect of this decision after this scene so you may be led to believe that it's just one self contained scene for a long time, the boy and the girl even carry on their adventures and everything seems fine.
That is until the games second twist, where the game changes from a slasher movie to a supernatural monster flick and the group is being chased by the Wendigo, a lanky fucker that will rip your head off. You get to a scene near the end of the game where the boy from the previous scene is being chased down a snowy path by the monster and when he reaches the cabin he needs the girl to open the door and let him in to safety. If you shot yourself in the buzzsaw scene, she opens the door and you survive. If you shot her she keeps the door tightly locked and watches you get your head ripped off by the Wendigo and sort of pretends to be sad about it. There's even a combination of events you can do that I'm unsure of where she doesn't open the door for some reason and is distraught when she watches you get torn to shreds.
There are plenty of scenes that play out in this way and are affected by stuff from WAY earlier in the game and it sort of invokes the same feeling that I had playing Kamaitachi no Yoru (also set in a snowy log cabin, funnily enough) on the SNES where we were working out every decision comination possible to get every possible ending scene, it was good fun there and it's good fun here.
I do have some minor complaints about the game though and while they don't ruin the experience they are worth noting. There are some characters in the cast, two in particular spring to mind, that don't get nearly enough screen time. They appear at the start and then either die SUPER fast or are ignored for most of the game and then get a little scene near the end. Some of the decisions the cast decide to make on their own, outside of your choices, sometimes feel a bit stupid but I suppose you are playing a teen horror movie where this kind of thing is to be expected but it's still annoying. Also parts of the game that involve walking from one area to another are PAINFULLY slow, with no proper run button and nothing to really do or figure out until the next set piece starts in 99% of cases.
There is one other HUGE complaint I have with the game but I'm separating it out because this is a problem that is no fault of the developer or the game itself. Since I live in Japan, I was playing the Japanese version of the game and this version is HEAVILY censored. Most of the deaths that the characters experience in this game involve either decapitation or amputation and in Japan, this is a big no no for games. That means that when a character is killed the game will usually fade to black or certain parts of the kill animation will be modified. This however goes as far to effect the story near the end. There is a scene where you open a door and find a hall that is filled with the hanging, mangled corpses of every character who has died up to that point. You go through the hall to rescue another member of the group and on the way out he has a sort of break down at all the death he's surrounded by. In the Japanese version of this game not only is there a fade to black during some of it but the 3D MODELS OF THE BODIES ARE COMPLETELY REMOVED. I had NO fucking clue what the cast was getting so upset about and I would have never have had an idea if it wasn't for someone in my stream chat explaining what was supposed to be happening. Japanese censorship of this game really fucked some of it's best moments so if you're going to play it, don't play that version, import a UK or US version or something.
Overall though, Until Dawn was an extremely fun game that has quite a surprising amount of replay value considering the kind of genre it's in. If you played a Quantic Dream game and found it lacking, give this game (or it's sequels Man of Medan and Little Hope) a try. If you're a fan of the old school SNES sound novel like Kamaitachi no Yoru and Otogirisou you might also like it since it's sort of a modern version of that kind of experience. Or if you just like trashy teen horror slasher flicks you'll probably like it as well because it plays VERY heavily into it's influences.
Bottom line, give it a go. Pop it in your PS4 in the evening and you'll probably be playing.....Until Dawn
Dohohoho
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