Oh man, I am so
qualified to talk about this game, because I think horror movies are dumb.
Well, maybe that’s too strong of a claim. It’s not like I think every movie in the
genre is dumb, or that the genre in its entirety is dumb. But I’ve had some bad experiences in the
past, and not because I got scared out of my gourd. I actually WISH I’d been scared out of my
gourd, because in theory that’s what horror movies are about -- making you
forget that there’s a screen between you and the action, and making you feel
just as vulnerable as the victims du jour.
I’d like to think that horror movies aren’t just vehicles for gore and
murder, because that’s not what horror movies are about. (Nor is it about busting out the baps, but
that’s neither here nor there.) Call me
naïve, but I would have thought that a horror movie that can’t scare is a
terrible horror movie, just like a comedy that can’t amuse is a terrible
comedy. But I got dragged to see The Thing remake, the Friday the 13th remake,
Legion (ostensibly), and sat through
no shortage of offerings on TV. Too many
of them have been a slog, and I’m ready for a change. I’m ready for the good stuff.
That brings me to Until Dawn -- a game that I can’t decide is amazing or awful.
So here’s the setup. One night, a bunch of college-going teenagers
(shut up, they’re totally teenagers) get together at their pal’s mountain
lodge. But instead of enjoying the snow
and having some good, wholesome fun, the majority of them opt to spring a prank
on Hannah Washington, a nerdy girl who has a crush on resident hunk Mike. Hannah ends up humiliated and runs through
the woods, prompting a search by her twin sister Beth. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end well for either
of them; something forces them to the
edge of a cliff, and the twins make a lethal drop to the ground below.
Cut to a year later, and the teens are all getting
back together at the same lodge -- on the anniversary of the twins’ death
(though officially, it’s said they just “disappeared”). It’s a plan orchestrated by their brother,
Josh, who opens up his wintry retreat to try and move past the tragedy. Eventually, all eight of the teens are
assembled at the Washington’s lodge, so they can -- in Josh’s unfortunate words
-- “party like they’re fucking porn stars”.
But things start going awry once again, because it’s obvious that
there’s still something creeping
around the mountains. Now it’s up to the
gang to solve the mystery…and it’s up to you, the player, to keep them alive.
It should go without saying, but everything after
this sentence is going to be THE ULTIMATE SPOILERS. Ready?
Okay! Here we
goooooooooooooooooo!
Here’s the thing about Until Dawn: I’m actually convinced that it’s the ultimate con
job.
Supermassive Games made a game that’s, in the eyes
of many, a mixture of every major horror movie in the past half-century or
so. And while that’s true -- for good
and for ill -- I don’t think I can fully buy into it. Call it a case of me over-reading into things
(that’s kind of my thing), but having finished the game, I don’t think Until Dawn is just “all of the horror
movies”. If anything, the horror
elements are a diversion -- maybe even a distraction from what the devs really
wanted to make.
Don’t get me wrong. I agree with the sentiment that this is a
David Cage/Quantic Dream game done well…inasmuch as a David Cage/Quantic Dream
game can be done well. But the question that’s been on my mind is
whether or not Supermassive Games had to
make Until Dawn like this because it
wouldn’t sell otherwise. What do I
mean? Well, I’ll explain. But first, I have to make an assertion: Until Dawn’s cast is almost a
point-for-point recreation of the Persona
4 cast.
I’m not even joking. The parallels between the Investigation Team
and the teens are uncanny -- so much so that I made some charts.
Those comparisons aren’t ironclad, of course; I’m
still debating whether Sam is the Chie-parallel or the Yukiko-parallel,
considering that Sam plays to the “final girl” role pretty hard. Whatever the case, it’s hard to avoid making
comparisons -- and weirdly, the comparisons don’t stop there. Until
Dawn is practically more mystery than horror, in the sense that the terror
in the first half of the game mostly comes from these goofballs trying to spook
each other (with many, many, many jump
scares). Supposedly, there’s a psycho on
the loose, so it’s up to the Nu-Investigation Team to figure out the truth
behind the murders of two innocent women.
And then the truth is revealed, and…well, I’ll get to that.
It’s worth noting upfront that there are actually
Social Links in the game. They’re not
called that, of course, but the resemblance is uncanny; say the right things to
the right characters, and their relationship values will increase (and of
course, story events will play out differently). I didn’t actually test it out in my
playthrough, but based on what I’ve read, having low enough relationship values
-- or just saying the wrong things -- can actually lead to a couple of
deaths. There’s a part of me that’s
convinced the Social Links aren’t quite as
controlling or impactful as you’d think, which extends to the personality
traits/stats that raise and lower depending on your actions (take lots of
shortcuts with Mike, and his bravery will max out, for example). Still, their inclusion tells me something about
Until Dawn’s intent.
My theory is that Supermassive Games didn’t want
to make a horror game. They wanted to
make a big-budget visual novel, but they had to sell it as a mash-up of all the
horror movies around -- the dumbest of the genre well among them -- because
otherwise, no one would have bought in.
I’d argue that Until
Dawn is one hell of a slow starter.
Oh, sure, Beth and Hannah bite it pretty hard in the opening, and it’s
made plainly obvious that something is
out there on the mountain, but for ages there’s nothing but an implied
threat. One scene after another will
deflate itself because -- surprise! It
was nothing. Just more pranks by people
whose pranks ended up getting two people killed. And when there actually is something, it’s in a scene that’s more of a slow burn -- the
implication of violence to come, rather than the genuine horror and high
tension one would expect.
Mike and Jessica are a good example of this. The end of one of the earlier chapters has
them heading off to a cabin to go “land some critical hits”, and it’s a breezy
trip for most of it. At one point, Jess
throws a snowball at Mike, and when he gets ready to throw one back, she’s
gone; she shrieks, and then the chapter ends.
So a monster nabbed her, right?
Nope. It was just a prank to
scare Mike. And then they run through
the forest to reach the cabin, for fear that some kind of animal is going to
eat them…and then minutes later, Mike’s looking to get Jess in the mood again,
which prompts a substantially-longer sequence where Mike has to set the
ambiance (with the reward, I suspect, being the right to see Jess take off more
of her clothes). And then Jess actually gets nabbed for real.
I’m no horror expert, but I feel like Until Dawn drags its feet when it comes
to getting to the scary bits (that actually matter, and aren’t just jump scares). I
mean, the point of a horror movie’s opening minutes is to set the tone and
atmosphere, isn’t it? The game’s plenty
competent at flexing its AV muscles to do that -- it really is a good-looking
game, trips to the uncanny valley aside -- but I feel like it’s undercut too
often for my tastes.
Did we have to have a scene where Chris dresses up
as a hooded stranger and rushes Sam and Josh?
Or was it just there because otherwise there wouldn’t be a chase scene
to make people think that things are
happening? And again, it deflates
the tension of the game overall. Instead
of all these false alarms that pull everything back down, why not build to
something steadily with subtlety and airs of unease? Why create these constant tonal U-turns and
diffusions of the overall story when the end goal is terror unrelenting? Or was the goal actually to not create terror, and just go through
the motions as any terrible horror movie would?
Maybe it doesn’t matter. It’s like I said: this game is a con job that
tries to convince people to play a big-budget visual novel. It’s not about the scares, the death, or the
things that go bump in the night. It’s
about the people.
That’s, uh, not always a good thing, though.
The weird thing about me and Until Dawn is that in a lot of ways, I don’t care about how scary
it is, or how well it apes horror movie conventions. Even when that stuff gets into full swing,
it’s not my big takeaway. As I’ve said
before, characters create opportunities;
they’re the biggest assets a story could possibly have, regardless of the
medium or the intent. So with the
Nu-Investigation Team well in the midst, they’re the focus and very literally the game’s assets. Pared down to basics, they’re a measure of
the player’s skill and success; the more you manage to keep alive, the better
you are at the game. (Naturally, the
achievement/trophy for keeping everyone around till the end is “They All
Live”.)
So the implication, then, is that the
Nu-Investigation Team is likable.
They’re people that you’d want to keep alive because of how endearing
they are, and how much they mean to you.
It’d be like putting the Classic Investigation Team in the same spooky
scenario; if their lives were in danger, you’d do your best to protect
them. You’d want to see more of Kanji
being Kanji, and Chie being Chie, because they’re endearing. Lovable.
They -- well, any good set of characters -- mean something to the
audience, even if they aren’t real.
With that in mind, how does the cast of Until Dawn fare? Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
I’m torn, honestly. I think the biggest thing about them is that
I like what they represent instead of
liking them because of who they are.
There’s no denying that they’re an interesting bunch, but are they
likable? Are they people I’d want to
follow to hell and back? Not
really. They’re stock as all get out,
which is problematic in its own right -- but the bigger issue is that they
don’t get the time to develop that they really need. They do develop, granted; Mike goes from a
joker and one move away from infidelity to a stalwart hero willing to sacrifice
himself (and will, if you screw up). But
I wanted to spend more time with them. I
wanted to see where they go, and what they do.
That doesn’t really happen, at least not to a substantial level.
Yeah, yeah, you can’t compare a game you could
beat in a couple of days to an eighty-hour JRPG, but even then Until Dawn’s progression is an
issue. The characters could have been
more than stock archetypes, but I suspect that a major problem comes from the
fact that there are more characters than the game has room for in the story. Matt and Jess drop out for a HUGE portion of
the game if you keep them alive; it gets to the point where they don’t even
show up for the climax. Characters split
up constantly and spend huge swaths of time alone or separated; apparently, Sam
spends hours in the bathtub for some
reason. Even if you’re trying to have
everyone be super best friends forever, it’s hard to keep the synergy levels
high -- because the needs of the plot outweigh the needs of the player.
I would have loved to spend more time with these
characters, because there are glimmers of hope in most of them. Even if she’s supposed to be the alpha-female
popular girl archetype, I don’t have any problems admitting that Jess is my
favorite character. She actually has a character, after all; she’s bold
and sassy, but there are layers to her that only start to be revealed when it’s
time for her to exit the plot. On the
guys’ side, Matt’s cool because he’s a nice guy who’s constantly getting dumped
on by everyone else, including his girlfriend.
But he takes it all like a champ, and he’s endearing for it.
There’s a moment in the game where you have a
chance to pick who your least favorite member of the Nu-Investigation Team
is. I imagine that a LOT of people
picked Emily, because every single element of her character is geared toward
making her as unlikable as possible.
Honestly, I think Sam is the
worst character in the game; Emily can get annoying, but at least she’s never
dull. Sam is. She’s kind, and brave, and smart, and
friendly, and strong, and cool, and pure, and everybody loves her. Except me, because she’s got nothing to her
besides being Miss Perfect.
Also, here’s a fun fact: you can pretty much spoil
who’s wearing the thickest plot armor thanks to the game’s opening
credits. Because if you know who’s
playing who (like I did), then you realize there’s no way they’re killing off
top-billed actors like Claire Bennet and Agent Ward. Not till the very end, at least.
I’d love to talk more about Chris and Ashley, but
really, what is there to say? The game
describes Chris as humorous and protective, and that’s kind of true depending
on which choices you make (and if you can tolerate Chris’ “humor”). But it still feels insubstantial. There are moments where he does become
amusing, and even likable, but it’s more like a taste test. I’m still hungry for more, even after
finishing the game. Same goes for
Ashley, only even more so; after the first few cutscenes, she spends the rest
of the game scared or in a panic -- which is kind of the point in the later
game, because her fears very nearly lead to the group killing Emily.
Something tells me that sequence is only there to
give the player a chance to kill Emily “the bitch” themselves if they wanted
to. But let’s give Supermassive Games
the benefit of the doubt.
If it sounds like I’m super-down on Until Dawn, then…well, that’s because I
kind of am. Like I said, the characters
offer up more of a taste test than anything filling; the taste is good, no
question, but it’s painful knowing that that’s all I’m going to get. If this game was supposed to be a visual
novel, then it’s hampered by the need to play the big dumb horror movie --
which in itself is a problem because it brings in all the baggage of big dumb
horror movies. But despite my complaints,
this game has more than enough saving graces.
And here’s one of them.
Jess may be my favorite character, but Josh is
arguably the best character. One of the big reveals is that the Washington
lodge reunion was all orchestrated by Josh; since the Nu-Investigation Team’s
prank led to the death of his sisters, he decided to have his revenge by
pranking them right back. So over the
course of a year, he spared no expense in setting up props and contraptions to
turn the lodge into the ultimate haunted house -- up to and including the
placement of fake evidence to give the player red herrings about who’s behind
the madness. Josh even fakes his death
with a trap straight out of the Saw movies,
complete with a body double (filled with pig guts, incidentally) torn in
half.
The truth is that Josh is a much more disturbed
person than his joking nature would suggest.
The death of his sisters has weighed on his mind for ages, to the point
where he suffered from depression, needed therapy, and was on no shortage of
medication. So while not every member of
the group is technically responsible for the twins’ death, in Josh’s mind it
makes sense. It doesn’t matter if Sam’s
a pure little snowflake, or if Chris (and Josh alongside him) drank himself
into an impromptu nap. Everyone is his enemy, and he needs his
revenge -- which just so happens to include uploading the night of horrors onto
the internet to preserve their humiliation for ages.
Once Josh gets outed as the culprit, he pretty
much turns into a fusion of the Joker and Daffy Duck -- for a little while, at
least. But even then (and in retrospect,
by extension), it’s hard not to sympathize with Josh. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and thanks to
the other story twists he ends up putting himself and his friends in actual danger, but in his eyes, what
he’s doing is justified. At least, it
starts off that way; there’s no telling of Josh actually realized the error of
his ways at story’s end, but I’d like to believe that he saw the need for
redemption before the credits rolled.
That really is the main idea behind the story, and
what at least tries to elevate Until Dawn
into something besides visceral schlock: it’s a story about redemption more
than it is about horror. The
Nu-Investigation Team has their reunion to move past the tragedy from a year
ago, and ease their guilt -- but Josh is there to remind them just how much
damage their little stunt did.
Some of the game’s strongest moments are when the
characters are forced to acknowledge their guilt, and go from a bunch of
terrible pranksters to people who are capable of feeling and
understanding. They come together,
connect with each other, realize what they did, and make bold stances that let
them go beyond their archetypes. Ashley
in particular has one strong moment where she stops cowering and speaks like
she’s got an inferno in her belly.
There were times when I didn’t care in the
slightest about Until Dawn’s horror
aspect; honestly, it reached a point where I wanted to just sit these people
down in the lodge and have them talk things out for the entirety of the game
(effectively turning it into Let’s All
Get Together and Enjoy Each Other’s Company…Until Dawn, If Possible). In a game with Social Links -- and by the
plot’s demands, heavily concerned with at least half the cast shacking up --
the expectation is that those bonds would be developed thanks to cutscenes,
dialogue choices, and relationship values.
And you know what?
I would’ve been fine with that. I
wanted to see Mike and Matt talk over boundaries, knowing that there’s still a
spark between the former and his ex-girlfriend Emily…who is Matt’s current girlfriend. I wanted to see Chris bond with Ashley in
better circumstances than a night filled with terror. I wanted Sam to have a character beyond “is
perfect”.
But what I wanted most of all was for the gang to
reconcile with Josh, and vice versa. His
grief and anger are justified, but they shouldn’t have to be the end of the
discussion. I wanted to steer the
characters toward him and show that there’s still a bond, and that they can all move past the tragedy. Honestly, I thought that was what the game
moved towards, given some of the dialogue choices. One character after another offers kind words
and support to Josh, albeit before his reveal as the manic mastermind. It would’ve been the ultimate closure for his
arc, their story, and the game at large to save Josh in his time of need -- and
however briefly, however incompletely, from himself.
That didn’t happen.
I don’t think Matt and Jess ever even learn about
Josh’s ploy in the main story. (Maybe
Emily, because she missed out on the actual reveal, and I’m not sure if they
actually explained the truth in full to her.)
Josh himself ends up dropping out of the plot once the horror stuff
kicks into full gear. Chris, Emily, and
Ashley become dramatically less important as the game progresses, excluding the
occasional action sequence. Mike and Sam
do the most legwork, but they do so while separated from the rest of the cast
-- and the cast at large tends to act like they’re on opposite sides of the
Berlin Wall once it’s time for the plot (such as it is) to take over.
What gets to me is that I have a sneaking suspicion
that those story elements -- the redemption and reconciliation -- are all just
happy coincidences born from me reading too deep into schlock. From what I can gather, there are only two
ways for Josh’s story to end; one of them ends in death. The other is dependent on whether or not you
find one piece of evidence way late in the game, which is hard to miss unless
you’re plowing through to the next cutscene.
That means everything up to that point is pretty much pointless filler
in terms of “choices that actually matter”.
All that potential ends up getting squandered. Frankly, I’m not even sure if the characters
themselves were aware of the potential; Sam’s the one who finds out Josh
suffered in silence, and I have my doubts she explained anything to anyone.
I wanted these eight people, rough around the
edges as they were, to be friends. But
overall, I never got the chance. And
that seriously bums me out.
Supermassive Games dangled a carrot on a stick --
and when I jumped for it, they yanked it away so I could fall on my face. Until
Dawn could have been so much more…which is odd, because despite my issues,
it already is more than expected. They
could have gone with the bare-bones requirements needed, but they didn’t. They got me to care about these people, and
their dilemma, and made me want to give them all a happy ending.
But I screwed up.
I went in hoping to keep all eight alive, but I lost Matt and
Ashley. It was so frustrating, knowing
that I blew it -- but the more I played, the more I realized something. I wasn’t mad because I lost the chance to
give characters I loved the conclusion they deserved; I was mad because as a
gamer, I’d lost the chance to prove my skill.
I’d gone down from S-rank to A-rank, or passed a couple of collectibles,
or just missed setting a new high score.
In the end, I hadn’t done enough to completely
care about them -- and neither had the game.
It’s so frustrating. So very frustrating. But on the other hand? You should judge a game by what it is, not
what it isn’t. And taken in that
respect? Even if Until Dawn doesn’t give me what I secretly wanted, what it does offer is…substantial, to say the
least.
See you next time.
Maybe then, I’ll have nicer things to say about the game -- or just
confirm whether it’s good or bad. That’d
be swell.
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