Until Dawn Review

Back in 2015, the landscape of horror gaming changed drastically with the release of one of the most innovative, transformative games in horror history. What was first perceived by audiences as a campy, cheesy, throwaway jumpscare-fest, that did little more than attempt to emulate the success of similar choice-based games from Telltale Games and Quantic Dream, soon became the breakout title of Supermassive Games, and upped the ante when it came to creating choice-driven games that genuinely handed players the steering wheel, rather than simply giving the illusion of consequence (looking at you Telltale).

10 years, a newly-released movie, and one underwhelming remake later, the original Until Dawn remains one of the most terrifying, thrilling, and iconic games in both the horror and choice-based game genres. Now, in celebration of its legacy, alongside the release of the movie that appears to be based on the game in name only, we’re looking back at 2015’s Until Dawn in our first ever retrospective review. A warning, in case you’ve managed to avoid this game completely over the last 10 years – spoilers ahead! We’ll be discussing plot points and characters from the game in-depth here! Now, let’s return to Blackwood Mountain, and talk all things Until Dawn.

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Until Dawn Review

Image by Sony Computer Entertainment

In many ways, Until Dawn is not only one of the best horror games you’ll ever play, but also encapsulates one of the best horror movies you’ll ever watch play out. A large portion of Until Dawn’s gameplay, like its choice-driven game counterparts, involves letting the decisions you make unfold on the screen before you, and while Until Dawn does keep you on your toes with its sporadic quick-time events and sudden choice-making moments, the game more often than not feels like watching an interactive movie – even if that movie is incredibly long. To drive this element home, Until Dawn leans into the 80’s horror movie vibes heavily, embracing the campiness and cheesiness of it all. Some of this game’s, let’s say clunkier, quotes still pop into my head on occasion, and it takes me back to the glorious corniness that this game loved to play with.

Also in the spirit of embracing its cheesy horror roots, Until Dawn’s character line-up is everything a classic horror fan could ask for. Just about every trope from retro slasher films are to be found here in the character department. There’s a jock, a mean girl, a macho man, a nerd, a scaredy-cat, and even a traditional final girl, though she may not fulfill that role based on how you play. However, unlike our favourite, 1 hour 30 minute horror flicks, Until Dawn has close to 7 hours on average to expand on these characters and their personalities, giving depth to their surface-level tropes, and allow players to connect with them in a way horror fans often can’t when it comes to their movie counterparts.

How these characters evolve over the game’s playtime is exactly what makes Until Dawn such a standout entry in its genre. Each and every character here starts out one way, but ends up another, with the exception of our final girl Sam, who remains fairly considerate and diligent throughout. Mike begins the game as a bit of a jerk, a typical, cocky heartthrob, and closes out Until Dawn as one of the game’s standout heroes. Ashley begins the game in a fairly sympathetic position, the most easily scared of the group, but as the game progresses, makes some of the most morally questionable decisions in Until Dawn. However, there’s perhaps no better example of character growth in Until Dawn than Emily, who begins the game as practically everyone’s least favourite character, and often goes on to be a fan favourite after showing off her survival skills in the game’s first direct confrontation with the wendigo.

Image by Sony Computer Entertainment

All of this character work is, in large part, thanks to incredible performances from the entire cast of Until Dawn. Hayden Panettiere is incredible in the game’s ‘lead’ role, while Brett Dalton, Nichole Sakura, and Rami Malek also deliver stand-out performances. Malek in particular is central to the game’s main plot twist, and manages to pull off the game’s most complicated character in Josh. Peter Stormare is also incredible as Dr. Hill, and in many ways, holds the game together with his regular intervals with the player. There are some weak points in the game’s cast though. Larry Fessenden’s character, who gets neither a name, nor any sort of explanation regarding his backstory, feeds into the worst kind of horror trope – a guy who acts very frightening and mysterious for no good reason, whilst actually protecting our protagonists from the real threat the whole time. Compared to how well-thought out a lot of the rest of Until Dawn is, this character’s time on-screen is almost laughably drab. 

Also integral to this game’s character work is the game’s willingness to kill anyone and everyone based entirely on how the player performed in Until Dawn’s most intense moments. There was no ‘game over’ screen in Until Dawn, a welcome change from other choice-driven games’ tendency to protect the main characters at all costs, regardless of how badly the player performed throughout the game. If a character dies in Until Dawn, that was the end of their story, and trust me – it is very easy for characters to die in Until Dawn. That danger, however, is what makes Until Dawn so thrilling. Every choice matters, every quick-time event, and every ‘don’t move’ minigame, matters. You’ll have to make extremely good choices to allow everyone to survive to the end, and often, on your first playthrough, this result is near impossible.

However, from a gameplay perspective, Until Dawn was often forgiving with its choices, usually giving players a couple of chances to keep their favourite characters safe. A great example is with Emily in the first wendigo chase, where you can choose to remain on a conveyor belt leading to a grinder, or jump off. Jumping off is, of course, the right choice, but should you stay on the conveyor belt, the player will still be given two quick-time event chances to keep Emily alive. Only if you choose to stay on the belt, and then mess up both quick-time events, will Emily die here. There are moments that are more unforgiving than this, but generally, with the exception of Matt and Jessica who die very easily in a standard playthrough, the game gives the player chances. This design is for the best, as it keeps the stakes high, while not frustrating players too much should a character meet their end. In most cases, should a character die, there’s really no one to blame but the player.

Image by Sony Computer Entertainment

In many ways, that sense of consequence is what a lot of Until Dawn’s success came down to. This is a choice-based game, and your choices really matter in it. The game drives that home a little too heavily with the whole ‘butterfly effect’ metaphor, but hey, at least they actively back up what they say. I love Telltale Games, and always will, but when you start to realise how meaningless the decisions in those games are compared to how consequential the decisions in games like Until Dawn are, it really makes you wonder – have Telltale Games been beaten at their own game? Quantic Dream has always given its players a lot of control over the outcome of their playthroughs, but never more so than Detroit: Become Human, which was the developer’s first release post-Until Dawn, and I truly believe that the heightened sense of consequence in Detroit boils down to the competition that Supermassive Games posed with the release of Until Dawn.

Unfortunately, as much of a breakout as Until Dawn was for Supermassive, its quality was also one of the worst things that could have happened to them. Following Until Dawn’s success, the developer began to work on more games in a similar vein, beginning with Hidden Agenda, a game that left little-to-no mark in its field, followed shortly by the beginning of the four-part Dark Pictures Anthology, games that made a mark, but for the worse. It’s sad to say, but in comparison to the triumph that was Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures games are embarrassingly mediocre. 2022’s The Quarry is the only release since Until Dawn that has come close to allowing Supermassive to regain their glory, and though it doesn’t quite reach Until Dawn’s heights, it’s still a very fun time, and you should absolutely check it out if you’re a fan of this style of game. Oh, and The Casting of Frank Stone also happened – I haven’t played it. I also haven’t heard about anyone playing it though, so maybe that one is best left alone…

What a lot of these subsequent releases lacked, and one of the main things that made Until Dawn so good, was the use of genuine, unexpected plot twists. While you may have had a faint idea, no one can tell me that they saw the Josh reveal coming, and you would have an even harder time convincing me that you anticipated the wendigo twist. With the reveal of Josh as the ‘fake’ killer, and subsequent reveal that a wendigo has actually been terrorising Blackwood Mountain, the game stacks plot twists on top of one another. It makes the player look back across the entire game, and start to wonder – what moments were down to Josh, what moments were down to the creepy Larry Fessenden guy, and what moments were down to the wendigo. Before you have time to contemplate all of this though, the player is thrown into Until Dawn’s electrifying final act, and a mad chase to the ending begins in which you can only hope to keep as many characters alive as possible.

Image by Sony Computer Entertainment

Through all of these twists and turns shines Until Dawn’s masterful ability to interweave practically all of the major horror sub-genres into one, wild ride. In the beginning, our group of teenagers stranded in a mountain cabin with a machete-wielding psycho feels ripped straight from the pages of a Friday the 13th script. Then, as ‘the killer’ begins to reveal his sadistic tactics, things take a turn towards a Saw-style, serial-killer movie. Our regular visits with Dr. Hill, as well as some of Josh’s hallucinations towards the end of the game, lean more into the psychological horror side of things, while the arrival of the wendigos allows Until Dawn to go full-on monster horror in its final hour. All the while, Until Dawn remains brilliantly scary, and copiously gory throughout. It really is a horror fan’s dream.

The only downside to this glorious smorgasbord of horror? Well, more than a handful of people have complained about Until Dawn being far too large-scale and branching for them to even follow the story, much less connect with all of the different characters involved. In some ways, I can see where they’re coming from, and perhaps it was this criticism that led to Supermassive Games really toning down the grandiose nature of their storytelling when it came to The Dark Pictures Anthology. The chaos can be very fun, but certainly, bouncing between the 8 main characters in the game can feel a little jarring, especially when they’re all actively facing very different threats. The game all ties together in the end, when all of our characters return to the central lodge where it all began, but this criticism is far from unfounded.

I do also want to deduct a few points from Until Dawn for those good-for-nothing jumpscares. Listen, a good jumpscare has its place every now and again. Some people are totally against them, but I can appreciate one when it’s earned. Until Dawn though, almost never earns the incredibly gratuitous jumpscares it injects throughout its playtime. Some of them can be laughed off, particularly when you find yourself startled by a harmless animal. Sometimes though, it feels like a little bit much when you very suddenly have a wendigo screaming in your face because you chose to go left at an intersection instead of right. The wendigos are scary to look at when they’re just standing still – it’s not necessary to throw them right at my screen.

Image by Sony Computer Entertainment

These jumpscares have now become something of a trademark for Supermassive Games in their subsequent releases, which is a little bit of a shame. Gratuitous jumpscares are one of the most common barriers for people looking to get into the horror genre, so it’s unfortunate to see so many of them here, likely stopping many from enjoying the masterpiece that is Until Dawn. However, Supermassive have decided that jumpscares are integral to their gameplay, and who am I to stop them? After all, they’ve checked the box in so many other areas – we can allow them a slip-up or two.

On a final note, I want to praise the game’s inventive use of gameplay mechanics. Initially, this title was released as a PS4-exclusive, and Until Dawn makes use of the DualSense controller’s motion detection in an ingenious way. Having to physically hold still in ‘don’t move’ minigames added a new level of tension to Until Dawn, and while the feature is disappointingly absent from other versions of the game, I will never forget having to physically freeze in real life in order to mimic my character hiding from a scouring threat. Particularly in the game’s final scene, with the wendigo in the lodge, this mechanic really puts the player to the test, especially considering the character most at risk if a mistake happens here is Sam, our destined final girl.

So overall, Until Dawn solidified itself as a genre-classic by upping the ante when it came to choice-driven games, making use of incredibly innovative game mechanics, as well as the decision to have real weight and consequence behind the player’s decisions. While there were some missteps, particularly in how they drew on some of the horror genre’s less than admirable tropes, as well as the over-reliance of cheap jumpscares, Until Dawn is near-perfect in practically every other way. Ten years later, it remains one of the greatest horror and choice-based games of all time, a game-changer for both of its genres, as well as Supermassive Games’ finest hour. With the movie on the horizon, I’m fairly skeptical the movie will reach the game’s heights, but only time will tell. What do you think of Until Dawn? Be sure to let us know your thoughts on the game, all these years later, in the comment section, and thanks for reading!

See also: Silent Hill 2 Review

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