Back Into The Light: Hands On With Until Dawn

Until Dawn was quite easily one of my favourite games that came out of Gamescom two years ago, but it quickly disappeared almost completely from sight. Since then, we had the occasional affirmation of its continued development, but it wasn’t until last week at Gamescom that Supermassive’s teen horror came back into public view, now set for a release on PlayStation 4, with new controls and a renewed focus.

A lot has changed in the last two years, but there is still plenty in common. The game still follows a group of teenagers who have gone up into a cabin in the mountains, one year on from the disappearance of one of their friends at the very same annual retreat, only to be haunted and hunted by a mysterious enemies and occurrences. You play the game with each of the characters, making decisions along the way and determining their fate as you go.

The biggest change comes in how you control this adventure, with the first person viewpoint and PlayStation Move controls dropped in favour of third person and fixed camera views and playing with the DualShock 4, as the game also now makes the leap to the new console.

The Killzone: Shadow Fall engine is put to quite excellent use, as it handily captures the dark and dank basement that two characters, Chris and Ashley, have found themselves in after their first encounter with the Psycho that is hunting down the teenagers. Loading up the game, it played a short “Previously on…” style recap of the events so far, something that will happen each time you load up the game so that you don’t get lost in the story.

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Set a few hours into the game, they’re trying to find another of their friends, Sam – portrayed by Hayden Panettiere, as modern performance capture brings her and other known name actors into the game – to try and make sure she’s safe. Investigating the area, the game comes across rather a lot like the work of Quantic Dreams, with the third person view points and the deliberate camera placement and panning around an area. It was quite interesting for me to see that the camera was often placed quite low down, deliberately framing the shot in such a specific way.

It all ties into the particular balance that they want to strike between terror, horror and disgust, as they describe them. The terror plays out as the sense of foreboding, the gradual creep of an unseen and impending threat, which is accentuated by the moments of horror, with a occasional jump scares and the climactic moments to a scene. The disgust is what you’re left with afterwards, reflecting on what lies before you and confronting the fragility of your situation, in which any and all characters can die.

So it’s terror that dominates, as Ashley witnesses a ghostly visage down off in the distance, getting ever more distraught as she notes the ghost’s similarities to Sam. Taking control to search for clues, solve minor puzzles and progress, the interactions here come across rather a lot like Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, with world objects being highlighted as she gets closer to them, and then certain more physical inputs required as the game constantly tracks the motion sensor inside the DualShock 4, such as needing to tilt the controller to twist a key.

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In fact, the motion sensor is also used to point the in game flashlight around the room, and control where the controlled character’s head is pointing. The downside to the latter point is that while the game aims for this cinematic approach, it puts a fair amount of control into the hands of the player in an all-too-familiar fashion that allows you to often break an element of the immersion by wandering around the room during a conversation or shift the character’s head around a little awkwardly during a closeup.

But the real hook is the Butterfly Effect system built into the game, by which the story will branch to hundreds of possible endings through your choices and actions in game. This was mentioned in passing two years ago, but this is the first time it’s really been shown in action, with both short and long term ramifications throughout the game, and a mixture of obvious points of divergence and more subtle ones. Whenever it branches in a meaningful way, a small butterfly logo appears and animates in a corner of the screen.

One several occasions you get to make a choice between, for example, going with Chris through a doorway or chasing after another ghostly appearance of Sam, splitting the two characters up in the process – because that’s always a good idea in this genre. Some of the bigger turning points even have a third option of inaction or indecision, when there’s an audible ticking down in the background. However, it also branches to a greater and lesser degree based on if you find certain clues, to reveal the backstory of the game, or if you happen to find and pick up a pair of scissors, which might come in handy a little later for fending off the Psycho.

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Throughout there is an almost disappointing turn away from the innuendo-laden schlocky teen horror that I enjoyed so much two years ago. It’s not completely gone, as Pete Samuels and Will Byles explained during the Q&A, but the increased power of the PS4 and the shift to that platform – which surely would not have been possible had Sony not shown a lot of faith in the project – allowed them to better aim for a more realistic and mature tone. That cheesy humour might still be there during certain scenes though, so I’m hopeful some of the choice lines in the script remain.

So I’m really quite excited for Until Dawn once more, as it comes back into the light. If anything, it’s better than ever, with fantastic graphics on the PS4 and a universal control system that doesn’t require any accessories, but its most unique attraction in a resurgent genre is how it adapts and flows like a river around your choices and abilities. Knowing that any of the characters can and will die in a permanent fashion could really heighten that sense of dread during the most suspenseful moments.

3 Comments

  1. Sounds interesting, I quite enjoyed Obscure on PS2 and PSP where you got to play each of the teens in the story. Nice to have a few horror-game options aside from the poor Resi’s they keep dishing out.

  2. Not something i had been hugely anticipating but the revamp is sounding quite good now. I don’t know if anything can scare me again like PT did but bring it on! :)

  3. Love that any of the characters can die and the story carries on regardless. As with Heavy Rain, I imagine that will really add to the tension beyond just having to replay a scene following a game over screen.

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