I’ve always felt like choice-based games get a bit of an unfair reputation.
And I’m not really sure how much of it is warranted or not. While the critique of “your choices don’t matter” levied ever since Telltale’s The Walking Dead came out is… certainly fair in regards to how a lot of games try to handle player choice, I do feel like at least a little bit of it is gamers hearing the phrase “your choices shape the narrative” and stretching it way beyond what would actually be feasible. Like, it's true that maybe games bottleneck you into the same setpieces/results regardless of what you do… but also the alternative requires wayyyyyyyy more scale than is even possible for a lot of these developers. As a fan of these sorts of games, it’s… mostly just an unwritten rule that there’s only so much a game can really branch out, and that when a game is truly capable of accounting for what the player does, it’s something special.
Until Dawn is one of those games.
The story follows eight young adults, one year after a prank caused the untimely deaths of their friends Hannah and Beth Washington. When the group is invited by Josh, the brother of the two deceased, to come back to the cabin where they died and celebrate their anniversary, as a method of commiserating and also moving on. However, it soon becomes clear that there’s some sort of malevolent force hunting down and attempting to kill the party, and it's up to you, the player, to take control of each character, go through QTE segments, make choices, and determine whether everybody dies, or manages to survive until dawn.
And… man, when this game says your choices matter, they really do. There are limits, obviously — the plot itself mostly goes down the same path and there are some characters who’ll stick around longer before they have a chance to die — but in regards to having the choices you make cause rifts and have repercussions down the line. Things that seem innocuous in the moment might come back later to make survival that much harder — if not just kill them outright. You’re even given a certain amount of leeway to determine what the characters are like: you can have jock Mike be the Ash Williams of the game… or you can have him be a total weenie who gets his ass kicked every time it's up to him to step up to the plate. You can have Emily and her rebound Matt bond together and have some genuinely cute moments together… or have them bicker at each other the whole way in a sea of pettiness. The possibilities… aren’t endless, but there’s a lot you can do, and for a game to be able to reach that sort of scale is honestly pretty incredible. I can’t stress that enough.
There’s… not really a lot that holds it back, honestly, though the bits that do are there and present and definitely knock it down a little bit. I say ‘bits’ when really the main one I want to talk about are the Don’t Move segments. See, in addition to QTEs (which… I’m fine with though I do wish certain life-or-death situations weren’t based on them), there are also other segments where you’re made to hold the controller and keep it absolutely still (because the PS4 controller has a motion sensor in it), causing you to fail if you move the controller outside the zone you started the event in. This is… kind of a fun way to implement motion controls in theory, but… it's very unforgiving. The zone you’re given is very small, to the point where even breathing can move you enough to make you fail which… as someone who gets muscle twitches is very rough but even regardless of that it's very easy to fail in a way that doesn’t feel like it's your fault. I can assume that this was a complaint for many both because I’ve seen a lot of people talk about it and also because I know how heavily nerfed they were in The Quarry (though that might just be because not every console has motion sensors), but it's sad to see something that… genuinely could’ve been a fun twist on the QTE formula work out as badly as it does.
…I realize, now that I’m this far into the review, that Until Dawn is… a bit of a hard game to review. Both because at least a little bit of it is wrapped up in spoiler stuff (tl;dr the story does a thing that’s spoilers that’s also a thing I absolutely love to see in fiction) but also a lot of what makes it work so well is… less in how it plays more in how it unfolds, which kind of makes it hard to describe for a text review like this. I’m not generally fond of seeing reviews that are just vague “try it, you won’t regret it,” but… if you’re into stuff based around player choice and you’re willing to look past sometimes iffy teen-movie writing and rough motion controls I really recommend you check this out. It’s one of the best Telltale-esque adventure games out there. 9/10.
And also, since one of my friends asked, here’s my character ranking of the eight teens, top to bottom best to worst:
Mike — easily one of the most malleable characters in terms of how you can portray him which is fascinating to see. I love my absolute loser <3
Emily — kind of loosely fun but mostly there for the first half of the game but once chapter 7 hits god she just steals the show. her shoving Ashley through the door <3
Josh — gets some of the most… weird 40-year-old-writing-teenager-lines but I’m really into how he’s portrayed and what he does in the plot
Chris — he’s generally fun and I like his relationship with Ashley, nothing much to say here he’s pretty cool
Jessica — sadly is out of focus for most of the game but I loved her before she ended up disappearing, she gets so many fun moments
Ashley — a bit too low-key of a personality but I like her general vibe and her relationship with Chris
Matt — has the same issue as Jessica but sticks out more because he has less of a personality
Sam — has the same issue with Matt in terms of personality but sticks out more because she's around the whole game
And I’m not really sure how much of it is warranted or not. While the critique of “your choices don’t matter” levied ever since Telltale’s The Walking Dead came out is… certainly fair in regards to how a lot of games try to handle player choice, I do feel like at least a little bit of it is gamers hearing the phrase “your choices shape the narrative” and stretching it way beyond what would actually be feasible. Like, it's true that maybe games bottleneck you into the same setpieces/results regardless of what you do… but also the alternative requires wayyyyyyyy more scale than is even possible for a lot of these developers. As a fan of these sorts of games, it’s… mostly just an unwritten rule that there’s only so much a game can really branch out, and that when a game is truly capable of accounting for what the player does, it’s something special.
Until Dawn is one of those games.
The story follows eight young adults, one year after a prank caused the untimely deaths of their friends Hannah and Beth Washington. When the group is invited by Josh, the brother of the two deceased, to come back to the cabin where they died and celebrate their anniversary, as a method of commiserating and also moving on. However, it soon becomes clear that there’s some sort of malevolent force hunting down and attempting to kill the party, and it's up to you, the player, to take control of each character, go through QTE segments, make choices, and determine whether everybody dies, or manages to survive until dawn.
And… man, when this game says your choices matter, they really do. There are limits, obviously — the plot itself mostly goes down the same path and there are some characters who’ll stick around longer before they have a chance to die — but in regards to having the choices you make cause rifts and have repercussions down the line. Things that seem innocuous in the moment might come back later to make survival that much harder — if not just kill them outright. You’re even given a certain amount of leeway to determine what the characters are like: you can have jock Mike be the Ash Williams of the game… or you can have him be a total weenie who gets his ass kicked every time it's up to him to step up to the plate. You can have Emily and her rebound Matt bond together and have some genuinely cute moments together… or have them bicker at each other the whole way in a sea of pettiness. The possibilities… aren’t endless, but there’s a lot you can do, and for a game to be able to reach that sort of scale is honestly pretty incredible. I can’t stress that enough.
There’s… not really a lot that holds it back, honestly, though the bits that do are there and present and definitely knock it down a little bit. I say ‘bits’ when really the main one I want to talk about are the Don’t Move segments. See, in addition to QTEs (which… I’m fine with though I do wish certain life-or-death situations weren’t based on them), there are also other segments where you’re made to hold the controller and keep it absolutely still (because the PS4 controller has a motion sensor in it), causing you to fail if you move the controller outside the zone you started the event in. This is… kind of a fun way to implement motion controls in theory, but… it's very unforgiving. The zone you’re given is very small, to the point where even breathing can move you enough to make you fail which… as someone who gets muscle twitches is very rough but even regardless of that it's very easy to fail in a way that doesn’t feel like it's your fault. I can assume that this was a complaint for many both because I’ve seen a lot of people talk about it and also because I know how heavily nerfed they were in The Quarry (though that might just be because not every console has motion sensors), but it's sad to see something that… genuinely could’ve been a fun twist on the QTE formula work out as badly as it does.
…I realize, now that I’m this far into the review, that Until Dawn is… a bit of a hard game to review. Both because at least a little bit of it is wrapped up in spoiler stuff (tl;dr the story does a thing that’s spoilers that’s also a thing I absolutely love to see in fiction) but also a lot of what makes it work so well is… less in how it plays more in how it unfolds, which kind of makes it hard to describe for a text review like this. I’m not generally fond of seeing reviews that are just vague “try it, you won’t regret it,” but… if you’re into stuff based around player choice and you’re willing to look past sometimes iffy teen-movie writing and rough motion controls I really recommend you check this out. It’s one of the best Telltale-esque adventure games out there. 9/10.
And also, since one of my friends asked, here’s my character ranking of the eight teens, top to bottom best to worst:
Mike — easily one of the most malleable characters in terms of how you can portray him which is fascinating to see. I love my absolute loser <3
Emily — kind of loosely fun but mostly there for the first half of the game but once chapter 7 hits god she just steals the show. her shoving Ashley through the door <3
Josh — gets some of the most… weird 40-year-old-writing-teenager-lines but I’m really into how he’s portrayed and what he does in the plot
Chris — he’s generally fun and I like his relationship with Ashley, nothing much to say here he’s pretty cool
Jessica — sadly is out of focus for most of the game but I loved her before she ended up disappearing, she gets so many fun moments
Ashley — a bit too low-key of a personality but I like her general vibe and her relationship with Chris
Matt — has the same issue as Jessica but sticks out more because he has less of a personality
Sam — has the same issue with Matt in terms of personality but sticks out more because she's around the whole game