There’s a lot more to Until Dawn than first meets the eye. It’s a slasher game, one whose storyline riffs off Cabin in the Woods and Scream, which follows a cast of eight teenagers who leave behind the bright lights of the city in search of tranquility within the woods on the slopes of Mount Washington. But while its unveiling at Sony’s press conference at Gamescom positioned it as a story-driven adventure that follows a very linear path, the truth is there’s a lot more behind the scares.
It’s been developed from the ground up for Move, and Sony’s motion controller is the only way you interact with and navigate your way around the game. It acts as a torch, and as you move, a beam of light cuts through the darkness. But you also move in the direction the wand is pointing, holding down the analogue trigger harder to move faster.
During the moments in the game when you interact with objects the wands gives you precise control over what you pick up and play with. For example, to start a generator to restore power you’re presented with various knobs and levers, but you have to press them in the correct order and then tug on the kick-starter crank before the engine bursts into life.
It’s incredibly intuitive, and my initial skepticism that the wand on its own wouldn’t be robust enough to handle all of the controls were proven wrong, at least in the brief demo I was shown.
The smart controls are not the reason why Until Dawn is something fresh, however. The story is key to the game, and while developer Supermassive Games is understandably keen to keep many of the surprises under wraps the chapter I experienced gave an indication of what’s to come.
Titled ‘If you go down to the woods today’, the story follows the plight Michael and Jessica, two overly-amorous teens who’ve been exiled from the rest of the group and told to ‘go get a room’. That room is a cabin deep within the forest, and the path weaving through the dark, snow-covered woodland provides the backdrop to the action.
As the pair meander along the path they crack jokes and rip into each other. The dialogue is cheesy and at times will make you cringe, but it’s knowingly so. It’s a pastiche of the movies that inspired it, and if you play along with your tongue firmly in your cheek you can’t help but break into a smile at the wonderfully awful one-liners.
Similarly, the scares are torn straight from the pages of Horror 101. When Jess runs off into the darkness or the torch batteries fail and you’re momentarily plunged into darkness, you know something bad is going to happen – but when it does you still can’t help but jump. Equally, at other times the game builds up to these moments of tension, only for nothing to happen, until you let your guard down and it hits you again.
The deeper into the woods you explore, the more the tension is cranked up. When a deer bursts from the darkness it’s guaranteed to get your heart pumping hard; seconds later, when you find the same animal lying in a pool of its own blood and entrails, I guarantee you’ll be freaking out, looking over your shoulder and reaching for the light switch to check everything’s okay.
Cleverly, though, you never see what it is you’re up against. At points during the demo the camera angle switches to the view of your pursuer, as he (it?) watches you from afar, the heavy breathing and terrifying soundtrack proving far more effective at notching up the atmosphere than gratuitous gore.
That’s not to say Until Dawn isn’t a bloody game though. Without giving away too much it doesn’t end well for Michael and Jessica and the claret will quickly start flowing if you make a bad decision. But that’s the key point – you have complete control over the outcome of the story, and what we saw was just one outcome in the game. According to Supermassive Games, there are countless ways to play through and enjoy the experience, every though there’s a single, very defined story arc running across all of the chapters. If one of the characters dies early on in the game, they won’t appear in the latter chapters. But play through again and prevent them from carking it and they’ll continue their journey.
Indeed, decisions you make throughout have an impact on what happens further down the line. You might miss an important clue or not pick up a particularly useful object, and rather than force you to go back you’re able to move on. That obviously has a big impact on how the game plays out, especially if the object in question is a shotgun and without it there’s no way to defend yourself.
As a result you might only get to the end of the game with a single character alive, or you could finish with all eight intact. That’s the charm of Until Dawn – there are literally hundreds of ways to experience the adventure, and countless endings and game-changing decisions that make each play-through a unique one.
If Supermassive Games delivers on its promise then Until Dawn could not only be a showcase of what Move is capable of, but also how games can boast a strong and compelling storyline but still have the flexibility and dynamism that separates playing a video game from the linear experience of watching a movie – and that’s an experience I cannot wait to get stuck into.
Alex Simmons is the UK Editor-in-Chief and is afraid of the dark. Make him feel more at ease by following him on IGN and Twitter.
Source : ign[dot]com
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