– this review contains spoilers and some strong language –
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Cabin In The Woods
The choose-your-own-adventure narrative style has found it’s way from the pages of Fighting Fantasy and Give Yourself Goosebumps and into video games, with more and more games adopting this style of story telling. From Heavy Rain and Beyond, to Life is Strange and Telltale’s many episodic series, the format has been executed with varying levels of complexity and success. Until Dawn is by far the most ambitious game to implement this style of branching choice and consequence fiction to date, but is it successful?
Until Dawn’s set-up is a suitably silly one, but one very much befitting a teen horror flick. Whilst vacationing in a mountain-top cabin, a group of teens pull a prank on one of their friends, but when it goes awry, victim Hannah flees into the dark, snowy woodlands that surround the cabin. Her sister, Beth pursues, but when she finally tracks down her sibling, they become cornered by an unknown threat on a cliff edge, and plummet to their deaths in the hard, dark mine below. One year later, their brother, Josh invites friends Ashley, Chris, Emily, Jess, Matt, Mike and Sam back to the cabin to catch up and commemorate the death of his sisters.
Any character driven story must have a relatable and empathetic cast, but as I was introduced to Until Dawn’s stereotypical teenage troupe, I became increasingly disgusted by each chiseled douchebag as they popped up. The jock, the nerd, the ditsy blond, all with their predictable predicaments and whiny american accents. Perhaps it’s my englishness, but I really hated every character, and I didn’t even start enjoying the game until over half way through. Until Dawn is a conflicting game, one that I disliked and enjoyed in almost equal measure.
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This Game That You Play…
Until Dawn purports to be horror game, and it is, as much as Scream or Halloween are horror films. It embraces the campy, pulpy tropes of it’s influences, which it should (to an extent), but this unfortunately leads to the lack of any real horror. It consistently makes countless attempts at scaring you with the cheapest jump scares it can muster, from surprise squirrels, to your fellow friends jumping out at you. There must be a good 50+ jumps scares scattered throughout Until Dawn, but sadly not one made me jump or scream. I’m not trying to make out that I’m a tough motherfucker, but Until Dawn is not a scary game, it can be tense and exciting, especially in it’s latter half, just not scary. Perhaps my recent obsession with Bloodborne has set the bar too high, it’s harrowing, gasp-inducing monstrosities have desensitized me to anything but the most extreme.
It’s these poor attempts at shock horror, combined with cringe worthy dialogue, and tiresome trekking through the woods that made me doubt whether I wanted to continue with Until Dawn. It is however an incredibly beautiful game, and despite the poor dialogue, the acting is fairly stellar thanks to impressive mo-cap. It was this quality presentation, combined with my desperation to enjoy it, to connect to at least one character, and to experience some genuine horror and thrill, that made me want to continue playing. In pursuit of satisfaction, I trudged onward, becoming increasingly intrigued as the story developed. The active appearance of the clown masked killer finally brought some threat, some excitement to events. The pace was picking up. Another intriguing aspect came from the scenes between chapters which took place in Dr. Hills office. How the results of his questioning regards my fears and feelings would manifest in-game, fascinated me, I had to see them come to fruition. I wanted to be scared.
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Pulp Fiction
Sam, for whom my affection had grown, had been captured by the clown masked killer, and Ashley and Chris had set off to rescue her. Things didn’t work out too well though, and the couple found themselves strapped to chairs, with saw blades above their heads, and a loaded gun on the table between them. Both characters had consistently annoyed me with their awkward relationship nonsense. I decided they were both going to die, but just as the jagged blades span towards their craniums, I was pulled out, back to Dr. Hills office. He deemed me a “psycho” and a “sick fuck”, and questioned what right I had to play god. It was both me, the player, and the clown masked killer that he was addressing in his now nightmarish office.
Returning to the Saw like murder scene, it was revealed that Josh was the clown masked killer and he was trying to exact revenge on the teens for what they’d done to to his sisters. Unfortunately, I’d seen this twist miles off, but had disregarded it when I let Josh get sawed in half earlier in the game. Josh explained this ruse with a delightfully comical flashback of him popping his head through a hole in the board behind a meat-filled prop body, screaming as he feigned his own death.
It was with this Scooby-Doo-esque twist that I realised all hope of a compelling horror story was out the window. Sure, I expected it to be kinda silly and B-movie-ish, but Until Dawn is a completely ridiculous mess of contrived nonsense. This revelation was for the better though, I played the remainder of the game with my tongue firmly in my cheek, laughing manically as the plot became more and more stupid. In another mad twist, the game does an Uncharted and goes all supernatural/monstery, as it turns out that there are Wendigos inhabiting this mountain. These feral beasts lurk in the mine network, and are all ex-mental patients and miners. Obviously!
A flamethrower wielding nomad, whom I had encountered a few times previously, turned out to be an ally, and teamed up with the teens to help them survive. He didn’t last long though, and soon got beheaded by a Wendigo. Josh, who’s bat shit insane, hallucinated his dead sisters and a giant pig head before getting his own head squished Oberyn style by what turns out to be his sister Hannah, who survived by eating Beth and subsequently turned into a Wendigo. Everyone then splits up (why do they always do that in horror films?) and systematically meet their doom.
The last few chapters of the game are fantastically bad. They’re packed with action sequences, combat, chases and wonderfully gory deaths (Ashley’s jaw rip was a highlight). I could have kept a few more characters alive but the only one I really cared about was Sam, the rest could be Wendigo food. After blowing up the Wendigo infested lodge, I ended the game with only two survivors, Sam and Chris. I watched the pair reciting their accounts to the authorities, alongside a pleasing montage of character deaths, as the credits rolled. That was it, I had survived until dawn, but only barely.
I do intend on replaying Until Dawn at some point, a big draw of the game being that your story can branch off in a multitude of ways. Everyone can survive, everyone can die. I am sufficiently intrigued to see the range of other possibilities, perhaps I’ll enjoy the game more on a second go round. Maybe I’ll kill them all, or try to fight my urges and keep them all alive. It’s motion control system is simple but pleasing, though too easy at times, so these replays shouldn’t be too arduous. Essentially, Until Dawn is an 8 hour long disposable teen horror film that you direct. It’s pretty, it’s stupid, it’s not scary, it’s unique, it’s plagiaristic, it’s many things, but most of all, it’s entertaining, and ultimately that’s what entertainment should be.