Waiting for the Sun to Rise

Eight friends gather at a remote house in the mountains, one year after their last gathering, when two other friends - younger sisters of another member of the group, who is voiced by Rami Malek, and he must have some serious molars, because he chews the scenery like his very life depends on getting all possible nutrition from it - went missing in a snowstorm.

As soon as they arrive, weird shit starts happening. The lights act strangely, there are weird noises and doors closing for no apparent reason. One of the friends is pulled through a window into the snow, and there's a maniac in a clown mask drugging people and playing games out of Saw. There's someone with a flamethrower roaming the woods. You periodically adjourn to a strange room to chat with a psychiatrist - voiced by Peter Stormare - who asks you what you're more afraid of, and what you value more in a person, loyalty or honesty? 

Until Dawn is a game that changes based on your decisions. In theory, anyway. You jump between different characters over the course of the game. Mostly you walk from one place to another, keeping alert for clues or other items. How many of them you find can also affect the game at certain points.

Or at least unlock different cut scenes. The game feels like it's always going to arrive at certain story beats. I couldn't avoid Chris and Ashley getting knocked the fuck out by clown maniac, or keeping Emily and Matt out of the fire tower. I didn't seem able to avert a certain confrontation at the very end of the game. I guess there was always the option to get all the characters killed before reaching that point.

When you aren't walking, you're usually talking, and the game will give you two options on how to respond. Usually one is kind or humble, while the other is blunt or cruel. You select by moving the right thumbstick one direction or the other. These affects your relationships with the character you're speaking to, although I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes, either. A few times I tried being very blunt or rude. Basically acting like a dick to see what happened. It didn't seem to have that big an impact on the plot.

Outside walking and talking, there are a lot of quick-time events. You're climbing a wall, and you have to hit a button or you lose your grip. You're fleeing something through the woods, hit the triangle button when it tells you or you'll get clotheslined by a tree. Sometimes it's about hitting or shooting something. There'll be a little targeting reticle, and you have to move your controller over it in the time allotted.

One thing the game does, that I had to make myself remember, is give you the option to not do anything. Not all the times, but just because there's a reticle over something, doesn't mean you have to attack. Just because the game offers two choices of what to do, doesn't mean you have to take them. Those moments are marked by the choices having a ring that shortens as time ticks away. If there's none of that, you're gonna have to choose or the game won't advance. But there were a few times "doing nothing" was the best call.

Along those lines, there's the "DON'T MOVE!" challenges, where you have to hold the controller very still, or you'll be detected. When I knew they were coming, I found having my forearms resting on my knees took care of that challenge pretty handily. If you have shaky hands though, I imagine it would really get frustrating. Maybe you could set the controller on the floor or a table before it started.

My first play-through, I tried to find everything, still missed several things, and ended up with only 3 survivors (plus one character that was alive, but everyone probably assumed he was dead.) And all the deaths happened in the last 20 minutes or so of the game. Two because I chose poorly, two because I botched consecutive "DON'T MOVE!"s.

Second try, still only 3 survivors, but mostly different survivors. I didn't make the same wrong choices, and I passed the "DON'T MOVE!"s, but then I had Sam run for the light switch too soon. I knew Mike was gonna get blown up, but I saw Chris run outside and figured everyone was clear. The game doesn't always show you everyone's movements. When Mike is traversing the old hospital with the wolf, there are some times I don't know how the wolf got ahead of Mike, considering the door was locked, but it managed some how. So I assumed that was the case here and, nope, blew Ashley and Emily right to hell.

So I tried that last chapter again, and managed 5 survivors. Mike still bought it - no big loss there - but I was annoyed in the credits cut scenes where Sam blames herself because Mike told her not to move and she didn't listen. That's bullshit. I stood perfectly still, and Mike still got his neck snapped.

So there are obvious limits to how much the game recognizes and adapts to the choices you make. And that seems to manifest most obviously in terms of Matt. Matt is Emily's current boyfriend, after she and Mike broke up some time in the year interval. And Matt seems to be there mostly to be yelled at by Emily, or feel insecure that she might still be hooking up with Mike. He's also the only black character in the game.

They end up in a fire tower that is tipped over into a mine shaft. First time I played, I made one attempt to save Emily (dangling from a railing above a void), and then had Matt leap to safety before the thing collapsed. Then Mike doesn't show up again for a couple of hours of gameplay, after having barely been a playable character up to that point, and only when he encounters another character, who also hadn't been seen in a few hours, but also got more time as the main earlier in the game. Emily survived the drop, because a rope somehow looped around her ankle(?), and you play as her for at least one very long stretch before ever seeing Matt again.

Second try, all right, let's have Matt be resolute in his attempts to save Emily. I kept trying until the tower fell into the void. They still get separated, Emily still survives the fall. Matt ends up on a different level of the mine shaft, but I'm playing as him much sooner. Progress! Walk for five seconds, cut scene, matt is attacked and killed.

When checking the "Butterfly Effect" info screen, I note it points out Emily kept the flare gun Matt found, so he had nothing to defend himself with. OK, goddamnit, third try. Emily, give Matt the flare gun. Now he'll have a weapon when the tower falls.

Matt immediately turns and shoots the flare gun into the night sky of a howling blizzard when they're alone on the fucking mountain. The tower falls, I try to save Emily, Matt lands on that ledge, Matt dies seconds later. Why did the game make the point that Emily keeping the flare gun meant Matt had nothing to fight with, if he wasn't going to have it to fight with anyway?!

You might be saying, 'Calvin, why not just, not try and save Emily?' Well, because when I went the "jump to safety" route the first time, Matt's lack of a weapon never came up as a critical factor. So it didn't seem like whether he'd ever had the flare gun or not was going to change anything.

The game has some effective jump scares and suspenseful moments, but part of what it sells itself on is how you can replay it to make different choices and see what that changes. Setting aside my frustration with the apparent limitations of the butterfly effect, if you keep replaying it, the scares wear off, because you've seen them before. I'm not nervous about the wendigo being inches away from Sam, because I know as long as I don't fuck up the "DON'T MOVE!", she's fine for the next few seconds. Sudden movements don't startle me. So there's a bit of tension between those two sides of the game.