Until Dawn

Until Dawn is a 2015 interactive drama survival horror video game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 4. Players assume control of eight young adults who have to survive on Blackwood Mountain when their lives are threatened. The game features a butterfly effect system in which players must make choices that may change the story. All playable characters can survive or die, depending on the choices made. Players explore the environment from a third-person perspective and find clues that may help solve the mystery.

The game was originally planned as a first-person game for the PlayStation 3's motion controller PlayStation Move. The motion controls were dropped when it became a PlayStation 4 game. The story was written by Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, who sought to create the video game equivalent of a slasher film. The development team took inspiration from various sources. These include the movies Evil Dead II and Poltergeist, and video games Heavy Rain, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill. To ensure the game was scary, the team used a galvanic skin response test to measure playtesters' fear levels when playing it. Jason Graves composed the soundtrack and Guerrilla Games' Decima game engine was used for the graphics. Several noted actors, including Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere,  Meaghan Martin, Brett Dalton, Jordan Fisher, Nichole Bloom, and Peter Stormare, provided motion capture and voice acting.

Until Dawn was announced at Gamescom 2012 and released in August 2015. Although the title received little marketing effort from Sony, its sales surpassed expectations. The game received generally positive reviews. Critics praised the branching story, butterfly effect system, world building, characters, and use of quick time events. Criticisms were aimed at the incorporation of motion controls, lack of build up the second act, and cliché dialogue. Until Dawn was nominated for multiple year-end accolades. Supermassive followed the game with a virtual reality spin-off, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood (2016), and a prequel, The Inpatient (2018).

Gameplay
Until Dawn is an interactive drama in which players primarily assume control of eight young adults who have to survive on Blackwood Mountain until they are rescued at dawn.[4][5] The gameplay is mainly a combination of cutscenes and third-person exploration.[6] Players control the characters in a linear environment and find clues and items.[7] Players can also collect totems, which give players a precognition of what may happen in the game's narrative. An in-game system keeps track of all of the story clues and secrets that players have discovered, even across multiple playthroughs.[8] Action sequences feature mostly quick time events (QTE).[9] One type of QTE involves hiding from a threat by holding the controller as still as possible when a "Don't Move" prompt appears.[10]

The game features a butterfly effect system, in which players have to make choices. These range from small decisions like picking up a book to moral choices that involve the fates of other characters.[11] Some decisions are timed.[12] Certain choices may unlock a new sequence of events and cause unforeseen consequences.[4] These choices also influence the story's tone and relationships between characters.[13] Players can view the personality and details of the character they are controlling, and his or her relationships with other characters.[12] All eight characters may die by the end of the story, depending on the player's decisions.[14] Deaths are permanent; the game's narrative will adapt to these changes and continue forward without them.[13] The strict auto-save system prevents players from reloading a previously saved file. This makes it impossible to revert choices with unfavorable outcomes. The only ways to change the player's choice are to restart the game or to continue to the end and start a new game.[15] There are hundreds of endings,[16] which are the outcomes of 22 critical choices players can make in the game.[12]

The game is divided into 10 chapters.[17] There is an intermission between each chapter in which a psychologist, Dr. Hill (Peter Stormare),[18] addresses the player directly. He analyses the player fears along with the choices they have made.

Plot
During a party at her lodge on Blackwood Mountain, a cruel prank causes Hannah Washington (Ella Lentini)[20] to run into the woods. Hannah's twin sister Beth (also Lentini)[20] finds her, but the two are pursued by a mysterious figure, resulting in them falling off a cliff's edge. No bodies are found by the police and the sisters are declared missing.

A year later, Hannah and Beth's brother Joshua "Josh" (Rami Malek),[20] invites the group from the previous party - Hannah's friend Samantha "Sam" Giddings (Hayden Panettiere) Josh's friend Christopher "Chris" Hartley (Noah Fleiss),[20] Chris' mutual love interest Ashley Brown (Galadriel Stineman),[20] new couple Emily Davis (Nichole Bloom)[20] and Matthew "Matt" Taylor (Jordan Fisher),[20] Emily's ex-boyfriend Michael "Mike" Munroe (Brett Dalton),[20] and Mike's new girlfriend Jessica "Jess" Riley (Meaghan Martin)[20] - back to the lodge. Despite tensions between members of the group and reservations about returning after the tragedy that occurred, all seven accept Josh's invitation. Each member of the group arrives at the lodge through a cable car before engaging in separate activities on the mountain.

As the night progresses, Josh, Ashley, Chris, and Sam find themselves terrorized by a masked man in the lodge. Josh is bisected in a torture device set up by the masked man, who then pursues Sam through the building's lower levels. The masked man's torment of the friends culminates with Chris being ordered to shoot Ashley or himself under the threat of them both being killed by giant saw blades. Meanwhile, Jessica is abducted by an unknown individual during a tryst between her and Mike at the guest cabin. Mike's pursuit of her attacker leads him to an abandoned sanatorium, which contains information about a 1952 cave-in on the mountain that trapped a group of miners. After discovering that the cable car's key is missing, Matt and Emily head to a radio tower request help. The request is successfully received, but the responder states that the group will not be rescued until dawn due to a storm and Emily falls into the mines when an attacker causes the tower to collapse. Looking for a way out, Emily stumbles upon the location where Beth and Hannah fell, with Beth's severed head located nearby.

Mike reunites with Sam just as the masked man appears before them and Ashley and Chris. The masked man reveals himself as Josh, who orchestrated the events at the lodge as revenge for his sisters' presumed deaths. Believing Josh killed Jessica, Mike has him bound in a shed to remain until the police arrive. At the lodge, Sam, Mike, Chris, Ashley, and, if she escaped the mines, Emily are confronted by the flamethrower-wielding stranger (Larry Fessenden),[21] the man Beth and Hannah encountered the night that they disappeared. The stranger reveals that the deaths on the mountain have been caused by wendigos, former humans who became malevolent creatures after resorting to cannibalism. Chris and the stranger travel to the shed to rescue Josh, but discover him missing, and the stranger is killed by a wendigo while attempting to return to the lodge. Suspecting that the cable car key is in Josh's possession, Mike heads back to the sanatorium to find him, while Sam pursues Mike to warn him about the wendigos.

Sam and Mike discover Josh in the mines, whose weakened mental state has caused him to hallucinate his sisters and psychiatrist Dr. Alan Hill (Peter Stormare). Mike tries to lead Josh to safety, but they are separated when Josh is attacked by Hannah, who turned into a wendigo after consuming Beth's corpse. If Jessica and/or Matt are still alive, they attempt to escape through the mines while evading wendigos. Mike and Sam return to the lodge to hold up in the basement with any other survivors, only to find it overrun by wendigos, including Hannah. When a fight between the wendigos causes a gas leak, Mike and Sam work together to destroy the lodge, leading to an explosion that kills Hannah and the remaining wendigos inside. Following the explosion, rescue helicopters arrive to look for survivors.

In the ending credits, any surviving characters, excluding Josh, are interviewed by the police about the events on the mountain. If Josh has survived, a post-credits scene depicts him eating the stranger's head as he transforms into a wendigo.