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Revisiting Until Dawn
CVGS 2021

Revisiting Until Dawn

By December 13, 2021September 19th, 2022No Comments

I recently had the opportunity to play more Until Dawn than just the first two hours, and wanted to look at it again, having played more of the game, and looked at more video games in the class. I thought that I had really gotten the full game experience, having played the first two hours and then researching it extensively for my video essay. I was wrong! I was very surprised by the depth of references and also gameplay that did not make itself apparent in just reading synopses and watching gameplay clips.

An Extension of Horror Tropes

HALLOWEEN, Original Blue Ratings Box Horror Movie Poster ...
I noticed quite a few more horror film tropes in the game that we hadn’t mentioned. (Spoilers) The one that leapt out the most to me was the extension of the purity culture trope in Horror movies. For those unfamiliar, this trope is where a horror movie’s victims are teenagers who run off to have sex somewhere, and are subsequently isolated from the others and then are killed. This can most prominently be seen in the original Halloween, where nearly everyone that’s killed is a teenager hooking up, and Laurie Strode, the protagonist, is portrayed as being separate from all the other lusty teenagers. As a result, she makes good decisions and stays alive, thus reinforcing the implication of purity and chastity so you don’t get murdered. Digression aside, in Until Dawn, the characters’ first encounter with the wendigos is when Mike and Jessica have escaped to the cabin and start having a Moment. It is at this point that the wendigo strikes, interrupting their activity and then violently ripping Jessica out of the cabin door window. It is only when they started getting frisky that the wendigos started attacking them.

Rewarding Player Thinking and Inaction

Most games that have choices that impact the narrative present them in an option A or option B format. You can choose to go left, or to go right. Even if it’s choosing between performing an action or not performing it, it presents itself in the same manner. Even in a choice like letting someone live or die, it’s an option A option B choice. In this format, the game is presenting you with a clear choice, and although the consequences may be murky, the decision you are making is not.

In Until Dawn, these choices do exist. However, there are other points at which you can make a decision. Many of the “combat” are formatted like Quick Time Events, however, for some of them failing them isn’t a failure. You can make the decision to not shoot or attack a target, and sometimes that’s the right decision. What’s interesting about these, however, is that the format of a QTE, implies a success and failure state. Until Dawn’s QTEs will kill characters if failed. However, in some of these shooting sequences, firing is not the “correct” decision, but the format amps up the pressure on the player to decide one way or the other, without the choice being a clear one. Doing so adds tension and mystery to the otherwise more straightforward decisions.

I’m really looking forward to finishing Until Dawn and seeing what other surprises it has in store for me. I’m very glad I had the motivation to play it because of this class, but also better tools to examine it now because of this class as well.