Until Dawn is an interactive drama survival horror adventure game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4, and was officially released worldwide in August 2015.
Until Dawn was initially going to be a PS3 release with Playstation Move compatibility, but an announcement in August 2014 stated that it would be a Playstation 4 exclusive.
Plot
Prologue
In 2014, Josh and his twin sisters Hannah and Beth invite their collective friends (Sam, Mike, Jessica, Emily, Matt, Ashley, and Chris) to the Washington Lodge on Blackwood Mountain for their annual winter getaway.
During their celebrations, some of the group conspire to play a prank on Hannah, who's romantically interested in Mike. While Josh and Chris are passed out drunk in the kitchen, Mike invites Hannah up to his room. Unbeknownst to her, Jess, Emily, Matt and Ashley are hiding under the bed and in the closet. As Mike convinces her to start taking off her clothes, Jess accidentally reveals the presence of the group and by doing so, humiliates Hannah just as Sam bursts in to warn her, finding out that it was too late.
Hannah runs out of the lodge and into the snowy woods as everyone runs after her, trying to apologize and convince her to come back. Beth suddenly appears after hearing the commotion and asks them what happened. After learning that Hannah has been humiliated, she angrily tells them off and chases after Hannah. As Beth finds her way in the middle of the woods, she finally locates Hannah crying in the middle of a small clearing and comforts her. Suddenly, they hear a violent noise and run from an unseen pursuer.
As they're cornered at the edge of a cliff, Hannah slips and falls while holding Beth's hand, taking her down with her. Beth manages to hang onto a large branch at the edge of the cliff, holding Hannah with her other hand. An unknown man crouches by the edge of the cliff and extends his hand to help them, but Hannah and Beth both fall to their apparent deaths, never to be seen again.
Present Day
"Boom: Butterfly Effect." - Spoilers for Until Dawn lie below.
On the one year anniversary of the disappearances of Hannah and Beth Washington, the remaining seven friends accept Josh's invitation back to the mountain and make their way there. As the group separates to partake in their own festivities, their seemingly idyllic getaway begins to quickly turn sinister in more ways than one.
Mike and Jessica head to a guest cabin for some alone time, and Jessica is kidnapped by an unknown creature. Mike chases after her in an attempt to save her. Depending on his choices during the chase, he either finds her dead or alive, but she disappears as the elevator she's laying on falls down the shaft. Mike then follows a mystery man whom he believes killed Jess to an abandoned Sanatorium, in which he explores and discovers information about a mining accident in 1952, which resulted in miners being trapped following a cave-in. Experiments and studies were done on the survivors by doctors at the Sanatorium, and a reporter ran into trouble trying to find out more on the cover-up.
Ashley, Chris, and Josh use a Ouija board to communicate with spirits and purportedly receive communication from either of the Washington twins. Josh, convinced that either Ashley or Chris are messing with him, storms off. Chris and Ashley investigate the clue that the spirit communicated, but Ashley and Chris are knocked unconscious by a mask-wearing psychopath and Ashley is kidnapped. Chris tracks her down and finds Ashley and Josh on the deadly end of a Jigsaw-like trap and must choose between saving one of them.
After learning of a maniac on the loose, Matt and Emily travel to the cable car station to get help but discover that the keys are missing. The couple then locates a radio tower and calls the mountain rangers for help, who inform them that assistance won't arrive until dawn at the earliest. An unknown creature tries and fails to enter the tower and then causes the tower to collapse by cutting one of its cables, sending it toppling into the mines. In the chaos that follows, Matt discovers Emily in peril on the destroyed fire tower and is forced between trying to save her life or jumping to safety to save his own. Regardless of his decisions, Emily falls with the collapsing tower deeper into the mines. Matt either escapes and also ventures deeper into the mines, or will be killed by the creature.
Meanwhile, Sam is stalked by the psychopath and chased throughout the lodge and is either knocked unconscious or escapes into the killer's workshop. In continuous interludes, a psychiatrist, Dr. Hill, conducts an interview with an unseen figure, asking questions as the narrative progresses. In each interlude, Dr. Hill's office grows more grotesque and dilapidated, reflecting the choices the player makes during each interview interlude. Depending on the former choices of the player, Dr. Hill himself may change in appearance, becoming sickly and maimed. Eventually, he is revealed to simply be a hallucination in the psychopath's mind.
As more sinister events unfold, the psychopath reveals himself to be Josh, who was playing a prank on the group the whole time in retaliation for the prank that indirectly caused Hannah and Beth's disappearance the previous year; Mike and Chris capture him and leave him tied up in a shed. In the abandoned mines, Emily is shown to have survived her fall. She may find Beth's head and learn that Hannah had actually survived the fall off the cliff and had buried Beth, only to dig her up weeks later and feed off her corpse as a result of extreme hunger. She encounters the stranger that Mike had followed, who helps her escape from the creature. In her escape, Emily can be killed or manages to get back to the lodge.
As the friends uncover clues about the past, a resident who had been stalking the group, subtitled as The Stranger and referred to by the characters as "Flamethrower Guy," reveals himself to the group as not the Psycho or Mystery Man, but a protector of the mountain. He explains that the mountain is infested by Wendigos, former humans who were possessed by evil spirits after consuming human flesh, and that they will not be able to escape to safety until dawn, which is when the Wendigos cease their hunt. Chris and The Stranger decide to rescue Josh, but discover that he has vanished; The Stranger is decapitated by the Wendigo soon after. Sam, Mike, Ashley and the remaining survivors flee to the lodge basement for safety.
Mike returns to the Sanatorium in search of Josh, hoping to find the key to the cable car, but encounters dozens of Wendigos, forcing him to destroy the Sanatorium to escape; meanwhile, Sam discovers more information about the Wendigos and follows him. They eventually find Josh in the mines suffering from extreme hallucinations. He willingly gives them the key. Mike helps Sam reach the surface, but Hannah, who is revealed to have turned into a Wendigo after being forced to eat Beth's body, spares Josh or kills him, depending on the player's choices.
If Matt and Jess are still alive at this point, they have separate encounters with the Wendigos in the mines and attempt to evade them and reach rescue. Meanwhile, Sam, Mike, and whoever is alive between Ashley, Chris, and Emily, flee from the Wendigos to the lodge only to encounter Hannah and multiple other Wendigos. The Wendigos begin to fight each other, resulting in gas being released from the furnace into the lodge. The group uses the gas leak to destroy the lodge, killing all of the Wendigos and any survivors still inside just as dawn breaks and rescue helicopters arrive.
In a post-credits scene, the group conducts interviews at a police station where they explain their story. If Josh has survived it is revealed that he is cannibalising The Stranger's body, leading him to transform into a Wendigo. If at least one other protagonist survives, two police officers will explore the mines and discover a half-turned Josh, who spots them and seemingly prepares to attack them.
Gameplay
Until Dawn is designed to be played multiple times, as players cannot see all content with a single playthrough. Each playthrough will last about seven to nine hours in length, and the game mechanics utilize an in-game system called the "Butterfly Effect", in which any choice of action by the player may cause unforeseen consequences later on. For example, locating a weapon in an earlier chapter may allow the player to pick it up down the line when a chase scene leads back to the same room. Throughout the game, players will make difficult decisions during ethical or moral dilemmas, such as sacrificing one character to save another. The Butterfly Effect system blurs the line between right and wrong decisions and it is possible for players to keep all eight characters alive as well as having all eight of them die, allowing for many different paths and scenarios as well as offering several different endings for each character.
Until Dawn has a strict auto-save system to prevent players from reloading a previous save file to an earlier point in the game if they regret an in-game decision they have made. The only way to change the player's choice is to restart the game from the beginning or continue to the end and start a new game. The developers have stated that Until Dawn has "hundreds of endings." Different endings have different variations depending on the combination of characters alive at the end of the game.
The gameplay is focused on exploration, quick-time events and discovering clues, as well as making decisions. There is an in-game system that will keep track of all of the clues and secrets players have discovered in total, even if there are multiple playthroughs; these clues will allow the player to piece together the mysteries of Blackwood. Regarding the gameplay mechanics and theme, Until Dawn has been noted to be similar to Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls.
A system is added to keep progress of all the secrets you find, which can help you piece things together. The player will take control of each of the eight characters and can make simple choices, which will affect the way the game plays out, resulting in deaths or other mayhem.
See Butterfly Effect, Clues and Totems for more information.
Characters
Until Dawn follows eight main protagonists, who visit Blackwood Mountain for an annual winter getaway, and all eight can be controlled. The playable characters are young adults, most of whom humiliated Josh's sister Hannah, causing her and her twin sister, Beth, to run away into the woods a year before, never to be seen again.
Protagonists
Hayden Panettiere as Samantha Giddings
Rami Malek as Joshua Washington
Brett Dalton as Michael Munroe
Galadriel Stineman as Ashley Brown
Noah Fleiss as Christopher Hartley
Nichole Bloom as Emily Davis
Jordan Fisher as Matthew Taylor
Meaghan Martin as Jessica Riley
Supporting Characters
Peter Stormare as Dr. Alan Hill
Ella Lentini as Hannah and Beth Washington
Larry Fessenden as The Stranger
Antagonists
The Psycho
The Wendigos
| “ | Eight friends. One killer. No escape. | ” |
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