spindizzy | First impressions of Until Dawn (or, UGH. MIKE.) (Reply)

RIGHT, I mentioned last time that

splend are playing Until Dawn! We've reached the first Previously On section, although I've seen a Let's Play as far as the... Hunting Lodge? Is that what it was? And

splend's seen it the whole way through, I think. So, there are probably spoilers behind the cut!

Did I ever mention that stories about serial killers really wig me out? Because they REALLY REALLY DO. ... We are maybe playing the wrong game.

MIKE IS SUCH A DOUCHE. I'm sure that I will grow accustomed to him, but I'm pretty sure he's rionaleonhart's favourite so something terrible must happen to him. ... I keep going "Is he the one who gets stuck in a bear trap?" and the answer people give me is usually "UM" so take that as you will. Would I be more okay with him if we ever saw him interacting with people in ways that didn't involve upsetting them? MAYBE. But I expect he'll grow on me, just maybe more like a fungus than I would like.

Also I'd be more okay with him if the animators had done a better job of making him look like a teenager, because seriously, he looks like a twenty-something guy picking up teenage girls because they're impressed he owns a car. (splend has pointed out that the actor is older than he is, so REALLY not a teenager.) It's weird, because so far Matt, Josh, and all of the girls look enough like teenagers to get by, but not Chris or Mike.

So far my favourites are Sam and Jessica, and everyone else I'm kinda side-eying. (Also, this is why splend is getting twitter-handled like no one's business; it's the easiest way to distinguish between Sam-the-character and Sam-the-friend-I'm-playing-this-game-with.) It probably doesn't help that your first introduction to the kids is "And now we perform a cruel prank on one of the girls in the group because crushes are HILARIOUS!" But also Sam has "Last Girl" written across her in big letters, so it's probably good that I like her.

(Also bless Jessica, she seems so young and sweet, and like she genuinely likes Mike? I'll be so sad when something horrible happens to her.)

Emily yelling "It was just a prank, Han!" after Hannah makes me hate her a little bit. I think all of them are awful children except for the like four people not involved, but THAT SPECIFIC THING. Like, "Oh my gawd, I can't believe you're upset that most of your friends teamed up to specifically hurt your feelings! We were only doing it to laugh at you!"

splend had different takes on Sam's culpability in that, because I'm like "Well, at least she went looking for Hannah to try to head her off," and splend is like "Well if that's what she was trying to do, she could have just waited in front of the door." So... We might be taking her as kind but ineffective, as a read?

In my brain, I keep replacing Sam with Elena from Uncharted and I know that it's just because of the hairstyle she has at the beginning, but also: can you imagine the Uncharted crew in a murder house? Nate would be climbing the guttering and the house would be on fire within three hours.

My read on Hannah as a track and field champ, by the way, was based on the fact that she's sobbing her heart out, in the dark, and half-dressed, but she still manages to get SO FAR through that forest. She HAS to be good at running and not falling on her face.

So... There's an arsonist in the woods? And that's possibly the person who found Hannah and Beth? I'm concerned. Plus, I can't tell if that person was trying to help Hannah and Beth back up the cliff or not, but either way we went with not dropping Hannah as the better option. (I'm guessing that either way it shakes out, the twins are still missing, but you might find Beth in a murder basement later in the game if she doesn't die with Hannah?)

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY CREEPY PEOPLE STANDING IN THE WOODS WITH MACHETES. WHY IS THAT A REPEATING THING THEY HAVE EVERY YEAR. WHY DO YOU NEED A MACHETE IN THE SNOW.

We did not shoot the squirrel and we did not throw snowballs at the bird. We DID however manage to hit Mike in the face every single time, which is excellent skills on our part.

Once we realised that our actions were changing people's stats, I DID make a cheat sheet so that we could be sure that everyone was either in character or going through deliberate character growth, which tickled splend quite a bit. Getting the characterisation right is important, okay! I write fanfic, I care about this nonsense!

One of the stat losses I was 100% okay with was tanking Jessica's Romance trait by smothering Mike in snow. NO REGRETS.

Also, I find it interesting that if you have Matt acknowledge the awkwardness and offer a truce to Mike, Em is SO MAD. She HATES it. Is she into the adolescent chest-pounding over her or what?

Seriously, how did everyone else get into this mountain if the gate's broken? And is that going to be a plot point later? Because I have visions of someone getting to the gate and being stuck while the murderer chases them down.

I have NO IDEA what's going on with Peter Stormare: The Murder Therapist is, only that if he's a real therapist in this world setting, he'd better not be charging me for these five minute sessions we're getting with him. I assume he's a hallucinatory manifestation of our guilt? Or we've survived the game only to be locked in his murder attic? Or is this like Chloe in Detroit: Become Human, where these interludes are entirely meta-textual and not part of the story at all?

(Asking two people with anxiety whether a creepy house in a cornfield makes us anxious? OH HOW WE LAUGHED.)

I just! Don't understand why Peter Stormare's there! I'm sure there's a good reason, I just don't know what it is yet!

Speaking of Detroit Become Human; in my brain, Until Dawn is a Quantic Dream game. You can see the similarities, right? The dialogue is SO WOODEN, there's the "totally indigenous beliefs" that the game is hinging the totems around, and so far the main gameplay has been a little bit of investigating and a little bit of wandering from one QTE to another, so it's not unusual that I'd make that mistake! But I'm pretty sure that Rabid Rage wouldn't stoop as low as schlocky b-movie horror when he could be... IDK, having his one playable female character in each game tied up and menaced by a predatory dude because it's Art or something.
- Yes, splend did make the joke about Heavy Snow, and I did go "Is this just the Jason scene again?" when we were yelling for Hannah.
- ... We absolutely have to cockblock every character in this game as hard as we did in Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls. I am making this our MISSION unless the romance subplots aren't as creepy and hamfisted as the Quantic Dream games.

I do actually like the trait system in this game, especially when the game is asking us to make characterful decisions from pretty much the first introduction of a character. It's nice to have the stage notes THERE so that when you're faced with two options, you can actually guess which would be most like that character instead of just going with what you'd do. It's just not exactly easy to remember, especially when there are SO MANY characters. Yes, this is why I made a cheat sheet. I think that there's a button you can press to bring up the stat page? But hopefully by the midpoint of the game we'll have a good enough grasp of the characters that we can just roll on through without help.

(Is Josh a playable character? Or is he secretly the murderer? I know that one doesn't preclude the other, but STILL. I hope he's not the murderer, Rami Malek could do with having some nice things.)

We're going to do our best, but I think splend and I are going to have to accept that most of these characters are going to die horribly and we, the players, are going to be complicit. (Is Peter Stormare a meta piece intended to make sure that the player does feel guilty for how they're getting all of these teenagers killed?) I'll have to ask splend how he feels about playing it the way I play visual novels – one playthrough where we do whatever we want however we want just to see what happens and what the natural result is, and one playthough where we have a guide on standby and whenever we're like "Oh god, is this going to kill a character?" we can check what the right answer is. I have a sneaking suspicion that Not Being A Dick is not enough to keep people alive, considering that this could well be a game where "You were a horrific dick to someone last year and didn't learn your lessons about NOT BEING DICKS after they disappeared!" is actually punishable by death.