Until Dawn is... Going.

[spindizzy]

Okay. So. Things didn't exactly go well.

Spoilers up to the sanatorium.

• splend and I played about... Three, four hours on Tuesday? And it was SO TENSE. THERE WERE SO MANY JUMP SCARES. WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA. Oh wait, no, us.


• (splend is jumping between Until Dawn and Darkest Dungeon, so that's... That's sure a decision he's making.)


• Man, the way that Peter Stormare's office changes each time you go back is so weird.
  
  • Like, it starts off looking like a normal office with the sounds of traffic outside. Then there's stuff you've told him you're afraid of on the desk. Then the office is a little more rundown. Then the windows are boarded up and the curtains are torn. Then there's (in our case) A MURDER CLOWN DUMMY IN THE WINDOW AND A COFFIN AGAINST ONE WALL. Then that wall is gone, revealing a torture chamber and the Murder Clown is impaled to a wall! Great! Fantastic! No!
  
  
  • I'm assuming that the reason the game asks you what you find scarier is because it puts masks on things, which: THANKS GAME.
  
  
  • Similarly, is that why they're asking which character you hate the most? Like, we chose Mike as our least favourite character, so do his QTEs have a shorter timer on them? Are the characters put in slightly different peril depending on how you rank them? Or is it just a cosmetic change to make you think about your feelings towards the characters and thus feel more guilty when bad things happen to the ones you said you cared about least?
  
  
  • ... Wait, is he the mountain. Is that why he's called Hill.
  
  
  • Those sections break the fourth wall, and I think they might be a deliberate rebalancing of tension. It's a space where things are still deliberately creepy and unsettling, so it's not destroying the tension, but it's also a space where you're specifically reminded that this is a game and asked to acknowledge it as a game, so it might be a way to break-up the tension and remind yourself of the framing? I don't know, I literally only play horror games with other people because they're too scary on my own, I am the wrong person to be trying to talk critically about what it's doing.
  
  
  • (splend is a good person to play horror games with because he also hates jump scares but does understand the mechanisms of horror, because he writes horror films. Also, he is funny so there is less "Oh god I need to hide under a blanket" and more dissecting the game and cracking jokes.)


• SPEAKING OF JOKES: HOW MANY GODDAMN SERIAL KILLERS ARE ON THE MOUNTAIN AT ONCE. This is ridiculous! There's at least two moving around at the same time! Did they co-ordinate this? Was there a convention?


• The camera angles are... Hmm. Part of it is they're Capcom level "The camera angle is going to change every time you enter or leave a screen just to confuse you!" Part of it is that whenever they can get away with it, the camera's at a distance and a low angle, to give the impression of someone watching even when it's NOT doing the "Ooooooh someone's ~watching you~!" dance. I think that bit is maybe overused, because I ended up noticing it and being able to specifically label what they were doing? But I could be wrong. Anyway, they sometimes do interesting things like using what's very obviously an external viewpoint (like the security cameras – where is that hooked up to? Which other rooms are being recorded? Do any of the kids know there are cameras?), but sometimes it's very clearly "I am not providing you with any new information, I'm just trying to scare you," so I don't know how I feel.


• In my head, I'm kinda comparing it to Oxenfree, because Sam has pointed out that horror games are a bit more scary than movies because of their interactive nature, but I have THINKY THOUGHTS. The horror in Until Dawn is very much the result of external action; you are leading these kids into awful danger, but that danger is put there by someone else. No matter what you choose, that danger is there. Whereas in Oxenfree, you are very much pulling the trigger on the danger yourself – none of it can go on without you choosing for it to. It's interesting to see the different approaches, and I'm looking forward to see splend's reaction to Oxenfree!


• Me whenever there is an inexplicable spooky noise or figure: It's definitely Old Man Smithers come to check that us kids are okay because the power's out!


• Okay, right, so, everyone had gotten to the mansion, and I spent a lot of time yelling at these ridiculous children "WHY ARE ALL OF THE WINDOWS OPEN AND WHY IS THERE NO OPTION TO CLOSE THEM, THAT'S HOW THE MURDERERS GET IN." "SURE IS GREAT THAT JOSH JUST LEFT THAT BASEMENT WINDOW OPEN SO THAT THE MURDERERS CAN GET IN!" "It's a good thing this lighter has unlimited fuel or I'd be worried." "Ah yes, Chris, set the door on fire WITHOUT WARNING ANYONE FIRST right after a vision of Ashley catching fire!" (Relatedly: GODDAMMIT WOLVERINE CUPBOARD!) We apparently missed a bunch of clues in the house, which is a pain – apparently you can find a bunch of film stuff while you're exploring, which would a) be better set-up for Chris nearly getting his head kicked in later, and b) gives me hope that maybe Josh is fine! If the film stuff is his he could have rigged up a dummy with a mask and a motor, right?
  
  • Josh is not fine.


• I have questions about how these visions are playing out in the world of the game. Because no one reacts to them, even when it's something like a vision of their own gruesome death, so that suggests that the kids aren't seeing the visions? Or if they are, they don't care enough to have a visible reaction, let alone mention it to each other. Maybe? I don't know, I feel like if everyone had hallucinatory intrusive thoughts, this would be... More of a mentioned thing? Because surely they all got stuck in therapy after their friends' disappearance?


• ... Speaking of, I don't think Josh and Chris know about the prank! Like, they were dead drunk when Beth and Hannah took off, and from the Let's Play I saw, when Ash apologises to the ghost, Josh reacts like he doesn't know what prank she's talking about. So... Did the group not explain why the twins took off into the woods? Did they lie? Do the adults know why the twins left, but no one mentioned it to Josh? Is this the Cabin in the Woods of that nineties horror trope "We accidentally killed a man, buried him in a shallow grave, and swore each other to secrecy, but now someone is trying to avenge him!" that I remember being a surprising amount of a thing?


• ... WHY DID JOSH'S PARENTS ALLOW HIM TO BRING ALL OF HIS FRIENDS BACK UP HERE. OR DO THEY NOT KNOW ANYONE'S UP THERE AND THEY THINK JOSH HAS GONE TO SPEND THIS DIFFICULT TIME AT SOMEONE ELSES' HOUSE.


• Also my headcanon is that Josh, Jessica, and Matt are the youngest of the group – like, maybe still the same school year, but born the year after everyone else? And Sam is Josh's favourite.


• SO HOW ABOUT THIS HOUSE PARTY THEN.
  
  • ... Why was there not an option to tell BOTH Emily and Jessica that Mike was not worth fighting over and that they should maybe stop embodying the stereotypes of feminine jock/nerd rivalries. And also ask the writers why this game was theoretically set in 2013 when the dialogue sounds like it's from the nineties.
  
  
  • We are playing Matt as very calm and reasonable, and I feel so sad for him that he's stuck in all this drama.
  
  
  • ... Do anyone else look at Mike asking if Jessica wanted to invite Josh to their love nest and immediately backing down as "Totally joking, unless you're into that in which case SURE"?
  
  
  • WHY IS THIS CABIN SO FAR FROM THE MAIN HOUSE AND WHY DID NONE OF THEM GO "MAYBE WE SHOULD NOT GO TO A MYSTERY CABIN IN THE MIDDLE OF WINTER."
  
  
  • There is one point where Mike's looking through the binoculars and there was a jump scare that he COMPLETELY DOESN'T REACT TO. Like, it looked like a zombie face popped up in front of the binoculars, and/or maybe a bird flew at us? But he just DOESN'T REACT.
  
  
  • Also, Jess scaring the living daylights out of us was good drama but I'm taking it to mean she's slightly more awful than initially expected.
  
  
  • Me, messaging jilliferium: At least Jess was wearing clothes when she got kidnapped.
    jilliferium, immediately: Did you yeet her into the river.
    (IN OUR DEFENCE SHE YEETED HERSELF.)
  
  
  • So yeah, we didn't actually need to TRY to cockblock Mike, we just did it naturally.
  
  
  • OH GOD THAT THING WITH THE DEER WAS SO CREEPY. How either of them thought that they could get some action after LITERAL DEAD DEER BEING VANISHED INTO THE WOODS, I don't know.
  
  
  • Also I'm going to give the gun owners ONE (1) free pass on the "storing the gun loaded" thing in that there are bears, but also SERIOUSLY?! (PS we threw a rock into the woods and we 100% Should Not Have Done That.)
  
  
  • Like, honestly, I'm kinda glad that we got to see Mike fumbling his way towards some kind of emotional reassurance for Jess? But also I'm kinda looking at the game askance for having all of the visions show Jess in her underwear.
  
  
  • I don't understand how whoever dragged Jess out of the window managed to get her to fit out of it, because from the look of it, she genuinely did not fit without her neck snapping.
  
  
  • We messed up three QTEs flinging Mike through the woods, so we didn't manage to save Jessica. ;_; OR, she is fine! Just... At the bottom of a mineshaft. And the post-credits sequence will be her staggering out of the gate at the bottom of the mountain, battered as anything, with no idea what happened.
    
    • ... She's not gonna stagger out the gate at the bottom of the mountain, is she.
  
  
  • (I can't work out what she would have been doing when Mike snuck off to the sanatorium, to be honest with you. She looked pretty beat up, but also it would REALLY NOT HAVE BEEN SAFE TO LEAVE HER BEHIND. Good job to the writers I guess for hiding their seams well?)
  
  
  • ... But yes, Mike trailing a guy to a sanatorium did not seem like the best or wisest choice he could have made. Also apparently he's the Nathan Drake of this game! Look at all of this climbing nonsense he does!
  
  
  • Evidence: thirty miners were trapped in a cave!
    Us: Well, that's probably bad for them.
    Evidence: Twelve of them were found alive and in surprisingly good health! Hardly malnutritioned at all!
    Us: *silently stare at each other in horror*
  
  
  • SO WE GOT TO THE BEAR TRAP. OH. OH NO. OH THAT WAS WORSE THAN I WAS EXPECTING. Who even rigs up a corpse-arm bear trap ANYWAY. What possible purpose could that serve except for MAYBE killing your wolves when they go "Ooh, food!"
  
  
  • The doctor who wrote the death certificate for one of the miners' victims apparently died later that same day. Oh.
  
  
  • WHY DID WE HAVE TO OPEN THE MORGUE DRAWERS WHOSE BRILLIANT IDEA WAS THAT, ALSO HOW DOES A MORGUE CUPBOARD DOOR EVEN BANG, THAT'S NOT RIGHT.
  
  
  • I am so sad that I messed up the dog bit, because splend was like "I think the bone is for this wolf!" and I thought it was for the bad wolf. Also it's good that splend was on the ball, because I thought the hand icon on the wolf was the button to pet it, and that could have gone... VERY wrong.
  
  
  • Me, excitedly, when Mike puts on the murderer's coat: Wait, if that's the same coat then does that mean there's time loops?
    splend: ... No.
  
  
  • You'd think Mike would learn his lesson about checking whether guns are loaded, but nope! No, watch him set the entire building on fire instead. (... There was an explosion-based fire this time last year too! Are we SURE there's not a time loop? Not even a little one?)


• As for our OTHER intrepid band of muppets... I feel like there's five horror movies going on at once, which means that this mountain is maybe the most cursed place in all video games. WHY DO YOU HAVE FOUR SEPARATE GENRES OF HORROR MOVIE SETS ON YOUR MOUNTAIN. WHY IS THAT A THING.
  
  • The fact that there isn't an option to murder Chris for the stunt in the basement is proof that none of the kids are as bad as they could be. Except Chris, because OH MY GOD I THOUGHT ONE OF THE QTEs WOULD BE TO HIT HIM WITH A BAT.
  
  
  • JOSH YOU CAN'T JUST SAY THAT YOUR FRIENDS NEED A SHARED TRAUMA TO BOND OVER, THAT'S NOT HOW THAT WORKS.
  
  
  • But yes, using a ouija board on the anniversary of your sisters' ?deaths?, while you're alone at the top of your CURSED MOUNTAIN and there are definitely no murderers on the loose sounds like a GREAT PLAN. NO WAIT. THE OTHER THING. What I'm saying is that Josh must be stopped.
  
  
  • On the one hand, I feel sorry for Ash because she seems remorseful about bullying Hannah when the others didn't, but on the other she was in on it and only seemed to react when it seemed like there'd be consequences! Which means this feels less like remorse, and more like fear! ... I want to assume that she's nice. I really do.
  
  
  • (Who was it that Beth was talking to, because I know ONE OF THEM said that she was "just looking out for her girl, Em," but I don't remember which one it was. *googles* ... OH. Oh it was JESS. Suddenly the vitriol that they're throwing at each other... Doesn't make SENSE, per se, but is understandable in the context of a "Men blatantly wrote this" thing. KIDS, PLEASE, DICK IS PLENTIFUL AND LOW IN VALUE, YOU DON'T NEED TO SQUABBLE OVER IT. Also, oh my god, Jess bullied the living shit out of Hannah for having a crush on Mike, AND THEN.)
  
  
  • Like, I'm not saying that Josh is in on anything, I'm just saying that it would be very easy for him to scream to lure the others in, put on a clown mask, and apply the knuckledusters.
  
  
  • Hey, game? That thing you're doing, where you keep kidnapping female characters to get male characters to do stuff? Yeah, I sure see what you're doing and I'm not thrilled.
  
  
  • Me: ... Is that an A written next to that blood splatter?
  
  
  • I wasn't sure if there was anything supernatural going on in the game or not, but the explanation is either "There are definitely at least GHOSTS in this game" or "Someone put a lot of time and effort into rigging this to LOOK like it was ghosts", because books flinging themselves off the shelves is a doable trick! We just need to know if it was.
  
  
  • WHY IS THERE A SECRET DOOR WITH A SECURITY CAMERA ACTIVE IN IT. WAS SOMEONE LIVING IN THE WALLS. IS THIS AN ELABORATE PRANK.
  
  
  • (Man, all of this is literally because four teenagers were awful one time and the murderers decided they would be fun. Wow.)
  
  
  • Does the spider always go across the security camera feed, or was that a special treat because we're both arachnophobes?
  
  
  • Me, after we find the dead pig: How did they butcher a pig without us hearing it?
    Me:
    Me:
    Me: Hey splend, remember how we heard something that sounded like a scream a bit earlier?
  
  
  • splend on seeing the death trap: Well SOMEONE'S been watching Saw.
  
  
  • So this must have been planned for ages, right? Because you don't exactly have a trap like that rigged up on the fly. But yeah, I thought it was going to... Maybe stop? Before it cut Josh in half? But NOPE.
  
  
  • Yeah, Sam chose to save Ash, which he said was a metagame decision because he knows something about the ending, but I know nothing so I am trusting his judgement! But also Josh is so calm right until the moment the saw switches track, which, wow.
  
  
  • Credit where credit's due, Chris and Ash's reactions are completely believable and understandable! I am just slightly confused as to why Emily and Matt let the group SPLIT UP AGAIN, considering JOSH LITERALLY JUST GOT MURDERED. Like, surely there's safety in numbers? Maybe? Like, all of you go and get Sam, then all of you BUG OUT.


• I actually feel a lot fonder of Emily and Mike now that they're in a crisis, just because Emily is able to stay calm and focus on next steps, and Mike because for all that he's a jerk – don't @ me, I'm right – he actually went after Jess.


• But yes, what I'm taking from the fact that we haven't controlled Emily, Matt, or Sam in a while is that they're blissfully ignorant of all problems, which I understand completely for Emily and Matt, because if there's only 2-3 killers working around the lodge, maybe it makes sense that they would be going relatively unmolested. But Sam? Either something awful has happened to Sam already (WHY IS THE CLOWN PUTTING UP BALLOONS WITH ARROWS ON THEM), or somehow she has managed to sleep through/ignore all of the screaming going on, despite being able to have a conversation with Josh two floors and several rooms away. HMMM.


• I'm not sure I'm having FUN necessarily, considering I spend half of the game going "Ahhhhhhhh noooooooooo!" but it IS compelling, which I guess is close enough for government work!

Comments

[rionaleonhart]

I laughed aloud at 'Great! Fantastic! No!'

I'm grinning so much as I read this entry. Sorry for delighting in your suffering.

I played Oxenfree after experiencing Until Dawn, and started out applying Until Dawn logic.
'Wait, why did you turn down Jonas's request to speak alone?' my friend asked.
'BECAUSE THEN REN WILL GO OFF ON HIS OWN AND GET MURDERED.'
'N-no, he won't. This is the beginning of the game. Nothing bad has happened yet.'
I felt so bad for turning Jonas down that I restarted.

"SURE IS GREAT THAT JOSH JUST LEFT THAT BASEMENT WINDOW OPEN SO THAT THE MURDERERS CAN GET IN!" is another of my favourite lines in an entry full of incredible lines.

... Do anyone else look at Mike asking if Jessica wanted to invite Josh to their love nest and immediately backing down as "Totally joking, unless you're into that in which case SURE"?

I maaaaay have written fanfiction in which he meant it.

SO WE GOT TO THE BEAR TRAP.

yesssssss, how are Mike's fingers

WAIT, DID YOU STROKE THE WOLF, PLEASE TELL ME YOU STROKED THE WOLF, DID YOU NOT STROKE THE WOLF???? THERE ARE ABOUT FOUR DIFFERENT WOLF-STROKING ANIMATIONS AND YOU DIDN'T GET ANY OF THEM? I'm glad you didn't kick it, at least.

I love that Until Dawn is desperately trying to cram in every horror film possible.

My housemate also got the Ashley-or-Josh choice and murdered Josh with absolutely no hesitation.

I actually feel a lot fonder of Emily and Mike now that they're in a crisis, just because Emily is able to stay calm and focus on next steps, and Mike because for all that he's a jerk – don't @ me, I'm right – he actually went after Jess.

Being in a crisis definitely helps some of the characters show off their best sides. It's interesting to see the different ways they respond.

[spindizzy]

Thank you, thank you, I'm glad I entertain! *takes bow*

I don't blame you for that, I'm also at the point where anyone going off alone in a video game or a movie is getting the "NO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!" treatment! (Also: ahhhh, Jonas! ;_;

I'm not gonna lie, I'm looking forward to finishing Until Dawn so that I can read your fic!

Mike now definitely has fewer fingers than he started with!

WE DID STROKE THE WOLF, IT WAS FINE! We definitely stroked the wolf, we just didn't feed it a bone!

I love that Until Dawn is desperately trying to cram in every horror film possible.
It IS! Like, I think we just need aliens from somewhere and we'll have hit bingo!

Ooh, wait, does this mean that there's routes through the game where you don't get that choice? But also... Yeah, no, having got to chapter nine, he deserved it.

[rionaleonhart]

I am VERY RELIEVED that the wolf got stroked.

You always get the Ashley-or-Josh choice, to be honest; I was being deliberately deceitful! I was going to say 'in that scene, my housemate did this' and then thought 'wait, I don't want Susan to think "hold on, if you always get that scene, how is it theoretically possible for everyone to survive? SOMETHING'S FISHY."'