spindizzy | Last bit of Until Dawn (while I'm literally falling asleep on my keyboard.)

Spoilers all the way through to the end!

JESSICA IS ALIVE! SHE DID IN FACT STAGGER OUT OF THE BOTTOM OF A MOUNTAIN! I'M SO HAPPY THAT SHE DIDN'T DIE! ;____;

No, wait, let's go back. So when we left off, Mike was in the sanatorium and had just found his Good Dog. I was very fond of him roaming around with his Good Dog, because it's probably the happiest Mike has been since the game started. There must have been at least one survivor of the initial wendigo outbreak, right? Because someone had to have put up those graves, and put the bodies in the morgue...? I'm assuming that what happened was that the bodies went into the morgue, someone started putting up graves, and then the wendigos got the last person? Or it was Bragg and he locked himself in his room to drink poison. I assume that we'd find out in the prequel game that splend said that they've made, but as it and the ?sequel? are both VR games, hahaha no, we're never going to play them.

But yes, we did check Does The Dog Die, and surprisingly it doesn't warn you about the decapitated wolf hanging off a wall! ... The Good Dog didn't make it, I'm sorry, we didn't barricade the door so the wendigos got Good Dog.

Also that entire section in the wendigo jail was NOPE. Especially because the game SHOWS YOU THE WENDIGOS SCRABBLING AROUND ON THE WALLS AND THE CEILING before Mike even realises there's a problem. The bit where it scuttles over a light and you KNOW it's up ahead but that's still the only way you can go? NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE.

SERIOUSLY THOUGH Mike made possible the WORST CHOICE of all of the bad choices in that game, because he WENT INTO THE GODDAMN NEST. You are so lucky that splend was on the controls at that point, because otherwise you would have JUST DIED. Especially because of the rat fake-out!

(I'm not gonna lie: I did wuss out today, which means that I was hiding behind my hands and making high-pitched noises while splend actually controlled the game.)

GOD DAMMIT MIKE WHY DID YOU LOCK THE DOORS ON THEM.

Yay, the girls are on a mission! And OF COURSE Sam is a rock climber who brought a headlamp with her, why wouldn't she be?

(You don't understand how much I need Hayden Patinierre to play Elena in an Uncharted movie, who do I need to give my money to to make that happen?)

I'm really glad that the game lets you pull the cover back over as you go down into the SUB-TUNNELS, BECAUSE OF COURSE THIS SWISS CHEESE OF A MOUNTAIN NEEDED ANOTHER WAY TO GET BETWEEN THE SETS.

We did hear Jess yelling for help, but quite frankly we both immediately went "That is bait" like we're Mad Max and noped out into the other direction. Because we read the fluff description of the wendigo, we know what's up! And also because I watched Annihilation this week, and NOPE to mimicry.

Bless Sam going after Mike despite knowing that he's a dumbass, although I do wonder what the hell Ashley and Emily were doing that took them so long to make it back. Did they get lost? Did they get stuck trying to work out how to shift the drain cover from underneath? And don't get me started on "How did Mike manage to make it to the Lodge when the only routes he knew about were LITERALLY ON FIRE?"

I know it's kind of playing female characters off against each other which is bad, but also I think I ended the game liking Emily more than I liked Ash. Like, Ash seems sweet and lovely! But also that sweetness starts to seem more and more calculated when you realise that she literally tries to get someone else to murder Emily for her, and that – as rionaleonhart points out, she can very deliberately cause Chris' death by her own actions. WHAT THE FUCK, ASH. It's an interesting character note – I think of all of the kids on that mountain, she's the only one that can cause a deliberate death, everyone else does it by accident – especially because she's the one that shows the most fear of consequences? I want to say remorse, but it's only remorse when bad things start happening to her specifically, so I don't trust it. ... What I'm saying is that if I had to do that character ranking mission now, Ash would be below a lot of people.

Sam saved Mike's like by knocking a wendigo's flaming head off with a leady pipe! Go Sam! You are the hero we deserve!

... Mike must have finally run out of bullets. I can tell not because we ever saw him reload at any point, but because he's using his gun to barricade the door shut.

Man, how bad does your life have to be that your hallucinatory therapist walks out on you? Because while it was nice to see someone read Josh the riot act, HIS HALLUCINATION DUMPED HIM. Although as someone who's been to therapy before, Dr Hill just SAYING the situation was fucked up instead of euphemising it was so nice.

Also, what in the name of sanity are Josh's hallucinations about? Because I'm pretty sure that he doesn't actually know about the wendigos, at all, so he's just... Hallucinating dead pigs and the dessicated corpses of his sisters for Reasons? I'm assuming that being carried off by wendigos fractured what was left of his sanity, but seriously, this was SUCH a shift from who he was at the start of the game.

Matt lived too! He made it! And I was honestly really offended that he asked Jessica if she could move after she nearly cracked his skull with a shovel.

... Our first run through did in fact kill Jess, and I felt so bad about it that we had to replay this chapter and make sure that we kept her safe.

Just, the way she moves like everything hurts and her limbs are dead weights! And the way she looks at people, like something behind her eyes has just turned off for her own safety! BLESS THAT POOR BABY GIRL.

I am very touched by the way that she and Matt steady each other when they're staggering through the tunnels/shimmy onto cliff edges. Although it occurred to me eventually that her and Matt are always going to be talking at cross purposes about that night, because Matt knows about the psycho killer and that Josh is dead, and Jessica knows that there are monsters on the loose and not that Josh set up a fake slasher to traumatise his friends. THEY ARE LITERALLY STAGGERING OUT OF THE MOUNTAIN WITH NO IDEA WHAT IS HAPPENING AND I AM SO HAPPY FOR THEM DEFINITELY GETTING TO LIVE.

Theory: Jess should date all of Emily's exes. Also I need to know if their hatred of each other last through trauma or whether they're going to have an awkward reunion where they look at how fucked up they are now and decide to be emotional support friends.

Sam is so smol next to Mike. Like, the water is waist-deep on him and chest-deep on her, it's adorable.

I'm gonna be honest, the fact that Beth's grave is so far away from her grave marker makes me wonder a) how far Hannah got through these tunnels on her broken leg, and b) did Old Man Smithers find it and move it?

(He doesn't have a name in the credits so I can officially declare him Old Man Smithers and no one can stop me. Also we found out that as you unlock the totems, you also unlock clips of what HE thinks happened that night, which as far as we could tell from our incomplete collection was "The Great White Wale of all wendigos chased those girls off a cliff, they're definitely dead, but it's okay because I avenged them and never told anyone where they could find the bodies because the writers somehow never thought of that as a moral or ethical thing to do."

(True fact: I don't know the difference between moral and ethical, I know that one is a value system imposed on you by society and the other is imposed on you by yourself, but I don't know which way round that is. I THINK ethics is societal and morals are personal, could be wrong! Either way, leaving a family to suffer from not knowing what happened to two of their children when you not only KNOW, but are SQUATTING ON THEIR LAND is bullshit.)

Also, respect to Hannah for doing all of that digging and scratching around in caves when she literally had a broken leg. She tried so hard to survive! She tried!

... It never occurred to me that the game would need to spell out that Hannah ate her sister, I'm pretty sure that I just assumed that from as soon as we found out that wendigos were created by cannibalism.

I love that Sam and Mike could joke around while shuffling through freezing cold water in a monster cave. (Sharks! Great!), I thought that was really sweet of them. Even though apparently they kept finding clues and Mike just refused to accept them. HEY MIKE, THE GIRL YOU BULLIED WHO HAD A CRUSH ON YOU? HAD TO EAT HER OWN SISTER TO STAY ALIVE.

The way that Sam drops her arms into the water every time is so great, she's just like "Ugh, this is my life now."

WHOSE DECAPITATED HEADS ARE THOSE. WHY ARE THEY THERE. OLD MAN SMITHERS WAS WRONG ABOUT LITERALLY EVERY OTHER PART OF WENDIGOS KILLING PEOPLE, WHY WAS HE RIGHT ABOUT THE HEADS.

Also, splend both looked at this scene and went "... Surely Chris should be hanging up there with Old Man Smithers?" but maybe that was a step TOO FAR.

I almost – ALMOST – feel sorry for Josh, just for how badly this entire thing has destroyed him. I don't actually feel sorry for him though, because he did cause **waves vaguely at mountain** all of THIS mess.

Seriously, Sam is so good. She volunteers to go ALONE into the wendigo-infested woods to take the key back to the others. She is the protagonist we deserve.

How you can tell this game broke me: Mike got dragged under by the wendigo, and I was honestly there going "... Oh noooooo!"

(He looks like a zombie, bless him. Or at least he looks a lot better roughed up that he did before.)

OH HEY, I WONDER IF THIS IS WHY THE GAME HAS BEEN EMPHASISING HANNAH'S BUTTERFLY TATTOO SO MUCH. Although apparently Mike's got way better eyes than I do, because he started talking about the scar and I'm just like "???? What are you talking about, I know nothing about this."

But oh, that ending is grim. If you can keep Josh alive, his sister carries him off to her larder to make him into a wendigo too! Is that better than death? I'm not sure it's better than death, although it does mean that he gets to be with his sister again, so...?

SERIOUSLY HOW DID MIKE CATCH UP WITH SAM I DON'T THINK THERE'S A SINGLE ROUTE THAT HE COULD HAVE TAKEN THAT WOULD WORK.

splend was appalled when he realised that the lights had been working the ENTIRE TIME, because that meant that they'd been hiding in the dark for about four hours for NO REASON.

I love the fact that you can see Emily pushing Ashley out of the way when they come barrelling out from the wendigo lair. Like, it's a horrible thing to do and Emily is being horrible! But on the flip side, that's perfectly in character and if someone had tried to convince my friends to kill me an hour ago, I TOO would have probably pushed them into a door to escape.

Sam hurtling up the stairs to find everyone standing Perfectly Still Because Everything Is Fine was such an effective scene, and from a storytelling point of view it was really well done! From a gameplay perspective it was frustrating as fuck because you know what's fun? Games that require you to hold the controller still when (in my case, when I did this chapter) your anti-anxiety meds give you a noticeable hand tremor. Also the game fucking cheats, because splend and I both put the controllers down for those sections to that we didn't accidentally nudge anything, and the game failed us anyway! CHEATER!

LOOK AT MIKE AND SAM BEING REALLY SMART! Look at their genius plan!

THREE WENDIGOS ENTER! ONE WENDIGO LEAVES!

... Like seriously, I don't understand why the wendigos started fighting at this point, I just know that they look like something Harryhausen would have out of plastecine. I assume it's a "No! The meat is MINE!" type thing, but it's still weird!

(Is it ever explained specifically WHY it's bad that the wendigo spirits go free? Because they seem to be angry screaming faces on fire, but don't they WANT to be released? ... I mean, probably not if they're hungry, I guess? Also I assume that we've all noted that this game doesn't appear to have any Indiginous characters in despite going "Yeah, look at this Native American belief we're claiming, and look at how we don't have a single Native American character!")

So, we had to replay chapter ten three times, and we managed to get everyone out (except Chris, who was long dead by that point), just not all in the same timeline.
- Playthrough one: immediately run for the light switch because we thought that was what the game wanted us to do, accidentally blew up Mike and Ashley as well as the wendigo.
- Playthough two: sometimes the correct choice is to do nothing, and Sam specifically says in her interview that she wasn't supposed to move, so we'll try doing nothing. Mike can't hold his musical statues pose so gets slashed by wendigo why Emily and Ashley slip out; Sam gets stabbed because the controller decided that we'd moved, so Mike pulls out a lighter and blows everything to hell.
- Playthough three: Everyone BUT SAM made it out, because the controller decided that we'd moved after we rescued Mike! And Mike, bless him, just looked at the wendigo with such a tragic expresison on his face and dramatically hit the lights. EXCELLENT.

I really like the exit interview format, because I feel like they did some interesting things there! The implication is that the kids don't know who's been collected and who's still alive – Jess specifically asks if Mike made it, and Emily wants to know if they're done examining Matt, so that sounds like everyone was split up for questioning. Sam is so perfectly, smilingly DONE with all of this and not being believed. Emily is REALLY CONCERNED that Matt knows that she's "devoted" and that he's talked about her, which feels like trying to cling onto something familiar in the face of so much overwhelm. Jess is probably in shock. Matt apparently feels guilty, but I'm not sure what for – at first we assumed that it was because Jessica died in front of him, but it could honestly be because he didn't pull Emily to safety somehow. Mike is... Grizzled old guy in a pub quietly talking about the Things That He Has Sceen and trying to process it.

(He was SO DETERMINED to get everyone out! I assume that the there is a bunch of fic exploring that how he's going to struggle with everyone he cares about fed into the taxes machine.)

BUT YES, everyone escaped the building, just not all at the same time. THIS IS FINE. And the stinger was... Oof, that's not a good look Josh. I can't even tell who he's eating, but oh god, that's grim. And it's probably going to be a bit Resident Evil, which is that he's going to keep eating anyone who comes up this mountain, because Hannah has "very kindly" kept him alive and fed him human flesh.

In conclusion: it was WEIRD AS ALL HELL and I wouldn't have been able to play it without

splend to do the scary bits. But it's... Good at being what it is? I don't know if I'd say it was ENJOYABLE, but as a slasher movie in video game form: not bad!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

nooooooo, Wolfie

I think of all of the kids on that mountain, she's the only one that can cause a deliberate death

Mike can shoot Emily, of course, and Matt can consciously abandon Jessica to save himself, but Ashley's the only one who can kill someone without the intention of saving herself or others.

Endgame Jess is heartrending. She's so broken.

"... Surely Chris should be hanging up there with Old Man Smithers?"

Huh, usually the bodies of the people who've been wendigot in your playthrough are indeed in the lair!

Mike got dragged under by the wendigo, and I was honestly there going "... Oh noooooo!"

I'm very pleased by this.

if someone had tried to convince my friends to kill me an hour ago, I TOO would have probably pushed them into a door to escape.

True! As it happens, Emily only pushes Ashley if Ashley revealed earlier that the bite is harmless. (If she hadn't pushed Ashley, Ashley would have left the lodge before her, and the people who got blown up in your first playthrough would have been Mike and Emily instead.)

And Mike, bless him

How far we've come!

Sam is so perfectly, smilingly DONE with all of this

I love her going I DON'T NEED THERAPY, I'M FINE. Of course you're fine, Sam.

Emily is REALLY CONCERNED that Matt knows that she's "devoted" and that he's talked about her

Oh, hey, they ended on good terms! She can be very uncharitable about Matt in the interview.

I've hugely enjoyed following your terrible adventures in this game!

Last bit of Until Dawn (while I'm literally falling asleep on my keyboard.)

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