Until Dawn: Explained
The story behind one of the best interactive horror games ever
It has been six years since Until Dawn was first released on Playstation 4, and has been said to be one of the best interactive horror games ever made. For those who are unaware of the game or just interested to know what the game is about, we will be breaking down the gameplay and the story behind Until Dawn. As for someone that doesn’t fancy horror, I can personally say that this game intrigued me.
First and foremost, we will break down how to play the game and how it came to be. So, let’s talk about it.
Until Dawn is a single-player interactive game, where it involves decision making within the gameplay. The developers of Until Dawn, Supermassive Games, was inspired by other known games, such as Heavy Rain, Resident Evil and Silent Hill. The purpose of the game is through the decisions you make, as it affects your gameplay and the characters you play with. Unless you regret your decisions and start again, you obviously cannot take back the fate you have made. Also, some events include your controller detecting your movement which can result in something deadly. One of the tensest moments, since you cannot move your controller whatsoever at random times. The game aims to save all characters throughout the night until dawn.
(DISCLAIMER: IF YOU DO NOT WANT SPOILERS, WE ADVISE YOU TO COME BACK AFTER COMPLETING THE GAME. THE GAME PLOT IS NOT COMPLETELY IN ORDER, AS SEPARATE EVENTS HAPPENED AT THE SAME TIME)
Now, let us begin — The story of the game.
The introduction of the game starts with 10 young adults on a camping trip in Mount Washington. Beth, Hannah and Josh’s sister, start the gameplay when Hannah runs away from the lodge after a horrible prank was pulled on her by the rest of the group. Beth goes out to the woods to chase after Hannah until she finds her and cross paths with a stranger holding a flamethrower. Terrified, they both run away from him until reaching the end of a cliff and falling off it. However, both bodies were not found and therefore announced to be missing.
Police reported that the incident was not foul-play, but suspected a mysterious person that has been interested in the girl’s family history. He had warned them about their construction site in the area, as he claimed it to be sacred to his forefathers.
Before the game officially starts, the introduction continues in a psychiatrist office, where a man speaks to you about the event that just happened — But, I’ll explain more of that later on.
A year later after the incident, Josh invites the gang back for the “annual blackwood winter getaway” to Mount Washington. The characters and their relationship with each other slowly get introduced throughout the game. Sam (Hannah’s friend), Chris (Josh’s friend), Ashley (Chris’ love interest) and the two couples, Emily and Matt, and Mike and Jess. As you may have noticed from the introduction scene, Emily and Mike used to date, which now creates a new and intense atmosphere between both couples throughout the game. The first episode starts with Sam, as she is the first person to arrive on Blackwood Pines, and eventually meets Chris. When looking for a way to the cable car, the tutorial of the game would lead you to weird warning signs and descriptions — Bare that in mind, because it will make sense afterwards.
After Sam and Chris ride the cable car to the lodge, the game separates the characters into groups while doing small activities.
This is when Episode Two starts when the whole gang eventually finds each other along the way when reaching the lodge. After a heated moment goes off between Emily and Jessica, Mike and Jessica wander off together to the guest cabin. While they go through the woods to find the cabin, Matt and Emily go back to the cable station to find her bags and Sam, Josh, Chris and Ashley stay behind in the lodge with their separate activities.
Now from Episode Three, things start to get more weird and spooky. Josh, Chris and Ashley find an Ouija board and try to summon ghosts, while Sam separates from them to take a bath. They believe it’s Hannah and Beth’s spirits haunting the lodge after what happened last year.
Meanwhile, the horror starts when Jessica gets abducted by an unknown individual after she and Mike settle down in the Guest Cabin.
Mike searches for Jessica through the woods and returns to the route that took earlier. Depending on how long it took Mike to find Jessica, he will either find her dead or injured. But then inevitably, the elevator shaft Jessica was laying on falls to the ground, convincing Mike that she is dead — Not looking good for her so far.
Sam, Chris, Ashley and Josh find themselves with a scary masked man in the lodge. Chris and Ashley were the first people to get kidnapped by him. Chris searches for Ashley out in the woods and finds a shed where Ashley and Josh were both attached to a tortured device. Chris is forced to make an ultimatum of saving one of them. This scene gets intense, as it would depend on your decision to either save your best friend or the girl you love. But whichever you choose to kill or refuse to kill them both, the game still kills off Josh by slaughtering him with the blade — You’ll know why later on.
As the night progress, Mike tries to pursue who he thinks is Jessica’s attacker and leads him to an abandoned sanatorium. While exploring the way, he discovers information about mineworkers that were trapped within the cave-in on the mountains in 1952. The sanatorium contained clock-in cards of mineworkers and medical records — Assuming that people were being experimented on at the time. It is claimed that 15 people have died and the rest survived the cave-in.
The masked man still pursues Sam through the building before Chris and Ashley return to the lodge. Depending on your decisions, either Sam gets caught by the man or hides from him. Either way, he manages to lure Chris and Ashley into a room when trying to find Sam. Again, Chris is ordered to either shoot Ashley or himself to save each other from a spinning blade behind them.
Don’t worry I haven’t forgotten about the most popular and toxic couple. When Matt and Emily find out what happened to Chris and Ashley, they go back to the cable station to find the map to the radio tower. As they hike up to the radio tower, they request help but were told that rescue would not come until dawn because of the storm — Shocking.
The radio tower mysteriously gets attacked and collapses into the mines along with the couple, which then separates them from each other. While trying to find each other along the way, Emily stumbles through the area where Hannah and Beth fell from the cliff. The most traumatising situation to be in, Emily finds Beth’s severed head and then gets chased by a mysterious creature. Again with your decision making, it’s either Emily escapes the mine and returns to the lodge safely or gets killed along the way. Matt remains lost within the mines, which later crosses paths with Jessica if both survived.
Once Mike reunites with Sam, Chris and Ashley, Josh reveals himself as the masked man and admits that he orchestrated all the tortured events at the lodge as revenge for what they did to Hannah and Beth. But because of the unknown and more terrifying events that were happening during Josh’s prank, Mike blames Josh for Jessica’s presumed death and locks him in a shed until police arrive.
Ah, remember the stranger holding a flamethrower last year? He appears again when he found Emily in the mines and helped her escape. He finally reveals himself at the lodge to confront everyone and explains that a curse dwells in the mountains, as the mountains belong to the “Wendigos” (Humans who resorted to cannibalism). This explains who was responsible for taking Jessica, attacking the radio tower and chasing after Emily.
Chris insists to rescue Josh before the Wendigos find him. The Stranger assists Chris back to the shed where they kept Josh, but then find him missing. While returning to the lodge empty-handed, Chris and the stranger were faced with Wendigos and sadly, one of them kills the stranger. Your decisions will occur with Chris to kill the Wendigo and safely go back to the lodge or get beheaded by them if failed to kill or escape. So, where did Josh go? Don’t worry, he’s still alive. Just been taken by a Wendigo.
Ashley takes Chris to the basement with everyone else for safety. Emily notices the stranger’s bag left behind with a notebook and a map around the mountain. Now, if Emily got bitten by the Wendigo in the mines earlier, Ashley and Mike would have made a panic decision of removing Emily from the room. Your decision is made with Mike either shooting Emily in the head or aiming away to spare Emily’s life. Ashley then reads through the stranger’s book with notes about the Wendigos, which includes that their bites are not infectious — If you’ve already killed Emily, then you made a bad choice. Patience is a risky thing in this game.
Back to Josh going missing, Mike returns to the sanatorium to find Josh while the other’s chase after Mike. This is when everyone slowly separates from each other within the tunnels where Mike left. Mike discovers more information in the sanatorium and finding out that the mineworkers were turned into Wendigos. While Sam reunites with Mike, the game shows Josh within the mines, where we see him becoming mentally unstable. The event shows eerie and disturbing images that are in Josh’s head, tormenting him because of the guilt for not saving his sisters.
When Sam and Mike search for Josh within the mines, they discover that Hannah wrote a diary from the day they went missing. Once they found Josh, Sam separates from the boys on the way out. Unfortunately for the boys, they were faced with a specific Wendigo that either kills Josh or takes him captive once again. Yes, if you haven’t guessed it already, that Wendigo is Hannah. We’ll discuss more of that later, so hold tight because we’re almost there!
And now reaching towards the finale, minutes away until dawn, the whole gang (except for Josh of course) find each other when returning to the lodge. Before you think you could rest, you can’t. Personally, my favourite scene throughout the whole game, as the group finds themselves in the presence of Wendigos that followed them back to the lodge. Because the Wendigos started a brawl with each other, the gas pipe attached to the fireplace broke off. This gave Mike an idea to crack open one of the light bulbs. While the characters slowly escape outside, you will be left with Sam, the ultimate hero, to hide from the Wendigos and reach the light switch on her way to safety. This scene is the most intense, especially going through so much saving all these lives until the end. This is the time where motion detection is our worse enemy because you CANNOT move your controller while making decisions at the same time. If done successfully, the lodge will explode into flames when Sam runs out of the building, burning all Wendigos inside. Finally, the helicopters arrive at the scene, hovering over the lodge for rescue.
Until Dawn’s credits are one of the best ways to end the game, as they created an integration scene after the group was rescued. I found this quite smart as it is a way to show the ending results and how the story flowed from the decisions you made throughout the game. For example, in a small scene where Emily, Sam and Ashley wandered into the woods, Ashley gets distracted from a distant scream and loses the girls. You play her by deciding to either follow the sound or follow the girls. If you chose to follow the sound, Ashley ends up in the mines thinking it was Jessica screaming for help, but ends up getting killed by a Wendigo. In Jessica’s interview, the police asked if she screamed in the woods for Ashley, and she said no. This would be impossible since she was far away from the location.
Another example refers to a scene when everyone discovers that Emily was bitten. If you chose for Mike to shoot Emily in the head, Mike admits in his integration to killing Emily not knowing that the bites were not infectious. Nothing like a good puzzle coming together to finish off the story.
Now, the thing I find interesting about the game is before starting a new chapter, you would find yourself in a psychiatrist office. This is where a man, Dr Alan J. Hill, goes through a therapy session (The introduction I mentioned earlier). First, you start to play as first-person, answering questions from a book with certain images of your “fears”. In the process, you would find out that the client is Josh and their discussion goes on about how bad Josh’s revenge impacted him and his friends. This portrays that Josh is suffering from a mental illness from the tragic event of his sisters — Referring back to the mines where Josh experienced hallucinations. These therapy scenes are actually in Josh’s head, replaying his experiences in therapy after his sister went missing. Although the game aims to save all lives, it is a way to understand real-life experiences of mental health problems that are caused by traumatic events.
Although Dr Hill is talking to Josh, the event is made as if he is talking to you to relate to your personal feelings and fears in the game. I think it is a good way of making the game feel real and to understand the different things people can be afraid of.
Now, let’s discuss the thoughts and the story behind the characters and tragic events if you failed to keep them alive.
There are many possibilities of deaths from each character, depending on the choices you made. Chris has the most possible ways of death out of all characters, which is not surprising considering he is the most played throughout the game. The butterfly effect of all decisions you’ve made with each character will affect, not only yourself but the other characters and their relationships. For example, if you chose to shoot Ashley when Chris had to choose to either shoot her or himself, the butterfly effect will make a future impact on their relationship. Since Ashley was hurt by Chris’ betrayal decision, Ashley coldheartedly refuses to open the door for Chris and watches him being in the hands of a Wendigo. We all know what a “Butterfly Effect” is, especially in interactive games. Butterfly effects are quite important to consider when making decisions since it basically creates your fate in the future without realising. With this effect, the game could either benefit you or turn on you at the last minute.
These effects are also connected with the totems you would find throughout the game. You probably remember the list of totems that Sam found, when she was finding her way to the lodge in Episode One. The description on the sign says, “Tribes who once lived in these mountains believed that butterflies carried dreams and prophecies or possible futures. The colour of the butterfly indicated the nature of the prophecy.”
When you go to the main menu of the game, you can rewatch the history of your character’s fates from the decisions you made after collecting the totems — It’s like a crystal ball to see your future.
There are 5 types of totems and a total of 30 totems altogether. These 5 totems are divided into categories: Death, Guidance, Loss, Danger and Fortune. From the description, the colours of the totems represent those categories: Black for Death, yellow for Guidance, gold for Loss, red for Danger and white for Fortune.
Beth introduced the first death totem from the introduction when Beth chased after Hannah in the woods. Since it is a “death” totem, we all know that it means someone will die in the future. Although Hannah is featured in the vision, the totem was referring to Beth’s death and not Hannah’s (You was probably convinced that both of them died when they fell).
Likewise, with the other totems, all characters will be able to reveal their own or another person’s fate when collecting the totems. A great way to foreshadow the inevitable or give you signs to guide your characters to safety. Remember, because there are many possible deaths I advise you to look out for these totems to give you any signs of future events.
The information you must be itchy and dying to know: What happened to Hannah and Beth Washington?
The scene cuts out from when Hannah and Beth fall from the cliff and drastically plummet to the ground before starting the game. No one ever saw them again until the end for those who picked up on the clues throughout the gameplay. When Sam and Mike found Hannah’s diary through the mines, it explained that Hannah was the only one to survive the fall, despite a broken leg. In respect for her sister, she buried Beth and continued to survive alone. When Hannah wrote that she was “sorry” and “had no choice”, it shows that she was driven to eat Beth’s corpse for survival after the days went longer. This answers the question of how Hannah turned into a Wendigo throughout the year.
Wendigos are shown to be stick-like, balded and tall creatures that kill you in horrific ways before saving your body as food. One thing that the game describes them is their weakness of blindness. From a Wendigo’s point of view, you would see that their vision is by heat censoring any movement. Wendigos are not a type of zombie-like virus or a contagious sickness people can turn into, but a curse. When the introduction explains an unknown man warning the Washingtons about their construction and that the mountains were owned by his forefathers, it shows that they knew about the curse of those who were tempted to do the unthinkable — Cannibalism. This is proven by the post-credit scene where Josh was discovered in the mines after being captured again by Hannah. People found him feasting off a human head (Shown to be the dead body of the stranger) that was stored by the Wendigos. You would see Josh transforming into a Wendigo from resorting to cannibalism. To think this tragic story between the siblings was caused by a childish prank amongst friends.
Aside from the scary events from the Wendigos and the fact that it is just a game, Until Dawn shows signs of realistic events of cannibalism and mental health that have been happening until this day. The Wendigos represent those who are mentally sick and would be driven to do anything.
With that being said, I believe that the creators wanted to show the relation between Wendigos and mental illness. The majority would agree that only an abnormal psychopath would resort to eating a human being, something you’re not supposed to consume. When Hannah was trapped alone, her mental state must have not been stable, especially knowing that her sister has died. After burying her in respect, her mind allowed her to then feast off her sister’s body to survive. Likewise, Josh started experiencing a form of depression and signs of psychosis (A mental health problem) because of the guilt for the sisters and anger towards the rest of the group. Also, interesting thought, I believe that some part of Hannah remembered Josh despite losing her human-self. Keeping him alive as a hostage, made me believe that she can still recognise Josh as her brother.
Hopefully, my explanation helps your characters survive the game — Unless seeing the possible deaths interested you more. Until next time!
17/09/2021
Game plot reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azPQMuboaJ0&t=17498sImages:
Emily’s bite — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGtjNDcquss&t=304s (5:04)
Sam saves everyone — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcJPsR2F0_c&t=776s (12:45)
Ashley betrays Chris — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMUa5H06B6o&t=60s (0:44)
Totem list — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azPQMuboaJ0&t=17498s (21:31)
Josh turns into a Wendigo — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcJPsR2F0_c&t=776s (17:17)
