Until Dawn
The Butterfly Effect
Until Dawn
This post does contain mature themes, as well as spoilers.
Please note that viewer discretion is advised when reading this.
Have you ever seen a typical teen horror movie? You know
what I’m talking about. A few friends get together and go out to some cabin way
up in the mountains. There's drinking, partying, and usually, someone gets
lucky. Everything seems all fine and dandy until they cut away and we see a man
standing outside of the house. One would think that the man is the reason
someone will die, but it's the exact opposite.
Until Dawn is a supernatural horror game that's exclusive to
Sony Entertainment. This game is based on The Butterfly Effect. As said by one
of the in-game title screens: “A tiny butterfly flapping it’s wings today may
lead to a devastating hurricane weeks from now.”
You play as various characters throughout the game, but you
start off the game watching a bunch of teenagers trying to play a prank on one
of the twin girls, Hannah. The prank goes horribly wrong and Hannah runs out
into the forest in the middle of the night. Her twin sister, Beth, doesn't know
what Hannah got into. She does see her run out, and of course, she follows her.
This will give you the first of many choices that you will have to make as you
play the game.
Again, this post does contain spoilers, so if you do not
want to know what happens I am advising you to stop reading now.
Any choices that you make before the opening title will not
impact your game at all. When the twins meet up, they hear something in the
distance and they run. With nowhere to go, they find themselves on the edge of
a cliff. Naturally, they both fall. You have a choice to either let go of the
branch you're holding or you can choose to let go of Hannah. No matter what you
choose, both girls will fall to their deaths.
Or so we think.
One year later, the group of friends gets together on the
anniversary of Hannah and Beth's disappearance and death. The introduction to
the game is beautifully done. It’s completely based on The Butterfly Effect.
But be on the lookout, as the introduction to the game holds hints and clues as
to what you may or may not see as the game progresses. I have included the
introduction clip below. It’s very eerie, with “O Death” playing in the
background.
This game is more like a movie than it is a game. It’s truly
an experience, and it’s one that I think is best experienced late a night with
the lights off.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, your goal is to
survive until dawn. Each “chapter” tells you how many hours there are left
until dawn.
YouTube.
The game has two almost completely different storylines to
the game. On the one hand, you get to watch this group of teenagers as they try
to survive a night that they won’t forget. But when you aren’t trying to keep
them all alive, you’re in a therapy session with a rather creepy looking man.
The first session you have with him he asks you what scares you most, and the
answers you pick will impact the gameplay later on. There is one choice that
will be jump scare later on, and no matter what you pick, you’ll still jump.
As you start a new chapter, there’s a bit of a recap of
everything that happened in the last chapter(s). While it can be annoying, it
can also help if you’ve taken a break from playing the game for a while. This
game truly does play out like a movie, and the story is incredible. You get
captured in it, and you find yourself wanting to keep these characters alive.
As the game progresses, we learn that there’s some masked
killer on the mountain. And he slowly starts kidnapping and seriously screwing
with the group of teenagers. The mask is terrifying, but it’s a clown skeletal
looking thing. One of those alone is scary, but combing them together just adds
an extra creepy factor. And of course, they pull out a Ouija board to contact the
dead twins. The “killer” is someone we know, but the shock value isn’t
something I want to take away from you, should you choose to play this.
While that’s going on, we also have the supernatural element
of the game. Which are the wendigos. According to a Native American tradition,
when someone ingests the flesh of a human, you become these creatures. The
wendigo that’s attacking and trying to kill most of the group is someone we
know, but if you thought that the killer's identity was a shock… you just wait.
There are some characters that are incredibly hard to keep
alive, and if you manage to keep them alive you’ll feel like you are some sort
of hero. There are some players that have certain characters that they just
want to kill and when those characters die, it’s incredibly satisfying.
The writers of Until Dawn need a huge round of applause for
creating such an amazing game. I wish that I could go back and play this game
for the first time again. I’ve played it through multiple times, and each time
it is still a new experience for me. I still jump at certain points in the
game.
If you only play one game out of any of the ones we’ve
talked about, I strongly recommend this one. Not only is the story phenomenal, but
it’s so fun to get a group of friends together to play it.
I’m going to leave you with a video that really doesn’t have
much to do with the review, but it is a portion of the game. We all need a bit
of a good laugh, so I hope you enjoy it! Thanks so much for reading this!
This video does have a spoiler in it, so watch with caution.
Markiplier, YouTube.
- Jessie
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