Until Dawn review: Don’t open that door!

I have a certain level of respect reserved for games where the scope is relatively lean—where the characters don't save the universe but simply have to get through more personal challenges. Surviving a single night isn’t that ambitious a goal for most people, certainly not for those in most big budget video games. But it’s a big lift for the characters in Until Dawn.

At first, Until Dawn seems to have a lot in common with other last-generation Sony exclusives: Quantic Dreams’ Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. Soft, lingering push-ins on the detailed faces of Peter Stormare, Hayden Panettierre, and Brett Dalton immediately bring to mind similarly detailed models of Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page in Beyond. It’s also an indication of the massive amounts of time and probably money Supermassive Games has sunk into this highly polished title.

Credit where it’s due, those faces look great, even if the game’s framerate can barely keep up with the detail. You’ll get quite inured to both beauty and choppy animation during the principal characters’ ascent up Washington Mountain, where a pretty awful night awaits all of your favorite horror movie archetypes, as outlined by the ritual from Cabin in the Woods. After a year away following the disappearance of two of their friends at the same location, the gang returns to their mountain retreat in order to celebrate life (or something), obliviously pressing through the clear signs of danger and sabotage in their way.

What follows is a horror movie and not much more than that. The group tries to hold it together until dawn (hey, that’s the title!) while being stalked by a Jigsaw stand-in, apparitions, and possibly other supernatural forces. As the player, you more or less get to decide the tone of the horror movie you’re watching.