Is Until Dawn a Good Horror Movie?

Hi, this is Mark Brown with Game Maker's Toolkit, a series on video game design. Sony's new PS4 game Until Dawn is billed as an interactive horror film, where TRAILER DUDE: Only your choices determine who will survive And I want to talk about that, but not about how much you can effect the story with your choices. Because, it's basically identical to the systems we've seen in games by Telltale and Quantic Dream. Yes, your decisions will make a dent in the plot, but it's also full of false choices, characters who can't die until the very end, branching paths that snap back to a central point, and that cute little indicator to tell you that this choice will definitely have an effect on the plot, somewhere down the line.

CHRIS: Boom, butterfly effect It does have some ideas that I haven't seen in one of these types of games before, though. Sometimes, you'll get a nice sepia-tinged flashback, to give you a better idea of which choices led up to the events onscreen. But don't be fooled by these screens which show how all your choices play out, and the incredibly granular meters that show your current personality traits and relationships to the other characters. They're all a bit smoke and mirrors, to be honest.

And that's fine. As we talked about in this video, these games aren't about offering infinite story states. And simply making choices is often more fulfilling than seeing wildly unique consequences play out. Plus, games are expensive to make without considering a billion unique paths. Especially when they look like this. DR HILL: I believe that in our last session, you were not completely honest with me. So what I want to talk about, is the question of whether all these choices and their consequences - especially the more grisly, blood-soaked of the consequences - can actually lead to good drama.

Because, while it is true that any story can become more meaningful and memorable when you're having a say on the proceedings. Much like how almost anything is improved with the addition of cooperative play. Or chocolate Does that actually make the stories dramatically satisfying? And this question is especially important to Until Dawn as it wants to play out like a Hollywood horror movie. This isn't a naturalistic story like The Wire, where characters can be snuffed out seemingly at random. This is a horror movie, man...

RANDY: There's a formula to it! A very simple formula! The game is heavily based on slasher movies. It's got a bunch of horny teenagers, getting together in a isolated cabin in the woods, on the anniversary of some horrible event. And there's a psychopath, who wants to pick them off - one by one. It also has elements of psychological horror and torture porn and - well, I don't want to spoil things. So let's stick to slasher flicks.

The thing about these movies is that there is always a very specific reason why some characters live, and others die. And sometimes, importance is placed on the sequence of the kills, too. In early slasher flicks, for example, it was all about morals. Sniffy, puritanical, thou shalt not morals, maybe, but those were the rules. RANDY: There are certain rules that one must abide by to successfully survive a horror movie.

RANDY: Number one. You can never have sex. Big no no! Big no no! STU: You're dead Meg. RANDY: Sex equals death, okay? Number two. You can never drink, or do drugs. No, it's the sin factor. It's a sin. It's an extension of number one. Break those rules and you'll be killed, leaving one last girl. An innocent, virginal, Final Girl. Early slashers were often criticised for being misogynistic. Which should make them the perfect source material for video games.

Anyway, the point is that in drama, people die for a reason. Whether that's a heroic sacrifice or in vengeance or to give another character motivation to do something, or - in horror movies - because they smoked pot, or chugged a beer, or were a total bully. But when interactivity comes into play, the rules can go out of the window. In Until Dawn, take Emily, who is a monster bitch. MATT: Let me think. EMILY: Don't think you idiot just get me outta here!

She would be killed in the most gruesome way possible in any horror movie, but can survive the entire night in Until Dawn, while her put upon boyfriend Matt is, uh, hung out to dry Or take Jess and Mike. Horror movie tropes say these sexpots should die, while innocent characters should live. But that's not how things work in Until Dawn. In fact, any combination of characters can make it to the finale. And you'll probably end with multiple survivors. If not all of them making it through the night, even though that goes against the horror movie set up where just one person survives.

But even if you don't care about horror movie formulas. Or you revel in the idea of a horror flick that ignores them entirely, the interactive story can sometimes just be... a bit rubbish. Take Jess, for example, who gets killed in the game, but you don't see a body so of course she's going to come back. And she does: hours later into the story she wakes up, alone, in the mines. And then, in my game, she walked forward a few paces, and was immediately killed. Oh. I think any script editor would put a big red circle around that scene.

And that's the thing: while interactivity can lead to more memorable, more surprising, and more personal narratives, without the smart guiding hand of a director or a script editor, the story can fall apart. It can be desperately unsatisfying, or lack important elements like character arcs, poetic justice, and good pacing. And that's the way it will always be. Thanks for watching, please like, comment, and subscribe.

Throw all your money at my Patreon - and, wait. Actually. Maybe we can fix this. You see, the thing I liked the most about Until Dawn is that you get to control eight different characters. That's much more than games like Life is Strange, Tales from the Borderlands, and Beyond: Two Souls. Which meant that while I normally play these sorts of games as a kind and compassionate character, having eight different people to play with, some of them archetypical arseholes and narcissists, I felt much more comfortable role playing them as jerks. And while I tried my best to save my favourite characters, like Sam, Chris, and Ashley, I was happy for the others to make dumb decisions and wouldn't really mind if they ended up as puddles of bones and teeth.

I realised that I wasn't really playing as the characters, but the as the director. Influencing who lived and who died, based on my own judgmental preferences. Suddenly, those horror rules were falling back into place and the story was way less disconnected. Perhaps you might want to try and subvert the most problematic tropes of horror movies. Have the ditzy, slutty blonde survive the ordeal, stop the black guy from getting killed first, or have the archetypical Final Girl bite it at the last moment.

And you do have some ability to influence events in a specific way, because the deaths often follow some internal logic. Characters can get killed if you screw up quick-time events. Messing with those relationship meters can lead to at least one death. And if you ignore the tropes of the genre - like wandering off from the group to investigate a spooky noise - then perhaps that character deserves to get killed for not watching enough horror movies.

And then there are these totems, which is another clever mechanic. Find one of these and pick it up, and it will show you a clip of one of the characters getting killed or surviving an attack. They're vague, but you might be able to use them to help guide later choices. But not all deaths are so easy to foresee. Understandable, of course, as Supermassive wanted to surprise you. And the legions of YouTubers who have made this game famous.

So, your choice of how to deal with this flare gun, for example, is an almost entirely opaque decision but will have huge consequences for Emily and Matt. And that's only if, like me, you were even trying to tell a specific story. Until Dawn doesn't give players any instructions, and while the trophies - which reward you for finishing the game with certain combinations - could push you to try and get a specific outcome, they're all hidden trophies.

So how about this for an idea. And, before I go on, I want to acknowledge that maybe I am trying to make the game into something that it's not. And, for the record, I really enjoyed Until Dawn and would recommend it. But, what if the game was actually about being the director. Similar gameplay, but at the outset of the game you would be told who must live and who must die and maybe even in what order. And then, you'd have to force the characters to act in different ways to ensure their death or survival. For those who are fated to die, you must act immorally and say nasty things to force the big baddy to enact poetic justice on their guts, or play into obvious horror cliches and get them split up from the rest of the group.

The game could be a lot shorter, but designed to be replayed over and over again with different instructions each time. It would also need some random elements, to keep you on your toes and also ensure that those jump scares and creepy moments don't become blasé. Because here's the main issue that nags at Until Dawn. On the one hand it, it wants to be a horror movie where characters get killed in increasingly gruesome ways. But on the other hand, it's a video game, and video games are there to be won.

Games teach us to make the smart dialogue decisions that will give us the best outcomes. When buttons flash up on the screen, we've been taught to hit them as quickly as possible. And systems, like the totems that warn of potential deaths, are supposed to be solved, right? Until Dawn the movie wants everyone to die. But Until Dawn the game wants everyone to survive. Something's gotta give. That conflict is somewhat solved when you put yourself in the director's chair. And try your hand at being Wes Craven or John Carpenter. But without that push, and reliable mechanics, many players could miss out on Until Dawn's greatest pleasures.

Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed the episode - if you did, please give it a like on YouTube. Plus: how would you make an interactive horror movie, or did Supermassive get it right? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.