Until Dawn(1)

Until Dawn is a horror-thriller game that explores the concept of the butterfly effect. It has multiple endings and the player's choices and gameplay influence the outcome. The main group of friends consists of eight characters, each with their own traits and relationships. The game is immersive and allows players to make emotional or logical decisions. It has a deep connection with fans who are invested in the characters and story. The game is well-developed and has a lot of lore and complexity. It's a unique gaming experience that tests players' choices and psychology. Hi, everyone. So today we're going to be talking about a game called Until Dawn. I have a guest with me who happens to be my sister, and we're going to be talking about our experience with the game. So if you could please introduce yourself. Hi, my name is Samaya Zidat. I am a first year playwriting student at the University of Houston School of Theater and Dance, and I'm also an Until Dawn enthusiast, so I'm very happy to be here. Thank you for being here with us. I'm glad we're going to be able to talk about this game because I know that we're both very interested in this game. So first let's talk about how we got into the game or who exactly introduced the game to us. Yeah. It was in 2015 when the game first released, and our older – we were young at the time – but our older brother was watching the game, and he said, hey, come watch with me or something. I don't know. We were going to spend time together. And so we watched the game with him, but it was kind of scary for me, so at first I couldn't handle it. Yeah, we were young. We were – how old were we? It was 2015, so I was like 11 years old. Maybe I was 12, you were 11, around that age. And we were watching a Let's Play. We weren't playing it ourselves. And I remember him asking us to watch it with him. And you honestly couldn't watch it. You were too scared. Yeah. I watched the first few episodes, and there is a sequence in the game where they use a spirit board, and that freaked me out, so I stopped watching for a few episodes. And by the time I came back, like, half the characters were dead. So for those who do not know, this game, it's a horror-thriller game. And it's basically – there are different paths to the game that one can choose. If you'd like to explain it a bit, you can go ahead. Yeah, so the game was released exploring the concept of the butterfly effect, and it's one of the main – like, it's one of the biggest games from that gaming company. And it has – it's a game that the player's choices and gameplay influences the outcome of the game. So there's eight characters, and each of them can die or live, and how you play determines the outcome. So we personally have actually never gotten to play the game ourselves. You can only play the game on the PlayStation. On the PlayStation. Yes. So we do not have a PlayStation. We have not had the privilege of playing it ourselves, but we have watched multiple Let's Plays on YouTube, which is – basically, you just watch someone else play the game. But because the game has multiple endings, I guess we have seen a few different story paths, depending on the person we watch, what decisions they make. And it's kind of like, I'd say, a tradition for us at this point. We watch it at least once a year, would you say? It feels like a bi-yearly thing. Like, every other year, we watch an entire Let's Play of it. I forget about it for a little bit. I think, like, once a year, we go back to it, find someone new to watch. And I've watched some, like, separately on my own as well. Yeah, so I'd say we pretty much know the game inside and out. I would say so. I think we've, like, intentionally, like, sought out – Invested our time into this game. A lot of time and dedication. And I feel like we have a connection to the game. Deep connection. Deep connection. I mean, I am 21 now, and you are 19, and we first discovered it when you were 11 and 12. I was still in elementary school, I think. Even though the years have passed, we always find – We come back. We find ourselves back to it. We find ourselves coming back to Until Dawn. It's a really well, like, developed game, like, both, like, in the technological sense and, like, the writing, because it explores a lot of different concepts within the game. There's a lot of lore to it that, like, I had to, in, like, 2016 or something, after I went back and stopped being afraid and watched the game, I got very deep – I went to a deep hole trying to find all the information that is in the game that you don't have access to if you don't have the game yourself. And so I had a YouTube deep dive of all the lore and all the complexity of, like, the story. And it's very, very cool. Yeah, I think the experience must be totally different, playing it for yourself and watching it. And all the bonus features that you wouldn't have access to. We feel like we know a lot about the game. And I'm sure we do. We know more than the average, because we have consumed it. Yes. No one loves it the way we do. But I feel like if we were able to play it, it would totally be a different experience. True. So I want to talk about the game and how it follows the concept of the butterfly effect. Because I feel like that is such an interesting topic in general, but also to make it into a game. Because most games, they'll have maybe one or two endings, or the endings are the same. You just play the game and you know the end goal. But with having a butterfly effect in a game, I feel like that adds something new to it. So if you want to add any intel on that. It was one of the first games to explore this. I'm sure I'm not up to tune on my video game history, but I know that when it was released, it was the first of its kind to really have that many endings and to be specifically exploring this concept of the butterfly effect. Because games can have a lot of endings. But the intention was to explore the butterfly effect, which is the idea that one choice will influence another choice, and that choice influences another choice. And if not for that initial choice, the rest of the sequences of what plays out in your life would not have happened. So there's technically a hundred and something outcomes within this game, because every single choice matters, and there's hundreds of different outcomes and combinations of endings that can happen with it. Yeah, and I feel like because it's a horror thriller type of game, the decisions are... It makes for higher stakes. Yeah, it gets pretty intense, I'd say. For sure. Now, there are how many characters? I believe there's eight characters in the main game. In total, there's ten main characters. Two of them are lost pretty early on, and then there's an additional character that comes later on in the story. Let's talk about the main characters, the main group of friends. All right, all right. So if we can list them out. I'll list out the guys, and you can list out the girls. All right. So for the guys, there's Josh, Chris, Matt, and Mike. And I am a big fan of Chris. And for the girls, there are Hannah and Beth. They are the sisters of Josh. And then there is Sam, Jessica, Emily, and Ashley. Yeah, and so basically, this is just the group of friends. And I guess we could dive into maybe our favorites, or we can kind of talk about their traits, their personalities, and what we want to see in the game. Which are friends, and then they know the other characters because of their relationships, the mutual friendships and mutual relationships. And it's interesting because when the game starts out, every character is set with a certain personality trait and a certain feeling towards another character. And depending on your choices, either the relationship will go up or down, or their traits will go up or down. Like, for example, Mike can become more brave or less brave, and he can have a better relationship with Jessica or a worse relationship with Jessica. Yeah, based off their actions and based off how they interact with each other. So it's not just about the plot. It's also about, like, the interactions. I think that's also a cool aspect of the game, how it really focuses on individual characteristics. And I think that's something that really intrigues me about the game, because we really get personal with each character, and based off the decisions that one chooses, you get to know different sides of the characters. And it feels also like when Supermassive Games was creating this, they were intentionally attempting to sort of mess with the players, because the arguably most dislikable character in the game has the most potential deaths, many of which the player can just choose to cause. And it's interesting because it's not only seeing—it's seeing if you would intentionally make that choice to harm another character, and how is that going to affect your future gameplay? They were really testing us. I think so. And I think it depends on the type of person who is playing, because there is a type of player that wants to play logically, and maybe they would want to save all of them. They want to make the most logical, smartest decisions. But we have also seen players who play very emotionally, and if they react with their emotions, like if they really dislike a character, they will not even try to save them. They will immediately kill them all. Or they will know that the decision is the wrong decision, but do it just because they want to. Of course, yeah. Which is a good measure of the psychology of this game, because it's studying how people's choices influence the future. And if there was a study on each different player and how the player plays the game based on their personality, it kind of puts you in the situation of the game, in the world of the game. Would you survive if you were in this situation? Because this is the kind of decision you're making. Yeah, I think it's a game that players really get immersed in. It's really easy, I feel like, when you play or watch this game, to put yourself in the character's position. And you really just dive all in. I don't think there's any superficial level to this game, and I feel like fans of this game, like us, we've been fans for years, take it pretty seriously. We are very invested and interested into it. We're also emotionally attached to the characters. They're well-written characters. They're very well-rounded, and it's easy to empathize with the characters. Even the characters that are placed in the position of being an antagonist, you learn to empathize with them, or you learn to still enjoy them, because the game has provided enough content for you to actually learn about the characters and the lives that they're living. That as well. I feel like sometimes in games, there's just this very obvious protagonist-antagonist, and you either really dislike one or you really like the other one. But with this game, I feel like because of all the context and backstory we are given, like you said, even those characters that might make bad decisions or are supposed to be disliked, it's very easy to empathize with them. And I think that also has to do with the environment they are put in. The environment kind of allows, like, you know, we're all human, and it allows a human perspective to be like, well, what if I was in that position? For sure. I have to feel for them a bit. I really love it. Like, from a writing perspective, when I invest in the media, I like to think about the characters a lot, and they did a good job at realistically portraying different types of people. And as a video game, you get so much more immersed when you actually care about what's happening in it, and they made it so that you care about it. Exactly. Yeah, from a writing perspective, I guess you could share some thoughts you have, since you are a writer. It's very interesting plot-wise, because when you look at a story, it seems very linear. And this is probably the most non-linear game you can think of, because it can go absolutely any way possible. And there's also multiple different storylines. The characters eventually get split up as expected of a horror story, so they're all split up very differently. And in terms of the lore, it runs very deep. It doesn't even solely surround the characters. There's a whole backstory to the setting that is there. There's a cultural aspect to it, and the, I want to say, like, mythology of the monster that is in this game. It's very, very cool. They clearly spent a lot of time on the world-building of this game and on the character-building of this game. So there's not one negative thing I have to say about this story. Yeah, I would agree. And I think because of the aspects within the game, like you said, there's a cultural aspect to it. There's a lot to it. And I think that alone really allows people to build kind of a personal connection or personal love for it. So for the characters, we revealed all the characters. I don't think we'll go deep into each and their personalities, but I'd assume most people have their favorites and their least favorites. And as you mentioned, I think you said Chris was your favorite? Chris has become my favorite as of recently. He was not previously, but after our recent rewatch, he became my favorite. It's interesting because the reason he became my favorite really is because they made his character as a really good measure of one concept that's explored in this game. So the concept of blame seems to be a big theme running throughout the game. In this exposition of the story, Josh loses his sisters who they died as a result of how they reacted to a prank that was played on them by the rest of the characters. Chris's character was uninvolved in the prank. He's been Josh's friend for the longest. And it seems like he cares the most about Josh, and he had the least to do with the thing that caused Josh to want to get revenge on his friends. And Chris suffers the most throughout the game. He has the most, like, psychological torture given to him by Josh. He has direct interactions with the monsters that later come into the game. And he also has to kind of take care of Ashley the entire time. It's like the biggest burden is placed on Chris, but he had the absolute least to do with the death of Josh's sisters. And it's an interesting concept because the whole thing happens because Josh blames all of them for what happened. And blame and misplaced blame is a theme here, and it's explored so well by making Chris suffer the most. And I don't know, I think I like that concept so much that Chris kind of just became so enjoyable to me because he was such a well-explored character. And he's also so fun. He's so nice. He's so silly. And I think comedic relief is something that's needed in these kind of stories. And I also emphasize deeply with Josh. So I like this character who really cares about his friend who is suffering. I think that's a good way to interpret it. Also, depending the person, we would see maybe different perspectives on who someone might think suffers the most, who someone might think goes through the most intense experience. And I think, like you said, Josh, which I would say is one of the main characters, he can either be taken as the protagonist or antagonist. Right? Yes, that's a good take. I think because he, as you mentioned, Josh, he loses his sisters very early in the game, Hannah and Beth. And you can build some sense of sympathy for him. And I think it starts off as just sympathy, just people being sympathetic for, hey, you lost your sisters. You weren't involved in the prank, as you mentioned, that was played on them. But not just being involved in the prank, he was also completely unaware of what was happening. So maybe there's a sense of guilt within him that he could have saved his sisters. And then I think, like you said, there's a lot of guilt, there's a lot of sympathy, there's a lot of empathy that plays within this game. And me personally, and I know you as well, it's hard for us not to emphasize with Josh his feelings. And he acted pretty harshly as a reaction to losing his sisters and the prank. But at the same time, even though those actions were extremely violent and traumatic, there's still part of us that feels bad for him. Yeah. And the more I look at it, did Josh do anything wrong? Because what happens for those who are not fans of this game, he decides to pull a prank on all of his friends. But it's a very psychologically torturing and traumatic prank. He tries to convince them that there's a killer and that he's dying. It's hard to explain, but it's very intense. But all of his intentions were to prank. He didn't have any intention to hurt anybody. He didn't have any malicious actions. I think that's the issue, though, because his prank, he genuinely did not mean to harm anyone. Like you said, it was all psychological. He wanted to freak them out. He wanted to scare them, essentially. But because there is another path or another aspect of the game, which is the creature or the monster, who actually is the real bad character, the real danger in the game, I guess it kind of confuses the group. Yeah. They all get very upset at Josh before they realize, hey, it's not his fault that we're in danger right now. And it's a good parallel to the initial scene, because as players, we can hate all these characters for pranking Hannah and Beth, but they're not the reason Hannah and Beth died. So we could hate Josh for bringing everyone back to this mountain, but he's not the reason that they're in actual danger. That is true as well. And I think, of course, as a player, you don't know that when you are playing. You think that the prank is the sole reason they died or what exactly drove them to death. But when you get along the game, when you play, you realize that there's a completely different thing that killed them. Yeah, for sure. And that's something that, yeah, you look at after looking at the game multiple times over. The first time playing through, you're going to be filled with so many initial emotions that you're not actually thinking about it in that way. You're just like, oh, I hate this character. I hate that character. Or, oh, they're to blame. This person's to blame. But the reality is that concept of misplaced blame, that you're going to blame someone for something, but you made that choice for this to happen. And it all comes back to the butterfly effect. You can blame everything in the world, but at the end of the day, you made the choice to influence the rest of your future. So that is a bit about the characters, a bit about the lore and concepts of the game. It's a very, I'd say, it's a very interesting but complex game. So if we move on from those specifics and we want to talk about a new announcement that has been made. Supermassive Games and Variety, some journalists, have announced that there's going to be an Until Dawn movie coming out. And this has been, I think, asked for by fans. The game came out 10 years ago. It will be 10 years next year. And they've announced that there's going to be a movie being made. I looked into it. It is confirmed. The directors of the movie have made posts about it, and Supermassive Games has responded to those posts. So it is confirmed. There will be an Until Dawn movie. But I don't think anything, there's just no telling what could happen. And it'll be a new experience for game fans, too, because this is a game with multiple endings. A movie has one ending. So no one knows really what's going to happen or how they're going to tackle this. I think that's kind of, that's what makes it hard for us to kind of imagine what the ending is going to be. Because as we said, this game revolves around the butterfly effect, around multiple endings. So with a movie, I'd assume it could only be a few hours long. I'm not really sure how they are going to produce this type of film. Yeah. Yeah. I have no prediction because the gameplay is 10 hours worth of time. And there is the plot with Josh, there is the plot with the monster, there is the plot with the Native American history that is kind of embedded into the rest of the plot. And there's only so much you can find out in two hours worth of time. So there's a lot that's going to be cut from the game, and there's a lot of choices that they have to stick to, and they have to make canon. Yeah. Like whose death is canon, whose survival is canon. That's what I've been thinking as well. I just want to know what exactly, which path they're going to include. Yeah. And then fans are going to take that. Yeah, there's a lot of, like, stories that they made that they could put in this movie, and then some fans are going to take that and start calling it the true ending of Until Dawn. And so it's a big job they have to choose how the movie goes. Yeah, most definitely. But I think I can speak for myself, I'm very excited. I know you are as well. Literally, I can't wait. I cannot wait for that. We will both be tuning in for that movie. We will be there opening night. Opening night, yes. And we don't watch horror, actually. We're not big horror people, but this game we love. In the beginning, we actually do not watch horror movies at all. No. We do not consume that type of media. So for us to be really invested and actually love this game, it's a little bit of a shock. Yeah, it's a big deal. It is a big deal for us. That just proves how good it is, because a sort of genre doesn't need to be your thing for the story to be good, and that reflects, like, our enjoyment of it. Yeah, and I think we dove deep into this game today. We're excited for the movie, which should be coming out in a few years. Our prediction is that it will come out 2025 or 2026. I thought their idea was it will be a 10-year anniversary thing, but this is also the sort of film that would take a lot of time if they actually care about it. And I'm excited to see what the future holds for Until Dawn. I've really appreciated you talking with me about a game that we both share a lot of interest and care for. Would you like to say your farewells? Farewell to all the Until Dawn enjoyers and non-enjoyers in the room with us. I can feel my love for this game growing, my love for Chris is growing, and my love for Rami Malek is growing. So thank you for having me here to discuss this game. Rami Malek plays Josh. He does. Yes. All right. Well, thank you. I've had fun talking about this game, and I hope the audience can find some type of interest and joy listening. Yes, I agree. So thank you. Thank you for having me. Absolutely.