Until Dawn

The game was initially designed for the PlayStation Move motion controller for the PlayStation 3.

British developer Supermassive Games led the game's development, which began in 2010.[22][23] Its existence was revealed after a trademark for Until Dawn was discovered.[24] The game's creative director was Will Byles, who joined the studio in the same year. The studio began discussing an idea for a new game for the PlayStation 3's PlayStation Move accessory, which had a greater emphasis on narrative than Supermassive's previous titles like Start the Party!. The proposed game would be a horror game that resembled a slasher film and it would be designed for a younger audience that publisher Sony Computer Entertainment had courted with the Move.[25] Supermassive hired American writers Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, both of whom had worked on horror movies,[26] to write the game's script. They were hired because Byles felt the company's British writers wrote in a "parochial" way that is inappropriate for the horror genre.[25]

The game was initially exclusive to PlayStation Move, meaning players needed to buy the Move controller to functionally play the game. In this version of the game, the only way to navigate and progress the game is by moving the motion controller. Moving the wand guides the movement of the flashlight held by the characters as players explore the location from a first-person perspective. The wand can also be used to interact with objects and solve puzzles.[27] In this version of the game, players can occasionally wield a firearm.[28]

A segment of the game shown at Gamescom 2012 received positive comments from the gaming community. Byles said the enthusiastic response was due to the game's unique tone, which was thought to be "fresh" compared with that of its competitors. One of the most common complaints received was the game's status as a Move exclusive; most people did not want to purchase a controller for the game.[25] At that time, the game had reached the alpha development stage.[29] Byles experimented with the game's debug camera and realized the potential of changing the perspective to third-person. This would change the game from a first-person adventure game to a more "cinematic" experience. The game also switched platform from PlayStation 3 to the PlayStation 4 and expanded the game's scope to include more mature content. Sony approved the idea and allowed the team to develop for the PS4 and changed the game's genre.[25] According to Ashley Reed of GamesRadar, the changes in gameplay gave more "space to let the score, character personalities, camera work, and settings shine through".[30] Most characters were also recast; Brett Dalton, one of the actors retained from the PlayStation 3 version, said he believed that the recasting was performed to hire better-known actors.[31]

With these changes, the team partnered with Cubic Motion and 3Lateral to motion capture the actors' performances.[32] The team also needed to change the game's graphics. They used the Decima engine created by Guerrilla Games and had to rework the lighting system.[25] The team also extensively used particle effects and volumetric lighting to light up the game's environments.[33] Despite the third-person perspective, the game adopted a static camera angle in a way similar to early Resident Evil games. The approach was initially resisted by the development team because the designers considered the camera "archaic". Byles and the game's production designer Lee Robinson, however, drew storyboards to ensure each camera angle had narrative motivations and prove their placements were not random. Initially, quality assurance testers were frustrated with the camera angle; Supermassive resolved this complaint by ensuring drastic camera transitions would not occur at thresholds like doors but the team had to remove some scenes to satisfy this design philosophy.[25]

To increase the player's agency, the team envisioned a system named the "butterfly effect". Every choice the player makes in the game helps shape the story and ultimately leads to different endings. Byles stated that "all of [the characters] can live or all of whom can die in any order in any number of ways", and that this leads to many ways for scenes to unfold. He further added that no two players would get the same experience because certain scenes would be locked away should the player make a different choice.[34] Byles said this would encourage players to replay the game to discover more about the story.[35] The dynamic choice and consequence system was inspired by Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain.[36] With a branching story, Supermassive developed software that recorded every choice in the game. Byles described the software as a series of "nodes" that enabled the team to keep track of the story they intended to tell. Due to the branching nature of the game, however, every time the team wanted to change details in the narrative, the writers needed to examine the possible impacts the change would have on subsequent events.[34] The team avoided substantial rewrites and instead focused on adjusting the game's pacing and direction once the motion capture and shooting process had begun.[25]

The game's strict auto-save system was designed to be "imperative" instead of "punitive". Byles said even though a character had died, the story would not end until it reached the ending and that some characters may not have died despite their deaths being hinted at. Some plot points were designed to be indirect and vague so the narrative would gradually unfold. Byles recognized the design choice as "risky" and that it may disappoint mainstream players but he felt it enhanced the game's "horror" elements. The game's pacing was inspired by that of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, in which there were quiet moments with no enemy encounter that help enhance the games' tension.[34] Tom Heaton, the game's designer, said an unsuccessful QTE trial or one incorrect choice would not lead directly to a character's death, though it would send the characters to "harder, more treacherous paths".[37]

Byles described the game as "glib" and "cheesy", and said the story and the atmosphere were similar to a typical teen horror movie.[22] The film was inspired by a number of classic movies; the developers observed horror tropes and clichés that can be subverted in the game. These films included Psycho, The Haunting, The Exorcist, Halloween, Poltergeist, Evil Dead II, and The Conjuring.[38] Fessenden and Reznick wrote a script of nearly 10,000 pages. The playable characters were set up as typical horror movie archetypes but as the narrative unfolded, these characters would show more nuanced qualities. The writers felt that, unlike films, games can use quieter moments for characters to express their inner feelings. With the game's emphasis on players' choices, players can no longer "laugh" at the characters' decisions because they must make these decisions themselves. It enables the player to relate with the characters and make each death more devastating. The dialogue was reduced significantly when the team began to use the motion capture technology, which facilitates storytelling through acting. The story was written in a non-linear fashion; chapter 8 was the first to be completed. This ended up causing some inconsistencies in the story.[39]

The development team wanted to invoke fear in the player and ensure the game had the appropriate proportion of terror, horror, and disgust. Supermassive made most use of terror, which Byles defined as "the dread of an unseen threat".[40] To ensure the game was scary enough, the team used a galvanic skin response test to measure playtesters' fear levels while they were playing the game.[41] Byles described Until Dawn as a game that took "horror back to the roots of horror"; unlike many of its competitors, tension rather than action was emphasized.[40]

Jason Graves is the composer for the game.

Jason Graves began working on Until Dawn's music in 2011. The scoring process for three orchestra recording sessions lasted for one year.[34] Graves talked with Barney Pratt, the game's audio director, for three hours to get a clear idea about the direction of the soundtrack.[42] He first composed the game's main theme, which he felt represented what the team was trying to achieve, and used it as the demo pitch to Supermassive Games.[43] The music was reactive; it would become louder as the player character approached a threat.[42] While composing for the game, he mixed both melodic and atonic sounds together.[44] The music was influenced by the work of Krzysztof Penderecki and Jerry Goldsmith.[43] There were tonally vague themes to mirror the game's mysterious storyline.[44]

With the butterfly effect being an important mechanic of the game, Graves used film music editing techniques. He divided each track into segments and had the orchestra play it piece by piece. He then manipulated the recordings and introduced variations of them in the recording studio.[43] For the game's mountainous setting, he used a "goat-hoof shaker" to perform the mountain theme and many of the key tracks.[42] He also extensively used synthesizers to pay homage to John Carpenter's work.[43] Only 30 minutes of themes with melody and chord progression were recorded in three orchestral sessions. This was because most of the time was spent recording 8–10 hours worth of atmospheric music and sounds that Graves later combined to invoke different emotions in different scenes. The Decima game engine was programmed to determine how the music was layered depending on players' choices in the game.[34] The game's soundtracks were nearly 15 hours long.[43] The theme song, "O Death", was performed by Amy Van Roekel.[45]

Until Dawn was officially announced at Gamescom 2012 and it was initially scheduled to be released in 2013 for PlayStation 3.[46] After the game was retooled, it was rumored Sony had canceled it but Supermassive CEO Pete Samuels refuted the claim.[47] The game was re-revealed at Gamescom 2014.[48] Sony did not market Until Dawn extensively; most of its marketing effort was spent on promoting third-party titles such as Destiny.[49] On 31 July 2015, Sony confirmed the game had gone gold, indicating the team had completed development and it was being prepared for duplication and release.[50] It was released for the PlayStation 4 in August 2015, two years after its initial proposed launch.[3] Players who pre-ordered the game received a bonus mission featuring Matt and Emily.[51] As well as the game's standard edition, an extended edition and a steelbook edition were available for purchase.[52] The game's death scenes were censored in the Japanese version.[53] Supermassive hosted a time-limited Halloween event in late October 2015, in which 11 pumpkins were added to the game as collectibles.[54]

Reception
Aggregate score Aggregator Score Metacritic 79/100[55] Review scores Publication Score Destructoid 7/10[56] EGM 8/10[57] Game Informer 9/10[10] GameRevolution [58] GameSpot 8/10[18] GamesRadar+ [59] IGN 7.5/10[60] Polygon 6.5/10[61] VentureBeat 90/100[45]

Until Dawn received a generally positive reception based on 103 reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.[55]

Jeff Marchiafava from Game Informer wrote that Supermassive Games had "polished the [adventure game] formula to a triple-A sheen". He also enjoyed the butterfly effect system because some choices significantly affect the game's narrative.[10] Game Revolution's Jessica Vazquez described the system as a "welcome limitation" because players would not know the consequences of each choice until they reach the ending.[58] Alexa Ray Corriea from GameSpot liked the game for its impactful choices and the "paranoia" it invokes during critical choices that risk the lives of certain characters. She also admired the system's complexity and intricacy, which lets the player replay the game to discover new scenes.[18] Mollie L Patterson from Electronic Gaming Monthly thought that the system is a "fantastic" inclusion but it never reached its full potential.[57] Chris Carter from Destructoid called the butterfly effect system "gimmicky" due to the choices not significantly influencing the plot.[56] GamesRadar's Louise Blain opined that most choices players make in the first half of the game are meaningless, though she noted that this is less of a problem in the latter half.[59] Polygon's Phillip Kollar respected Supermassive's decision to not include manual saving, though he found the decision to be punitive because accidentally failing a QTE can result in a character's death.[61]

Carter liked the game's world-building, which he said is extensive and intriguing. He also praised the cast's performances—singling out Peter Stormare's performance as therapist Dr. Hill—and the intermission sessions that became increasingly disturbing as the game progressed.[56] Ray Corriea also enjoyed the cast's performances along with Graves' soundtracks, which she said elevate the game's "panic, terror, and anguish".[18] On a less positive note, Kollar wrote that the acting is hampered by inadequacies in the game's motion capture technology.[61] Marchiafava enjoyed the "compelling" story; he applauded the developers for successfully using different horror tropes while introducing several twists to the formula.[10] Both Marchiafava and Dean Takahashi from Venturebeat liked the characters, who show genuine growth as the narrative unfolds.[10][45] Correa added that players can relate to these characters.[18] Both Blain and Patterson called the title a "love letter" to horror films,[59] with Patterson noting the game's similarities to a "B-grade teen slasher flick".[57] Andrew Webster from The Verge agreed, saying the game combines elements of both horror films and games, and transforms them into a "terrifying experience". He further added that the control the player has over the events makes Until Dawn "something special".[62] Lucy O'Brien from IGN, however, said the game's strict adherence to genre tropes dilutes the game's scary moments and that it "revels in the slasher genre's idiosyncratic idiocy". She also criticized the game's inconsistent tone.[60] Kollar disliked the game's writing and he criticized the "awkward cuts, long moments of unintentionally hilarious silence and hopping between scenes and perspectives with no regard for holding the player's interest".[61]

Carter called the gameplay of Until Dawn unimaginative,[56] though critics generally agreed the quick time events are well-handled because they help players become immersed in the game;[10][58] Ray Corriea chose the "Don't Move" prompt as one of the player inputs that further heighten the tension.[18] Marchiafava called its use one of the best in gaming because button prompts were often timed and successful attempts required precision.[10] Patterson described the gameplay as conventional; he enjoyed the inclusion of QTEs and said they match with the game's overall theme and atmosphere. He noted, however, the game's cumbersome controls and suggested the shortcoming may originate from the game's origin as a PlayStation Move exclusive.[57] Ray Corriea was disappointed by the game's linearity and the lack of interactions players can have with the environments, which she said had wasted the game's setting.[18] Blain praised the game's quieter moments, in which the player character simply walks and explores the environment, and the fixed camera angles that contribute to tense and frightening moments.[59] Takahashi found the 3D navigation awkward.[45] O'Brien lamented the game's poorly-implemented motion control; she also disliked the QTEs, which she considered as tedious at times.[60] Level design and location diversity were commonly praised by critics.[56][10][58] The collectibles were regarded as meaningful additions to the game because they give players insights into possible future events in the game.[58][18][10]

According to Chart-Track, Until Dawn was the second-best-selling retail game in the UK in its week of release, trailing only Gears of War: Ultimate Edition.[63] It was also the seventh-best-selling game in the US[64] and the top-trending game on YouTube in August 2015.[65] Sony was surprised by the game's critical responses and the number of players posting videos of it or streaming it on YouTube. Shuhei Yoshida, President of SCE Worldwide Studios, called Until Dawn a "sleeper hit".[66] Samuels added that the game surpassed the company's expectations, though the exact sales figure was not announced.[67]