T w e n t y S i d e d

Warning: This episode is where the game gets to be really gruesome. And no, I don’t mean Chris’ haircut. I mean people die in really nasty ways. Proceed at your own risk.

For reference: The “Pants were dead” gag is a reference to this vintage video.

I’m glad someone else is playing, because this is the part where I would put the controller down because I’m not having a good time. I’d intend to come back later, but I probably wouldn’t. Watching Josh get buzz-sawed in half while he begs for his life is just a little too unpleasant for me in terms of human suffering. I know everyone has a different tolerance for this sort of thing and react differently when they see something they don’t like, but this seems to be about my limit.

The buzz saw scene was really frustrating. I can’t tell what the options were, gameplay-wise. My first instinct was, “Ah! An electric saw. Let’s figure out how to cut the power!” But the game railroads you into saying you plan to save only one person. And saying that line sets the saw in motion. The game never cut you loose from quicktime mode to look for other solutions, which is what I really wanted to do.

I’m actually dealing with a one-two punch of unpleasantness and unbelief. Regardless of what justifications are offered later, we see a man slowly moseying away from Mike while supposedly dragging a heavy, belligerent, physically-fit person. Meanwhile, Mike is sprinting through obstacles like an Olympian. And yet despite his speed, his shortcuts, and his not-carrying-a-difficult-teenager, Mike is constantly outpaced by the killer. That makes it really hard for me to believe in this world. At the same time, Josh’s apparent death makes me not want to believe in this world. The writer is asking me to grant them tons of leeway so I can continue to be immersed in a story I’m not enjoying that hasn’t given me a single character I can really root for.

By this point in the story a horror movie has usually established a villain. The townsfolk have told some stories about the beast that’s been spotted on the edge of the swamp in October. Or the old woman told a story about what happened in this old manor a hundred years ago. Or the bookish old guy has revealed the town’s secret history of witch-burning. Whatever. By this point we have some kind of frame of reference for what kind of story we’re seeing and what the stakes are. Maybe we know the killer’s goals and we’re working to stop them, or we know the protagonists goals and how they plan to to save themselves. But here we are 3 hours into Until Dawn and the writer still hasn’t bothered to tell us what kind of story this is. They’re asking a lot, and not giving me any reason to go along with it.

So yeah. As of right now, this game isn’t working for me at all.

We’ll see if things turn around and it’s able to win me back in the next couple of episodes.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

So Jess gets pulled out through the window. I can’t wait to find out the killer is a six and a half foot tall bodybuilder that can bash through this window and dead-lift an uncooperative and physically fit subject through the ragged opening without slicing his own arms to shreds. I guess he’s also psychic, since he knew she was going to stop just inside the door to make this move possible.

Yeah, yeah. People keep telling me “it’s all explained later”. Okay fine. The problem is that the story hasn’t given me any reason to believe that any of this is possible. I’ve basically stopped believing in the world at this point.

I think our format is working against me here. I’m watching all of the episodes twice: Once when we record and again when we post. But it’s a week between new episodes for me. This is a lot of scrutiny on a story that’s probably not designed for it, and it’s taking a long time to reach the justifications. Objections that might normally be after-the-fact bits of fridge logic end up nagging me during the experience.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

It’s really bugging me that we haven’t yet settled on what genre our psycho killer belongs to. Is this a vengeful spirit? A particularly motivated and resourceful crazy person (or persons) like in Scream? A supernaturally strong (and possibly mortal-ish) killer like Jason? In some scenes we’ve got people wearing masks but in other scenes we’ve got supernatural stuff (like the girl that Rutskarn pointed out) and I have no idea where the story is going.

Note that I’m not asking you to tell me in the comments. I’m saying at this point in the story I’d like to know what sorts of disbelief I should start suspending.

In general I find ghosts, spooks, and monsters much more interesting for these kinds of stories. Enabling a mortal to pick off a large group like this usually forces the writer to cheat their ass off and make the baddie omniscient, insanely lucky, and hyper-capable. The longer the spree goes on the less I can believe in the story. Meanwhile, ghosts and monsters can do whatever the author says they can do. They don’t need to spend six consecutive hours crouching in a crawlspace while their rubber mask fills with sweat, waiting for the exact moment when the right person enters the room without turning on the light so they can be properly jump-scared.

EDIT: And yes I realize this is totally the wrong mindset for this genre. Sorry. I literally can’t help thinking about this stuff when examining a story. It’s completely involuntary, and probably explains why I enjoy Japanese horror but have such a hard time liking American stuff.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.