As the title says this game is a bland mess.
Until dawn became such a hit because it had cheesy over the top slasher movie characters, with typically dramatic, but believable interactions, it mixed real world scares of serial killers with supernatural horror and was a fun game start to finish.
This is short, it is at most 4 hours long
It is not scary, the monsters are creepy, credit where its due, but the only scares in the game come from cheap jump scares from crows, ghosts screeching as they lunge at the character from the dark, deer running through unlit woods. There are very very few moments where there is actual danger or even a sense of actual danger and for a horror game having a sense of danger and a tense atmosphere is an important thing, yet it is almost entirely neglected here
The choices do not matter, the ending of the game is the same trope they used in man of medan and is the laziest writing trick in the book, not only is it so bad it renders every choice you made throughout the game 100% meaningless but it also removes any and all motivation to even consider replaying it because by then you will already know that none of that stuff is happening, its all completely insignificant. The characters you control are nothing more than creations imagined by a sole character, there is no reason at all to empathize with them or to care what happens to them, so where is the reason for replaying it even supposed to come from?
Continuing to talk about the ending, it is such an unbelievable cheat that supermassive have relied on twice now, its is a cheat because any single person on this planet capable of writing could write a story if they were allowed to throw in abnormal things and then allowed to use an "ending" that absolves them from having to explain any of it, or to wrap up the characters story-lines, or to be consistent with the overarching story or to put any creativity at all into the mysticism and supernatural entities in the creation.
One last note on the poor excuses for endings we do get, they are not dependent on actions or "choices" they are dependent on words. Did you have one of the characters ask for help when they were in a life or death struggle? well if you did as far as the writing in this game is concerned that makes you a bad person, it means that you made poor choices and the character you made ask for help will "die" in the ending over something so arbitrary. Taking a gun or knife? doesnt matter, but having a character ask for aid as they are fighting off seemingly real demons? that makes that character flawed and deserving of death, its nonsensical, its lazy, its unfulfilling and by every conceivable measure the ending is a complete disgrace.
It isnt just the ending though, the writing is terrible, period. If any of you have played until dawn remember how those interactions went? they were over the top in the same sense 80's horror movies were, but the interactions between people flowed seamlessly, in little hope over 90% of the dialogue does not even come close to resembling how humans interact, it is choppy and they cut each other off and it is an immersion breaking disjointed mess, unfortunately
Do you want to find out the mystery behind the demons? there is no mystery they simply arent real.
Are you curious to see why the past selves from the witch trials are the most present threat in the game? you cant, there is no explanation because none of it is real
Are you curious to find out if mary is as evil as she seems or if it is all the clearly evil priest pulling all the strings? there is no explanation because neither of them are real.
Do you want to find out how and why their past selves and present selves collide in a a supposed life or death situation? there is no explanation, it just happens in someones head Would you like some backstory on the characters to be able to empathize and invest yourself in them to be better immersed in the game? There are no backstories because the versions of the characters we see do not exist Do you want to be able to replay the game again and see what different choices yield? you technically can, but since you know the character are just fictional creations of the damaged mind of another fictional character you know there is no danger, no mystery, nothing supernatural, there are no stakes whatsoever.
Do you want some closure on the satanic cult leading mayor of little hope that indirectly lead to everything we see in the game? there is no closure, there is no explanation, we are given slivers of information in a few notes and thats your lot.
Sorry to bang on so much about the ending, but it is without a shadow of a doubt the worst part of this game, with a better ending the game would still not have been amazing but with a real story and real supernatural/horror elements it would be a solid 6-7/10 experience( sorry for how ugly the formatting of this is, it was submitted as bullet points to outline the shortcomings in the writing but when i submit it clumps it all together as one paragraph
Too long, didnt read A game sold on the premise of being a choice based horror game has very little in the way of horror and an ending so lazy it renders every single choice you can possibly make in the game utterly moot. Until dawn came out in 2015, and somehow for this successor supermassive have removed every positive thing that made until dawn a success and replaced them with tropes,cliches and rushed out games for quick money grabs.
You may got some enjoyment out of it the first playthrough, but is very short and you will very quickly reach a disappointing "conclusion" that leaves a bitter after taste and subtracts any desire you might of had to replay it, I was very much looking forward to this game, but im afraid I cant in good conscience give it more than a 3/10
Until dawn became such a hit because it had cheesy over the top slasher movie characters, with typically dramatic, but believable interactions, it mixed real world scares of serial killers with supernatural horror and was a fun game start to finish.
This is short, it is at most 4 hours long
It is not scary, the monsters are creepy, credit where its due, but the only scares in the game come from cheap jump scares from crows, ghosts screeching as they lunge at the character from the dark, deer running through unlit woods. There are very very few moments where there is actual danger or even a sense of actual danger and for a horror game having a sense of danger and a tense atmosphere is an important thing, yet it is almost entirely neglected here
The choices do not matter, the ending of the game is the same trope they used in man of medan and is the laziest writing trick in the book, not only is it so bad it renders every choice you made throughout the game 100% meaningless but it also removes any and all motivation to even consider replaying it because by then you will already know that none of that stuff is happening, its all completely insignificant. The characters you control are nothing more than creations imagined by a sole character, there is no reason at all to empathize with them or to care what happens to them, so where is the reason for replaying it even supposed to come from?
Continuing to talk about the ending, it is such an unbelievable cheat that supermassive have relied on twice now, its is a cheat because any single person on this planet capable of writing could write a story if they were allowed to throw in abnormal things and then allowed to use an "ending" that absolves them from having to explain any of it, or to wrap up the characters story-lines, or to be consistent with the overarching story or to put any creativity at all into the mysticism and supernatural entities in the creation.
One last note on the poor excuses for endings we do get, they are not dependent on actions or "choices" they are dependent on words. Did you have one of the characters ask for help when they were in a life or death struggle? well if you did as far as the writing in this game is concerned that makes you a bad person, it means that you made poor choices and the character you made ask for help will "die" in the ending over something so arbitrary. Taking a gun or knife? doesnt matter, but having a character ask for aid as they are fighting off seemingly real demons? that makes that character flawed and deserving of death, its nonsensical, its lazy, its unfulfilling and by every conceivable measure the ending is a complete disgrace.
It isnt just the ending though, the writing is terrible, period. If any of you have played until dawn remember how those interactions went? they were over the top in the same sense 80's horror movies were, but the interactions between people flowed seamlessly, in little hope over 90% of the dialogue does not even come close to resembling how humans interact, it is choppy and they cut each other off and it is an immersion breaking disjointed mess, unfortunately
Do you want to find out the mystery behind the demons? there is no mystery they simply arent real.
Are you curious to see why the past selves from the witch trials are the most present threat in the game? you cant, there is no explanation because none of it is real
Are you curious to find out if mary is as evil as she seems or if it is all the clearly evil priest pulling all the strings? there is no explanation because neither of them are real.
Do you want to find out how and why their past selves and present selves collide in a a supposed life or death situation? there is no explanation, it just happens in someones head Would you like some backstory on the characters to be able to empathize and invest yourself in them to be better immersed in the game? There are no backstories because the versions of the characters we see do not exist Do you want to be able to replay the game again and see what different choices yield? you technically can, but since you know the character are just fictional creations of the damaged mind of another fictional character you know there is no danger, no mystery, nothing supernatural, there are no stakes whatsoever.
Do you want some closure on the satanic cult leading mayor of little hope that indirectly lead to everything we see in the game? there is no closure, there is no explanation, we are given slivers of information in a few notes and thats your lot.
Sorry to bang on so much about the ending, but it is without a shadow of a doubt the worst part of this game, with a better ending the game would still not have been amazing but with a real story and real supernatural/horror elements it would be a solid 6-7/10 experience( sorry for how ugly the formatting of this is, it was submitted as bullet points to outline the shortcomings in the writing but when i submit it clumps it all together as one paragraph
Too long, didnt read A game sold on the premise of being a choice based horror game has very little in the way of horror and an ending so lazy it renders every single choice you can possibly make in the game utterly moot. Until dawn came out in 2015, and somehow for this successor supermassive have removed every positive thing that made until dawn a success and replaced them with tropes,cliches and rushed out games for quick money grabs.
You may got some enjoyment out of it the first playthrough, but is very short and you will very quickly reach a disappointing "conclusion" that leaves a bitter after taste and subtracts any desire you might of had to replay it, I was very much looking forward to this game, but im afraid I cant in good conscience give it more than a 3/10