Video: Eurogamer plays the intro to Until Dawn
INT. Eurogamer office - NIGHT
I love cheesy horror. I grew up watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all those teen slasher films parents would overlook you renting out for a sleepover. I remember reading Goosebumps and Point Horror and later, Stephen King. I knew the rules for surviving a scary scenario inside out. You stick together, you never investigate a strange noise, and above all, you certainly don't drink, partake in recreational drugs or have sex. But would my supposed knowledge of how all these horror cliches play out save me when it came to directing my own story?
Until Dawn takes every teen horror trope in the book and sticks them all in an isolated cabin in the Blackwood Mountains, tasking you to keep all eight survivors - helpfully boiled down to recognisable archetypes like the good girl, the bitch, the jock, the horny couple and so forth - alive until dawn. The result is a very Quantic Dream-like game without the overwhelming presence of David Cage's ego, tightly-packed with jump scares and laughably bad scripting. "Let's party like we're f**king porn stars," a line spoken by a guy who recently lost two sisters in tragic circumstances, is a particular highlight. Chris Bratt and I teamed up to play the first half hour, and you can see the resulting casualties below.
