Until Dawn thread of this game rules.

[Wrath2X]

Umm holy shit.

From the reveal onward I thought this was going to be some David Cage type bullshit but wow, it's actually a game for one and a damn good one at that. And finally, it's not some self indulgent bull crap with awful narrative.

It's another one of those game with choices, but unlike others it shows glimpses of possibilities that could happen depending on your choices. Some to guide, some to warn, and some to just to show where your choice leads. Apparently, everybody could survive and everybody could die depending on what you do, which adds a lot to replayability. Clues are everywhere for who could be the killer, their back stories, why the twins are targeted, etc.

In a sense you get to play around in your own horror movie and decide how things go. All the characters have stats that tell you about their personalities and their relationships, which changes depending on your choices. Which in turn, leads to different scenarios. The game handles this very, very well. Never forgetting that it's a game(lol David Cage) and investigating actually matters to how the game plays out and adds to replay value(lol The Order). The game tracks everything you do and the consequences as you go on. So you can make note of everything and possibly change it when you start over after you're done.

I'm shocked at how good this game is. It's a fantastic adventure game through and through. A must play if you own a PS4. I haven't beaten it yet, but have barely been able to put down the controller. In many ways it should have been awful but nope, unlike a lot of games of this type it engages you completely and gives you a setting and characters to play around with. Sleeper hit of the year with Life Is Strange for me.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

It's amazing to think how, 3 years ago, this was a really shitty looking PS Move game for the PS3, yet they managed to salvage it and turn it into an actually great game.

[Dickie Dee]

How long is an average playthrough? Kind of interested in experiencing genuinely different branching paths but multiple playthroughs times whatever average playlength might just be more than I want to commit.

I did enjoy what I saw from the GiantBomb quicklook - the bits I saw were pretty much better than most post-80s slasher flicks (not counting some of the decent meta/ironic stuff that's come out since - this seemed like straight up frisky teens in the country gettin' cut )

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

I'd say about 8-10 hours or so, in that neighborhood. After you finish it the first time you can go back and replay any section (and make different choices) but on your first time through you're locked in with every thing you do (frigging permadeath).

I really, really like this game. It really is like a more polished, less pretentious Quantic Dream game. It gives you many choices, and it does an excellent job of disguising which ones are irrelevant or not. Some are there just for flavor, some are deadly important, and its great how the game really screws with you as to what is and isn't a very important decision. Here's a hint, play the game not like you're playing a game, but do what you would do if you were in a horror movie to survive. Don't use video game logic, that shit will get you killed here.

Lost half my cast on my playthrough, half of those were killed because of mechanical errors (I failed key QTE's), the other half was because I made poor decisions that I could honestly justify at the time, in retrospect I could see why I fucked up though.

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

well play any section is a bit generous, you can replay any chapter (remember there's ten). So if you want to go back and do one thing in particular different you'll have to do a bit of legwork to get there most likely.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Oh man this is actually good?

Damn

[mormapope]

Looked up the developer to see what they worked on before, a bunch of small shit that didn't really make any waves. Its nice to see a developer make a great game when they're given the chance to.
 

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

Well to be fair they had a very generous development budget, great Hollywood collaborators (modern indie horror gets some nice callbacks here, thanks Larry Fessenden), and years in the oven thanks to Sony's very wise decision to scrap their M-rated Move killer app and get that shiz on the PS Quatro. Honestly I'd love to see a followup to this, maybe not a direct sequel, but a new set of kids in a different horror/thriller scenario, and perhaps there's one member of the group that's still struggling to get over the events of their time at a cabin the Canadian wilderness perhaps...

Before this game resurfaced, about a year or two ago I figured for sure it was quietly canceled, just like The Last Guardian must have been. Thanks very much Sony for your seeming inability to pull the plug.

[demi]

Remember when I said this game took a shit on Bloodborne

[Bebpo]

Finished my first playthrough last night. Liked the game, but was disappointed after I finished it and saw how little choice there was in the game. I had heard the game was nothing like Heavy Rain and every choice had impact and characters could die if you're not careful. Playing through Until Dawn I thought every QTE mattered and if I missed a couple in a row that character would die and get written out of the story and the story would adapt.

But after finishing it and seeing that basically nothing matters at all for the first 80% of the game outside a couple of one minute choices that have later effects...I dunno, just feels like a let down and doesn't make me want to play it again.  I feel like it's such a fake out that everyone has plot armor for 98% of the time and failing every QTE and making every wrong choice still won't kill them because they need to survive until a specific chapter where they can actually be killed.  While playing I thought every QTE could've killed me and was looking forward to watching an RE4 style youtube video of 100s of ways to die in the game.  I wish like every character could have died in the first couple of chapters and then the game just ends and is like "and that's how the story ended". I wish it was a lot more organic and choose your own adventure-ish. I still feel Alpha Protocol has the best branching of any game out there, you can have such wildly different storylines in that based on your choices.

Also for all the "choice" you have, you almost never get to choose major stuff like if the characters are going to be stupid and split up it'd be nice if you had a choice so that you can either let horror cliches play out, or the thrill of the game would be what if you actually were in the horror game/movie, would you make smarter choices and keep people alive.

Also wish you could walk faster and skip cutscenes because I don't find the game really replayable since it's kind of slow and cumbersome to actually play and you play a 40 min episode where 1 choice for 30 seconds 35 minutes in will actually matter in the long run. Just feel like the replay factor could have been done a lot better.  Some games I want to replay it right away and do things differently, whereas with stuff like this after I beat the game I just wanna youtube the deaths and best ending video and shelve it.

Had a good talk with duckroll about how the problem with "choice" in Western non-rpgs is that they are so focused on telling a specific story and showing you the specific story that all your freedoms amount to very little in the end like Walking Dead, Heavy Rain, Until Dawn.  Whereas something like Way of the Samurai lets you really make your own choices and make your own story about it.  They aren't so concerned with telling you a specific story and the devs are content with you making your own plot.  Good Wrpgs get this as well, with stuff like the White Glove Society questline in New Vegas.

For what it's worth though, if we don't talk about "choices" and "freedom" and just look at it as a linear horror game it's a pretty decent old-school Resident Evil game, especially the last 1/3rd.  I'd give it a B.  I just don't think it's particularly progressive or any better at being choice driven than the David Cage games that people pile on.