Until Dawn

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Until Dawn is a 2015 Survival Horror interactive drama game created by Supermassive Games and released by Sony Entertainment. It follows a group of eight teens who gather on the one year anniversary of the disappearance of two of their friends, only to be trapped on the mountain and stalked by a supernatural evil. Depending on the decisions the player makes, all of the characters could die or all of the characters could survive. Your decisions will affect who will live and who will die.

Directed by Will Bowles and Nik Bowen.

Tropes used in Until Dawn include:

• Action Girl: Barring Jessica, all of the main women can take a very active role in ensuring their survival, but Sam is the best, since she will kill a Wendigo flat out to save Mike's life, and can incinerate all of the remaining Wendigos in the final battle.
• Action Survivor: Everyone when just how dire the situation is dawns on them. Even Jessica, who spends the vast majority of the game unconscious can be quite resourceful.
• Adaptational Weakling: Relatively minor, but despite how accurate the Wendigos in the game are, especially in comparison to how they were depicted in many other of Larry Fessenden's works involving them, they cannot speak, despite Algonquin mythology that they can speak and converse with their victims.
• Abandoned Mine: The mines are where the Makkapitew has made its residence, and the protagonists ultimately have to recover the key to escape it when it takes Josh to its nest.
• Abandoned Hospital: The Sanatorium on the mountain has been abandoned, and where the Stranger has kept the other Wendigos captive.
• Achievements in Ignorance: At least some of the achievements will mock you for falling for obvious tricks or set ups.
• Amateur Sleuth: It is entirely possible for the cast to find more evidence that reveals the truth about Hannah and Beth and the fall of the Sanatorium and the mines, than the police ever did during a whole year of investigation.
• Anyone Can Die: All of the cast can die depending on the choices made in the game.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Regardless of all the harm Josh did, Sam and Mike will still mourn him whether or not the Makkapitew killed him or simply reimprisoned him. It is especially apparent with Sam if she survived, as during her police interview, she will admit she though there was a chance they could be together.
• Bait and Switch: The game loves to do this in the first half before the Wendigos properly reveal themselves, with several long shots implicitly shown from its point of view, before something else happens. Mostly, this is just the Makkapitew ratcheting up its victims fear before he really attacks them.
• Big Bad: The primary Wendigo stalking the group is Hannah, but since she is being possessed, the real villain is the Makkapitew, the spirit that caused her death and possessed her when its original body was destroyed.
• Big Badass Wolf: Mike befriends a wolf in the Sanatorium, and it will protect Mike through his second trip. Whether or not it survives is down to your choices.
• Big No: Sam and Mike will scream this when they enter the Makkapitew's trophy room. This will happen also if any of the protagonists see anyone die.
• Black Dude Dies First: While it is possible to have Jessica die first, it is very hard to keep Matt alive throughout the night, and it is entirely possible that he could be the only casualty among the group you truly can save.
• Butterfly of Doom: A major point in the game, in that any decision could reverberate and come back to haunt the player. The Indigenous tribes on the mountain believed black butterflies were bad omens, and Hannah has a black butterfly on her shoulder.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Chris and Ashley have this in the initial stage of the game, but the events of the night cause them to hook up.
• Chekhov's Gun: The game runs on this, but one particular instance is whether or not Matt gets the flare gun. Give it to him and if he gets caught by the Makkapitew, he can shoot it and scare it off.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Neither Emily or Jessica like each other due to the fact they both dated Mike, with them both needing to be separated before they fight each other.
• Closed Circle: Once things start going wrong, the cast cannot get off the mountain due to Josh taking the cable car key, and the Makkapitew summoning a winter storm that will not subside until dawn, leaving the cast stuck with trying to evade the Makkapitew until the arrival of help.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Matt can be this to Emily, especially if he believes Emily is cheating on him with Mike.
• Disc One Final Boss: The Psycho aka Josh is set up as the main villain, but he gets taken care of at the halfway mark, and the Wendigos, particularly the Makkapitew, the real villains take center stage at that point.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: The Stranger has wolves that help keep the captive Wendigos in line. The Makkapitew summons a herd of deer to corner Emily and Matt at the cliff, though whether Matt dies there depends on if he decides to attack them.
• Everyone Has Standards: While how remorseful they will be is up to the player, some of the cast will make comments indicating remorse over the prank they played on Hannah regardless of the player's decision.
• Exposed to the Elements: Everyone is exposed to freezing temperatures as the night wears on. This is mitigated in the first few chapters since everyone is wearing winter clothing, but it gets particularly egregious when Mike is able to walk through a blizzard wearing only a t shirt and some long johns and not have frostbite, or when Sam is only wearing a jacket and no head protection despite going through freezing cold water.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Even for a game set in a horror genre, the game takes roughly 10 hours, starting in the late evening and ending at sunrise, whereas most horror media generally has a whole day go by.
• Eye Scream: All of Emily's deaths involve her getting hit in the eye, except for the rock grinder. The Makkapitew will put its claws into her eyes if it kills her, and if she was bitten, Mike can shoot her in the head which will enter her right eye.
• Dangerous Windows: The Makkapitew violently drags Jessica through a front door glass window the first time it makes itself known to the group.
• Death By Pragmatism: This can possibly befall the entire cast in the lodge depending on your choices, as they are safely holed up in a save room from the Makkapitew, but decide that they cannot risk outwaiting it and decide to get the cable car key from Josh whom the Makkapitew has captured. Depending on your choices, everyone in the lodge could die from leaving the room.
• Demonic Possession: The fate on anyone who becomes a Wendigo, and it is particularly true with Hannah with her journal in the minds documenting how she knows something is happening to her.
• Dumb Blonde: Jessica, but the most stupid would be her going outside to yell when her phone gets thrown though the cabin window. Not surprisingly, as soon as she goes back inside, the Makkapitew violently drags her through the window.
• Dying as Yourself: Should Sam manage to save everyone or just opts to run for the switch at the first opportunity, Hannah will ignore everything or everyone else and tackles the Wendigo chasing Sam. It is heavily implied this is not the Makkapitew trying to assert dominance, but Hannah reasserting control to allow Sam to escape.
• Fate Worse Than Death: Anyone who commits cannibalism becomes a Wendigo, and it is made clear that the transformation is both gradual and very painful, with the victims fully aware something is happening. This fate befell the miners in the 50s, Hannah after the prologue, and if you manage to keep him alive, Josh in the stinger.
• Failure Is the Only Option: In several instances early in the game, some of your choices will be overridden by events anyway. This ends later in the game though, where failure is entirely up to the player's call.
• Fighting From the Inside: Hannah can actually be heard on several instances pleading with the Makkapitew not to harm her friends or calling for help if the creature manages to kill any of her friends. The most blatant is where Hannah yells at the Makkapitew "DON'T HURT HIM!" should Josh manage to recognize Hannah.
• Final Girl: Sam fits the bill, having no major flaws, being quite attractive, and who absolutely cannot die until the final battle in the lodge.
• For the Evulz: The Makkapitew is repeatedly shown to be committing its actions not to eat, but often just to satisfy its own sadistic amusement.
• Genre Shift: The game starts off as a slasher game due to the belief the main villain is the Psycho, but once the Wendigo gets introduced proper, it swiftly turns into supernatural horror.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Josh set up a prank by trapping everyone on the mountain. He is the only one who cannot be saved regardless where the "better" outcome has him become a Wendigo.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Most of the cast by default is this, though whether or not they can be worse or better is up to the dialogue the player chooses.
• Jump Scare: Plenty of them, often involving dummies, but the most serious is when Emily is being chased by the Makkapitew, when trying to decide where to run, it will jump right in front of her and screech in her face.
• Karmic Death: Should Matt attack the caribou, he will fall off the same cliff Beth and Hannah did.
• Kick the Dog: The Makkapitew scares a moose towards Jessica and Mike, then fatally wounds and leaves it in their way. Regardless of whether or not Mike kills or comforts it, it will drag it away just to scare them.
• Kill It with Fire: The only surefire way to kill the Wendigo is to burn them as it gets rid of their outer skin layer that is as strong as armor, which once burnt off makes them more vulnerable to conventional means of attack.
• Laughing Mad: Josh when he is in the midst of a mental breakdown.
• Meaningful Name: Samantha's name is similar to Samson, the biblical warrior who burned down the enemies of Heaven to protect the innocent. Sam does the exact same thing, burning down the lodge to kill all the surviving Wendigos.
• Modesty Towel: Sam spends Chapter Five and the start of Chapter Six in one as the Psycho has taken her clothes for a dummy. She will then be chased by the Psycho, and whether or not she gets caught will depend on prior choices and managing to pass the QuickTime events.
• Ms. Fanservice: Sam spends her portion of Chapter Five stuck in a Modesty Towel after the Psycho steals her clothes. Even if she possibly reopens an injury, Sam is still very attractive. This is completely averted with Jessica, who despite being even more attractive, is violently dragged through a window, dragged through the snow and hard rock by the Makkapitew and is covered in gashes and bruises.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Mike's decision to leave Josh tied up, and also the barn door open means that when the Makkapitew captures Josh, they inevitably have to go and get him instead of hiding in the basement like the original plan was once the Makkapitew starts attacking them openly.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Granted how much of a villain Josh is unclear, but his decision to take the cable car key means that the cast simply cannot ride the cable car down once the Makkapitew starts making itself clear and attacks the group openly. This forces everyone to leave the safe room to look for him which can get everyone else killed.
• Off with His Head: Barring a few exceptions, most of the cast will die by decapitation. Tellingly, the heads will still move for a few seconds to reflect the brain is still functioning.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Chris will ask the Stranger about this trope regarding Wendigos, inquiring if garlic would repel them. The Stranger states it won't, and that it requires standing still. Similarly, the bites they inflict do not turn others into Wendigos where the requirement is strictly the consumption of human flesh.
• Out of Focus: Jessica and Matt get hit with this big time, where Jessica vanishes after getting kidnapped and Matt disappears after the tower. It is not until Chapter 10 that they become prominent again and they don't reunite with the rest of the cast until the end of the game, if the rest of the cast survived.
• Poor Communication Kills: The Stranger's warning to the group regarding the Wendigo can result in this, if Emily was bitten by the Makkapitew during her escape from the mines, as Mike can make the decision to shoot Emily in the assumption she will turn. They later learn literally a minute later that the bite was not infectious, meaning Emily dies in this situation for nothing.
• Posthumous Character: Hannah and Beth, who both die in the Prologue and are declared missing by the authorities, and who hangs over the entire game. As it later turns out, Hannah is "alive", but death might have been preferable.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The Makkapitew will not attack the cast in the lodge until the final battle, as being inside the building would give them ample opportunities to escape it, and it would also ruin its primary tactics of ambush and surprise.
• Press X to Not Die: In most of the game, in order to avoid death, the player must hit the button in time before it runs out. In some instances it requires missing several times in a row for it to result in death.
• Press X to Die: However in some instances, doing the opposite will equally hurt. Mike can lose two of his fingers investigating a flag, Matt can get killed if he attacks the caribou, and Ashley and Chris will get killed if they open the banging trap door in the sewers. This is most blatant with the Don't Move prompts, where moving at all will get a character either killed or severely injured, especially in the final battle.
• Race Against the Clock: If you want to save Jessica when the Makkapitew kidnaps her, have Mike take the shortcuts, because following the path will guarantee her death no matter if you pass all of the Quicktime events.
• Replay Value: The game is designed to be replayed multiple times in order to get all of the achievements, since some of the decisions to get some of them cannot be undone if you went the other way.
• Stalker Sequence: The Makkapitew repeatedly stalks the cast throughout the night, and only starts attacking them openly after sufficiently scaring them.
• Stupidity Is the Only Option: Some of the achievements are only possible if you have the cast blatantly fall for some of the various tricks. Mike should lose two of his fingers, and Chris and Ashley should fall for the Makkapitew's voice trick in order to get the achievements relating to them.
• Shown Their Work: The Wendigos in this game are considerably closer to how Algonquin mythology depicts them, as tall, lean, emaciated figures who are vulnerable to fire and are depicted as very intelligent, in very stark contrast to them having antlers or being an amalgamation of animals and being part human and who notably lack any intelligence, just blindly chasing their victims until they catch them.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The only weapon barring fire that will have any effect on the Wendigos are point blank shotgun blasts. Thus, Chris and Josh must manage to shoot it before the Quicktime event expires or it will get Chris killed and Mike beaten up.
• Summon Magic: The Makkapitew lets out a very long screech that is heavily implied to have summoned the winter storm that traps the cast on the mountain, along with the herd of deer that corners Emily and Matt.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: This is very enforced: should the player have any of the cast harm an animal it will come back to haunt them. If Chris shoots the squirrel, Sam gets attacked by a bird and she gets caught by the Psycho. If Jess hits a bird with a snowball, an icicle will hit Mike and result in Jessica's death regardless of if you do everything right. If Matt attacks the caribou, unless you get every Quick Time Event, he will fall to his death.
• Visible Invisibility: The sight of a Wendigo is based on movement and a shimmering distortion in its vision, so in order for everyone to survive, don't move at all.
• What the Hell, Hero?: It happens a lot, from the cast getting called out for pranking Hannah, to Josh getting called out for playing the Psycho, but the biggest one is when if Mike shoots Emily especially since they learn Mike shot her for nothing just a second later.