Work Text:
Until Dawn has Skill Issues
11/1/24
It is the day after Halloween, and last night we finished our second playthrough of Until Dawn. The game has some issues. I am no horror connoisseur, but if I’m not mistaken, a lot of horror loses its footing once you start thinking too hard about it. We shouldn’t let this be the standard, it is the year of our Lord 2024, stories should have substance; it doesn’t matter if it’s for children, a Hallmark movie or thriller experience for our beloved time spent in autumn(!) So. Allow me to begin with the first issue:
The setting
Why? On Earth?? Is it snowing?? If there aren’t going to be consequences??? My very professional experience has taught me that shit needs to have a reason for being there. There are, like 4 quips from the cast that mention that “ooh it’s freezing”. It would still be freezing if it was any other time of the year, because uh. They’re on a mountain??? If you miss the quick time events and fall into water, there should be some repercussions. Like dying from hypothermia. Or. If that’s too intense it should deal hella damage and give you little to no time for quick time events. You’re tired, out of it, muscles are kinda fucked from the freezing temperatures, it would make so much more sense for your reflexes to be shot. So. Yeah, they’re on this mountain, it’s snow capped, this creates the local setting with some minor faults, but the regional setting calls for a much bigger change. This is a lodge, in the Appalachian Mountains, so. Naturally. You have to bring Native American lore into it.. But uh, no you don’t, you really, really don’t. At least not in this story. The main legitimate threat lies on the premise that there is some wack ass cryptid shit happening. The writer’s cling onto this regional lore even though there’s abandoned mines, a psychiatric hospital and a high-profile real estate that has a connection to two dead protagonists. All prime places to worldbuild and take advantage of, but, alas. All the locations are half baked as they string together a story about cannibalistic miners that a hospital started experiments on (I think?) Also Josh, the guy who grew up in the mansion, is mentally ill, and they’re all affected by these skinwalker wendigo creatures. There’s two solutions that I would really rather enjoy; scrap the whole wendigo idea or work on blending the settings. Scrapping the wendigo would allow the writer’s to build an in-depth and well-known threat to the characters. I would say that the miner’s and human experimentation would be enough for some morbid monster action. Maybe there was dust from a particular mineral that was concentrated to make a super-zombie or something. I don’t know, the options are kind of limitless, and would be much easier to justify than an already established cryptid… that none of the main character’s even know of. Fixing the plot holes for the wendigo in the story as it stands, is a much greater endeavor. First, let’s address the wendigo tale as I understand it. There’s this abandoned mine that has been a breeding ground for wendigos (ew), they only come out at night so it’s not an issue. Until some punk ass kids pull a couple of pranks and some characters end up stranded. Now it’s up to some inexplicably courageous flamethrowing hick to continue eradicating the wendigos and while he’s at it, help these kids not die. Oh also there’s a mental hospital that housed a couple of wendigos at one point, and may or may not be related to one of the rich kids in the mansion up the mountain. Are you kidding me? None of these kids have an ounce of conspirator in them? No one is familiar with the haunting lore of the region? It’s all up to some dude in the third act to spell it out to them and they just??? Roll with it? I don’t like that one bit. My proposal is that one of the characters in the main cast is, in some way, Native American. They could have grown up with family on the rez, hearing tall tales of the cryptids on the mountain but always dismissing it. In a serious world building sense, this character could all scare them by sharing their personal, genuine fear of running into these characters, or the indigenous character could entwine the lore with the elaborate prank that Josh is pulling. In a more casual “relatable teen” way, the character could be shitting their pants while coming to the realization that their grandma wasn’t pulling on their leg and the wendigo is an actual genuine threat. (I like that one more) And, if we are going to keep the exterminator on the mountain, it would only be for the sake of having a faux villain, and he, again, would need to have a reason for being there, even if it’s as simple as “he’s the south-eastern equivalent of a Bigfoot hunter”. But honestly. There could be more horror in uncovering the threat that is actively jeopardizing their lives. We don’t need to rely on A THIRD potential murder-hungry villain to signify the peril the cast is in.
The plot
Oh, oh dearest plot. How you failed me. Josh’s prank literally took like an hour of game play, it was a mere fraction of the plot, and it should have been so much more. First and foremost, why did everyone have to split up so early? The two couples left immediately, but they were the emcee’s of the initial prank that led to Hannah and Beth’s death, so they didn’t even get the consequences that Josh curated for them. Rather Chris and Sam paid the price but Sam was nowhere to be seen in the prank, and Chris was asleep. SO??? Yeah, HELLO? The bitch ass punks that did something so belittling to your sisters and ultimately got them killed (in your eyes) get to go on a sexcapade and YOU HAND THEM THE KEYS TO GO DO SO?? BEFORE THE REVENGE PRANK CAN EVEN BEGIN ??? Make it. Make SENSE. So. For the sake of plot and pacing, my editor’s note is that everyone needs to stay PUT. Maybe some of them go and find rooms, maybe some join Josh at the Ouija board, and maybe the rest go looking around the house trying to find something from their beloved highschool years. OR SOMETHING. Anything that keeps the full cast in the house for at least an hour so Josh’s prank can feel more effective. It makes sense for all of them to split ways, but it needs to be in the middle or towards the end of the game. Mike and that blonde chick (sorry lady) can go get the keys to the cabin, they can still run into the wendigo, but only AFTER they are exposed to the faux horrors in the main lodge. The Blasain couple (not good with names) can still “escape” and find a way to the watchtower so they can call for help. Of course it’s crucial that landmarks are reached so the plot can conclude, but my goodness it is just so rough in the way it lies now. AFTER it’s been “remade”. I had fun with it and I will be replaying it in a semi-serious tone. My frustration mainly lies with the fact that we’ve decided as a collective, that some genres just aren’t entitled too elaborate, well told stories, but to that I say, “hubbub”
Hypothetical Overview of a Re-Write
The Washington siblings live among the highest peaks in the appalachian mountains, Josh is gearing up for college, Beth is preparing for her senior year, and Hannah is the exceptionally cool younger sibling hanging out with *the upperclassmen*. The snow is finally clearing out, summer is underway, and the siblings decide to host a few of their closest friends over for an unforgettable weekend. Josh and his buddy Chris end up passed out on the couch while everyone plans a prank on the adorkable middle sibling, Beth. She gets really upset, runs out of the house, like really runs, and keeps running, Hannah gets to catch up just in the nick of time as they plummet off a cliffside and fucking die. There was probably something chasing them, and now their corpses are being dragged away, probably by the thing that seemed to be chasing them before. We’re not sure. One year later, Josh offers a reunion back up at the lodge; he and his parents had abandoned the estate after losing Hannah and Beth, unsure if they will ever find their bodies on that cursed mountain. In an attempt to support Josh, the group agrees and meets him once again for an unforgettable weekend. Shit gets brazy. Josh’s prank works extremely well, the one ethnically ambiguous kid is all paranoid about some shit his grandma told him, people disperse and blood is spilled. By. some. Weird. Mine Monster. Maybe an IRL creeper, oh wouldn’t that be rich. JUST KIDDING it was a wendigo, just like the kid said it was. He went into shock and saw an apparition of his grandma saying “oooh boy I told your ass”. And idk how differently the game ends but in this version there's an exploration of the miners that were first exposed to the wendigos, and an actual trackable lore of how they're created and how cannibalism plays into it, c-cause I’m still confused.