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Section 9 posted:I can't remember all the moments I thought it might change tracks, but here are a couple things I thought might happen (mostly in retrospect): This does happen though? Hannah is given multiple opportunities to kill both Mike and Sam throughout the game, and we see her vision during some of these events. Instead she chooses to either leave, or just watch them. During the final lodge moments, rather then hunt them, she fights the other Wendigo, giving Mike and Sam a chance to blow the place up. I mean, it's Mike and Sam specific, she seems perfectly fine murdering her brother/other friends, but I got the feeling she retained some measure of her humanity and wasn't willing to kill Mike/Sam just yet unless they made themselves too irresistible for the Wendigo spirit.
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Sep 14, 2015 17:14
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Rookersh posted:This does happen though? Hannah is given multiple opportunities to kill both Mike and Sam throughout the game, and we see her vision during some of these events. Instead she chooses to either leave, or just watch them. If Sam moves Wendigo-Hannah will murder her rear end dead. I think in this case it is just "Wendigo-Hannah didn't have a chance/had a better target."
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Sep 14, 2015 17:15
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ImpAtom posted:If Sam moves Wendigo-Hannah will murder her rear end dead. I think in this case it is just "Wendigo-Hannah didn't have a chance/had a better target." Point still stands If Josh recognizes her, she retains enough humanity to keep him alive/turn him. Once she saw Mike and Jessica in the beginning, she just watched to see what they were doing, only attacking when Jessica started boasting about loving him. All her kills sans Chris are specifically tied to the person and how they treated her, Emily/Jess get the worst treatment, Ashley gets tricked into being murdered, etc. And you could argue Sam only gets killed at that point because the spirit inside her was hungrier then her willpower at that point. Considering just how reckless Mike was, it takes a far greater leap of logic to believe he lucked out of encountering multiple wendigos while wandering the woods then it does to believe Hannah realized it was him and didn't kill him. e: And the Stranger even mentions wendigos do maintain some measure of their old personality/memories. They just lose the right to be considered human the second they start murdering people.
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Sep 14, 2015 17:25
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Not all of the Wendigos on the mountain are Hannah. There are several others running around, even before Mike blows up the sanitarium. The one that kills the Stranger and potentially kills Chris is pretty specifically not her. Also, the Stranger's journal makes a point of noting that he's found several different kinds of wards and rituals that act to drive off or impede the Wendigo, but none of them work inside a building.
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Sep 14, 2015 17:42
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Rookersh posted:Point still stands How exactly does she turn him? Force-feeding him the stranger immediately after dragging him off? Or does he just get the munchies shortly after being thrown down there? Another point that doesn't quite make sense: who knocks down the fire tower? Josh isn't out to kill anybody, and the wendigo don't seem intelligent enough (and can't get to Matt and Emily once they're in the mine anyway).
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Sep 14, 2015 18:13
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epenthesis posted:Another point that doesn't quite make sense: who knocks down the fire tower? Josh isn't out to kill anybody, and the wendigo don't seem intelligent enough (and can't get to Matt and Emily once they're in the mine anyway). No, that makes sense. Once you know what you're looking at, it's pretty obvious that a Wendigo severs the fire tower cables, and the Wendigo are already on the prowl in the mines. The Stranger's down there hunting them. The Wendigo aren't exactly stupid. They have a very specific type of vision, they're insane with hunger, they have short attention spans, and several of them are clearly sadistic, but there are several times throughout the game where they're clearly toying with one of the characters for the sheer hell of it.
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Sep 14, 2015 18:22
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epenthesis posted:How exactly does she turn him? Force-feeding him the stranger immediately after dragging him off? Or does he just get the munchies shortly after being thrown down there? There's no clear time frame for how long he was down there. It's pretty likely that he got taken and then found himself trapped with no food and no way out.
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Sep 14, 2015 18:23
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I had figured he dug up his sister's remains and got Hannah's leftovers Although I guess that may just be my imagination.
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Sep 14, 2015 18:26
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ImpAtom posted:There's no clear time frame for how long he was down there. It's pretty likely that he got taken and then found himself trapped with no food and no way out. A couple of clues suggest that the initial transformation takes maybe three days, so it's been at least that long. He's also still tripping balls, has eight different kinds of head trauma, and might be possessed by the same "alpha Wendigo" spirit as Hannah, which could've sped things up. PantsBandit posted:I had figured he dug up his sister's remains and got Hannah's leftovers Although I guess that may just be my imagination. Nope, he's pretty clearly eating the Stranger. There aren't any leftovers of Beth worth talking about in that cave.
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Sep 14, 2015 18:26
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ImpAtom posted:There's no clear time frame for how long he was down there. It's pretty likely that he got taken and then found himself trapped with no food and no way out. It shouldn't take the cops that long to find that section of the mines. I seem to remember them referring to him as a survivor, too; it doesn't seem like it takes place long after the events at the lodge. I guess I can accept that he's sufficiently messed up to eat a corpse, but remember that nobody's told him about the wendigo and how they're created. That idea would have to occur to him independently. And it's fun to nitpick once you get started! Shouldn't Hannah's diary be a little less forlorn about Beth if she dropped her off the cliff at the beginning?
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Sep 14, 2015 18:43
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Nitpicking for nitpicking's sake is obnoxious.epenthesis posted:It shouldn't take the cops that long to find that section of the mines. I seem to remember them referring to him as a survivor, too; it doesn't seem like it takes place long after the events at the lodge. It'll take them some time to sort out what really happened, and to get rescue personnel back up the mountain in force. Keep in mind that over the course of escaping from the mines, most of the characters will block off or blow up the methods they used to access them, and the mines aren't particularly stable. The explosion Mike causes at the end of the sanitarium level causes enough damage to the tunnels that it endangers Sam for a minute. They'd want to get geologists in there, and they're supposed to be in the rear end-end of Nowhere, Canada. If you assume the cops take a couple of days to get their act together, and Josh is A) still tripping balls, B) insane with grief (and also insanity), C) traumatized, D) trapped in a cave with a dead body as the only potential source of food, E) the only living human on the mountain for at least a few hours, and F) the potential unwitting host of six or seven Wendigo spirits plus the big daddy Wendigo that possessed Hannah, then that's probably enough to be getting on with. epenthesis posted:And it's fun to nitpick once you get started! Shouldn't Hannah's diary be a little less forlorn about Beth if she dropped her off the cliff at the beginning? Hannah might not know. Even if Beth drops Hannah, the branch snaps shortly thereafter and they both fall at roughly the same time. Add disorientation, pain, shock, and a lengthy period of unconsciousness.
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Sep 14, 2015 19:02
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Wanderer posted:Nitpicking for nitpicking's sake is obnoxious. I was mostly kidding about that one, jeez. I liked the game, I just don't think it holds up to close scrutiny. But then, I also think it does just fine in terms of offering meaningful choices, so I'm not surprised to be the outlier.
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Sep 14, 2015 19:08
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epenthesis posted:I was mostly kidding about that one, jeez. I liked the game, I just don't think it holds up to close scrutiny. I get really tired of nerds who think they get some kind of real-life bronze trophy for finding flaws in a given product or service. I have to deal with them professionally. As far as Until Dawn goes, it isn't perfect, but it hangs together a drat sight better than you'd think given the relative complexity of the plot. It has a few weak spots here and there (I have no idea how Josh found the time to get down to the cable car station and wreck it, unless he's a pro skier), but people seem to want to pick it apart and claim it has problems that it doesn't have. It's that bizarre vicious cycle of video game narrative; many of them aren't particularly consistent, so players go in with a chip on their collective shoulders, and are hyper-alert to flaws while minimizing or ignoring strengths because that's what you use to pump up your Internet snark boner.
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Sep 14, 2015 19:32
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Compared to other games of the same type (mostly Telltale and David Cage stuff), Until Dawn holds it together really well on your first playthrough. It only really falls apart when you stress test it on subsequent playthroughs, or if someone spoils the intricates for you. The amount of freedom/branching people are asking for requires a scarily big budget to keep it all voice-acted and animate it. The closest you'd be able to get something with that freedom would be a text adventure.
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Sep 14, 2015 19:36
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It's not the voice acting or animation that would kill you. It's just the time it'd take and the logistic challenges it presents, because you're effectively committing to making multiple games. You can cut a corner or two by reusing assets, sure, especially if you take really obvious outs like making one of your possible plots a "bottle episode" (such as with P.H., where your single location is some kind of infinite hallway and that's part of what makes it creepy), but you're still making more than one game at the same time. I keep coming back to the idea of not making it outright choice-based, but instead having an invisible points system in place, like how Silent Hill 2 determines your ending on the first time through the game.
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Sep 14, 2015 19:50
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I think it's fine for a game to be a single-playthrough and Until Dawn is good at that. The trick is making the illusion feel fair and well-done. That's where something like HR fails but UD succeeds. (For the most part, the last lodge scene is honestly pretty bad for the non-'main' characters.) HR's plot doesn't hold up well on a single playthrough while UD sticks together as well as you can expect from the genre. Really the only big complaint I have is Mike and the sanatorium which is the one places I really feel like the game cheats. Sam never being in big risk feels fair because she's never in a position to be at risk until the very end, but Mike has a big setpiece made up for him that is effectively unfailable. It's the one point I don't think the game is fair with its own limitations. Wanderer posted:I keep coming back to the idea of not making it outright choice-based, but instead having an invisible points system in place, like how Silent Hill 2 determines your ending on the first time through the game. I think this might be interesting too. The game has the various relationship meters that end up sort of secondary. It would be interesting if the subtle choices influenced the major ones secretly. Mike will take the brave path when running if he's made brave choices before or whatnot. You kind of get that with the Matt/Emily choice at one point and it'd be neat to see that extended further in the game.
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Sep 14, 2015 19:56
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RealSovietBear posted:The amount of freedom/branching people are asking for requires a scarily big budget to keep it all voice-acted and animate it. The closest you'd be able to get something with that freedom would be a text adventure. Yep. Resources aren't unlimited, and Until Dawn's went into ensuring that the first playthrough would be effective no matter what the player did, not into making it a game that really benefits from multiple playthroughs. So there are consequences to most actions, they're just hung on the same main plotline. I do think they could have gone further in some places (the ending sequence in particular should have acknowledged a few more branches, and there should indeed have been some way for Mike to die in the second sanitarium visit), but I'm pretty impressed with the overall package. E: yeah, what ImpAtom said.
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Sep 14, 2015 20:01
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I didn't hear about this game until last week, but I love Telltale stuff and Heavy Rain, so I went for it. I ended up playing the entire game in a single sitting. I don't think I've ever done that before in my entire life. I lost a few people, but the only one I felt bad about was Chris, who I missed a QTE for while running from the Wendigo. He got decapitated. I'm definitely playing this through again. I want to see: Can I save everyone, and how hilariously can I kill everyone?
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Sep 14, 2015 20:14
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ImpAtom posted:Really the only big complaint I have is Mike and the sanatorium which is the one places I really feel like the game cheats. Sam never being in big risk feels fair because she's never in a position to be at risk until the very end, but Mike has a big setpiece made up for him that is effectively unfailable. It's the one point I don't think the game is fair with its own limitations. Yeah, that was really jarring. And considering it was relatively close to the end of the game, I feel like they could have let Mike die there.
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Sep 14, 2015 20:17
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mangler103 posted:I'm definitely playing this through again. I want to see: Can I save everyone, and how hilariously can I kill everyone? Yes, and try missing Emily's QTEs at the top of the conveyor belt.
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Sep 14, 2015 20:23
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I'd like to see a playthrough where the player misses every single QTE.
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Sep 14, 2015 20:27
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ImpAtom posted:I'd like to see a playthrough where the player misses every single QTE. I did that. It takes loving forever for everyone to die. It's only worth it for missing the high-five with Sam and Josh.
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Sep 14, 2015 20:39
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Nothing as great as this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-L-G1q_0L8
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Sep 14, 2015 20:41
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ImpAtom posted:I'd like to see a playthrough where the player misses every single QTE. that or one where the player doesn't do anything the entire time
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Sep 15, 2015 15:25
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PantsBandit posted:Nothing as great as this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-L-G1q_0L8 jesus christ heavy rain was such a piece of poo poo game
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Sep 16, 2015 07:19
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Attitude Indicator posted:jesus christ heavy rain was such a piece of poo poo game at least it gave us this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t0uCWjQ6Og
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Sep 16, 2015 07:47
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So what happens if you save everyone else, but have Josh get his head exploded.. I mean doesn't that leave the game with no real wendigo candidates left on the mountain, and the spirits kind of forced to chill for a bit?
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Sep 17, 2015 22:07
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Rookersh posted:So what happens if you save everyone else, but have Josh get his head exploded.. None of the others are wendigo candidates. Everybody left alive escapes, and you don't get a tag scene after the credits.
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Sep 18, 2015 00:56
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None of them would be anyways since you have to eat someone right?
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Sep 18, 2015 01:43
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epenthesis posted:None of the others are wendigo candidates. Everybody left alive escapes, and you don't get a tag scene after the credits. Yeah that's my point. Since the Stranger is dead/everyone else is gone, the wendigo spirits will have to go back to just being dick rear end ghosts again. So wouldn't that make not finding Hannah's journal the best ending? Since yeah Josh dies, but it also somewhat ends the threat of that mountain for a bit.
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Sep 18, 2015 02:31
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RealSovietBear posted:Yeah, that was really jarring. And considering it was relatively close to the end of the game, I feel like they could have let Mike die there. I haven't played this but I watched a stream of the whole thing and this seems really surprising in hindsight. There were like 3 cases or more where a wendigo is jumping straight at mike and the streamer had to shoot a Videogame Red Barrel to stop it, but I don't see how mike could possibly survive all that if he missed every shot. What happens if you fail every QTE since mike still lives anyway?
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Sep 18, 2015 02:56
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Rookersh posted:Yeah that's my point. Since the Stranger is dead/everyone else is gone, the wendigo spirits will have to go back to just being dick rear end ghosts again. So wouldn't that make not finding Hannah's journal the best ending? Since yeah Josh dies, but it also somewhat ends the threat of that mountain for a bit. Oh I see. Yeah, that's true in a sense. But I think this character's "good" ending is more fitting, both for the character and the genre.
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Sep 18, 2015 03:00
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I beat the game and I think it's great. The writing never really popped but this is a rare exception to the "just because you meant to do it doesn't mean it's good" rule. Until Dawn is a CYOA direct-to-DVD slasher flick and if you accept that, if you accept the tone and characterization of cheap slasher horror, it's a game that clicks 100%. There's no reason why they should have tried to transcend the medium in terms of characterization or plotting or anything of that nature. The game justifies itself and despite an initial "not this again" with returning to a certain gloomy environ, it's tightly plotted and brisk. It's a Quantic Dream game that's fun! I ended up with one death following a chain of decisions I didn't realize were connected: Matt agreed to call for help, which led him to fire the flaregun in a remote area in the middle of a snowstorm like a stupid idiot. He then tried to save Emily and was hopeless against the wendigo. Naturally Emily still blamed him for his own death. If there's a next game for me, she's getting mulched. By the way: Is there a circumstance in which Emily shoving Ashley during the final escape causes her to be killed? Or is that just one of those little reflectors of the characters' esteem for one another?
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Sep 18, 2015 08:24
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Basic Chunnel posted:By the way: Is there a circumstance in which Emily shoving Ashley during the final escape causes her to be killed? Or is that just one of those little reflectors of the characters' esteem for one another? Don't quote me on it, but I imagine if Chris is dead as well, it might?
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Sep 18, 2015 08:27
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There might be something to that! Also at the risk of baiting all the spergs, I have no idea why people play games under the delusion that what is determined cannot have substance. Arguing that character death technically isn't significant because ~plot structure oh no~ is a misreading of what the game is selling when it touts choice and consequence, a thick and willful misreading at that. If a character dies through player actions, other characters react to that death, and game sections are lost where they might otherwise have been shown, that is the sort of consequence that's promised on the box, and it is significant. A preventable PC death is significant to any player for whom the experience of the game is not anchored to metagame knowledge of choice mechanics (which is to say, most players). Was it obvious that some characters were deliberately tapered off at the end of the game to make it easier on the devs? Yes. Does that matter? Not really. If you need whips and chains to get a boner and you go around telling people that sex without those things isn't really sex, you're not enlightened, you're just a guy with very poor boundaries. Arguing that a consequence must by definition meet some radical standard of change is done in bad faith and, at best, ignorance of what such things actually require. People want to see Alpha Protocol / Witcher 2 C&C in games and that's fine, it's fine that they're excited about those possibilities. But reading the same arguments in every goddamned game thread that even feints at plot branching is profoundly tiring. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 09:03 on Sep 18, 2015 |
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Sep 18, 2015 09:00
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Basic Chunnel posted:There might be something to that! Haha
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Sep 18, 2015 09:09
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Basic Chunnel posted:Arguing that a consequence must by definition meet some radical standard of change is done in bad faith and, at best, ignorance of what such things actually require. People want to see Alpha Protocol / Witcher 2 C&C in games and that's fine, it's fine that they're excited about those possibilities. But reading the same arguments in every goddamned game thread that even feints at plot branching is profoundly tiring. I sometimes get the impression is that people try to break down these systems to prove how they're actually simple, like trying to say how magic tricks are fake, or crying how the blood in a horror movie is obviously fake. Games aren't just interactive in the sense that you supply input and you get results, they also require you approach them with the right mindset.
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Sep 18, 2015 09:31
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Playing a game twice, and seeing that 95% of it is exactly the same, isn't exactly spergy or intricate deconstruction you guys.
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Sep 18, 2015 09:36
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No, but if the game maintained the illusion on the first playthrough, does it matter how it actually works?
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Sep 18, 2015 09:39
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RealSovietBear posted:No, but if the game maintained the illusion on the first playthrough, does it matter how it actually works? If it's a $60 7 hour game that was advertised as being significantly reactive and allowing for varied playthroughs then yeah, probably. A 7 hour Alpha Protocol where things actually changed a lot would be cool. I didn't give much of a poo poo because I got it for $3 but it's a legitimate criticism.
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Sep 18, 2015 09:41
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