Suppermassive’s Until Dawn hits the PlayStation 4 in just a week, and it looks to be a playable love letter to all the cheesy, trope-filled slasher flicks of the ’80s and ’90s. It seems fitting, then, that the game has received a live-action trailer to get your heart racing, and it lets you decide how to escape danger.
The trailer, called “Choices,” is “inspired by the emotional experience of Until Dawn” (being afraid), and follows the classic slasher film victim: a woman in the shower. As the lights shut off and she leaves the bathroom to investigate, the woman seems surprisingly unsurprised with the bloody hand-print on her wall, but it’s here where you choose how to proceed.
Choose to do nothing, and our scream queen enters the safest room in any horror film — the basement — maneuvers past the mysterious attacker, and runs back up the stairs unharmed.
The second choice, “go back,” sees her returning to the bathroom with a curtain rod for protection, only to have the slasher break through the door before the screen cuts away. The third option, “defend,” has our hero putting on her best Mrs. Peacock impression as she picks up a candlestick and begins walking down the hallway, only to see her boyfriend dragged into the abyss.
“As fans of the survival horror genre, we worked with MoFilm on a short series of live action films to illustrate the gravity of the decisions you’ll be forced to make in the game,” says Sony’s Ken Chan. In each of these films, equal attention was focused on the exact moment the characters are faced with a touch decision, as is on the potential outcomes they must weigh.”
A second, noninteractive trailer titled “Road Not Taken,” is also available to view on the GameStop Facebook page. Until Dawn launches exclusively for PlayStation 4 on August 25.
