“Only your choices determine who survives,” the trailer states as teenagers scream and run away from unseen baddies. It also gives a quick shot of the newest character, portrayed by veteran actor Peter Stormare. Stormare previously worked on the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski and Fargo (“Where is pancakes house?”), as well as a series of creepy commercials for Call of Duty: Black Ops II back in 2012.
“He gave some incredibly powerful performances in the motion capture studio and you can tell from the end result in the game that he had some fun with the character,” executive producer Pete Samuels says regarding Stormare. He also points to his portrayal of John Abruzzi on the show Prison Break, a role he reprised for the 2010 video game adaptation.
As with special editions of movies, it appears that deleted scenes are making their way into video games via pre-order bonuses. Pre-ordering Until Dawn will net you an “exclusive scene” featuring the characters Matt and Emily, although it’s not clear how substantial this bonus content is. The game is written “in collaboration” with Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, who previously worked together on the 2010 horror film Stake Land.
Until Dawn is, by far, Supermassive’s most ambitious project thus far. The studio previously worked on mini-games for LittleBigPlanet PS Vita, developed Walking With Dinosaurs for the ill-fated Wonderbook, and ported the original Killzone to PlayStation 3. This may have been one of the reasons behind Supermassive’s decision to use the Killzone Shadow Fall engine for their latest project. With Silent Hills/P.T. essentially cancelled at this point, horror fans can only hope that the studio is up to the challenge.
