GAME · 2015
Until Dawn
- Publisher
- Sony Interactive Entertainment
29 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
10 Facts From Behind the Scenes of Until Dawn
- #009
Despite its third-person perspective, Until Dawn adopted a static camera angle similar to early Resident Evil games. The development team initially resisted this approach because the designers considered the camera "archaic".
- #010
Byles and production designer Lee Robinson drew storyboards for Until Dawn to ensure each camera angle had narrative motivations and to prove their placements were not random.
- #013
Until Dawn's strict auto-save system was designed to be "imperative" rather than "punitive". According to Byles, a character's death would not end the story before it reached the ending, and some characters may not have died despite their deaths being hinted at.
- #019
Until Dawn's story was written in a non-linear fashion, with chapter 8 completed first, which led to some inconsistencies in the story. The dialogue was cut back significantly once the team adopted motion capture technology, which the team said facilitates storytelling through acting.
- #021
To gauge whether Until Dawn was frightening enough, the team measured playtesters' fear levels using a galvanic skin response test.
- #024
Before writing the score, Jason Graves held a three-hour conversation with Barney Pratt, Until Dawn's audio director, to clarify the soundtrack's intended direction.
- #026
For Until Dawn, Jason Graves blended melodic and atonal sounds, drew on Krzysztof Penderecki and Jerry Goldsmith, and wrote tonally vague themes to match the game's mysterious storyline; the music grew louder as the player character neared a threat.
- #027
Until Dawn's mountainous setting led Graves to use a "goat-hoof shaker" for the mountain theme and many key tracks, and he also leaned heavily on synthesizers as a homage to John Carpenter's work.
- #028
Only 30 minutes of Until Dawn themes with melody and chord progression were recorded across three orchestral sessions, because most recording time went to 8–10 hours of atmospheric music and sounds that Graves later combined to evoke different emotions in different scenes.
- #029
Until Dawn's Decima game engine was programmed to determine how the music was layered based on players' choices, and the game's soundtracks ran nearly 15 hours, with "O Death" performed by Amy Van Roekel as the theme song.
Sources & editorial notes
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia Until Dawn — Wikipedia
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