sense . 10 This implied intertextuality and self-reflection places Until Dawn in its generic space for the audience to build their expectations accordingly . Moreover , opening the prologue with an emphasis on choice suggests an awareness of the significant role played by film genre in determining how players will choose to interact with previous conventions .
The potentially treacherous ways in which slasher films constitute a collective and individual sense of ideal choices , and the extent to which memory itself depends as much upon the player ’ s current situation , is reflected throughout the game . In contrast to the status of media as a source of authenticity which can be excavated and relied upon by the player , this game mobilizes the sense Nicola King identifies in Memory , Narrative , Identity : Remembering the Self , of memory as revision and rewriting . 11 Following a prologue wherein two sisters meet their deaths resulting from an ill-conceived prank , the next scene begins in a psychiatrist ’ s office where the player , as an unseen first-person protagonist , answers a series of questions to a malcontent analyst serving as surrogate for the game developers and writers . The design of spaces , cut-scenes and character behaviours are notably determined by players ’ responses to the analyst ’ s tests throughout the game . The protagonist ’ s memories , narrated to the increasingly sardonic councillor , therefore appear inflected by their current personality and psychological state as chosen by the player . Responding differently to these questions produces a different narrative and , by implication , a different version of the remembered 10
Russell Kilbourn , Cinema , Memory , Modernity : The Representation of Memory from the Art Film to Transnational Cinema ( London : Routledge , 2013 ), p . 183 . 11 Nicola King , Memory , Narrative , Identity : Remembering the Self ( Edinburgh :
Edinburgh University Press , 2000 ), p . 36 .
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