Until Dawn is a procedurally generated horror game that has a story that will branch out and change, depending on the choices you make as you playthrough the game. Because of this, it’s a bit hard to nail down just how long it will take to play the game in order to see and do everything the title has to offer. Thanks to an interview with Will Byles and Game Reactor, we know that the first playthrough will last about nine hours.
Byles, the creative director at Supermassive Games said that in that nine hours, there is an awful lot you won’t be able to see. Because the story changes depending on certain choices, the developers have no way of knowing what parts of the story are going to be missed. Byles calls it annoying, others might call this kind of a feature the very definition of “replayability.”
The creative director also talked about the fact that making sure none of the total playthroughs were too short or led down a path that was totally unsatisfying. He points to having to work at making sure no paths led to the game lasting just an hour. “That took a lot of structural work, to map all the options out really, really carefully. We used a very sophisticated software for that, with something of a 3D map, and that was a feat on itself, to make things happen. We also had to populate those areas with gameplay, dialogue, action… It was a lot of work. In the end, I would say nine hours is a safe bet for the first playthrough.” He added. You’ll be able to check out how long the first playthrough of Until Dawn is for you when it launches on August 25 in North America and August 26 in Europe for the PS4 exclusively.