One Year Ago

One Year Ago

Chapter 1→

The Prologue takes place a year before the main events of Until Dawn.

The player will take control of Beth, right before the disappearance of her and her sister on Blackwood Mountain.

02:00

One Year Ago
Page	02:00
Chapter	Prologue
Protagonist:	Beth
← Previous	N/A
→ Next	Chapter 1
Transcript	2:00

As the game opens, Jessica is seen debating with Sam about a prank they plan to play on Beth's twin sister, Hannah, as Mike and Emily watch. Jessica dismisses Sam's concerns, claiming to be "looking out" for Emily, Mike's girlfriend at the time. She then heads up to the lodge's guest room with Mike and Emily, who are soon followed by Ashley and Matt.

Mike stands in the room waiting for Hannah, Jessica and Emily laugh as they hide under the bed, Ashley ducks behind a partition giggling, and Matt climbs inside a wardrobe with a camera ready to film the prank. Sam's actions are deliberately made ambiguous; while the others head off to the bedroom, she heads upstairs and calls out Hannah's name. This is either a failed attempt to warn Hannah of the prank, or Sam caving to peer pressure and playing her role by directing Hannah towards the guest room.

The player is given control of Beth in the lodge's kitchen. She can see her brother Josh and his best friend Chris, drunkenly passed out on the counter. She then sees a piece of paper on the table and picks it up, to read a letter from Mike to Hannah. The scene ends with Beth shaking her head while looking at the note in disbelief or with her putting down the note and walking to the kitchen doors.

Meanwhile, Hannah enters the guest room and sees Mike waiting for her. He suggests that they start by making out and go from there, but Hannah instead begins to remove her clothes. Before she can fully remove her blouse, she hears laughter from under the bed and covers herself with her arms.

The others take this chance to reveal themselves to Hannah, humiliating her. Sam barges into the room and tries to comfort Hannah, but she runs out of the lodge crying and into the woods. Sam, concerned for her, proceeds to call them jerks before running after Hannah.

Beth notices Hannah run past the window and starts to worry. She can choose to try and wake Josh to help her, to no avail, or look for the group. Leaving the kitchen, she warns her friends that someone's outside, before noticing all the commotion and walks over to them, taking her winter coat along the way.

Everyone has followed Hannah out to the backdoor and call out to her to come back. Beth catches up and asks them what's happened. Jess and Emily claim that Hannah can't take a joke, implying that she may have overreacted about the prank.

Beth, hearing this, starts to get angry and demands that they tell her what happened. Mike tells her that it wasn't serious and they were "just messing around," but Beth calls them jerks and runs into the woods to find Hannah.

The screen now cuts to Beth as she's running through the woods looking for Hannah. This section introduces the player to QTEs. After a series of QTEs, Beth can choose to pick the fast route through the woods or the safe route. Regardless of which route she takes, she continues to run through the woods until she reaches a divergence in her path. She can then choose between following the footprints, or following the noise. Not long after, she is given another choice, one of which is following the shadows she sees.

Beth stops running and can find a totem in the snow, which depicts Beth falling to her death. As she walks along the path, Beth flinches as she hears a noise and witnesses flames before they fade away.

She finds Hannah nearby, crying in the snow. Beth, now relieved that her sister is safe, offers her coat and helps her up while Hannah begins to degrade herself, claiming that she "was such an idiot". Suddenly, the sisters hear a strange noise behind them. After seeing what made the noise, they run away from it as an unknown pursuer starts to chase them throughout the woods.

As they cross a bridge, Hannah trips and falls down for a few seconds before Beth runs back to help her up. In doing so, Beth's phone falls out of her pocket and into one of the cracks on the bridge. Seconds later, they find themselves at the edge of a clifftop. Frightened and unable to run any further, they hold hands and back up until Hannah accidentally falls off the ledge, pulling Beth along with her.

Beth manages to grab onto a branch with one hand and Hannah with the other, telling her to hold on. A mysterious man reaches out to Beth, who can either drop Hannah and attempt to grab the stranger's hand or let go of the branch and hope for some form of survival, or do nothing, which results in the branch snapping. All options will result in Hannah and Beth falling from the ledge.

Hannah rolls down the cliff into a cave below, and Beth continually and harshly tumbles down sharp protrusions in the terrain on her way down to the cave, almost assuredly killing her. The chapter ends with Hannah and Beth's unchanging faces on the screen before the scene cuts to black.

Transcript

View the chapter's transcript here.

View the first therapy session after the chapter here.

Collectibles

Totems

Original Game

• Death Totem #1 - Once Beth turns on her phone light, she can find a Death Totem #1. It shows her and Hannah falling to their demise.

Remake

• Death Totem #1 - Beth can find the totem outside of the lodge. It foretells her and Hannah falling to their demise.

Character Deaths

Beth

• Regardless of the player's decision to let go of the branch, drop Hannah, or do nothing, both sisters will fall from the ledge, killing Beth in the process.

Differences in the Remake

While the main game remained largely untouched, the prologue underwent significant changes and was almost completely reworked.

• Beth's entire segment at the lodge has been greatly expanded:
  • Beth is first shown outside taking out the garbage when she encounters a deer. This moment introduces the “Don't Move!” segment for the first time. In the original, it was introduced in Chapter 1 with Sam and a squirrel. Furthermore, because she is not at the kitchen, she does not catch a glimpse of the Stranger.
  • Hannah and Beth have an extended scene where they move Josh to the couch, and Chris had already been moved to another one offscreen. This is in contrast to the original game, where Chris and Josh stayed at the kitchen.
  • Beth can explore most of the lodge, and is also able to go outside where she can find a totem. In the original, Beth is limited to exploring only the kitchen and finds the totem later in the woods.
• The prank got a lot of new scenes:
  • Hannah is shown discovering Mike's note (which also has her drawing made by Sam on the back) after moving Josh, while Jessica is seen checking on her as she reads it.
    • This also reveals that the group framed Sam using her drawing, which later might have led Hannah to believe that she was also in on the prank (as seen in the slow motion shots of the group from Hannah's POV which includes Sam). In the original, the group told Sam about the prank, but made no attempts to drag her into it.
    • The content of the note itself have been changed. In the original, it is more suggestive, with “Mike” complimenting Hannah's blouse and commenting that she would look hotter without it. In the remake, it is more sympathetic, with “Mike” commenting that he has fun with Hannah and she understands him like no one else.
  • The group discusses the prank with Sam (as she sketches her friends in the art book) in the living room and start moving upon seeing Hannah leaving to her room. In the original, Hannah has already left offscreen and the conversation takes place in the kitchen.
  • Due to Beth's extended playable segment, the scene where Sam runs off to warn Hannah about the prank is cut. However, it is clear that Sam still tried to warn her about the prank.
  • A montage of Hannah preparing to meet Mike (making a diary entry, picking out an outfit and getting tipsy) and the group preparing for the prank (Emily placing Mike down on a chair and assigning the others their hiding spots) was added.
    • These scenes show Mike's role to be less active, while Emily's is on the contrary to be more prominent. Furthermore, Mike is overall shown hesitant about the prank, as he does not have a phrase encouraging Hannah to undress (which he has in the original) and is shown to be reluctant (which Hannah notices).
    • These scenes also hint at Jessica's future romance with Mike and her conflict with Emily in the main game.  She is seen having an eye on Mike and subtly flirts with him before the prank formally begins, which Emily notices and glares at Jess.
  • Hannah doesn't hear Jessica's laughter (to which Emily actively tells her to be quiet and covers her mouth) and senses that something is off by Mike's expression. It's only when Sam intervenes that she realizes about the prank as everyone reveals themselves. In the original, these moments are reversed, with Hannah realizing about the prank after hearing Jessica's laughter and Sam coming in afterwards.
  • The scene with the friends revealing themselves after the prank is presented as slow motion shots of the group from Hannah's POV. In the original, it was shot in third person and included Hannah's reaction to the group.
  • The scene with Sam sending the guys off is shot from a different angle and lasts mush longer, showing that they immediately feel regret for the prank.
  • The scene of Hannah running off into the woods is shot from her perspective before switching to Beth. In the original, the scene is done entirely from Beth's perspective.
• The segment in the woods remains mostly as in the original, though some moments have been changed:
  • Beth's sequences with free gameplay and QTEs have been reversed. She freely explores the woods at first, and only starts running after being startled by a stream of fire in an abandoned cabin. In the original, she first runs through the forest and then freely explores the forest, with streams of fire visible in the background.
  • How Beth lost her phone is also changed. In the original, she lost if after she and Hannah resumed running from the Makkapitew, with it clearly falling out of her back pocket. In the remake, it falls out as she is getting Hannah up after she tripped, making it more realistic that she would lose the phone that way.
  • The scene of Beth and Hannah falling off the cliff has been cut. It is mainly consists of Beth fatally falling on the rock and the sisters landing at the bottom of the cave. In the original, after falling on the rocks, the sisters are shown to roll down the cliff before finally landing in the cave.  Furthermore, the prologue ends with a close up on Hannah's eye, whereas in the original game, it showed both of the twins, likely to try to avoid showing Hannah moving during the fade to black as the scene transitions.