Tips on how to save, or lose, all eight characters in Until Dawn

This story has major spoilers. If you’re having a hard time with Until Dawn, you may want to look up specific advice on a character –Ed.

This post is all about spoilers in the interactive horror story of Until Dawn, where your goal is to help eight trapped young adults survive a night in a mountain wilderness until dawn.

If you need some tips on how to play the Sony PlayStation 4 exclusive, but don’t want to know the story spoilers behind each character, check out our previous tips story. But this story is all about the specific tips you’ll need to save every person in the circumstances where they can live or die during the game. (Check out our review here).

I highly recommend that you play Until Dawn without any tips the first couple of times. It is quite replayable, and it’s fun to watch a friend who hasn’t experienced it before play it with you for the first time. But if you’re frustrated and really want to save one character without having to go through the drill of playing the game for 10 hours again, this post is for you.

I’ve played the full game a few times through, and I’ve explore different options in each of the 10 episodes (which you can replay after you first finish the game). I know the excruciating feeling of having to replay the whole thing just because of one poor decision or a botched QuickTime Event (or QTE, where you have to hit the right button on your controller before a timer runs out).

Until Dawn’s designers fully embraced the chaos theory of the The Butterfly Effect, where tiny events, such as a butterfly flapping its wings, can contribute to enormous downstream effects like a hurricane that occurs weeks later. You have to make a lot of small and big decisions in the game, and those lead to either salvation or death. You can get clues to how to save characters in the totems that you find, which show a brief video of a future life-or-death scene. But sometimes, the game is very unfair. You decide to run instead of hide, your character may get caught and die. If two characters aren’t getting along, one character may choose to allow another character to die at a critical moment.

At the end, you can either emerge with all eight characters alive, or you may finish with all of them alive … or all of them dead. You’ll get plenty of trophies if you can survive the night. I highly recommend you try to save people for as long as you can, since that unveils more clues and more of the story. Also, you’ll want to save these characters because the developers at Supermassive Games went out of their way to create an emotional attachment to each character. That’s so rare for a game.

Hannah and Beth

Above: Beth and Hannah in Until Dawn.

Image Credit: Sony

These twins are doomed no matter your choices in the prelude. A prank goes wrong, and one of the twins, Hannah, flees into the cold winter night. Her sister, Beth, follows her, and they wind up falling off a cliff. Their failings are meant to provide the fodder for the plot, which starts a year later when their brother, Josh, invites all of the friends back for a stay at the mountain lodge. He wants some closure for everybody to have a good time in honor of Beth and Hannah.

Jessica

Above: Jessica wanders the mine in Until Dawn.

Image Credit: Sony

Jessica (played by Meaghan Martin) starts off as an unsympathetic and over-sexualized character. When you play Episode 4, you play Mike. A creature drags away Jessica, and you have to chase after her. If you fail every QTE button push, Mike won’t reach her in time. She’ll fall from above and hit the floor dead. If you reach her in time, she lies on the floor of an elevator. Then the elevator gives way and falls down into the mine. Mike believes she’s dead at that point, but we discover in the final, Episode 10, that she’s still alive. At that point, she tries to escape a Wendigo, creatures that are the real killers, in the mine.

If she tries to hide and you manage to stay still with the game controller, Jessica will get away. You have to do this absolutely still trick twice with the game controller in order to make her survive. In this latter life-or-death situation, it doesn’t seem like a really fair choice. Jessica dies if she runs, and lives if she hides. But she’s in such good shape that the player should realize she has no chance if she decides to run. In this latter period, Jessica is injured and vulnerable, with none of the annoying swagger of the earlier scenes.

Matt

Above: Matt’s moment o truth in Until Dawn.

Image Credit: Sony

Matt (Jordan Fisher) is the jock boyfriend of Emily, and he catches a lot of verbal abuse from her. In Episode 6, he faces his first life-or-death moment when a herd of deer corner him and Emily on the same cliff where Hannah and Beth fell. In this case, Nature can take revenge. If Matt tries to attack a threatening stag, rather than just do nothing, the deer will start pushing back, driving Matt off the cliff.

Later in the episode, Emily and Matt run into trouble as the tower falls. This one is tricky. When Matt and Emily decide whether to go the ranger tower, Matt should disagree. It seems like a small thing, and it is. On top of the ranger tower, Emily finds a flare gun. If Matt had agreed and Emily gives him the flare gun, then Matt shoots it off needlessly. Then he won’t have it later, when he needs it to save his life. So, again, Matt has to disagree on the ranger tower, then Emily has to give him the flare gun.

Then the ranger tower topples and falls into the mine. Matt has a choice about saving Emily or jumping to safety. Matt survives if he jumps to safety. If he tries to save Emily twice, she falls anyway, and Matt is tossed to a landing. Emily appears to die, but she doesn’t. At that point, a Wendigo finds Matt. If he has the flare gun, he can use it. If he doesn’t, he dies a nasty death as the monster impales him on a hanging hook. Once again, the details matter here, and Matt’s fate is tied to some random decisions that make him hard to save naturally.

Lastly, in Episode 10, Matt runs into Jessica. Together, they play out the same routine that either saves or kills Jessica. If they hide, they can survive. While hiding, Matt has to catch Jessica from falling and making a nice with a very fast QTE. If he fails to catch her, they both die.

Emily

Above: Emily is trapped in the mines in Until Dawn.

Image Credit: Sony

As noted, Emily (Nichole Bloom) doesn’t die when she falls into the mine. She catches her foot on a swinging hook and can swing her way to safety. But in Episode 8, a Wendigo Emily gets chased by a Wendigo in the mines. If you fail the QTEs while running, the Wendigo will catch her and kill her. She is at risk while running, and she’s also at risk when the Wendigo punches through the door and bites her in the neck. That bite has consequences down the road.

Later in Episode 8, Emily goes to the “safe room” in the basement with the others. Ashley notices the bite on her neck and starts freaking out about how Emily is infected, will become a Wendigo, and will turn and kill them all. Mike latches on to this theory and pulls out his gun. Sam disagrees, but Mike points the gun at Emily. If you shoot the gun, Emily dies. Then Ashley reads the stranger’s dropped Wendigo book and discovers that the bites are not infectious. Emily’s death is needless.

Ashley

Above: Ashley hears something in the tunnel in Until Dawn.

Image Credit: Sony

In Episode 9, Ashley (Galadriel Stineman) faces her own critical moment when the group is moving through the sewer to find Mike in the mines. Ashley trails behind and hears a plea for help. It sounds like Jessica’s voice. If you choose to investigate the voice, Ashley goes down a separate path. There’s some moaning, and Ashley has to decide whether to open a door that is being banged on from the other side. If she opens it, a Wendigo comes out and beheads her. It’s a fairly random and pernicious death: If she’s kind, she dies.

Chris

Above: Chris is in trouble in Until Dawn.

Image Credit: Sony

In Episode 8, Chris (Noah Fleiss) goes with the stranger to try to save Josh. They don’t find Josh and discover they are in danger as they try to return to the lodge. You have to remain still as the Wendigo stalks you, but no matter what you do, the monster hears you make a step. There’s no way to save the stranger from being beheaded. But Chris has a chance to survive as he runs.

But here’s some kind of bug. When I tried to shoot the shotgun directly at the Wendigo, the trigger wouldn’t pull. If I aimed at the flamethrower gas tank, the shotgun did fire and blow it up. So by default, just remember to shoot at the explosive when you have the option. At any point during the pursuit, Chris can die if you miss your shots. And if the Wendigo gets him, he loses his head. If he makes his shots, Chris can reach the safety of the lodge.

But there’s one interesting twist. If, in Episode 6, Chris opts to fire the gun with blanks at Ashley, rather than shoot himself, she’ll turn on him. In that case, even if Chris reaches the safety of the lodge, Ashley won’t open the door for him, and he’ll die on the steps.

Mike

Above: Mike’s critical moment in Until Dawn.

Image Credit: Sony

Mike (Brett Dalton) starts out as a big jerk, but he becomes one of two main characters. He’s much more likable when he comes under pressure. And so while he faces many dangers from Wendigo attacks, he doesn’t face his real do-or-die moment until Episode 10. At the close of the game, as the Wendigos hunt the survivors in the lodge, everybody has to stand still. If Samantha fails her QTEs, she and Mike can die. If Samantha runs for the light switch in an attempt to save herself, she may blow up the lodge with Mike still inside it.

Sam

Above: Sam approaches a butterfly effect moment in Until Dawn.

Image Credit: Sony

Sam (Hayden Panetierre) has to make a run for it as Josh is terrorizing her in the lodge. But if she gets caught, she falls unconscious with sleeping gas. Like Mike, she is the other main character. And she won’t have a death moment until Episode 10. As noted, if she fails her QTEs and is spotted by the Wendigos, then it’s all over. Panetierre, by the way, gives an outstanding performance at the close of the game.

Josh

Above: Josh’s appointment with a circular saw in Until Dawn

Image Credit: Sony

Josh (Rami Malek) seems like the most helpless character. It seems like he dies early on at the edge of a circular saw. But Josh survives until the last episode. If you collect all of the clues about the missing twins, and find the last note by Hannah in her diary in the mine, then Josh will live. A Wendigo emerges from the water, pulls Mike under, and then emerges to grab Josh. If you did not collect all the clues, then the Wendigo squishes Josh’s head. If you collected the clues, the Wendigo drags Josh away. And that sets up the final part of the ending.