Until Dawn did a great job with them imo. Characters would die if you missed one and QTE’s were used for the quicker but riskier routes. There’s one section of the game where you can chose between safe and risky patches and if you don’t chose the QTE’s and get them all right it causes another character to die because you were too slow to save them and anytime a character dies it changes how the story continues to play out.
Being rewarded for doing QTE’s while also having consequences if you mess up adds to the tension I think but just adding them into a running action scene is fairly boring and their inclusion doesn’t change or add to the story at all, you could remove all QTE’s and the same cutscene could play out.
Until Dawn (OG at least) also had some QTEs that were safe to fail and some that weren't, even in the stressful parts. Early on there was a sequence you could miss 2 or so and succeed, so later when you couldn't miss any you still had hope after missing and would keep trying. Plus it meant QTEs could be difficult because you often were allowed one miss.
Also hard QTEs would often be there if you didn't have the right item which helps converge choices into sequences for dev scope, gives a final chance, and still rewards the player who got the item.
Only rough ones were the sit still motion ones, those were inconsistent.
Couldn’t agree more! And yes omg I went through the whole game with the ps5 controller vibration on and had no problems with the don’t move section until the VERY last one with Sam and no matter what I did I would fail. I put the damn controller on a soft surface so it wouldn’t move and also held it super still myself and it would always fail at the last second. I just turned the vibration off because it was due to a glitch and not my stupidity lol.
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u/forest-fairyx Sep 11 '26
Until Dawn did a great job with them imo. Characters would die if you missed one and QTE’s were used for the quicker but riskier routes. There’s one section of the game where you can chose between safe and risky patches and if you don’t chose the QTE’s and get them all right it causes another character to die because you were too slow to save them and anytime a character dies it changes how the story continues to play out.
Being rewarded for doing QTE’s while also having consequences if you mess up adds to the tension I think but just adding them into a running action scene is fairly boring and their inclusion doesn’t change or add to the story at all, you could remove all QTE’s and the same cutscene could play out.