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Developed by: Supermassive Games Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment Platforms: PlayStation 4 Production year: 2014 Original release: August 25, 2015 Announced: 2014 Mode: Single-player Misc: Wikipedia | Amazon |
On 2 February 2014, seven friends: Sam (Hayden Panettiere), Mike (Brett Dalton), Chris (Noah Fleiss), Ashley (Galadriel Stineman), Emily (Nichole Bloom), Jessica (Meaghan Martin), and Matt (Jordan Fisher) are celebrating their annual winter getaway at the Blackwood Pines lodge, owned by their mutual friends, Josh Washington (Rami Malek) and his twin sisters, Hannah and Beth (Ella Lentini), located near Blackwood Mountain in Alberta, Canada. Mike, Ashley, Emily, Jessica, and Matt play a prank on Hannah because Hannah made a move on Mike who is in relationship with Emily at that time, and they all (especially Jessica) want to “teach her a lesson”. Hannah is successfully pranked into opening her shirt to make out with Mike, and then flees into the forest in humiliation under the snowstorm. As Beth follows her into the forest and discovers her, the two are hunted by a creature that corners them to a cliff, where they fall to their deaths. The chapter is followed by a therapy session with Dr. Hill (Peter Stormare), who poses a question to his patient; these sessions will come up in following chapters and will affect what contents of the game will be shown. His patient is concealed with the first-person view.
A year later, the bodies of Beth and Hannah still haven’t been recovered, and the seven are invited by Josh to attend another getaway at the Blackwood Pines as a celebration. At this time Jessica and Mike are in a relationship, as are Matt and Emily. As they arrive, Emily and Jessica get into a fight, and Jessica decides to leave the lodge with Mike to stay at the guest cabin, while Emily and Matt decide to go back to retrieve Emily’s bag which was left in the cable car station. Jessica is taken by an unknown creature after she and Mike arrive at the guest cabin, and depending on his choices Mike either finds Jessica dead or badly injured before the mine elevator collapses and takes her into the mines. Mike continues through the area, following a stranger who was lurking in the shadows, and enters a sanatorium, where he can befriend a wolf (one of the stranger’s pets) as he learns about an incident in 1952 where 30 workers were trapped in a cave-in. Meanwhile, Chris and Ashley are attacked by a figure in a mask who kidnaps Ashley and forces her and Josh into a sawblade trap, forcing Chris to choose which one to save. Regardless of Chris’ decision, Ashley survives and Josh is torn apart by the saw blades. Sam is stalked through the lodge by the masked figure and is either knocked unconscious or escapes into the killer’s workshop. Returning to the cabin to search for Sam, Chris and Ashley are once again attacked and strapped to chairs. The figure forces Chris to decide whether to shoot himself or Ashley, and if he chooses to shoot Ashley it will lead to Chris’s demise later. This is stopped by Sam and Mike, who have returned from the sanatorium, and the two discover that the guns are loaded with blanks. The figure is revealed to be a mentally unhinged Josh, who blames his friends for causing his sisters’ disappearances. Josh explains that he had used a fake body to fake his death back in the saw trap, using pig blood and intestines. While he confirms having set up the traps, he denies having a role in Jessica’s presumed demise, as he never wanted to actually kill anyone. Mike does not believe him and leaves Josh tied up in a shed.
Meanwhile, having met with Chris and Ashley before, Emily suggests to Matt that they should head to a radio tower for help. However, the tower collapses into an abandoned mine when she and Matt are attacked by unidentified creatures. Matt either escapes and ventures deeper into the mines, is killed by the creature, or falls off of a cliff during an earlier encounter with a herd of deer. Emily explores the mines, finding Beth’s head and Hannah’s personal effects, and learns that Hannah had survived her fall. She encounters the stranger that Mike had followed, who helps her escape from the creatures. In her escape, Emily can be killed or manages to get back to the lodge. She can also be bitten by the creature in her escape. If she survives, she tells the others of the creature and her discovery of Beth’s head.
At the lodge, the stranger (Larry Fessenden) reveals himself and explains that the mountain was cursed by a First Nations tribe because people were destroying the nature in the area. The curse created creatures known as wendigos: humans who are starving to death in heavy winter storms on the mountain will eventually resort to eating human flesh, and eventually will be possessed by the evil spirits and turn into wendigos. He also explains that the wendigos hunt people from night until dawn. The wendigos are known for having hard skin, even gunshots cannot kill them. The only way to kill them is by burning them intensely, to free the evil spirits within them. Chris and the stranger attempt to free Josh in the shed, but find him gone, and the stranger is decapitated by the wendigos. Chris heads for the cabin, and is either killed by the wendigo, gets back to the lodge, or is left to die by Ashley if he tried to shoot her in the trap. If Emily is bitten by the wendigo, the group also debate on leaving her alone or to shoot her dead, fearing the wendigo bites are infectious. Either way, Mike goes to the sanatorium to find Josh, who has the key for the cable cars to get away from the lodge. Mike explores deeper into the sanatorium (and will be accompanied by Wolfie if the player befriends him on first visit) and find more clues about the miners who turned into wendigos, some of the wendigos which got loose chases Mike and he is forced to burn the sanatorium. Meanwhile after Sam and others found out about the wendigos from The Stranger’s journal, they decide to follow after Mike. Ashley and Chris can be lured to their deaths by a wendigo pretending to be Jessica in the mines from the lodge to Sanatorium. Sam and Mike can learn that Hannah was turned into a wendigo when she resorted to eating Beth’s flesh to survive. Mike and Sam find Josh in the mine (who was thrown into the mines probably by Hannah), who is suffering from extreme hallucinations of his sisters. As Sam decides to go back to the lodge to warn her friends, Mike and Josh are ambushed by Hannah and if the player found enough clues about Hannah’s transformation, Josh recognizes Hannah and is dragged off. If not, Josh is killed by Hannah.
Meanwhile, if Jessica and/or Matt are still alive they regroup and attempt to flee the mountain as they are being chased by the wendigo. Mike and Sam return to the cabin to meet with the other survivors, only to find that the wendigos from the sanatorium got loose, and joined by recently turned wendigo, Hannah. The survivors freeze, knowing the wendigos can only see movement. More wendigos arrive and start fighting with Hannah, as the only source of movement they can see. While the wendigos are fighting, one of the wendigos is thrown to the fireplace, breaking the gas pipe. Mike and Sam eventually decide to break a light bulb and use electricity to burn off the gas, exploding the lodge and depending on the player’s actions, Sam and/or Mike and any other survivors can die before or while setting the lodge ablaze, but no matter what the lodge explodes and the wendigos are killed. The remaining survivors regroup as a helicopter locates them.
As the credits roll, those of the eight protagonists who did not survive have their death scenes replayed (with the time of their death added), followed by interviews with scenes of the police interrogation of the survivors. The police are warned by the survivors of what is within the mines. If Josh survived he’s shown to now be in the process of transforming into a wendigo, if anyone else also survived then Josh is discovered by the police and he attacks them as the screen cuts to black.
