#ud talk

Blackwood Pines Local Map 

Blackwood Pines Local Guidebook (scanned from the Until Dawn press/dev kit) 

(apologies that this took a few days to answer. It got a little long.. )

Hannah’s humanity is a really interesting topic (with lots of interpretations!) so even if I’ve talked about it before, I’m happy to talk about it summore. I’m going to copy/paste a couple things I wrote on reddit right after finishing the game for the first time and then I’ll get into some new stuff I’ve been thinkin about.

From a discussion about who threw Jessica’s phone into the cabin:

Personally I like to imagine that Hannah has moments of recognition with the kids. At least with Josh, Mike and Sam, since they were the closest to her. Notice that the Handigo never attacked Mike at the cabin, and she only attacked Jessica after she runs out and yells about having sex with Mike. Depending on how intelligent you think wendigos are, you can believe that Hannah might have even thrown the phone in herself, to prevent Jessica from having sex with the boy Hannah liked. We know for a fact that Handigo has glimmers of humanity since it’s possible for her to recognize and spare her brother later in the game. I think it’s interesting to imagine having intense feeling for someone as a human, like the crush Hannah had on Mike, could spark a moment or two of hesitation even as a wendigo. The flamethrower guy also mentions that wendigos like to keep their victims alive and slowly eat them, so that might explain why Hannah really messes with the kids rather than kill them in the beginning of the game (for example, dropping Jessica into the mine alive and then leaving her alone.) By the end of the game she’s figured out that trying to capture that many people isn’t working, or maybe she sees them as real threats suddenly, so she starts killing them instead.

From a discussion about why Hannah knocked down the fire tower instead of breaking in:

Depending on how much humanity you think wendigos retain you could argue that Handigo was toying with them, or ‘playing with her food’. The game makes it very obvious that wendigos are great climbers. She easily could have climbed up to the top and used the other door or broken one of the windows at the top. Instead of going the easiest route, she chose the scariest one for Matt and Em. She prolonged their fear. The flame thrower dude mentioned that wendigos like to slowly peel and eat the skin off their still living prey, so clearly they’re sadistic, but maybe Handigo takes it even farther since these were the kids that inadvertently caused her “death.”

Also in the early game, depending how well you play, hannah seems more interested in collecting all the kids into the mines than actually killing them. Eventually she switches over to killing everyone immediately, maybe because she realized they were a threat (they team up with the flame thrower dude) or because she was overwhelmed, but initially it seems like she’s just throwing everyone into the mine. I assume this is so she can eat them later, maybe after the sun comes up and she has to retreat back into the mines. It’s in line with the thing the flame thrower dude said about keeping their victims alive so they can slowly eat them too. It’s the most painful way and also keeps their food source fresher. Excluding Jess/Matts’ initial deaths, they (and Em) only get attacked when they’re trying to leave the mines. Mike and Sam also wander around for a long time in the mines, Hannah even watches them enter her lair without attacking. Its only after Sam climbs out and Mike tries to leave with Josh does she attack. So if getting everyone into the mines is her goal, that would explain why handigo chose to make the fire tower fall rather than just climb up and kill the kids in the tower.

Another cool thing to think about is that Hannah was most likely possessed by the Makkapitew, the original wendigo. The makkapitew was the oldest, strongest and wisest of all the wendigos. It avoided capture by the flame thrower dude (and his grandpa before him) for years, so I’d guess that Handigo is also pretty smart. You can see it in the way she deals with groups. She doesn’t usually attack head on, but rather watches and waits until they separate, or causes a distraction to separate them herself. Examples of this are things like throwing jessica’s phone into the cabin (if you believe hannah did that) to get her away from mike, and imitating jessica’s voice to separate ashley from the group. You could even make the argument that Handigo used people like Jessica and Josh as bait to try and get more people (specifically mike and sam) into the mines, where she could more easily trap/pick them off one by one. Given how strong wendigos are, you’d think Hannah could have easily broken in to the lodge and killed everyone much earlier in the game, just like she could have broken into the fire tower to deal with Matt and Em, but she was playing the long game. The safest way is to separate everyone so she can deal with them individually, and collapsing the fire tower definitely did that.

Ok so those were my early feelings about hannah’s humanity, and I stick by them, but we have some more information now. 

In particular, we know that Handigo was definitely the one who threw Jessica’s phone into the cabin. Was it a tactical move or an emotional one? Was the wendigo trying to isolate jess/mike to easily pick them off, or was some jealous remnant of Hannah’s humanity wanting to keep Jessica away from Hannah’s crush? The fact that Hannah picked up the phone in the first place implies that she sees it as a valuable item too- The question is whether that value was a reflexive human instinct, or a predatory one. Would one of the 1952 miner wendigos still pick up the phone if they were in Hannah’s place, or would they have no idea what a cell phone (or how valuable it would be to Jess) and ignore it? I tend to lean towards this being an act specific to Hannah; It’s very human of her to do. She was, after all, a teenage girl at heart and what teenager wouldn’t reflexively pick up a cell phone (I constantly pick up other peoples phones without realizing, just because I’m so used to holding my own.) 

It’s sort of a funny symmetry that Hannah dropped her own cell phone as one of the last human things we see her do, and picking up Jess’ cell phone is one of the first things (that we know) Hannah did as a wendigo.

The other new information I’ve been thinking about was sort of a throw away comment during the developer’s commentary livestream. Jez mentioned that in some stories, a wendigo’s limbs never stop growing. I love that idea, so I’ve been looking into wendigo lore a bit more. Here’s some interesting tidbits and insight into what is “natural” wendigo behavior:

“…Wendigos were said to be giants, many times larger than human beings… Whenever a Wendigo ate another person, it would grow in proportion to the meal it had just eaten, so that it could never be full. Therefore, Wendigos were portrayed as simultaneously gluttonous and emaciated from starvation.” (x)

“When the Wendigo hunts, it stalks the victim for long periods. The chosen victim only has a dreadful feeling of being followed. However, the Wendigo has a sadistic streak. It prefers to terrify its victims before moving in for the kill. When it has had enough of stalking the victim, it lets out a growl or a shriek, which resonates through the forest and terrifies the beast’s prey. They panic, firing weapons haphazardly into the brush as the dense forest closes in on them. Eventually, the intended victim succumbs to insanity, running wildly into the forest with abandon. In such a state, they are easy prey for the Wendigo.

The Wendigo has been known to enter cabins and other dwelling, unlocking them from the outside and slaughtering the inhabitants, then proceeding to convert the cabin into its own lair. The Wendigo tends to hibernate for long periods, ranging in length from a few months to years at a time. Once they awaken, they go into a feeding frenzy, and after having eaten enough humans, it retreats to its lair and falls back into hibernation once again. (x)

Far from being a stupid beast, the Wendigo has a man’s intelligence and cunning, as well as the predatory instincts of an animal. It is mystically attuned to every single tree, bush, rock, hill, or cave within its territory (which can be considerably vast). The Wendigo uses this advantage to stalk its victims for hours on end, never being seen or heard unless the monster chooses to reveal itself by means of a growl or a shriek. There is no way to hide from the Wendigo, and it will not stop hunting until the victim’s broken, mutilated body lies at its clawed feet. (x)

The Wendigo excels in stealth, and it is said that the Wendigo moves on the wind and breezes in utter silence. It can fill the air with an eerie, haunting siren by forcing the air through its blood-flecked lips. The Wendigo is able to mimic human voices, which are most often cries for help. The beast’s roar is utterly terrifying, and the fear it inspires cuts to the bone.” (x)

holy shit right? fucking metal. Disclaimer: None of these are particularly scholarly sources so take these excerpts with a grain salt, but it does sound like wendigos are traditionally very intelligent, sadistic creatures. 

I like to think Hannah is still in there somewhere and occasionally her humanity effects some of her choices as a wendigo (because it’s more interesting to me that way) but you could definitely make the argument that wendigos have no humanity at all. They’re just incredibly clever, patient and willing to make more work for themselves if it means torturing their prey a little longer, i.e. The way Handigo repeatedly gets up close Sam in the final lodge scene but never actually attacks. She was inches from Sam, how could she not have known she was there? Unless either a) she recognized Sam and didn’t want to attack OR b) because she wanted to toy with Sam. You could make a good argument either way!

There are my (incredibly long!) thoughts on Handigo’s humanity (or lack thereof?) If you took the time to read all that, kudos for you, because, damn. hahaha