FMV games are a rare breed these days. Back in the 90s, when the tech that could accommodate actual video footage was still new, you couldn’t move for the f**kers, but now it’s basically just the company that makes Her Story in the game. Enter: Wales Interactive, who have given us access to this Dead Reset preview to see if there’s about to be an FMV renaissance or just another attempt at getting fans’ hopes up.
What Is Dead Reset?
If that sterling introduction didn’t give it away, Dead Reset is an FMV horror game that acts a lot like an interactive movie. You watch scenes play out and have to make choices for the main character which affect what scene will play next. In short, it’s akin to a choose-your-own-adventure story, like Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch but with a lot more practical effects. It’s a release from Dark Rift Horror and Wales Interactive, who both shared development responsibility, but the most interesting factor is the use of a real film school in Leeds.
In fact, the big standout about this particular FMV title is just how high-quality the cinema is. A lot of modern FMV efforts rely heavily on a “found footage” style, with the FMV you’re watching presented in some in-universe context to aid in immersion. Dead Reset goes for the more classical approach of immersing you by being incredibly tense, engaging, and making you so scared that you puke up both of your kneecaps.
Let’s Do the Time Warp (Again?)
The title, Dead Reset, refers to the fact that your main character is stuck in a time loop. As you try out different paths throughout the story, each one that ends in your death has you springing back to a reset point to try again. This time, though, things will be different based on the past knowledge that you managed to gain in your previous loops. It’s not as simple as remembering information from your previous loop and then making different choices; the character that you’re controlling also remembers each loop, and that changes how he reacts.
It’s part of the reason that Dead Reset is so appealing. Yes, you are controlling a character and making choices for them, but at the end of the day, they’re a real character who has their own thoughts and feelings about things. If they gain certain knowledge, it affects some of the choices that they make, which is part of why certain decisions can lock you out of specific choices and pathways. It certainly seems like the sort of game that is going to warrant many replays, if they can get a decent ‘skipping’ system worked out at any rate.
Practical Magic
One of my personal favourite parts of Dead Reset has been the film itself. The entire thing has been done with a lot of love for cinema, and everything from the way it was shot to the use of practical effects is liable to make a film geek moist. There’s also an insane amount of gore on display, a far cry from the subtle “chills” of games like Her Story and Telling Lies. Basically, if you’re into an intense, gory sci-fi horror film starring a human-eating monster and a cast of poor bastards who are trapped with it, then that’s basically what you’re getting here.
It all points towards a love of making films and of making games, and it’s clear from the outset that this is at least one person’s passion project, more likely, the entire crew’s. The static shots and awkward pauses that are common in these sorts of projects are done away with and replaced with real cinematic filmmaking, and the thousands of hours of effort that this thing must have taken to create are on display the whole time.
Silly, Goofy Mood
That’s not to say that Dead Reset doesn’t have a few bumps that might trip it up. With only a single opening chapter to try out, we have no real way of knowing where the plot is going, though we have a promise of multiple endings to discover. The biggest potential pitfall is going to be tonal. While so far, things have been kept very much in the realms of a sci-fi horror masterpiece, the excessive gore and practical effects do nearly stray into being a bit goofy in places.
As long as the rest of the game manages to keep the tense energy up and refrains from anything as idiotic-looking as that ending scene in SAW V (seriously, that looked like two rubber gloves filled with strawberry syrup), then we could be in for one of the best FMV experiences in horror since Christopher Walken said, “This guy…is un-f**king-believable,”, and I, for one, am incredibly excited about where Dead Reset is going.
Dead Reset begins looping on 11th September 2025 and will be available on PC, Switch, Xbox, and PS5.
