Will Episode Select alter my choices if played all the way through?

I have recently beaten Until Dawn for the first time and would like to go back and get the rest of the trophies. Unfortunately, I pulled down an outdated save file from the cloud which was near the beginning, so I didn't get a chance to try the Episode Select feature for myself.

I plan to play this game two more times, a perfect file and no-survivor file, but I'm having trouble deciding which to play first now that I have deleted my previous save. I understand that, after unlocking Episode Select, I will lose my collectibles if and only if I select New Game, but I am concerned about how Episode Select will affect my choices.

If I use Episode Select to play from the very beginning until the very end, will my choices from my first playthrough be overwritten or will subsequent uses of Episode Select still fall back on my first choices?

Solution 1:

Episode Select will still fall back on your first choices.

The first time you beat the game the choices you made during that playthrough become your "canon" and make up your episode select. Anytime you use the Episode Select to skip around, the game uses the choices from the canon playthrough to fill in the gaps.
Even if you use episode select to start in the prologue and play all the way to chapter 10 it will not change your "canon". The only way to change it is to actually use the new game feature, which will wipe your collectibles and episode select away.

Note that episode select always loads all of your canon choices before the episode you start in. This means if you want to change a choice in chapter 3 to see how it affects chapter 5 you have to play through 3, 4, and 5 again. If you just play through 3, then jump to 5, it will load your original choices and you will not see the change.