Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Until Dawn’s remake is a fun way for newcomers to experience a horror classic, but returning players have little reason to return.
I missed the boat on Until Dawn when it first launched in 2015. Despite my reluctance - at the time - to play anything that even mildly resembled a horror game, word of mouth surrounding its narrative and atmosphere eventually convinced me to get over myself and give it a shot. I have a lot of fond memories surrounding this game in particular. My method of playing through it was likely unintended - sharing the controller with a friend during a series of sleepovers, with each of us assuming control of specific characters. Local co-op multiplayer would eventually become a major feature for later projects under developer Supermassive Games, but it hadn’t yet coalesced in 2015.
When Sony announced that Until Dawn was getting a remake earlier this year, I was confused to say the very least. In my mind, this game held up to even the fussiest of standards in modern gaming conventions, and I saw little reason for the game to be reproduced so quickly. Having played through the Until Dawn remake this week, however, I can admit that it does have a few new ideas to bring to the table - mainly a new camera perspective and slight changes to in-game totems. Besides that however, it’s just as I feared: this is a haphazardly made remake that brings little new to the table, aside from changes that actively detract from the original game’s intended look and feel.
Keeping a group of teenagers alive against all odds
In revisiting Supermassive Games’ arguably now-iconic horror game Until Dawn, developer Ballistic Moon has opted against making changes to its story campaign. That makes sense, considering there wasn’t much wrong with the game’s story to begin with, and going in to make changes to it now would mean untangling a wide web of choices and consequences that tend to snowball into another over the course of the game. Its classic cabin-in-the-woods horror premise remains unchanged, placing the lives of a group of careless teenagers in the player’s care.
Most of the game’s action takes place in a lodge up on dark and spooky Blackwood Mountain, one year after a tragic accident seemingly claimed the lives of two sisters partying there with a group of friends. In the present day, said group of friends reunites when the sisters’ surviving sibling Josh invites them back to the lodge for another get-together, despite the horrific events that followed their last alcohol-soaked jamboree. Things have understandably changed in the year since Josh's sisters went missing, and evolving relationship dynamics within the group - and some potentially supernatural goings-on in Blackwood Mountain - leave their reunion ripe for juicy drama.
Until Dawn’s core appeal remains unchanged: with the ability to play as an entire group of friends, players are free to opt into or out of the various romances, friendships and interactions they are presented with, building the group up into a cohesive unit that survives the story’s events, or tearing it down into a passive-aggressive mess of cliques that can barely survive each other, let alone the monsters of Blackwood Mountain. Its quicktime events range from engaging - like ratcheting up the tension by forcing players to move at a crawl when monsters are lurking about, to tedious - like making players hit a Mortal Kombat-like button combo just to go to a shelf and read some newspaper clippings.
This story doesn't have the strongest start, burdening its main cast with hackneyed dialogue and forced melodrama that can make these characters feel more like walking tropes than actual people. However, the beauty of Until Dawn’s story is that it takes them far enough from their respective comfort zones to change them, sometimes quite dramatically, and turn even the most loathsome among them into people worth rooting for. Part of that is because it’s difficult to avoid becoming attached to the cast for as long as this game leaves you in their shoes, but it should be said that none of Supermassive’s next few games ever featured characters quite as compelling as this one.
The game’s cast has also aged exquisitely, with the likes of Rami Malek, Hayden Panettierre, Jordan Fisher, Brett Dalton and more counted among them. What I loved about Until Dawn so many years ago is still thankfully present here today - even if a few changes marr its aesthetical charm somewhat.
What's new in this remake?
Developer Ballistic Moon has made a few changes to Until Dawn in an effort to justify its $60 price tag, the most obvious of which is its new over-the-shoulder camera. Where the original game had players explore environments in a fixed camera perspective, the remake now allows players to freely swing the camera around to get a better sense of their surroundings. This isn’t as consistent a change as it was made out to be however, as the game does switch back to a fixed camera perspective at jarringly random moments.
Most of the game’s environments and characters have received some graphical polish here. While the additional detail on these characters' faces can sometimes make their uncanny valley-like robotic facial animation stand out even more, there’s also a new layer of immersion here to enjoy as their skin collects soot, grime and flecks of blood as the story progresses.
New lighting changes make the game a lot prettier but at a sizeable cost. For example, an opening chapter sees the group arrive at the lodge in different ways - some by cable car, and others by a long walk. This scene is now lit with golden hour daylight, making their arrival to Blackwood Mountain and subsequent reunion seem just a little awkward but nonetheless hopeful, completely eschewing the suspenseful atmosphere of the original’s opening chapters, which had them arrive at the mountain in the dead of night. Suddenly, it takes a lot longer for Until Dawn to build up to the bone-chilling tone of the original game set almost immediately, altering its creative intent in ways that almost feel accidental.
Alas, the game is rife with changes like these. At the expense of better-looking faces and environments, players also have to deal with certain aspects of the story not landing quite the same way - a problem that will admittedly impact returning fans more than newcomers. There are a few gameplay additions here to check out, however. An extended prologue allows players to watch the group bond through wanton partying before tragedy strikes, and a few endings have been added to tease certain characters’ fates. The most interesting of these is a cutscene that seems to be teasing a sequel, lending some cogency to the making of this remake at least (a movie adaptation is also in the works, turning this into an unlikely franchise).
New totems have also been scattered around the game to present elements of the story from, let’s say, a more monstrous perspective. These add up to fun little bonuses for returning players to discover, but they're hardly sufficient to justify splurging on another copy of a game they might already own.
Verdict
Ballistic Moon’s Until Dawn remake is a perplexing product that fits somewhere in between a full-fledged remake and a simple remaster, adding enough new content to nudge into the former category, but not nearly enough to pull it completely out of the latter. New players will find a lot to love about this remake, as the original’s charm hasn’t been completely diluted despite a few strange lighting changes and the absence of a fixed camera.
On the other hand, returning players have little to gain from revisiting Blackwood Mountain at this price point, as its thrills and chills can be felt more keenly and cheaply in the original package.
Until Dawn is now available on PlayStation 5 and PC, we received a copy of the game for this review.