I’ve always been in love with Until Dawn. I grew up watching playthroughs of the game years before I even got my hands on it, and nowadays, I appreciate the game as a horror movie enthusiast. The original title still holds up, running at an incredibly smooth 60 frames per second on PS5, only showing bits of age over the years. It’s still playable today, which makes it incredibly baffling as to why it needed a remake, much less a $60 one. The original game can still be enjoyed, and this new one comes not only with some visual upgrades of its own, but with some major shifts and changes here and there to the core structure of the modern Halloween favorite.
Table of Contents
Classic Slaying
What made the original title so engaging was its choice-based structure, similar to titles like The Walking Dead and Heavy Rain, with a lot of the charm coming from an initially archetype-heavy cast of characters played to perfection. Scream’s Hayden Panettiere is the perfect final girl here, playing Sam with the strength and resilience demanded, while Rami Malek of Mr. Robot and No Time to Die fame gives a very strong performance as the grieving Josh. The cast is full of other decently known stars, with Jordan Fisher of both Broadway and Teen Beach Movie fame, Nichole Sakura of Superstore, and Brett Dalton who would eventually play his own part in God of War: Ragnarök further add to this cast’s long history before and after this title.
Nichole Sakura’s Emily and Brett Dalton’s Mike especially help to show that this game is both very aware of character tropes, yet able to subvert them in surprising ways. This game uses the tropes and turns them on their head, turning characters that would be very easy to dislike in a standard horror movie into very compelling and capable characters. Until Dawn’s dialogue captures the essence of the cheesy slasher flick perfectly, and its clear love for the genre definitely helps.
Taking place throughout a single night, a bunch of young adults come together one year after a horrible tragedy, and much like I Know What You Did Last Summer, have to end up dealing with both the consequences of their actions, and a killer with a grudge. The central mystery of who is responsible is given enough time to breathe, and the remake ensures no major details are changed about the game, only choosing to add some things.
Unlike The Last of Us Part 1’s PS5 remake, Until Dawn actually does come with some new story content. A new totem, usually used to predict future events, is available to find, though functionally, it serves little to no purpose at all beyond being another collectible to hunt for. The opening has been adjusted, with a few new details and bits that are very much appreciated, but the best and most substantial change the remake has is its new ending. There’s one standard new ending you can achieve by beating the game with a certain character alive that sets up a sequel, and another that gives a character a changed fate, one that fans would be happy to hunt down so long as they make the right choices to get to it.
Where the remake falters a bit is in the slight dilution of the original’s atmosphere. Until Dawn relied heavily on a cinematic atmosphere, with fixed camera angles all around, but the remake changes it to being an over-the-shoulder perspective, similar to how Resident Evil and Silent Hill have altered the remakes of their own classic titles. Unfortunately, here it fails, as while it does allow players to see the dark, chilly environments better, it loses a bit of the classic horror feel the original brought. While it’s a welcome change, the fact this is the only way to play the remake hampers its addition.
The Lodge in the Woods
As mentioned, there is a heavy emphasis on choice in this title, and the remake makes sure that aspect doesn’t change. It still feels incredible to play, with way more accessibility options too now. The “Don’t Move” segments have largely stayed the same, with a new option to forego motion controls in favor of quickly readjusting the bar back into position when it randomly changes and moves. It certainly helped me out and is one of the remake’s positive additions to the title.
Instead of having to move your stick in a way to choose, you now have to push down on the trigger on the choice you want to make. It’s a minor change, but there’s honestly not much that the game does that is new in terms of mechanics. The aspect ratio can be changed too, so you can have it as a game played in full screen, or with black bars on it for a cinematic feeling.
The choices you make have an extreme effect on each character’s survival. One choice made early on can decide whether or not a character lives or dies later on. It certainly set a strong standard for Supermassive’s future titles, with deaths coming quickly, brutally, and sometimes through easily avoidable methods. Sometimes, doing nothing is the best option, as choosing to do something like shooting a creature could end up hurting a character.
Each person’s relationship in the game also is a major factor in whether or not some make it through the night, as one character distrusting another could lead to that other character’s death later on. It’s very easy to slip up, and the game’s deaths are very bloody, something that thankfully hasn’t changed in the remake.
Diminishing Returns
Unfortunately, like many remakes of classic horror movies, this one feels like a totally unnecessary creation. You won’t see a remake like Evil Dead’s 2013 one that justifies its existence with an exciting, new experience, or even the similarly recently released Silent Hill 2 remake’s fresh, revitalizing return to a classic, but instead something more along the lines of that same year’s Carrie remake. It’s a bit nicer to look at but you won’t find anything substantial to justify the $60 price point.
Firstly, the frame rate. It’s standard nowadays to find that games come with a performance and quality mode, but here, Until Dawn’s PS5 remake is locked to 30 frames per second. The original PS4 title runs at 60 frames, and having both, I took to replaying a part in both games one after the other, and the difference is noticeable. It can be argued that 30 fps helps it feel more cinematic, but at least an option would’ve gone a long way.
As a whole, the remake has a rather sluggish feeling brought about by multiple things. The 30 fps issue is indicative of just how the 2024 version of the game can feel worse than the original at times. There are technical issues that are quite distracting with some very clear and distracting frame dips at certain moments, and while I haven’t had any, there have been many reports of technical issues and crashes faced by other players.
Shockingly the game removed a button that makes you walk faster. Playing parts of the game alternating between the original and the remake, it was hard to ignore that the L1 button that lets you walk a little bit faster is completely absent from the remake, so now, you’re stuck at playing the game while your character moves at the pace of Saw 3’s protagonist. In other words, it makes you move atrociously slow.
Some of the terror is muddled as a result of a combination of the painfully slow movement and the fixed camera angles, with the dread of not knowing what comes from the next fixed camera angle replaced by that over-the-shoulder view, and walking that feels like stumbling at the pace of crawling. Even some audio choices don’t land perfectly. Take for example the iconic slap Emily dishes out, and after comparisons, there’s a lot less impact heard in the remake’s rendition of the slap than the original.
The remake also removes a few memorable things from the original. The iconic opening theme song and other tracks in the original have been removed, and while serviceable, their replacements simply cannot compare. The “Previously on Until Dawn” segments at the end of each chapter has also been removed, and while it could be seen as a way to help the pacing, it not even being an option takes away from the slasher charm of the original.
What might be the one, true justification for this title is its arrival on PC, but for PS5, it’s a full priced title with its big selling point being accessibility and visual upgrades made to a game that doesn’t even look atrocious nowadays. There are some definite visual improvements to be found, and the choice to start the first chapter in the daytime definitely helps in settling players into the fact that they’re locked, waiting until dawn for rescue. Characters appear far more bruised and battered in the remake, adding to the impact and realization of how much they’ve been through in one night. It makes enough visual improvements for it to be on the graphical level of Supermassive’s newer titles like The Quarry, looking like an authentic PS5 title.
The increased accessibility options like the aforementioned “Don’t Move” changes help in making it easier to complete with one’s desired outcome. I still feel the pain from making it all the way to the end with every character possible alive in an old playthrough I had of the original game, only to fail and get one character I love killed because my hands were just a bit too shaky. It was a memorable moment of despair for me, and it’s nice to be able to go for a specific, ideal run in the remake like how one can set a movie mode in The Quarry.
There is a change made to the totem collectibles that really has no effect on the game as a whole. Instead of just zooming in and witnessing a very brief premonition of a potential future event, you have to scan the totem to hone in on and find that premonition through a glowing light. That is the only real mechanical change, and it’s an underwhelming one that only serves to add the tiniest bit of interactivity.
Verdict
While every criticism doesn’t take away from the fact that I still had an absolute blast playing through Until Dawn’s PS5 remake with its increased accessibility and updated graphics, the $60 price point is absolutely unjustified for how little it truly adds to the campy classic. It’s admirable that there’s actual new story content that has promising implications for the game’s future, but as it stands, it’s far too little for far too much. As of now, it’s best to wait for this slasher title to get its prices slashed.
