Adventure Corner ~ Until Dawn (2024)
Welcome to Adventure Corner, a column where members of the RPGamer staff can give their thoughts, impressions, and pseudo-reviews for various adventure titles that don’t come under our usual coverage. Adventure Corner is aimed at delivering opinions on a wide range of titles including visual novels, point-and-click adventures, investigative mysteries, and so forth.
In this edition of the column we take a look at Ballistic Moon’s remaster of Until Dawn on PlayStation 5.
Until Dawn (2024)
While I haven’t platinumed many games over the years, the original Until Dawn is one of the few I have. When it was originally released in 2015, I remember buying the game and being completely obsessed with it. My roommate and I would chat for hours on end, trying to put the whole story together, and theorizing about the consequences of many of our decisions. Until Dawn is a special game, as it became the hallmark of cinematic adventure games, with tons of replayability, gorgeous graphics, and heaps of gore. Until Dawn made you feel like you were trapped in a horror movie, and all your decisions mattered because it was life or death for the game’s cast. Now, Ballistic Moon has remastered the original game, and while some of the gameplay changes and graphical upgrades are not great, the heart of this horror classic still beats with the same level of intensity; the way it did when it debuted in 2015.
The story begins with ten friends having a holiday getaway at the Washington Lodge, and a prank gone wrong. After Hannah is humiliated by her friends, she hurries out of the lodge and into the woods. Her twin sister Beth, angry with the group, rushes out to find her. After reuniting, the twins are chased by a shadowy figure, and unfortunately, fall off a cliff. With no bodies recovered, the police declare Beth and Hannah as missing. Flash forward to a year later, and Josh, the twins’ brother, has invited the eight remaining friends to the Lodge. The group has been scarred, to varying degrees, by the events of the previous year, but what is about to occur is something that will either change them forever or kill them in the process.
Until Dawn’s story is a fantastic look at human nature and how grief can often create an unpredictable response to trauma. Between each chapter, players are given a psych evaluation from a psychiatrist named Dr. Hill, portrayed by famed Swedish actor Peter Stormare. Over the course of these interviews, the player is asked a series of questions that impact the presentation of the game. The eventual reveal of who the player character is in these scenes is still as impactful in the remake as it was ten years ago. In terms of the characters, the cast is fairly deplorable, but when watching horror, that’s part of the intrigue. It’s abundantly clear in the writing what tropes each character fits into, such as Sam being “The Final Girl,” Mike being “The Big Damn Hero,” or Emily being “The Bitch.” What makes these characters wonderful is that they have all grown in different ways since the events of the prologue, and further transform as the story progresses.
It also helps that there is a star-studded cast in this game. Rami Malek voices Josh with the emotion and struggle of someone grieving the loss of their siblings, while Hayden Panettiere does a phenomenal job of giving the player humility and empathy in her performance of Sam. All the actors do a great job of lending their voices and physical likenesses to bring this horror story to life. It also helps that the writing is solid from start to finish, with the story being penned by horror icon Larry Fessenden and Supermassive’s Graham Reznick. Together, they’ve crafted a story that is both gory as it is psychological. These characters can be played in a variety of ways, but the writing makes the choices feel natural and in character.
Until Dawn is broken into ten chapters, with players moving back and forth between each of the eight characters. Players will be thrown into various quick-time events, and forced to make decisions that could have deadly consequences as the game progresses. Each character has their emotional stats, as well as relationship stats with the others. Depending on the decisions made, these stats can change throughout the game, and even affect how characters will behave towards one another. For example, if one character chooses to harm or endanger another, that decision will be remembered, and in some cases will lead to characters being placed in rough situations where there is an increased chance of losing them. The deaths in Until Dawn are gruesome, with a lot of body horror and dismemberment being showcased. With hundreds of different outcomes, there is a lot of replayability in just trying to discover all the various deaths. There are genuinely disturbing elements to the story that are not for the faint of heart, with tons of filth and horror throughout.
The game does struggle with some of the new improvements added to this remaster. When it released in 2015, it was gorgeous, but not without a few blemishes. While the remaster’s graphical upgrade has moments that are stunning to look at, particularly in the backgrounds, some of the updated lighting on the characters isn’t as smooth, with a lot of instances where hair on characters clips into faces, or the characters look closer to mannequins than actual people. There are also multiple instances of texture pop-in or characters disappearing from the screen completely. Together with numerous crashes, these make for a half-baked experience. This is such a shame because the game is meant to resemble a live-action movie, and while some of the monster designs and backgrounds have gotten amazing touch-ups, the main characters did not get the same quality of treatment.
Even more frustrating are the changes to some of the game’s mechanics. There are numerous instances where the game isn’t reading the button being pressed, and during the “Don’t Move” portions where players have to stay still, the controller may vibrate hard enough to sabotage the player. Totems, which are premonitions that the player finds, used to simply be picked up and interacted with, but now require the player to move the joystick so that the totem darkens enough so that the player can search for an opening that then flashes the short cutscene. It’s a stupid change overall and it’s an exercise in wasting the player’s time, adding nothing to the experience. Even the controls throughout feel far stiffer, and it’s easy for players to collide with other objects when searching for clues.
Other additions to this remaster come in the form of new dialogue for the characters, as well as a better ending for one specific character. However, the requirements to execute this are surprisingly difficult and may require multiple playthroughs before successfully pulling that ending off. The prologue has been extended to add more context to how the events came to be, and, for the most part, is more interesting. The best and most impressive additions to the remaster are the new songs provided by composer Mark Korven, which add fantastic depth to some of the newer story elements. The original soundtrack was always haunting, and the new tracks follow suit, including some beautiful vocal tracks that make for a delightful listen. A playthrough can be completed in roughly six to eight hours depending on how much time is spent looking for clues, but the game is meant to be replayed so one can explore all of the potential possible story beats. With tons of replayability, it’s easy to get one’s money’s worth from the experience.
While I still believe that Until Dawn is a hallmark title in horror gaming, Ballistic Moon’s remaster needed a bit more time in the oven. Many of the game’s changes don’t add much to the experience, or, in some cases, bring it down entirely. The graphics need more consistency because a lot of the texture pop-in and weird lighting changes detract from the scenes, taking away some of the emotional investment of the moment. Despite these flaws, this game still has a fantastic and deeply uncomfortable story, with a star-studded cast that truly offers great performances throughout. If you have never experienced Until Dawn, this remaster is fine, but for those who have played the game before, the technical issues are unfortunately too noticeable to ignore.
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