Another day, another flop: The problem with the Until Dawn remake

The horror slasher adventure game, Until Dawn, launched in 2015 for the PlayStation 4. For the lovers of the "choose your own adventure" genre or just titles where your choices change the outcome of the game, Until Dawn was a huge success. Produced by Supermassive Games and launched by Sony, the company tried to bring Until Dawn into the light again with a remake for PC. However, this has been a flop. Let me explain why.

Before we try to understand why the remake is flopping, we must understand why Until Dawn had so much success back in 2015. It was the second best-selling game in the U.K. in its first week of release, being only behind Gears of War: Ultimate Edition. In the first month of 2016, the game had already sold 1.38 million units — something that the developers were not expecting.

One of the main reasons why people were attracted by the game was the amazing storyline. For a 2015 game, the graphics were incredibly good as well. The mechanics, horror elements, music, voice acting, and gameplay design were also details that put the game on a higher level.

Since 2015, Sony Interactive Entertainment, commonly called Sony, has tried to replicate the success of Until Dawn. In addition to spin-offs, Sony has launched games similar to Until Dawn: horror games, slashers, engaging storylines, and choice-driven narratives. The Dark Pictures Anthology and The Quarry are examples of these. While these titles have been good, they've never been as successful in terms of sales as Until Dawn.

Since the games never reached that peak, Sony had another idea: bring Until Dawn back into the spotlight by announcing a remake at the 2023 Game Awards. This time, the game would be under the game developer company Ballistic Moon, founded in 2019 by some of the co-founders of Supermassive Games, and would launch on PC and PlayStation5.

Producing a remake of a 2015 game was bold for Sony and that idea might have turned against them. As I said before, the game had pretty good graphics so what was exactly changing with the remake? Check some of the differences publish on the Until Dawn Reddit.

One of the main differences was in the character design, investing in the best features, and more details such as wounds, dirt, or sweat. In the original game, the lights were darker, making it very difficult for the player to see the character's details. Even the character's death are more gory.

Being a game that happens all during the night, some scenarios were pretty dark in the original game. For example, in this frame of Until Dawn's Stalker, we can see more details such as the green eyes, the damage on the mask, and the mouth.

One of the significant changes is in the camera angles. In 2015 Until Dawn, the player only had fixed-camera angles, making the camera movement pretty rigid. In the remake, the developers switched to a mostly over-the-shoulder third-person view, "bring new life to characters and locations". New collectibles were added as well as interactions between the characters and the new areas.

But the most interesting changes were in the prologue. The developers justified this choice by adding more emotional impact to the game and giving more context to the prank that started the whole story and the relationship between family members - John, Hannah, and Beth - so the players could understand better their family dynamics.

Overall, the changes seemed pretty nice, especially with the character designs and the camera movements, making the game more natural. But in reality, that was not the case. There are a few issues that no one was expecting.

However, some players and streamers have been talking about image quality concerns, bugs, and frame delivery issues. As Eurogamer explains, the 2024 remake has "frame ordering issues", "a film grain effect enabled by default that updates extremely slowly" and "plenty of break-ups whenever there's motion on screen". Some fans complained about the ray tracing and DLSS not working as well as the music changes from the original game. The requirement for a PlayStation Network account was also a red flag for the fans.

Besides the in-game problems, the Until Dawn Remake launched 28% weaker than Sony’s Concord, the shooter game that was shut down two weeks after debuting. According to TrueTrophies report, Until Dawn had 98.5% fewer players than The Last Of Us Part 2 Remastered. This could be explained easily: while The Last of Us Part 2 costed less than 10$ to be upgraded from PS4 to PS5, Sony was charging 60$ (70€) for the Until Dawn Remake.

The price was one of the most significant complaints since "better lighting" and "more details" don't justify the launching of the game as a new one with such a higher price. The people who bought the game and had to experience the quality issues and the constant break-ups clearly are not satisfied with the waste of money. In fact, according to SteamDB, the game had a peak of 2,067 players at the same time on the day of the launch. And that was too low for such a success as Until Dawn was in 2015.

If you're asking, will Sony keep trying to profit from the Until Dawn fan base? The answer is yes. In January, The Hollywood Reporter announced exclusively the adaption of Until Dawn to cinemas. The production will be in the hands of David F. Sandberg, the writer of Annabelle II, It, and The Nun. We don't have much information about the release of the movie yet.

A new ending on the Until Dawn 2024 Remake brought some hints that Sony might be coming with a new sequel for the game. After the ending credits, we see a black screen and a message - "Los Angeles, some years later" - followed by a scene with Sam, one of the main characters. If you want to see the scene, a fan on Reddit published it.

It might be too soon to be talking about a total flop, but the facts are difficult to run away from. Will the integrity of Until Dawn remain after this remake?

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