Until Dawn (2024) review – The quick (time event) and the dead

The first question that must be asked when considering the nine-years-later remake of Until Dawn is who the game has been (re)made for? Though the horror-themed branching narrative adventure comes with bonus retrospective content, features a new ending (which opens a door to a sequel) and gives players the chance to secure a happier outcome for one key character, the new Until Dawn seems far more orientated towards people who never experienced the 2015 single-player game when it released back on PS4 as a Sony exclusive.

As a little plot context, Until Dawn sees a group of eight college-age friends – including emotionally fragile Josh (Rami Malek), no-nonsense Sam (Hayden Panettiere) and dashing class president Mike (Brett Dalton) – reunite on remote, snowy Blackwood Mountain, one year after a cruel prank led to the disappearance of two of their circle. The idea is to put the tragedy behind them, if they can stop coupling up for some sexy times, but there’s something lurking outside, and possibly in, the lodge where they’re staying.

The original Until Dawn was a name maker for developers Supermassive Games, who went on to make 2022 spiritual successor The Quarry, as well as their Dark Pictures Anthology. All these games feature a similar formula: highly cinematic, they ramp up the star power by recruiting familiar faces from Hollywood and give them a thorough motion capture treatment. It’s then up to players to determine the characters’ fate, through dialogue choices, reflex-testing quick time events (QTEs), on-the-fly decisions – like choosing a safe route versus a risky one – and general environmental explorations that will yield both useful items and cryptic premonitions that can guide the cast to the most favourable outcome.

If you’ve played any of the more recent Supermassive titles, you can expect a similar, if slightly stripped back, experience from Until Dawn, which stands as their groundbreaking predecessor. One particularly notable feature here and in The Quarry: until you finish a playthrough, and unlock chapter replay, there is no reverting to a previous save. You have to live with the “butterfly effect” consequences of your actions to the end of the story. And there’s no scene or conversation skip. You’re locked into playing the game at the makers’ intended pace.

With Supermassive presumably busy on sci-fi horror Directive 8020, Ballistic Moon is the studio behind the remake of Until Dawn, reworking the game in multiple departments to make it more palatable for contemporary players – at the same time it’s brought to PS5, and PC for the very first time.

Primarily, the changes are aesthetic, with Until Dawn (2024) tapping into Unreal Engine 5’s visual bells and whistles to make the game very good looking, whether you’re trudging knee-deep through snow in an ominous forest, or sneaking through a grungy, derelict asylum. Until Dawn features updated motion capture (though that doesn’t save the game from a smattering of Uncanny Valley moments) and cinematography, enhancing the game’s status as an interactive movie, while a new controllable over-the-shoulder camera is more aligned with modern sensibilities. Then there are a broadened range of accessibility options, especially for players who struggle with the QTEs – although they are relatively forgiving as is on the game’s default setting.

While they’re a carry-over from the original game, and nothing new, probably the most enjoyable mechanic of Until Dawn is the game’s use of the PS controller touchpad and gyroscope. There’s a pleasing tactility to swiping the pad in order to light a match, or holding your breath so you don’t move the controller and alert enemies to your hiding spot.

All this talk of features, though, and ultimately, the enjoyability of Until Dawn rests largely on its story. Until Dawn is considerably scarier and tension-soaked than The Quarry, but the trade-off is that its cast of teens is, for the most part, considerably more unlikeable. That may be the point, though, as players are tempted to kill off characters like relentlessly annoying and bitchy Emily (Nichole Sakura), who subjects boyfriend Matt (Jordan Fisher) to non-stop abuse, and demonstrates no remorse over her instigating role in the deadly prank.

Drawing on an assortment of horror films, from Evil Dead to Saw and Friday the 13th, Until Dawn’s twists can be predicted if you’re immersed in horror tropes. That’s a large part of the fun though. That said, by the final act, things are becoming repetitive, and as the game bounces between the survivors, it’s best not to think about where some of the cast disappear to for long stretches. Answers won’t be provided, and consequences for your actions at this point become more frustratingly random and brutally final.

Still, the Until Dawn remake is a solid way to play this genre classic for the first time if you missed it on original release. It’s just hard to recommend it as a must revisit for anyone but the most ardent fans – and even then they may be disappointed by some changes. For the record, it will take you eight to ten hours for a single complete playthrough. Just be aware of a bugged autosave in the lodge basement which blocks progress and may see you forced to restart at around 54% (5-6 hours) in. It certainly dampened my enthusiasm for the game.

Until Dawn (2024) is out now for PS5 and PC, having released on 4 October.