Author: Game Infliction

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This article contains spoilers for the Until Dawn movie.

I’ve been racking my brain over the conundrum that is adapting Until Dawn. Supermassive Games’ deconstruction of horror cinema through choice-based butterfly effect mechanics is essentially a 10-hour playable movie—a damn fine one written by indie horror staples Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick—so a film adaptation couldn’t just be the same thing. But a film that isn’t indebted to the game and its “choose your own adventure” method doesn’t feel appropriate either. Sony’s desire to release an Until Dawn adaptation seemed misguided upon announcement, and after viewing the film, it’s still a headscratcher.

That’s because David F. Sandberg’s Until Dawn movie betrays the core hook of Supermassive’s Until Dawn.

Writers Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler chose to adapt Until Dawn as its title reads. In this case, “Until Dawn” translates into a time-loop-like horror scenario where five young adults find themselves hunted by various baddies, and they only escape if they can survive … until dawn. Should anyone die, they’ll wake once a gigantic hourglass fixed to an ominous, skull-adorned mount drops its last grain of sand. Die enough times, and you become a wendigo lost to Dr. Alan J. Hill’s delirious experiment. The core impetus of a missing sibling is still there—Ella Rubin’s protagonist, Clover, is hunting for her missing sister—but otherwise, you’re not on Blackwood Mountain aka Mount Washington (er…yet), and certainly not similarly punished for choices that alter narrative paths.

That’s… not Until Dawn.

Death Shouldn’t Be An Afterthought

In the game, death matters. It matters so much, in fact, that killing a single character sends ripple effects felt throughout the remaining storylines. There’s no regeneration or second chances. Like, famously. That’s the point of Until Dawn. The stakes are so astronomically high, the slightest nervous twitch of your controller during a “stay still” Quicktime event could doom multiple characters. Dauberman and Butler fail to translate the nerve-wracking experience of playing Until Dawn, landing on quite the opposite concept.

If anything, Until Dawn is a beginner’s attempt at Cabin in the Woods. Glore Valley is drenched by a thunderstorm, except for a perfect circle of sunshine over the welcome center location, like some all-powerful horror movie god is controlling the rain—once again resembling Cabin in the Woods in terms of the “influencing environment” effect. The all-seeing overlord (Dr. Hill), the meta nature of characters joking about horror movie rules, and the different creatures unleashed each rewind? Despite countless plot configurations, the game’s powerful storytelling is far superior to this random assortment of scary scenes tied to an hourglass clock. The game pulls players deeper into a web of intrigue, where the movie’s Mad Libs nature drags viewers through a jumbled rotation of clowns-and-kooks randomness.

Points are awarded for at least using wendigos. In the game, Fessenden’s “Stranger” character reveals that a 1952 mining cave-in led to cannibalism, and said cannibals turned into wendigos that now haunt Blackwood. Here, Clover and her friends start turning into wendigos due to Dr. Hill’s experiments on Glore Valley from his sanatorium hideout (resembling his dingy in-game office). It’s not a one-for-one translation, nor does it need to be, but the wendigos are overshadowed by a slasher villain vaguely costumed after Josh’s psycho getup. There are also witches, porcelain doll-looking masks, creepypasta demons, and water that makes your entire body explode Scanners-style if you drink it. It’s a hodgepodge of dangers that have nothing to do with Fessenden and Reznick’s straightforward creature-centric game, outside of a few Easter eggs.

The most obvious connection is Peter Stormare as Dr. Hill, Josh Washington’s (Rami Malek) hallucinated psychiatrist who runs players through rigorous psychological tests that influence future in-game details. However, even Dr. Hill features stark differences in the film vs. the original game. In the movie, he’s seen as a gas station attendant, but it’s not long before he’s outed as former game character Dr. Hill—who’s in control of experiments on Glore Valley. It’s here where we have the only direct reference to the game’s most well-known character, Josh Washington. After Clover discovers Hill’s “office,” we see her patient profile alongside Josh’s.

There’s some exposition about Hill’s experiments as we watch prisoners cannibalize bodies and then turn into wendigos to highlight that connection to the game, but the reveal is followed by Clover defeating Dr. Hill pretty easily.

Except she doesn’t. Probably.

As the film ends, we return to the dirty sanitarium office where Dr. Hill explodes after ingesting some ‘splodey water, and on surveillance monitors, we see Blackwood’s lodge. We then hear Dr. Hill speak, suggesting he was Clover’s hallucination, much like Josh’s in the game. But, that’s right before the credits because I guess Sandberg’s movie is an offshoot prequel that, for some reason, has nothing to do with the actual events of the Until Dawn game? If there is a sequel, presumably it’ll be about Josh’s case of vengeance paid unto the Blackwood group except based on the film’s rules … somehow.

Cheap Easter Eggs Aren’t Enough

It’s just all so generic. Turning Dr. Hill into the baddie removes intrigue and becomes a cheap cop-out, torn from the game but improperly refitted. Then the stinger of Blackwood hits, which again is confusing because in interviews, Sandberg insists his film takes place after the game’s timeline—but Blackwood’s reveal suggests it’s not a sequel, but a prequel. Inconsequentiality plagues Sandberg’s film in a way that makes you wonder why it’s even tied to Until Dawn (*cough* intellectual property reasons *cough*), which only causes Blackwood’s tease to be even more spoonfed and underwhelming. For so long, Until Dawn (the movie) bears no resemblance to Until Dawn (the game)—why pivot back toward the game at the last minute?

The reason is simple: to appease us fans. There are choice moments that attempt to help us relive the game, but they’re crammed in like afterthoughts. Ji-young Yoo’s spiritualist character Megan has everyone hold hands in silence, mimicking the game’s quiet “hold your breath” Quicktime events. There’s a shot bathed in red lighting where a wendigo is right by a frightened Clover, and that’s a direct reference to the “Don’t Move” instructions. But the game’s cinematic nature doesn’t yield many other level-based opportunities to recreate, nor does the film try. The adaptation’s biggest issue is it never fully comprehends how best to honor Supermassive’s inspiration while telling a fresh horror tale.

What else might you recognize? The wendigo audio files are plucked from the game, reusing the same noises. There’s also Abe’s first death of being chopped in half, which could be respect paid to Josh’s fake death in the game, or maybe that’s just a lucky coincidence. Are the werewolf sketches in the witch’s cabin a possible reference to The Quarry? Is the radio in the basement the same radio in the game where characters find out they must survive until dawn? Chances are yes, but these Easter eggs feel forced.

Look, I’m all for a “spiritual successor.” But to do so, there has to be some resemblance to the thing you are named after. While I don’t think Until Dawn is a terrible movie, it’s a bad Until Dawn movie. It’s a far cry from the urgency and invasive dread that Supermassive so easily conjures, speaking to what makes the playable horror movie such a blast to complete (over and over).

As is, the Until Dawn movie doesn’t make much sense in context. The events of Glore Valley are a grab bag of ideas from other horror movies that would be nothing but a clip show without Dr. Hill’s inclusion. But even with Stormare’s reprised role, it’s only Until Dawn at face value, nothing deeper. I get the interpretation of the gang’s choices forcing them to keep restarting, but it’s still too far off-base to consider this adaptation anything more than unfaithful. In the end, Until Dawn is a missed opportunity to bring Supermassive’s smash-hit game to life.

When Bethesda finally revealed Oblivion Remastered earlier this week, I could hardly believe my eyes. Somehow 2006’s trip to Tamriel, known for its weird, potato-faced characters and smeary stretches of low-res verdant grasslands, is now the best-looking Elder Scrolls game ever made. A long history of HD overhauls has conditioned me to expect underwhelming results from remasters – Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Dark Souls Remastered are barely indistinguishable from their Xbox 360 parents, for instance – and so to see the Imperial City that I explored nearly 20 years ago rendered in Unreal Engine 5 with ray tracing was momentarily unbelievable. Not only that, but the game has been enhanced with upgrades to combat, RPG systems, and a multitude of other details. All that considered, I wondered if Bethesda and the project’s developer, Virtuos, had got the title wrong. Surely this is Oblivion Remake, not remastered?

It turns out I wasn’t alone in that thinking. Numerous fans have declared it a remake, and even Bruce Nesmith, the senior game designer on the original Oblivion project, has said “I’m not sure [the word] remaster actually does it justice.” But while I doubted Bethesda and Virtuos’ remaster claim at first, after playing several hours it’s actually pretty clear – Oblivion Remastered may look like a remake but it plays like a remaster.

There are plenty of reasons why Oblivion looks like a remake and they can be easily summed up: Virtuos has done a huge amount of work, with “every single asset redesigned from scratch.” In terms of what you physically see on screen, it is all brand new. Every tree, every sword, every crumbling castle. This means Oblivion lives up to modern graphical expectations. Not only is it beautifully textured, it also has gorgeous lighting and a whole new physics system that ensures every arrow and weapon strike affects the world realistically. And while all who you meet in the game are recognisably the same folks you crossed paths with back in 2006, every single NPC model is a brand new creation. It’s a hugely impressive overhaul that rejects the idea of making something that “looks like you remember” and instead aims for something that’s great by 2025 standards. It’s the best a Bethesda Game Studios RPG has ever looked, and if I had seen it before the remaster rumours began I’d probably have believed that it was The Elder Scrolls 6.

It’s not just visuals, though. Combat has been overhauled, and so swinging a longsword no longer feels like fencing with a balloon. The third person camera is now actually functional thanks to the addition of a reticule. Every menu, from the quest journal to dialogue to the lockpicking and persuasion minigames, have all had refreshed interfaces. The original, horrific levelling system has been replaced with a much more logical hybrid of Oblivion and Skyrim’s approaches. And finally you can sprint. With so many visual and gameplay upgrades, surely we are firmly in remake territory?

The big issue here is not so much one of technology, game changes, or project scope, but semantics. There are no industry-defined parameters for remakes and remasters, and publishers recklessly throw the terms around. Rockstar’s “Definitive Edition” remasters of the Grand Theft Auto trilogy are unmistakably blocky PlayStation 2-era games with upscaled textures and modern lighting effects. But the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, also branded a remaster, sports all-new graphical assets and looks like a game from the modern era. Things are even muddier when we get to remakes: Bluepoint’s Shadow of the Colossus and Demon’s Souls both rebuild their respective games from the ground up, but are faithful, 1:1 recreations of the original experiences. Resident Evil 2, meanwhile, sticks more-or-less to the original blueprint in terms of structure, but completely redesigns the way you interact with the survival horror icon. And then we have Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth, which radically overhaul the design, script, and even story beats of the original games. All five of these examples are considered remakes, but there’s very little shared philosophy between them.

At one point in time, the general consensus seemed to be that if the game had been rebuilt from scratch in a modern engine, it was considered a remake. Remasters, meanwhile, were more limited upgrades performed within the scope of the game’s original technology. Such a definition is clearly becoming fast outdated, though. Today, it seems more fitting to say that a remaster is a graphical overhaul that preserves the design of the original game (bar a few quality of life gameplay upgrades), while a remake redesigns a game from scratch. Such a definition would “downgrade” Demon’s Souls and the upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Delta to remasters, and ensure the remake term only applies to games that genuinely feel like new takes on old ideas.