Since Until Dawn remastered came out on October 4th on all major platforms, I finally was able to own the game after loving it from the sidelines for years and only having played it once myself.
The remaster boasted a lot of changes to the game, adding new scenes, a whole new soundtrack and a new ending that many fans wanted from the get-go. I’ll start by covering the new intro, which adds a bit more context and dramatizes the scene more. Originally, it was very straightforward; Hannah gets pranked by all her friends because of a crush she has, she gets embarrassed and runs away and it ultimately leads to her and Beth’s deaths.
In this new intro, all of that content is still there, but it includes moments of siblings bonding between Beth, Hannah and Josh as the twins take drunk Josh to a couch to make him more comfortable while he sleeps it off. It includes a new montage of everything except Sam setting up for the prank and Hannah getting ready to meet Mike. Even the prank revealed to Hannah is much more dramatized, as it’s in slow motion of everyone laughing and Hannah’s extreme embarrassment.
The rest of the intro remains very similar, and it leads to a whole new intro song, “Out of the Shadows”, an original song to the game performed by Mae Stephens. I do enjoy this new song, but I can’t help but be biased towards the original song, “O Death” performed by Amy Van Roekel. I think it’s iconic to the game but I do enjoy the new addition.
After this, the game remains mostly the same as I remember. There’s some slight changes like a song playing over the montage of Jessica and Mike snowball fighting. I don’t recall if a song plays in the original during this scene but I don’t think it does. Maybe that’s why it felt out of place for me. I don’t think a song there was necessary and being a longtime fan I actually found it distracting. It’s not a dealbreaker that it’s included, but it was jarring.
However, one change I do love is the camera. Before, the camera was very fixed so that whoever you played as, you couldn’t look around the environment in a 360 degree way. It was often put in camera angles much like movie shots. It made the game more cinematic, but it limited your POV. Now, the camera allows you to look wherever you want, which is a welcome change.
The caveat to this is that it does eliminate some of the cinematic shots from the original game. For example, there’s a shot where Jessica and Mike are walking across a bridge and the camera pans out to give you a view of the frozen scenery and waterfall, but with the new camera, it keeps you looking forward in third person but you can move the camera to look at the waterfalls. So the game acts more like most video games with the camera and does get rid of the more unique aspects of the game being like an interactive movie.
We’ll now skip ahead to the end with some new changes. They added a new ending to the game, one I didn’t get in my playthrough because I had no idea how. Originally, Josh is the only character who doesn’t survive until dawn. He either gets killed by wendigo Hannah, or she takes him away and he is forced to cannibalize someone and become a wendigo. For years, many fans, myself included, wished we could save Josh. Despite his cruel prank to his friends, it’s clear he’s mentally ill and just needed a lot of help and was a truly tragic character.
Now, Josh is able to be saved. If you repent to the therapist during the sessions, you can end up not dying or transforming, but police will come down to the mines post credits and find him alive.
There’s one more new addition that I did not expect but it may hint to more in the future. If you don’t kill Sam in your playthrough, there’s a whole new ending where it’s several years later and Sam is laying in her bed, and there’s medication everywhere. Clearly she’s still grappling with the events of that night, likely feeling guilty about Josh because they were close for a time and maybe guilt about other friends dying depending on your playthrough. She gets up to turn off her alarm, but a mysterious injury shows up on her arm. It’s unclear what this means, if it’s in her head or real, but the scene ends with her being frightened by a knock and a voice says her name.
To me and many others, this seems to hint at a potential Until Dawn 2. I’m not sure how to feel about it because I tend to be wary of sequels, especially because that’s such a huge trend lately. But if there is an incoming sequel, I’m curious about the direction it could go in. At the very least, it makes it canon that Sam is supposed to survive the night.
So, is the remaster better? I would say in many ways, yes. I enjoy the new content, the improved graphics, and of course, the ability to play on PC as I don’t own a PlayStation. I think one of the only things holding me back from definitively saying it’s better is the soundtrack. I just enjoyed the original and don’t think a complete overhaul was necessary. With that being said, I really recommend the remaster as it’s a lot of fun and it’s still largely the same game that came out almost ten years ago, just more accessible.
