copper marigolds

I guess first and foremost, I don't want to judge an entire game off a two-minute trailer. Most of the things that made me fall in love with the first game weren't hinted at in its trailers, either. So I want to at least try to keep something of an open mind.

That said.

Sony. Sony listen. You can't just drop a bunch of young adult characters in a horror situation, throw in Dr. Hill, and call it Until Dawn. That's basically the same thing they did in the UD movie and it was Not Until Dawn. DR. HILL IS NOT WHAT MADE UNTIL DAWN UNTIL DAWN, OKAY.

I actually enjoyed the movie well enough for what it was, but it wasn't Until Dawn. It was essentially a generic horror film with a bunch of references/homages to Until Dawn. The trailer for UD 2 is giving me the same vibes, except with even fewer references/homages? If it wasn't for the two seconds of Dr. Hill right at the end, plus the fact that it's called Until Dawn 2, I would have zero clue that it was in any way related to the first game at all. It's not even being made by the same studio!!

About that. At first, my reaction to the apparent complete lack of involvement by Supermassive was "WTF," but after a bit more thought, that might not necessarily be a bad thing. Supermassive hit it out of the park with Until Dawn, but that was over a decade ago (???) and they have yet to recapture the magic. I've played The Quarry and all of the Dark Pictures games, and I enjoyed them all to one extent or another (some less than others--looking at you, Man of Medan), but none of them really came close to UD. IMO, The Quarry was the closest--it was the only one besides UD that I've actually replayed--but even it didn't quite get there.

So, maybe giving another studio a crack at it won't automatically be a disaster...but I keep coming back to two questions. HOW is this related to Until Dawn? And WHY was it necessary?

Look, I love Until Dawn with all my heart. But it was really not a game that screamed "I need a sequel." For one thing, there's the fact that every single character can die (well, except Dr. Hill). And the game's mysteries were all pretty well wrapped up. That's why I thought the "spiritual successor" route they took with The Quarry was the right way to go. Similarly choice-based, with choices having actual consequences, with the same "everyone can live or die" aspect, but with all new characters and setting. Same concept, but without unnecessarily tying it to a pre-existing game.

Other scattered thoughts:

How can you really call this game "Until Dawn 2" when 90% of the trailer takes place in broad daylight???

One thing that would unequivocally make this an UD sequel is if Sam is in it. Given the scene that they added at the end of the first game remaster a couple years back, I would actually be surprised if she's not in it, because that scene pretty much screamed "sequel setup." But it does make me wonder, if she is in it, why not have her appear at the end of the trailer instead of Dr. Hill?

Plot twist: maybe Sam is the killer 👀 Okay yeah, probably not. "Final girl gone very very wrong" would actually be an interesting concept, come to think of it, but probably not something they would risk doing with Sam, lest they piss off fans from the first game.

I'm not really a fan of the direction they've apparently taken Dr. Hill, between the movie and the suggestion in this trailer. It's like they're making him into some kind of supernatural, Curator-esque entity. On one hand, I kind of get it, since it would be easy to interpret him that way in the first game if you don't find all the clues. But based on the messages in Josh's phone, plus Josh's medical records, it seemed pretty straightforward that Dr. Hill in the first game is a real person, probably a perfectly normal person, and that the "Dr. Hill" in the game was just Josh hallucinating the entire time. To go from "real psychiatrist appearing in a patient's hallucinations" to "malevolent supernatural entity" is...a stretch.