Hi there. I'm Copper and I careen wildly from one fandom obsession to another. Current fixation: The Bad Batch. Other fandoms you'll see here include BioWare (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, SWTOR), The Walking Dead, Star Wars, Until Dawn, Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted, Legend of Korra, Frozen, and various others. Also cats.
Occasionally I bang words on the keyboard and call it writing.
So yesterday Sony announced they're making Until Dawn 2, coming out next year, complete with a trailer
Actual footage of my reaction:
If you've followed me for a while, you probably know that Until Dawn, in all its cheesy, cringy glory, is basically the fandom of my heart and soul. So naturally I have Thoughts.
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.
On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong and the Dr. Hill appearing in UD 2 is actually Normal Psychiatrist Dr. Hill and one of the characters is another one of his patients? Would be a pretty big coincidence, but not out of the realm of possibility I guess.
always funny to remember darth vader is anakin skywalker. the adrenaline junkie chucklefuck who used to dive head first out of speeders and built a pod racer in his yard when he was like six is now upper-middle management for the evil empire. half of his appearances in the original trilogy are Meetings. vader spends like 80% of his time dealing with bureaucratic bullshit. status updates. team meetings. holo-Zooms. budget rundowns. anakin betrayed the jedi and caused the fall of the republic and his punishment is being CC'd on every email forever. and you know what. he would hate that. the punishment fits the criminal
Just came home from a dinner party with the friendgroup at which several people kept saying "Ask Pedro" or "Pedro will know" and I was terrified that they were referring to an AI like Claude but no, thank fuck, they were referring to a cardboard cutout of Pedro Pascal that someone left upstairs and who has been designated a kind of patron saint status in the household.
One of my favorite little Bad Batch moments is when Cid tells Omega, "You'll have to convince Dark 'n Broody first," and Hunter says, "Convince me of what?" without even skipping a beat or making any kind of protest
Super late to this, but @asaara-writes tagged me to share five fictional women I love, and obviously I can never pass up a chance to talk about fictional women. (I agonized over how to narrow it down to five haha)
Velanna, Dragon Age (o b v i o u s l y)
Emily "Danger is my middle fucking name" Davis, Until Dawn
Nadine Ross, Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, because how could I not include a character capable of handing both the Drake brothers their asses but also adorkable enough to ride an elephant and geek out over monkeys
Fennec Shand, multiple Star Wars media, who could stand on my throat and I'd thank her with my dying breath
Kay Vess, Star Wars Outlaws, whose awesomeness makes me continually tempted to replay Outlaws even though the gameplay made me want to hurl my PS5 controller into the sun
Bonus round: more Star Wars women, because the above five were in danger of all being from the galaxy far far away...
*deep breath* Lana Beniko aka the light of my life, Phee Genoa aka the light of Tech's life, JYN FUCKING ERSO (the light of Cassian Andor's life), Bo-Katan Kryze, Omega, Asajj Ventress who's so cool they brought her back from the dead, Sabine Wren and Shin Hati who are extremely gay for each other (I accept no criticism), Vel Sartha and Cinta Kaz who are extremely gay in canon, Cara Dune because it's not her fault her actress is human garbage, Ahsoka Tano, the Armorer in The Mandalorian, Pelli Motto who is basically me in 20 years, and and and
Tagging anyone who would like to love on fictional ladies!
origamiaround
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
gracieabrams
tangentwithtanner
