Until Dawn's PS5 remake scares – with bugs, image quality concerns and frame delivery issues

Ahead of its eventual theatrical release (and rumoured sequel), Sony has returned to the Canadian Rockies to remake 2015’s interactive horror drama Until Dawn for PS5. Digital Foundry’s own Canadian representative, Oliver Mackenzie, was given just 24 hours before the game’s October 4th launch to test it out. Unfortunately, the game is on a shaky technical footing so far, despite some impressive elements in this surprisingly deep remake.

Let’s start, as Oliver did recounting his experiences on DF Direct Weekly #183, with the good stuff. Compared to the original PS4 version running on PS5, it’s clear that there are some seismic upgrades in terms of character models, environments and even cinematography. The opening minutes of the game have been significantly expanded too, with new and reworked gameplay segments that replace previous quick-time event sequences and a new third-person camera that replaces the loosely tracked and fixed or semi-fixed shots in the original game.

Until Dawn’s core visual design has also seen a generational leap, as you’d expect from an early PS4 title transitioning to the now-mature PS5 using Unreal Engine 5, with higher-res graphics and effects, better lighting and skin rendering and a warmer colour tone. However, this fidelity upgrade isn’t matched by improvements to performance, and the game has other issues too that call into question exactly how much QA time and polish the remake was afforded.

0:00:00 Introduction0:00:53 News 1: Nintendo takes down Ryujinx0:17:28 News 2: Until Dawn remake tested!0:33:20 News 3: Unreal MegaLights tech demoed0:48:26 News 4: Square Enix wants FF16 on Xbox0:57:39 News 5: Next Guerrilla game reportedly Horizon online1:06:04 News 6: God of War Ragnarök gets PC patch boosts1:14:02 News 7: STALKER 2 documentary shows war torn game development1:22:20 Supporter Q1: Was Strix Halo designed for a new Steam Machine? Could Steam Machines match the performance of a PS5 Pro at the same price?1:28:56 Supporter Q2: What is Naughty Dog working on?1:35:04 Supporter Q3: Will Switch 2 support the newest UE5 features?1:38:43 Supporter Q4: Can the Switch 2 compete performance wise with the Steam Deck? Does it need to?1:42:34 Supporter Q5: The PS5 Pro hasn’t sold out, so is this a sign of underperforming sales?

Some of these issues are glaring but limited in scope. For example, the 2024 remake has significant frame pacing or frame ordering issues in its (admittedly few) pre-rendered cutscenes, making them look bad even if you’re not exactly sure why. There’s also a film grain effect enabled by default that updates extremely slowly – perhaps at one-sixth to one-quarter rate, or 10 to 15Hz – and is extremely coarse and ugly as a result. Thankfully, this can be disabled, but other issues are more deep-seated.