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[ManaByte]

Here's Why Supermassive Never Made Until Dawn 2

"The Quarry team was originally Until Dawn 2 working with Sony"

www.timeextension.com

Last night's State of Play saw Sony announce a newly rebuilt and enhanced port of Until Dawn for PS5 and PC, from the developer Ballistic Moon, again raising the question of why its original developer Supermassive Games has yet to make a sequel to the popular survival horror game.

But what you might now know is that a sequel was actually considered at one point by the studio and Sony, with former employees telling the author of this article that the game eventually evolved into what became the 2022 title The Quarry.

One employee, for instance, told us, "The Quarry team was originally Until Dawn 2 working with Sony. And Sony basically paid for them to be making this for them as a prototype. Then once the prototype was done, Supermassive turned around and said, ‘We’re going to shop this around and see if anyone else wants it”, which was kind of the final nail in the coffin of any relationship with Sony. They ended up getting picked up by Google who funded it for years."

Another employee seemed to confirm The Quarry was at one point Until Dawn 2, but offered a slightly different take on these events, suggesting it was Sony who broke things off over The Dark Pictures' multi-platform approach: "The Quarry started as a pitch for Until Dawn, but they didn’t have the license. They burnt their bridges with Sony by releasing Dark Pictures on multiple platforms. As far as I’m aware someone else has that license now."

So those people thinking The Quarry was a spiritual successor to Until Dawn weren't far off. It started out as the sequel.

 

[skit_data]

Lol, talk about burning bridges

 

[DenchDeckard]

This isn't be true right, if the staff and original owners move to this new studio. Why would Sony poach the people that did them dirty?

 

[Mr Moose]

They burnt their bridges with Sony by releasing Dark Pictures on multiple platforms.

Huh? Why would Sony care? They were shit.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

The Quarry was actually pretty good but it's no Until Dawn. I really don't think they'll ever replicate the success of that first game again, new studio and all.

 

[Fbh]

I guess Sony dodged a bullet.
These guys were a one hit wonder. Until Dawn was pretty cool but everything else I've played by them has been terrible: Man of Medan, Little Hope, The Quarry.

I've heard House of Ashes is decent but at this point I'm done giving them my time/money.

 

[Gojiira]

Thats actually pretty scummy, Sony funds the prototype and they just decided to shop it around…Final nail indeed.
Its not hard to see how The Quarry would have been a sequel, just a model swap for Wendigos and your almost there already.
Tbh it makes it even weirder that Sony would want to revisit UD, I know theres a movie coming out but the same can be said for a much more popular game that needs a update or sequel…Bloodborne…

 

[Loomy]

This isn't be true right, if the staff and original owners move to this new studio. Why would Sony poach the people that did them dirty?

Those decisions would have been made by studio leadership, who are now leaving the company. Individual contributors wouldn't have anything to do with those decisions.

 

[drotahorror]

I guess Sony dodged a bullet.
These guys were a one hit wonder. Until Dawn was pretty cool but everything else I've played by them has been terrible: Man of Medan, Little Hope, The Quarry.

I've heard House of Ashes is decent but at this point I'm done giving them my time/money.

I think I'm in the minority but I kind of liked Little Hope. Until Dawn and LH are the only titles I enjoyed. I thought HoA was trash and boring.

My ranking is probably UD >>>>>> Quarry=Little Hope > MoM > HoA > DI. I did not play DI or HoA to completion though.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

I've heard House of Ashes is decent but at this point I'm done giving them my time/money.

That's actually the best one of their Anthology games. Easily.

 

[SimTourist]

Huh? Why would Sony care? They were shit.

Something something shame and honour

 

[LavitzSlambert]

Sounds about right. Whoever was calling the shots had no idea what they were doing. Why risk your relationship with Sony when they had been bankrolling your game and had made the first one so successful? This kind of cinematic movie-game is their specialty, where as Google is just cash.


Big mistake, they could have done well with Until Dawn 2 as a PlayStation exclusive.

 

[GrayChild]

Supermassive just shot themselves in the foot.

I don't know how much the rest of you know about game development culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in Hollywood where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in the gaming industry, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.

What this means is the gamer public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase Supermassive's next game for any system, nor will they purchase any of the Dark Pictures Anthology installments. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Supermassive has alienated an entire market with this move.

Supermassive, publicly apologize and cancel every non-PS ports of your future games or you can kiss your business goodbye.

 

[analog_future]

The Quarry was fantastic and I can't wait to play the Until Dawn remake/remaster!

 

[Bojji]

I like their games, they get better with each dark pictures release and quarry was also quite good.

 

[TGO]

Dumb shits

 

[SkylineRKR]

Until Dawn was sort of fun when it came out, I beat it over a weekend and then sold it. I largely forgot about it. I also kind of fail to see the point of an Until Dawn remaster.

Personally I think this studio is worthless for Sony anyway.

 

[Hemingwayoffbase]

There’s something to be said for the fact that the first Until Dawn had a level of actor talent they basically can’t ever repeat.

I mean, Rami Malek went on to win an Oscar for best actor. Talk about buying a stock at the right time.

They’ll never get A-list talent for what is essentially a B-movie FMV quickTime game again. It does make a sort of sense to reprint the game with the big talent rather than making what will inevitably feel like a straight-to-video sequel.

 

[Ozriel]

There’s no common sense in thinking that Sony (or any other corporate entity) would fund a prototype game without contracts or binding agreements in place keeping them from ‘shopping it around’

that employee is simply wrong, and it’s weird for anyone to expect that every employee know everything that happens at the head of any organization.

Why In the world would any of you think this was a plausible explanation? Multi-billion dollar corporations aren’t run like kindergartens.


The Tequila Works guys who made RIME had their deal terminated by Sony and went their way to release the game later after Sony had funded the prototype. Thats how these things usually go.

 

[CamHostage]

There’s no common sense in thinking that Sony (or any other corporate entity) would fund a prototype game without contracts or binding agreements in place keeping them from ‘shopping it around’...

The Tequila Works guys who made RIME had their deal terminated by Sony and went their way to release the game later after Sony had funded the prototype. Thats how these things usually go.

My assumption would be that either Sony was hesitant or indicating disinterest in continuing the project after the first production round or the deal actually did terminate (or was put in turnaround and still in discussion but not re-signed by contract) and so Supermassive had enough indicator that things were not moving forward with Sony at the time.

But also, that's the thing about rumors, they're fun bits of info but they're never from the people who would actually know all the ins and outs of the business dealings. You can safely bet that leaks are never from the president of the company or game director or somebody up top, and even if it's an experienced member of the staff who is leaking because they know the unproduced history of games is a fascinating (and frustratingly rarely told) part of the history of games, they aren't in on everything. Different industry, but I've been in a position before where I knew something about a project or office change and could tell people about it, yet when the final thing came about, it wasn't quite what I would have told people about at the time even though I'm one of the few in a position of that department to know. Business are weird, fluid entities.

 

[Ozriel]

My assumption would be that either Sony was hesitant or indicating disinterest in continuing the project after the first production round or the deal actually did terminate (or was put in turnaround and still in discussion but not re-signed by contract) and so Supermassive had enough indicator that things were not moving forward with Sony at the time.

But also, that's the thing about rumors, they're fun bits of info but they're never from the people who would actually know all the ins and outs of the business dealings. You can safely bet that leaks are never from the president of the company or game director or somebody up top, and even if it's an experienced member of the staff who is leaking because they know the unproduced history of games is a fascinating (and frustratingly rarely told) part of the history of games, they aren't in on everything. Different industry, but I've been in a position before where I knew something about a project or office change and could tell people about it, yet when the final thing came about, it wasn't quite what I would have told people about at the time even though I'm one of the few in a position of that department to know. Business are weird, fluid entities.

For sure, and I agree with you that there’s usually some element of truth in things rank and file employees get to know (filtered down from corridor gist) but rarely the full picture.

What is clear is that there’s no way anyone at Sony would enter an arrangement with a third party without a legally binding agreement signed. Someone would be getting fired over that.

 

[Alandring]

I think I'm in the minority but I kind of liked Little Hope. Until Dawn and LH are the only titles I enjoyed. I thought HoA was trash and boring.

My ranking is probably UD >>>>>> Quarry=Little Hope > MoM > HoA > DI. I did not play DI or HoA to completion though.

My personal ranking is Man of Medan > Until Dawn > House of Ashes >>> Little Hope >>> The Quarry >>>>> The Devil in Me.

I played multiple playthrough (22 hours of game time) of Man of Medan, I really enjoyed it. The fact that everyone can die, sure, but anytime (like Conrad who did really quickly in my first playthrough), unlike in Until Dawn where some characters were immune until chapter 9.

But for the next games, I had the feeling that their just more of the same, with the same flaws as the first one. I accept them in Man of Medan, but it was harder at each release. They tried to innovate in The Devil in Me, but not in the right direction imo. And the game had so many bugs at launch.

For Until Dawn and The Quarry, I prefer shorter games with more replayability (more choices, more ways, more endings), especially since I also play those games in local co-op (unavailable in Until Dawn, I really hope the remaster will add it!).

I really enjoyed the accessibility features in The Quarry (the fact that you can skip every QTE), but it was really hard to explore everything, with the save system and the impossibity to skip cutscenes already seen. Plus, it's probably the story that I enjoyed the last, because everything happens because of some really bad decisions from the characters that you cannot change.

 

[Jesb]

I enjoyed their dark series as well. Still haven’t played a few of them. Been thinking of grabbing the whole series on pc to play on gfn. I’m not sure what some were expecting out of these games. They have done good for my expectations. They never released anything as good as until dawn but still some quality there.

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

In my experience this isn’t how funded prototypes with external partners works.

The proof of concept may be funded by an outside party and that party has the ability to move forward after the scope of the PoC has been completed or they can choose to ditch it.

With zero “insider knowledge” about this instance my gut says (if this proof of concept rumor is true) Sony either passed on the PoC or wanted to make changes to the development and distribution agreement.

At which point the dev said “well…we can make something on our own terms” and they went that way.

There are always two sides of the story and rarely 100% of it ever sees the light of day.

 

[BennyBlanco]

The Quarry started out as an Until Dawn sequel

But what you might now know is that a sequel was actually considered at one point by the studio and Sony, with former employees telling the author of this article that the game eventually evolved into what became the 2022 title The Quarry. We came upon this information back in 2022, during an...

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