Supermassive Games has made quite a name for itself. After the success of Until Dawn, the studio has continued with similar gameplay experiences. We’ve seen the team bring out titles like The Dark Pictures Anthology, a series of games that played out similar to Until Dawn. However, you might be surprised to learn that Until Dawn was not the original development team responsible for getting this project off the ground. Instead, the developer responsible initially for this horror game was Sony’s London Studio.
Thanks to a report from Time Extension, some of the history behind Until Dawn’s early years is surfacing online. Sony’s London Studio has been around for quite a long time. Established in 2002, the studio has worked on a wide variety of games. At the time of Until Dawn’s conception, it was the studio’s job to deliver a game that would showcase the power of the PlayStation Move, a new device developed for the PlayStation 3. Time Extension spoke with a few former studio employees, who have remained anonymous.
According to the sources, it was the studio’s job to compete with the Nintendo Wii, which had a ton of success with its own move controls. As a result, the team started to put together a project that would eventually become Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn. Some differences here include the game being made in the first-person perspective. Meanwhile, the PlayStation 3 Move control was heavily focused in a variety of areas. Former developers described a wide range of actions that would be used, from opening doors and manipulating objects to even quick time events that would likely determine the fate of your character.
The overall basis also seems to be intact, with the storyline focused on a group of characters stuck in the mountains while being stalked. However, rather than controlling the whole cast, this original build was meant only to feature two playable characters. From there, it was a couch cooperative experience where players would swap the controller back and forth when it came time to control their designated character.
While the game was not properly unveiled to the public, snippets of the footage were showcased when highlighting the upcoming PlayStation Move controller. Behind the scenes, there seemed to be some issues keeping the game project moving smoothly. As a result, it’s reported that the studio hired Mark Simmons, a director behind Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Silent Hill Origins. With Mark taking the reigns, it looked like the project was moving in the right direction when Sony came in and killed off the project.
At the time, the developers assumed it was just dead in the water. That was until Supermassive Games revealed their Until Dawn project. It looked like Sony decided to hand this game project over to the studio to see if they could deliver a new take from where the London Studio left off. A former employee told Time Extension that it felt a bit soul-destroying at the time. Now, looking back, the developers have massive respect for the studio to turn Until Dawn into such a success.
To have a project that was just at the point of getting good shuttered and taken away from you was yeah, at the time, a little bit soul-destroying. But I have massive respect for what Supermassive did with it. I think if there was ever a final product of something you worked on, I couldn’t have asked for a better job to have been done of it.
Former Dev – Time Extension
Of course, the London Studio has continued on with making projects to associate with some of Sony’s big hardware accessors like the PlayStation VR. Meanwhile, Supermassive Games has pressed forward with the horror genre, with titles like Little Nightmares III and The Casting of Frank Stone being a couple of projects currently being developed by the team.
