Until Dawn 2 Has a Release Date, and Its Fake Ghost-Hunting YouTubers Are About to Regret Everything

Until Dawn 2 launches January 28, 2027, and its new trailer finally explains what Firesprite is doing with the sequel. Eight fake paranormal YouTubers, one abandoned tropical island, a suspiciously important chicken and the return of Dr. Hill. This already sounds like an extremely bad group holiday.

The original Until Dawn gave us eight attractive young people, one terrible weekend and enough bad decisions to keep YouTube playthroughs alive for years. Its sequel has somehow found an even better group of people to throw into a supernatural disaster.

Fake ghost-hunting influencers.

Firesprite confirmed during State of Play that Until Dawn 2 launches January 28, 2027 on PS5, with pre-orders opening September 10. The new cast runs a massively popular paranormal channel called Dead True, except there is one small problem: they have never actually found a ghost. Most of their supernatural content is staged.

Then they finally find something real. This goes about as well as expected.

Dead True Starts by Making Content About the First Game

One of the smartest connections to the original is where the new story begins.

Dead True visits Blackwood Sanitorium, shooting an episode about the horrifying events that happened there 12 years earlier. New intern Izzy, played by Sarah Catherine Hook, discovers something she was definitely not supposed to find, and whatever happens there completely changes the crew's plans.

Later, at HorrorCon in Sydney, they meet Yoona, played by Gia Kim, a survivor of an actual supernatural attack. She even has a rather unpleasant necrotic scar to prove it.

That encounter sends Dead True to Akishima Island, a remote South Pacific island where a luxury resort mysteriously shut down in the 1970s. Nobody lives there anymore.

Naturally, eight influencers hear “abandoned haunted island” and think: Content.

Until Dawn 2: Choice & Consequence Trailer

Akishima Looks Beautiful, Which Is Usually a Terrible Sign in Horror Games

Until Dawn 2 swaps the freezing mountains and snowy cabins of the original for something almost offensively pretty.

Akishima is tropical, sunny and covered in dense jungle. Dead True arrives after landing its first properly funded television deal, expecting to shoot the biggest episode of its career. Firesprite describes the island as hiding secrets that are centuries old and very interested in revenge.

The change of setting is a really good move. Trying to recreate Blackwood Mountain exactly would have made the sequel feel like Until Dawn again but with different actors. A tropical island gives Firesprite completely different horror tools: abandoned resorts, dense jungle, caves, old buildings, isolated beaches and the unsettling feeling that the thing chasing you might be somewhere behind approximately fourteen thousand trees. And because this is still Until Dawn, the island is only half the problem.

The other half is the people you brought with you.

Their Relationships Can Apparently Get You Killed Now

The Butterfly Effect is back, but Firesprite is putting much more emphasis on relationships between characters.

Small conversations can change how people feel about each other, and some later story branches will only become available depending on where those relationships stand. That means deciding whether somebody likes you could eventually matter just as much as deciding which door to open.

The examples Firesprite has already given are wonderfully messy.

Do you risk hurting yourself to rescue a baby boar from a bear trap? Do you keep a secret affair going even though it could destroy the group? Do you push one of your friends past their breaking point because your terrifying network boss wants better footage?

That last one feels particularly appropriate for a game about influencers.

The original Until Dawn made tiny choices unexpectedly important. Shoot a squirrel early in the game and something seemingly unrelated can come back much later to punish you.

Until Dawn 2 seems to be taking that idea and adding:

What if your friends also remembered that you were an as*hole?

One Choice Is Literally “Sacrifice the Chicken or Use Your Own Blood”

And then there is the chicken.

Dead True apparently travels with a chicken companion, which already makes them more interesting than most paranormal YouTube channels.

During one sequence, Mina, played by Camila Senna, receives an order from the network: perform a ritual sacrifice live on camera.

The game gives you two options.

Sacrifice the chicken.

Or:

Set it free and offer your own blood instead.

This is exactly the kind of stupidly uncomfortable choice Until Dawn needs.

There is no obviously correct videogame answer. Save the chicken and maybe your character pays for it. Obey the network and you have just murdered the group's innocent bird for engagement.

Also, if Firesprite thinks I am sacrificing the chicken after specifically calling it the team's “plucky chicken companion,” they have badly misunderstood how videogame players work.

That bird is leaving Akishima alive.

Everyone else is negotiable.

Owen Gets a Choice That Sounds Normal Until You Remember What Game This Is

Another trailer decision follows Owen, played by Dacre Montgomery, the cocky star of Dead True.

His friend Nate, played by Spence Moore II, has gone missing. Owen detects a signal that could lead him toward Nate, but there is another option: cross a suspicious-looking bridge and investigate a strangely active bar.

Help your missing friend.

Or investigate the mysterious bar on the abandoned haunted island.

In another game, this would not be difficult.

In Until Dawn, the bar could contain the clue that saves everyone six hours later, while following Nate immediately somehow results in three decapitations and a broken relationship.

That unpredictability is the whole appeal.

Firesprite wants players constantly wondering whether the sensible choice is actually the safe choice.

The People Behind Dispatch Are Helping Write It

This is one of the details that makes Until Dawn 2 considerably more interesting.

Supermassive Games is not developing the sequel. Sony-owned Firesprite, the studio behind Horizon Call of the Mountain, is leading development.

But Firesprite has partnered with AdHoc Studio, the team behind Dispatch, on the story.

That is a pretty exciting combination for this kind of game.

Dispatch built much of its appeal around characters talking, fighting, flirting and making terrible interpersonal decisions. Until Dawn works best for exactly the same reason. The monsters matter, but watching a group slowly collapse under pressure is half the fun.

Firesprite specifically promises sharp dialogue, complicated relationships and choices that ripple through the story, which sounds very much like AdHoc's wheelhouse.

The big question is whether Until Dawn 2 can create another cast people actually care about killing.

Accidentally.

Mostly.

Dr. Hill Is Back, and I Already Don't Trust Whatever This Means

There is one familiar face.

Peter Stormare returns as Dr. Hill.

The original game's deeply unsettling psychiatrist became one of Until Dawn's most memorable characters, appearing between chapters to question the player while gradually becoming much stranger as the story unfolded.

Firesprite has not explained exactly how Dr. Hill fits into Until Dawn 2's new story, which is probably intentional.

And I would rather not know.

His return gives the sequel an actual connection to Until Dawn beyond the Blackwood references without forcing the original characters back into a story that does not need them.

Pre-order either edition and you also get Dr. Hill-themed extras, including his classic Until Dawn outfit, an Akishima holiday outfit and collectible Dr. Hill bobbleheads hidden around the game.

Nothing says psychological horror like searching an abandoned island for tiny Peter Stormares.

The Deluxe Edition Lets Everyone Die in Y2K Fashion

Until Dawn 2 has eight members of Dead True: Owen, Mina, Nate, Reagan, Izzy, Luke, Josie and Cameron.

The Digital Deluxe Edition includes a Y2K Neon Vibes Pack giving the entire group colourful alternate costumes.

More interesting is Diorama of Death.

That mode lets you revisit the game's fatal outcomes as individual vignettes and view each gruesome death from different angles.

That is wonderfully morbid.

Until Dawn players already spend an unreasonable amount of time deliberately making different decisions just to see how badly things can go.

Firesprite has apparently decided to formalize that hobby.

Congratulations, you got Owen killed in a completely new way. Would you like to rotate the camera?

Until Dawn 2 Has the Right Kind of Stupid Premise

This is what makes me much more interested in Until Dawn 2 after the latest trailer.

Firesprite does not appear embarrassed by what Until Dawn is.

It is still a cinematic horror game about attractive people making questionable decisions while the player desperately tries to prevent those decisions from becoming fatal. The Butterfly Effect is back. QTE-style pressure is back. Relationships matter. Characters can die. Everyone can live and everyone can die.

But the setup feels fresh.

Fake ghost hunters finally encountering real ghosts is already fun. Sending them to an abandoned tropical resort is better. Making their television network encourage increasingly dangerous behaviour gives the whole thing a modern horror angle that could become surprisingly nasty.

Until Dawn 2 Announcement Trailer

Until Dawn 2 launches January 28, 2027 exclusively on PS5 at launch, with pre-orders beginning September 10. Sony has not announced a PC version yet.