The gold-standard in video game horror is now the gateway to a new series

Until Dawn absolutely owned in 2015.

It's still one of the best PlayStation 4 games, this playable horror story where your decisions and split-second button presses directly influence which members of the cast live and die. And now, the building blocks that make Until Dawn special are apparently going to live on.

The newly announced Dark Pictures Anthology gives developer Supermassive Games a platform to continue toying with ideas first laid out in Until Dawn. Even better, it won't be a PlayStation-only party anymore; the first game, at least, is coming to PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2019.

That first game is called Man of Medan, and it starts with a premise that really leans in on horror tropes. The story follows four American tourists as their summer boat cruise plans go completely off the rails when they end up stranded aboard a haunted World War II-era ghost ship.

Here's a tiny taste.

Of course, for anyone who played Until Dawn, there's every reason to believe that this trailer's "ghost ship horror story" vibe is a bait-and-switch. This is the part where I'll suggest going and playing the earlier game -- I'm about to spoil its biggest, and best, secret.

Yup, it's spoiler alert time.

In early looks, Until Dawn's story looked like one that anchored its brand of horror to the "torture porn" hits of the early Aughts, along the lines of the Saw and Hostel movies. As players delved deeper, however, it became clear that this was an act of misdirection: Really, Until Dawn has more in common with the creature features of the '80s.

Watch the launch trailer. Do you get any kind of a monster movie vibe here? This looks like a story about a creepy-masked slasher hunting teens in the snowy woods.

Now along comes this trailer for Men of Medan. By all appearances so far, it's a haunted house ghost story set on a derelict war ship. But can we really trust that, given Supermassive's history? How will the studio tie our brains into knots this time around?

For what it's worth, I don't think the same subgenre-flipping twist can work again. But it wasn't the twist itself that made Until Dawn a success in my book; it was everything that twist represented.

Plenty of games are scary. I've shouted involuntarily at the jump-scare moments in Silent Hill games. The act of reviewing Resident Evil 7 left me physically exhausted after every play session because that game did such a stellar job of building tension.

Until Dawn is different, though. It's written and executed like a horror movie. It plays with familiar tropes by forcing you to act during moments that would usually get audiences shouting in a theater. When the slasher is chasing a character, you can stupidly choose to hide under a bed -- or not, and then deal with the consequences of either decision.

That's why Until Dawn works. It's a playable horror movie. You only have yourself to blame when a character makes a dumb decision, because it was your decision all along. And all those actions have real consequences; just about every character in the game lives or dies based on how you play.

The only problem with Until Dawn: As good as its ideas and its execution are, the story is completely self-contained. A couple threads are left to dangle at the very end, but a sequel never felt like the right move. The story always felt stronger as a standalone thing.

That's why this Dark Pictures Anthology is so exciting. Superemassive is taking the killer foundation established in Until Dawn and applying it to a series of new, unconnected stories. It's a baller move.