Between multiple previews, interviews, and a release date, Bloober Team’s Cronos: The New Dawn has been ramping up the hype. There’s still plenty left to discover about the time-hopping post-apocalyptic adventure, especially how it ends (since there are multiple endings). However, survival horror fans can rest assured that it’s still a “linear” experience, albeit with “moments of freedom.”
When asked about the overall structure, game director Jacek Zięba explained to MP1st, “It’s hard to answer because we have a time travel story. In the case of structure, it’s linear with moments of freedom, like backtracking and resolving all the stuff on the level. But still the story will need to go on a proper pace, because we want to say something very specific here.”
Lead writer/narrative designer Grzegorz Like added, “We thought about doing multiple variations of things, and all that, but after experimenting, we decided to make it more linear because that’s more of a friendly environment for horror stories. Because you don’t want to make it too big, because it wears off, you know? But we still wanted to give the player that kind of feel of choices and all that, so we have dialogue choices, and your choices affect what you see in the game, what souls you have in your collection.”
“People you extract will change the way you perceive the game. They will whisper different things, and they will give you context of things. After one play through, you meet your friend in a bar, you will talk about the game, and your experience will be a bit different, and maybe that will make you, you know, replay the game.”
While this could provide enough incentive to revisit the story, Like also confirmed that players can opt for New Game Plus and “change the difficulty to a higher level.” The different difficulty options have yet to be detailed, but for completionists, it’s a great way to spice up a second or third playthrough.
Cronos: The New Dawn launches on September 5th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. You can check out some more extensive gameplay from the beginning of the story here. For those attending Gamescom from August 20th to 24th, a demo will also be playable at the Xbox booth.
