Over the last few months as the marketing for next generation consoles are finally starting to gear up, we’ve gotten a look at a lot of different titles. One of those was horror title, The Medium. Developed by Bloober Team, who has made a lot of horror titles such as the latest Blair Witch game, Observer and the Layers of Fear series, it’s said to only be able to be made on next gen systems. It looked quite different than those games, and that’s because it’s aiming for a far different feel.
The first and biggest noticeable change is that the game will be third person, unlike all of their previous work that’s been first person only. Not only will it be third person, but they are going real old school with what Wojciech Piejko, Lead Game Designer, describe as “semi-fixed camera angles” in an interview with GamesRadar. It’s not clear what exactly he means by semi-fixed, but presumably this is like the older Resident Evil and Silent Hill games in some way.
Speaking of Silent Hill, the game drips influence of that franchise. The inspiration is pretty obvious (and if you didn’t pick up on it, the legendary Akira Yamaoka helping with the soundtrack should have clued you in). The game utilizes two worlds, a regular one and a degraded, creepy one much like the Silent Hill games did, but it sounds like there will more involved aspects to that instead of the game passively transforming as you progress. The Medium is a “love letter” to Silent Hill according to Producer Jacek Zięba in the same interview.
“I think we could even think about the connections with our game. It’s not only the music, but, of course, Silent Hill has also got two worlds… but we’re using it completely differently. But I think there are many points that you may connect with those games. But we are not, of course, trying to recreate Silent Hill 2 here – we are doing our own story – from the very beginning, we said that we want to create a serious, narrative-driven, cinematic experience with a Silent Hill vibe.”
The Medium is aiming to launch this year for Xbox Series X and PC.