Once you finish The Medium you are met by a message from the game’s developers, Bloober Team. The message reveals that this has been the teams most ambitious project. However, it’s also a project which means a lot to the Polish studio. Bloober’s intent with their latest psychological-horror project was to make something personal to them that will also leave an impression on the player.
The Medium’s setting, 1999 Poland, is unique and crafted with the utmost authenticity. When the introduction sequence starts, following some basic gameplay, it shows real life images and clips of its setting. On its own, this is a powerful sequence.
What lends the game a further authenticity is the nearly all-Polish team that worked on it. You can instantly tell that this is a setting the team are familiar with and passionate about. This familiarity and passion shines through in The Medium‘s environmental and character driven storytelling.
A Terrifying Tale
The Medium is told mostly through the eyes of Marianne, the game’s primary protagonist and powerful spirit medium. Marianne’s powers allow her to see through the veil that separates the spirit realm from reality. Consequently, she can see both worlds simultaneously.
Marianne is a great character whose prior run-ins with the spirit realm means she has a good reason to stay courageous through what is a miserable and tragic story. The story itself follows many different, brilliantly told narrative threads, all of which deal with horrific themes. It would be easy for this bleak story to weigh the player down but Marianne’s unique history means she can add a bit of levity to moments that need it most.
Dual Frights
The Medium plays out with a well-designed fixed camera system, and otherwise simple gameplay mechanics. Bloober team use this camera system to devise some great scares and tension whilst exploring the game. Some interesting features include being able to hold your breath when wanting to stay out of sight, as well as the well marketed and discussed dual-rendering mechanic.
The dual rendering is an interesting concept and can create some interesting puzzles and explorative moments when the screen splits in half showing two versions of what you see. Sometimes this split will happen vertically or horizontally, depending on whichever makes sense in that moment. You will also find yourself flitting between the worlds in full screen too. Again, it all depends on what is happening at the time and is entirely scripted when these moments will occur.
Safe from Harm
When in the real world, you can feel a sense of safety. Monstrous entities often only appear when in the spirit world. This means you get a strange feeling of calm, even if the eerie and dark environments still represent the dreariest of video game locations.
This can influence how you feel in the spirit world which by default is uniquely horrifying thanks to its inspiration from Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński. His work focuses on “dystopian surrealism” which gives the environments, monsters, and general atmosphere a truly dreadful presence. Bloober’s art team have done a fantastic job in realising this inspiration, delivering some visually striking horrors throughout the experience.
Keep it Moving
Puzzles are easy in The Medium. But this is no negative thing as the game is paced meticulously for the benefit of its story. Often you will need to investigate points of interest around you, sometimes needing to go out of your body into timed sections where you must move exclusively in the spirit world.
Although basic, the puzzles are varied with great environments. There is also an excellent narrative design within the item you interact with or collect. There will also be times where you are stalked by the game’s creepy antagonist, the Maw.
Voiced by Troy Baker, the Maw delivers some terrifying dialogue. Lines such as “Let me wear you” will chill you. These moments can create nail biting sequences, which give you a great sense of satisfaction when you come through the other end.
The Art of Noise
Troy Baker’s performance is not the only one of note, with every single performance being top notch. Kelly Burke delivers each line as Marianne, perfectly. Whether she is retrospectively narrating something, talking to herself or giving a well-timed quip; every inch of dialogue is believable.
The soundtrack and general audio are superbly mixed with the dialogue and the general timings of each scene. This all helps highlight the surreal moments of the game and gives it its general artistic quality. The audio elements of The Medium truly elevate its story and characters.
The Meddling Performance
The Medium suffers from technical hiccups, mostly in the graphics department. Whilst the art style and ambience are nailed, it can sometimes break the immersion when textures begin flashing, popping, and breaking. Towards the end of the game, all the textures on character’s faces had black grid-like glitches on them which unfortunately bled into every cutscene and gameplay moment from then on.
You will struggle to get this game to run at 60fps, but 30fps is certainly doable and the slow-paced gameplay works fine with that performance. You may have to play with some settings to get the desired results, with Ray Tracing unfortunately causing problems in the inventory screen and general lighting glitches. This was played with an RTX 2060 and i7 6700k, which managed a solid 30fps experience at 1440p with medium settings (no pun intended).
Oober Work
Coming in at about 8 hours in length, The Medium is a digestible experience that tops anything Bloober Team has done before. It manages to do what most horror games cannot, and that is tell a meaningful and unconvoluted story with a clear shared vision from a passionate team of creatives.
The level of ambition may have caused some technical problems here and there, but The Medium is one of the best horror experiences of recent times and being available through Xbox Game Pass makes it a must play.
Reviewed on PC via Xbox Game Pass
