Perhaps the most interesting project shown during the May program Inside xbox became the next generation psychological horror The medium. The Polish studio is responsible for its development. Bloober teamgiving fans such interesting projects as Blair witch, Observer and Layers of fear. Two composers write music for The Medium at once – Arkadiusz Reikovsky from the Bloober Team and Akira Yamaokaknown for the series Silent hill.
As part of the Xbox 20/20 Microsoft event introduced the official trailer of the game, however, saying that The Medium will be released this fall at the same time as the release of the Xbox Series X. The plot of The Medium is not as simple as it seems.
Players will take control of the girl Marianne. Being a medium, she is capable of being in two worlds at once: the real and the ghostly. The heroine is haunted by visions of a dead child, so Marianne will have to return to an abandoned hotel, where a terrible tragedy happened many years ago. It is there that she will find answers to her difficult questions.
The plot of The Medium intrigued us no less than the visuals and the outstanding music of Yamaoka, so we decided to figure out what the project of Polish developers was and how it was born.
Teaser Wii U
It turns out the first information about the game appeared back in 2012. Then the Bloober Team, with the support of Nintendo, was preparing for Wii U a mysterious project called The Medium.
The teaser was distributed through a hint to the Japanese company’s new phone call system for journalists.
“They called me from an unknown number. I usually do not answer calls, but then I thought, why not, and answered.
“Hello?” I say. In response to the other end of the wire, muffled sounds were heard. They were very weak. I repeated: “Hello?”
“Do you know about Wii U?” A mysterious voice answered me in the receiver. “If not, you’ll find out soon,” wrote the NWR editor in 2012.
The first image of The Medium
A few hours later, Nintendo announced a special edition of Nintendo Direct, which was supposed to go before E3 2012, and the telephone teaser The Medium outgrown into a project for Wii U, PlayStation 3, PS Vita, Xbox 360, PC, iOS and Android.
The most ambitious project of the studio
Since then, not a word has been heard about The Medium, until at E3 2019, the developers suddenly remembered the project. It was reported that The Medium will become the studio’s largest game, and the Bloober Team did not slow down development for a single day.
In June 2019, the company introduced Blair Witch, which premiered on August 30, but was created by another division, and there are three of them in the Bloober Team. One of the teams, meanwhile, was preparing the largest and most ambitious project – The Medium.
Last summer, President of the Bloober Team Peter Babieno first revealed the details. In an interview with the Polish edition of Business Insider, he stated that The Medium is essentially “two games in one.”
In their games, the Bloober Team usually raises a certain question, for example, in Blair Witch, the creators asked the player where the verge of humanity ends, and in Layers of Fear, which is more important, work or family?
In The Medium, developers are trying to show a person’s life from different angles. Depending on this, things take a completely different turn. The heroine of the new project was a female medium, able to see both the real and the spiritual world.
The project was originally supposed to go on sale in 2018 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, but was postponed to 2023, as it was then said, “in connection with the debut of the new generation of consoles for which the game is now being developed.”
Idea
The Bloober Team consulted with psychologists, whose studies showed that people now absorb much more information, so it is much more difficult for developers to attract the attention of a player, viewer and consumer. It’s easiest for filmmakers, but with games it’s somehow more difficult.
The developers decided that if they provide the player with twice as much information, then his attention will be easier to attract. For this, the Bloober Team recreated in the game the simultaneous display of two worlds on one screen. The studio even patented the mechanics of one hero who has two or more avatars in different locations.
The second significant element of the projects of the Polish studio is the so-called “Catharsis 2.0”. As the head of the company explains, in Bloober Team games the user decides the fate of the hero himself and chooses the path to follow. In short, a concurrent player is one of the creators of the game.
Transition to a new generation
Later, the developers said that they had decided on the distribution model and “monetization” of the game.
As it turned out now, “monetization” refers to the Xbox Game Pass subscription service, in which The Medium will appear from the moment of release. However, it became known that the game will be an exclusive Microsoft platform and will be released on the Xbox Series X and PC, and the owners of the Xbox One, alas, the project can not wait – the unfinished building will not appear on their platform due to the technical limitations of the old hardware.
Eurogamer writes that the Bloober Team has an agreement with Microsoft on console exclusivity, but its details are unknown.
In February, at a meeting with investors, the Bloober Team announced a studio development plan for 2023-2022. The company announced its entry into the first echelon and the transition to the development of AAA projects. In particular, she emphasized that the new products will be offered by a much more mechanic than the previous ones (Layers of Fear, Observer, Blair Witch), and the perspective in them will change from first person to third.
Also, the Polish studio secured the support of leading industry leaders, one of which was Akira Yamaoka, known for the Silent Hill series.
Fresh trailer
“In The Medium, we play the role of Marianne (actress Veronica Rosati), who is haunted by a vision of a murdered child,” says the Bloober Team. “The girl is going to Krakow in the late 90s … which you probably guessed so, because the silhouette of St. Mary’s Church flashes in the trailer.”
The fragment shown is taken from the middle of the game. In it, the viewer sees the Volsky Forest, in the middle of which stands the wilderness hotel of Cracovia. In Poland, Cracovia is located in the modern quarter almost in the city center next to the Kiev cinema and the stadium, however, the developers deliberately moved the hotel to a godforsaken place for escalating the atmosphere.
Moreover, they completely worked out the material on the ground, enlisting construction plans and rich photographic material, arriving at the hotel with cameras.
“We transferred it almost 1: 1,” the chief designer Wojciech Peyko praises.
Fixed camera
The main character goes to Cracovia, because a mysterious man (played by Marcin Dorocinsky) sent her there. The camera rarely follows the heroine, usually, according to the classics of Capcom and Konami, it is rigidly fixed at a certain angle.
Previously, developers tested a more modern solution, because, in the end, Resident Evil remakes moved away from the old approach, but such a camera was “slow” and it was difficult for the player to keep his attention.
“People most often completed a level twice,” one of the creators of the game explains. “I must admit that we made this decision also because we are fans of old horror films. We want to return to the games of the times of the first Silent Hill and Resident Evil, but at the same time adapt them to modern standards. “
Local flavor and the split worlds
When Marianne leaves the forest, the temple is closed tightly. To get inside, you need to move the bin. The interior is amazing. The poster “Cold vodka, a warm audience” and an invitation to dance on one wall, an icon of a public place, a little Polish graffiti and an image of children in costumes from the past era to another.
This is followed by a scene with a search of the location and a phone call, then the hotel bell rings and a colorful ball flies out of nowhere, it approaches Marianne, and the girl enters a different world in a sea of flashes and light.
Bloober Team explains that the team decided to use a little trick to distinguish between both worlds.
“In the real world, blurry blue colors prevail. However, Marianne wears a red scarf, which allows you to quickly find a girl. Red colors rule the world of spirits, but the heroine’s white head makes character management easier. ”
Screenshot from the old version of the game
Marianne finds the elevator in the hotel, but its doors are closed. Designers of the Bloober Team say that the girl “can extract spiritual energy from the environment.”
“The easiest way to think of her is as mana, which you can use in different ways. For example, create a spiritual explosion or psion rocket. “
The heroine needs to find an energy ball that she could take in. The problem is that in the real world the road to it is blocked. What to do?
“We separate the spirit from the body and go further in the form of energy,” the developers say. “The difficulty is that we cannot afford such“ dualism ”for a long time.”
In addition, Marianne can take advantage of the energy shield, which acts on barriers that prevent passage in the world of spirits. A shield burns them like a swarm of butterflies burning a light bulb.
Sadness
At a certain point in the game, Marianne meets Sorrow – a one-armed girl in a graphite dress. Her face is hidden behind a cracked mask.
The ghost recalls that once the complex was full of life, but over time the guests stopped coming, and the architectural pearl collapsed. However, there were others who, warns the girl Marianne, can cause pain.
Actors
When developing The Medium, the authors used the dualism method: two worlds, two soundtracks, two stars of Polish cinema.
Scanning Dorocinsky and Rosati was engaged in the Platige Image studio, with which the Bloober Team entered into cooperation in April of this year.
The Warsaw studio is well known in its homeland and beyond. It is she who is behind the creation of cinematic videos and cutscenes for Dying Light 2, The Division 2, Metro Exodus, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, For Honor, Watch Dogs 2, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, Prey, Halo 5: Guardians, The Witcher 3 and other games.
Platige Image has been honored more than once and has been nominated for BAFTA, EFA, Goya, SIGGRAPH, and Oscars.
Despite the fact that the Poles presented the leading characters with movements, gestures and images, the characters will speak with the voices of American actors. The images were supposed to emphasize the local atmosphere, so the developers needed people from Poland. However, The Medium is primarily aimed at the Western market, therefore, like the game of Hideo Kojima, it will be voiced by other people.
Recall that Guillermo del Toro gave Death Stranding only an image of the character, while the voice and motion capture was performed by another actor.
“Part of the process was carried out with the help of Marcin and Veronica, the rest was completed by stuntmen.”
The Medium will be released in the fourth quarter of this year on PC and Xbox Series X. At the last, the game will work in 4K resolution with support for ray tracing, and switching between the two worlds will be implemented without reloading.
Mateusz Lenart “Mariacki Church “, Artstation
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