The camera cannot be manipulated - the devs prefer to implement tracking shots and swooping camera moves to focus players’ attention on important details - but what’s on display is a magnificent visual feast. In many ways The Medium presents itself as the spiritual successor to the European point-and-click adventure games of the ’90s and ’00s, only now the incredibly detailed static backdrops of those periods have been replaced with fully-3D environments that can be explored in realtime. This isn’t a subtle game, but it is a powerful one.Ĭhanging gears, I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to mention what an accomplishment the visuals are. The Medium has a clear theme - people create monsters by abusing children - and it hammers it home time and again until the player is battered into submission. Nearly every character is the product of shattering childhood trauma, and much of it is depicted it in horrifying detail. While the details of how Marianne’s powers work are fascinating and the opportunity to look into the minds of other characters is well-handled, at its core this is a story about child abuse. So, about that story – I cannot stress enough how bleak it is. I found myself sucked into the story without even realizing it. What starts as a task to locate a tool takes players on a journey through the resort’s tragic history, introducing them to the important characters and hinting at the terrible things that happened there. At first I was confused and annoyed by such an obvious solution and then having it pulled away again and again, but the developers knew exactly what they were doing. The greatest example of this is a 90-minute quest to find a bolt cutter so that Marianne can open a set of double doors. The developers make an effort to ground things as much as possible, keeping threats relatable and letting the player learn about the story by observing the world. Instead of the bloody pianos and elaborate riddles one might find in Silent Hill, Marianne has to slowly work her way through the collapsed floors and burned rooms of the hotel. The adventure is largely set within a crumbling Soviet-era resort, and the developers get a huge amount of mileage by depicting the rotting building as ominously as the dusty, windblown otherworld version is. Speaking of puzzles, I commend The Medium for avoiding overly-complex or arbitrary brain-teasers - everything is tied directly to learning more about the narrative or traversing believably-dilapidated locations. The physical Marianne is just as capable at helping her spirit version - throughout the real world are energy sources that can feed ghostly Marianne the power she needs to defend herself from enemies. While a door may be locked in the real world, Marianne’s spirit form can bypass it and explore the spirit version of the same room and use her ghost form’s ability to interfere with electrical charges to open doors and power up machinery. ![]() On a mechanical level, this dual-world system provides a fantastic framework for puzzles. ![]() It’s a clear analog to the way the real world tears away to reveal its horrific mirror image in Silent Hill, but by keeping one foot in the physical realm, The Medium creates its own identity and keeps the focus on how people’s inner lives can have concrete effects on real-world behavior. Whenever Marianne encounters something supernatural, the screen splits horizontally (or vertically) with Marianne on one side in the real world, and a white-haired version of her in the spirit realm. ![]() ![]() It’s a stunning effect that could only work effectively with a third-person camera, which probably explains why Bloober Team (known primarily for first-person horror titles like Observer and Blair Witch) made the switch, and it’s difficult to overstate how effective this choice is. This ability is the basis for The Medium‘s signature visual effect - showing Marianne’s actions in two different worlds simultaneously via splitscreen. Her journey is both assisted and complicated by her unique ability to exist in the material and spiritual worlds simultaneously. It opens with a vision of a girl being shot next to a lake, and the first task the player is asked to do when given control of Marianne, the main character, is to prepare a body for burial at the funeral home she lives above - and that’s just the first ten minutes.Īn aspirant to the long-dormant Silent Hill legacy, The Medium asks players to uncover the secrets of Marianne’s past while stopping the plans of a monstrously evil spirit that wants carnage and chaos. The Medium makes no effort to disguise how bleak its story is going to get. LOW The final confrontation has bad timing.
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