#THE MEDIUM REVIEW EMBARGO FREE#

The footage then jumped to a section where the protagonist was trapped in the spirit world, which shifted the focus to this realm alone.

#THE MEDIUM REVIEW EMBARGO FREE#

An interesting touch is how Marianne’s Spirit Meter is displayed on her arm, revealing when she can use her powers while keeping the screen free of intrusive UI elements. In this case, Marianne had to find a nearby totem to empower her Spirit Blast ability which could then create electricity to bring power back to the elevator’s fuse box. Spending too much time in Out of Body Experience can lead to your soul disintegrating, so you have to make good use of it. This is where her Out of Body Experience ability came into play, allowing her to seek a solution in the spirit world. Shortly after using it, however, the elevator broke down, presenting another challenge for real-world Marianne, now trapped inside. The Medium’s fixed camera makes it easier to spot both the common elements and the differences between its two realities, like a nearby elevator that was intact in both of them. Tasked with moving on from that location, Marianne found the nearby set of stairs to be in a sorry state in the real world, acting as a first puzzle. Although the cutscene in which they talked didn’t use identical camera angles, players have the same third-person perspective of both realms during gameplay.

In the spirit world, Marianne could interact with a one-armed child called Sadness, who was not present in the real world. Her state and movements are echoed across both but each reality can have its own differences and obstacles. A horizontal line split the screen in half, showing Marianne in both the real and spirit world simultaneously. A ball then rolled down a nearby set of stairs, triggering the dual worlds mechanic. Shortly after, the reception bell started ringing on its own, prompting Marianne to answer it. The spirit world is no less unwelcoming, but its visual elements inspired by Zdzisław Beksiński’s dystopian surrealism do draw you towards exploring its halls and rooms, even as you’re hunted by the unsettling monstrosity that is The Maw. Whether interior or exterior, its rundown real-world locations weren’t ones we would like to call home, and Marianne – the game’s protagonist and, incidentally, a medium – seemed to think the same. Set in late 90s post-communist Poland, The Medium has its fair share of oppressive brutalist architecture and eastern European furniture typical for the time, which make for a good amount of dreariness. At a glance, this “flow between the worlds” is arguably the game’s standout feature, but as we saw in a hands-off preview from last month, there’s more to Marianne’s journey than just that.

This approach is set to continue in The Medium, the Polish studio’s upcoming title which plans to give us the first taste of next-gen horror, and have us stepping into the shoes of a protagonist that’s able to tap into both the real and spirit worlds. From Layers of Fear’s hallucinations to Observer’s cyberpunk world and Blair Witch’s haunted forests, developer Bloober Team has explored a range of different settings and flavors in its horror games.

The medium review embargo