The Medium (video game)

A puzzle is solved between realities, unveiling a spirit well.

The Medium is a psychological horror game played in third-person as Marianne, a medium who can travel into the spirit realm.[4][5] Being able to inhabit both worlds aids puzzle solving. Her psychic abilities may also be used against hostile forces and are recharged by interacting with energy spots called spirit wells.[6]

Marianne, a spirit medium that helps troubled souls seek final respite, has a recurring dream of a man shooting a young girl by a lake. While grieving over the death of her foster father, Marianne receives a mysterious phone call from a man named Thomas, who knows of her abilities. Thomas offers to explain the origin of Marianne's powers, as well as the meaning of the dream. However, Thomas is only willing to talk if Marianne meets him at the Niwa Workers' Resort, an abandoned communist-era vacation resort in the Polish wilderness. Niwa had been shuttered by the government after the Niwa Massacre years earlier, where a large number of people were murdered and the survivors fled the area.

Exploring Niwa, Marianne finds the place has strong ties to the spirit realm, and evidence that Thomas, the resort's manager, and his daughter Lilianne were at the epicentre of the Niwa Massacre. In the spirit world, she encounters Sadness, a spirit of a young girl that warns her of the Maw, a hostile and malevolent spirit that has managed to partially exist in the real world and was responsible for the Niwa Massacre by occupying human hosts and using their bodies to murder others, and is now hunting down Marianne to sate its hunger and escape Niwa. Marianne repeatedly offers to send Sadness to her peace, but she refuses.

Marianne pieces enough clues to learn that Thomas was also a medium as a result of prior Nazi and Soviet experiments, though his powers could be used to sever people's minds from their bodies. He had fled back to Poland and hid at Niwa, eventually starting a family. An agent of Służba Bezpieczeństwa named Henry discovered Thomas, subdued him, and forced him to watch as he set fire to Thomas' home with his children inside, causing Thomas to attack and murder him. Marianne realizes she is Thomas' daughter; she had fallen into a coma from the fire and Thomas had left her at the hospital while he remained with Lilianne at Niwa.

Marianne discovers a fallout bunker hidden beneath the ruins of her family home where she encounters Thomas' spirit half. He explains to Marianne that Lilianne had trouble controlling her own powers, so Thomas kept her confined in the bunker. However, this did not stop Lilianne's powers from going out of control and she summoned the Maw, which broke out of the bunker and caused the Niwa Massacre. While Thomas's spirit half is confident that Thomas would never have killed Lilianne, he has no idea of Thomas' current whereabouts. As the Maw approaches, Thomas' spirit half assures Marianne that she is the only one that can end this and sends her off, preparing to sacrifice himself to delay the Maw.

Still troubled over Lilianne's fate, Marianne leaves the bunker and heads for the lake that she saw in her dreams. There, she encounters Lilianne, who is alive and well. Lilianne explains that the dream Marianne has been seeing is not a memory of the past, but a vision of the future. She hands Marianne a gun and pleads with her to kill her, as the Maw cannot be banished as long as she is alive, and hence why Sadness, her spirit, refused to be sent off to peace. Marianne hesitates and, considering Thomas' words, threatens to kill herself instead, as without her as a medium, the Maw will remain trapped in Niwa forever. The Maw then arrives, forcing Marianne to fire, but it is left unclear who she shoots.

In a post-credits scene, a man is seen wandering the spirit world, stopping briefly to pick up Thomas' pocketwatch.

Hotel Cracovia in Kraków was used as the inspiration for Niwa.

The Medium is developed by Bloober Team,[4] who came up with the idea in 2012.[7] Bloober meant to enhance the immersion by changing their traditional perspective from first- to third-person and taking advantage of Xbox Series X/S's background streaming.[5] Lead designer Wojciech Piejko said The Medium imparts the message that "there is no universal truth".[5]

They modelled the supernatural setting after Zdzisław Beksiński's dystopian surrealist artwork.[7] Hotel Niwa is based on a one-to-one rendition of the existing Hotel Cracovia located in Kraków.[8] The opening apartments at the start of the game, while based on a real building in Kraków, is an Easter egg to Bloober's prior game Observer: System Redux, where the same building is also present in that game's future setting.[8]

Audio for the game was made by a "Silent Hill dream team" according to Bloober Team,[8] including Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka, singer Mary Elizabeth McGlynn,[9] and voice actor Troy Baker,[10] as Silent Hill was an inspiration for The Medium including the use of fixed camera angles.[2] Yamaoka was persuaded to take on the music when Piejko gave him a gameplay demonstration.[11] Yamaoka and composer Arkadiusz Reikowski were tasked with scoring the physical and spiritual plane, respectively.[4][11] Using synthesiser and analogue sounds, Reikowski likened his approach to that of Stranger Things and Chernobyl.[12] Baker voices the primary antagonist, known as the Maw, for whom another actor performed the motion capture on stilts.[10] Actors Weronika Rosati and Marcin Dorociński provided design and motion capture for Marianne and Thomas within the game.[8] The developers had planned out the camera and actor's direction for motion capture prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made it easy to complete the motion capture sessions under COVID-19 regulations during 2020. Overall, the game has about 90 minutes of motion capture.[8]

The Medium was originally announced for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii U in 2012, but for want of better technology,[5] reappeared in May 2020 as a Microsoft Windows and Xbox Series X/S title.[4] Originally scheduled for 10 December 2020,[13] the release was eventually delayed to 28 January 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[14]

The Medium received "generally favorable" or "mixed or average" reviews, depending on a platform, according to review aggregator Metacritic.[15][16]

Bloober Team reported that within a few days of launch, they had been able to turn a profit from the development of The Medium from its initial sales.[30]

• Official website