Small Details You Missed In The Medium's Latest Gameplay Trailer
The Medium is full of firsts for Bloober Team. The game is Bloober's first non-first-person horror title, as well as its first (timed) console exclusive. The game might have been delayed until Jan. 28, but now Bloober Team is gearing up for release with a gameplay trailer. Not only does the video give audiences a taste of The Medium's gameplay loop and Silent Hill-esque atmosphere, it also hides tiny details within its 14-minute runtime.
One of The Medium's standout features is its novel split-screen gameplay. Instead of two players competing against each other on the same monitor, The Medium displays a "real" and "spirit" world side by side. The trailer provides a good, long look at this mechanic, which unveils an unfortunate problem. During cutscenes, the split-screen technology uses asynchronous cameras. The character animations in both might be the same, but the game provides two different angles of the same event, which apparrently comes at the cost of framerate, especially for the "real" world camera. Plus, the "spirit" world camera hogs most of the screen's real estate. The gameplay portions that feature split-screen seem to fare better, though.
This trailer also gives first-hand looks at several mechanics (it wouldn't be much of a gameplay trailer if it didn't). These include a special vision mode called Insight, the ability to have literal out-of-body experiences, and the power to store spectral energy. However, instead of just displaying the skills in action, the trailer does one better and demonstrates how they will function. For example, the protagonist Marianne states that her out-of-body power runs on a timer, and if she uses it for too long, she will die. The trailer accentuates this by altering her character model over time. The longer Marianne's spirit remains untethered, the more her model becomes decrepit and transparent, which might serve as an efficient diegetic in-game timer. As for storing energy, Bloober's dev team apparently took a page out of Dead Space, since they turned Marianne's arm into a meter that eschews the need for a HUD. The more her arm lights up, the more energy she has to spare.
The gameplay trailer also hides a few details that are less definitive and more implied. For instance, The Medium will feature fixed camera angles — which is where some of the Silent Hill comparisons may arise. Marianne doesn't change directions while moving between areas; she continues walking in a straight line, which could imply The Medium will utilize tank controls. Moreover, after the first cutscene, a moth symbol hovers in the bottom-right corner for half a second, which might mean The Medium will run on an autosave/checkpoint system.
Since the opening seconds of the video state that this gameplay footage is not final, certain features are subject to change. Still, thanks to the trailer and its tiny details, gamers have learned more about The Medium in 14 minutes than they have since its initial reveal.