How Long Does It Take To Beat The Medium?

Bloober Team's The Medium has a lot of appeal for fans of the classic psychological horror genre. The game is the third original horror title from the Polish developer, following 2016's Layers of Fear and 2017's The Observer, but the first to embrace the fixed camera angle perspective of classics like Silent Hill and Resident Evil. While the game uses an old-school approach to its presentation, it is a visual spectacle, with graphics explicitly built to take advantage of the next-generation Xbox Series X|S.

To sell an old school horror aesthetic, Bloober Team even hired Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka to create the game's score, enveloping the experience in ominous and foreboding tones. Gamers should appreciate these familiar framing devices as they explore The Medium's unique dual reality mechanic, which takes the main character, Marianne, through the game's real world and spirit world simultaneously.

However, the question for some is what the dual world mechanic means for the overall length of the game. Will exploring the same settings twice, once in reality and once in spirit, artificially lengthen the time it takes to complete the game? Thankfully, Bloober Team has given a definitive answer for how it takes to beat The Medium.

While the game's dual reality is a core part of the experience and "one of the foundations of The Medium," producer Jacek Zieba explained, these segments only last for a portion of the time. Zieba notes that about one-third of the game uses the dual reality mechanic that split-screens the game, with the spirit world on half of the display and the real world on the other. The remainder follows Marianne from a normal perspective, stuck in one reality or the other.

Zieba told Gaming Bolt that players would probably take no more than eight to ten hours to complete The Medium. This tight run-time is possible alongside the novel dual reality mechanic because it is not a constant option for the player. Instead, the developer has deployed it as a story device, using it to point players to the correct realm to solve whatever challenges they face.

The actual value of the dual reality innovation is that it "promotes gameplay and exploration, as well as taking in the atmosphere itself," says Zieba. Instead of simply boosting the challenge and revisiting locations in both worlds, the deployment of a split reality is "designed to enhance the story."