The Medium is a game of two halves – a game where you, playing as Marianne, shoot between the world of the living and the dead. This distinct division is a defining factor in the story, the production of its soundtrack and the rendering technology that gives strength to the game. It is also a fascinating launch as it walks the line between providing a next generation experience for the latest Xbox series consoles – not playable on previous generation hardware – while paying homage to the adventure style of terror of the early 2000s games.
Produced using Unreal Engine 4 and developed by the Polish studio Bloober Team – formerly responsible for Observer and Layers of Fear – this game is slightly different from other tours in the horror adventure genre, due to its use of camera angles in perspective third person. back to the original Resident Evil. However, what separates this game is a unique feature that appears at points throughout history – a two-window screen. Essentially, the game screen is divided into two in these scenarios, representing two halves of the same world. During these sections, your control is mirrored, with road blocks on one side, limiting your progress on the other. This is the defining visual feature of the game and is also quite demanding: the game renders two simultaneous viewing windows, which can be quite demanding, especially with the way modern engines tend to work.
While there are similarities in both game worlds, we are looking at two distinct locations that are rendered simultaneously, with unique sets of assets per view also increasing hardware demands in terms of streaming, GPU computing and CPU load. For example, rendering components such as depth of field, ambient occlusion and motion blur are calculated twice, increasing the cost. In addition, DXR accelerated ray tracing is presented in the Xbox Series X and PC versions and the BVH acceleration structure, which is a fundamental requirement for this technology, must be maintained for both viewing windows, overloading the CPU and VRAM (which may explain why RT is missing from the Xbox Series S).
Medium’s double-point effect could have worn away if used too often. Fortunately, this is not the case – the pace carefully balances the different types of scenarios as you play. For example, in various areas of the game, instead of playing in split screen, you will use mirrors to jump back and forth between the real world and the spiritual world. The mirrors themselves reflect your character’s movement and position, but serve as a portal to the other side, creating a new effect in the process. During these segments, you can instantly zap between environments while working to solve puzzles. It is an intriguing experience, hampered only by a few texture flow issues from time to time. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen very often during normal gaming, but I was surprised to see this in a game running on the new systems, keeping in mind its high bandwidth SSDs.
A deep dive into The Medium’s technology, shown here running on the X Series and S Series consoles.
If we examine the environments themselves, it is perhaps here that The environment is most impressive. In the world of the living, the environments are full of small granular details. From the forests around the Niwa resort to the ruins near the abandoned hotel itself – everything is spectacularly accomplished. Meanwhile, the spirit world is inspired by the Polish painter Beksinski, but that connection may be a little deeper than normal. In this world, the dramatic change in materials creates a very different feeling and works exceptionally well. The same can be said about the environment itself, which differentiates this title from the package: the representation of Polish nature and the abandoned resort hotel gives Medium a unique atmosphere that I found attractive – it is a frighteningly beautiful world to explore.
The character models are also very detailed, especially those you find on the other side. The representation of these inhabitants is appropriately frightening and attractive, although I have found that the scenes were somewhat disappointed because of the somewhat rigid animation, especially when it comes to facial expressions and eye movements. The game’s animation is perfectly usable, but also somewhat rigid. With that said, though, within the horror game genre, it seems like a perfect fit, if that makes sense.
Medium is available on the Xbox Series X and Series S, as well as on the PC, which means that this is the first title we’ve played that can’t run on previous generation Xbox One hardware – and that makes sense, taking into account the exclusive presentation. In terms of resolution, The Medium uses a dynamic resolution scale with a wider variation than normal, probably due to the double display used during the game. When exploring the world in full screen, the resolution reaches its maximum in native 4K in the X Series and 1080p in the S Series: during these segments, the DRS scaling averages approximately 1440p in the X and 900p in the S Series. explore in split-screen mode, the minimum resolution drops even further. In the X Series, the lowest case is around 900p, while the equivalent in the S Series is 648p. Remember, the game is literally rendering two independent scenes at the same time, explaining the drop in pixel count.
In terms of ray tracing support, The Medium features RT reflections – but only in some locations and only on the Xbox Series X and PC – with the S Series returning to more conventional screen space reflections. They do the job, but they simply cannot reproduce details that are not present in the current view of the camera, so the details may disappear in some scenarios. There are other differences between the Xboxes as well: the shadows, for example, are rendered at a lower resolution in the S Series. All the shadows in The Medium are traditional raster shadows, it should be noted, rather than shadows drawn by rays – with exception of the shadows visible within a drawn ray reflection. That said, reliance on fixed camera angles helps to avoid artifacts often associated with traditional shadow maps and the result is excellent. Shadows dance as your flashlight passes through the scene, while Unreal Engine 4’s contact shadows are also used to improve proximity details.
In terms of performance, this is an experience of 30 frames per second, which is acceptable for a slow-paced horror adventure game – and the good news is that performance remains on most Xbox X Series and S Series consoles. of the scenarios, whether there is a view being rendered or two. There are some selected scenarios with real performance drops, but luckily, they are few and far between. However, despite a relatively clean 30fps output, I found that the improper frame rate is in place. What this means is that, although 30 unique frames are presented every second, they are not delivered uniformly with each screen update as they should. This presents itself as a more inconsistent experience and some may even experience a lower frame rate. We report this to the studio, which promises that it will be resolved in a future patch, along with a current issue in the form of occasional flashing pixels. If you are seeing this during the game, don’t worry, your console looks great!
Another thing I would like to address is the audio side of the experience, which is very impressive. No horror game is complete without a foreboding soundscape and The Medium offers. Not surprisingly, in a game about duality, two composers were brought on board. The real world is controlled by Arkadiusz Reikowski – who has worked on previous Bloober Team projects – while the spiritual tracks are managed by composer Akira Yamaoka, whose credits include Kensei Sacred Fist and Silent Hill. The result is remarkably atmospheric and rich. The mix of these beautiful and often frightening tracks, combined with the excellent implementation of surround sound provides a very powerful audio experience. More than the visuals, the sound really helped to pull me into the game. I recommend playing using a state of the art surround setup or at least a pair of high quality headphones for the best experience.
And try it, you must! While there is no doubt that The Medium is a little rough in terms of polishing and its overall production values, the fact is that it is a beautiful and memorable horror adventure, and I would classify it as the best Bloober title so far. It is also available on the first day through the Game Pass, so I hope to see an impressive game receive a lot of extra exposure as a result. I think it is worth emphasizing that despite being an exclusive Xbox platform for now, The Medium is not a triple A steamroller in the traditional sense, but it is different, it is unique, and I strongly recommend taking a look.