The Medium
THE MEDIUM ferries third-person horror into a new life.
We’re all going to die some day, so I won’t waste your time: The Medium is one of the best third-person horror games I have ever played. The studio behind Blair Witch and the Layers of Fear series has completely outdone itself with the brilliantly written, emotionally grounded story of Marianne, a troubled young woman who can see and communicate with the dead.
The Medium plays like an old-school Resident Evil game, minus the gunplay. You navigate Marianne around crumbling, abandoned hotels and claustrophobic Cold War bunkers from fixed camera angles. It can be a bit cumbersome, but it’s a deliberate and effective design choice. The Medium is excellent at making you feel like you’re always being watched, and that danger could be lurking just out of view at any time.
The added gimmick here is that Marianne can sometimes see into the spirit world, which is handled by splitting your screen in half, down the middle. All inputs will affect the real and spirit world versions of Marianne identically, but there are often small differences in the terrain or enemies that only exist in one world or the other to complicate things. Unfortunately, Bloober Team definitely didn’t push this idea to its limits. Most of the puzzles are fairly simple, and there were only a couple of those Portallike ‘a-ha!’ moments that made me feel like I’d done something really outside-the-box and clever.
The star, though, is the story. The Medium is exquisitely paced and plotted, with multidimensional characters and a complex, but not convoluted, supernatural mystery to uncover. It kept me guessing throughout, but the big reveals always felt earned and well set up. I had several running theories about what was going on at the haunted Niwa Resort that all made sense, but the true answer ended up being even more elegant and poignant than I guessed. And yet it doesn’t seem to come out of left-field, M Night Shyamalan-style. Overall, it’s some of the sharpest writing I’ve seen in a videogame in a long time.
MEDIUM RARE
This is supported by a spectacular voice cast. From the intrepid but troubled Marianne to the enigmatic avenger Thomas to a bone-chilling arch-villain brought to life by Troy Baker, every character is realized with exceptional emotional depth and authenticity. The central struggle Thomas faces, in particular, is a heartbreakingly complex story of a man in an impossible situation, with all of its highs and lows hitting you right in the heart.
It looks pretty stunning, too, with overgrown, post-Soviet ruins in the real world and a macabre, yellowtinged spirit world as its surreal mirror. When Marianne is split between those worlds, walls of human flesh and spectral moths are juxtaposed with the mundanity of an abandoned classroom on the other side of the screen. It gives the sense that you’re never really safe—when the split-screen effect goes away and you’re just looking at the classroom, how do you know what’s going on over in the other world?
The character models are the one area where detail is lacking. They stand out with a somewhat doll-like appearance, and stiff animations. They won’t always connect with the objects they’re interacting with. There are also a few performance issues that can drag things down. While I was generally able to maintain a good 45-60fps on my RTX 2060 Super, there is a significant amount of hitching when you first enter the spirit world or transition between gameplay and a cutscene. This took the bite out of some key moments, such as a monster jumping out at you for the first time.
Despite some technical foibles and the simple, unchallenging stealth and puzzle solving, I fell completely in love with The Medium. The writing stacks up to the very best in the genre with its well-crafted mystery that explores difficult, often very relatable themes on its way to a satisfying, though not uplifting conclusion. Top-notch actors realize complex and memorable heroes and monsters along the way, and the score, sound design and art are gorgeous, pulling together an unforgettable, cohesive whole. The Medium is going to stick with me for a long time.
The true answer ended up being even more elegant than I guessed