“The story takes a baffling turn…”
The nauseating carelessness of THE MEDIUM
Over its first couple of hours, I was quite charmed by The Medium— I liked its throwback fixed camera angles, its grim post-Soviet atmosphere, and its endearingly worn-out protagonist. I was intrigued to see where its horror mystery would take me.
It seemed to be spinning a fairly standard but compelling yarn about a mysterious series of killings at a remote holiday resort. But at about the two-hour mark, the story takes a baffling turn that leads it down more and more uncomfortable paths. Warning: Big spoilers ahead.
A flashback scene that puts you in the shoes of a different, rather less endearing protagonist serves to kick off a grim deluge of hot button topics. With no focus, care, or sensitivity, the game invokes domestic abuse, rape, alcoholism, the Holocaust and Nazi experimentation, Soviet authoritarianism, and more, in rapid succession. Whether trying to shock or affirm its own seriousness, it becomes completely incoherent in its rush to throw out as many edgy topics as it can muster—and blunders into such gross narrative beats as a lengthy sequence exploring the life and motivations of a child molester.
VIDEO NASTY
The throughline is trauma, as all of these things exist in the plot in order to provide damaging moments for each of our key characters. Trauma makes monsters out of innocents, The Medium asserts—both figuratively and literally. These monsters traumatize other innocents, who become monsters themselves.
There’s truth to the idea of toxic cycles of abuse and violence, but the way The Medium approaches that = is totally alienating to any player who has suffered traumatic experiences. It displays sympathy, but its overall thesis is that there is no true recovery, no way of processing or moving on. It hinges its entire finale on the idea that the only solution is suicide.
Needless to say, that’s an unbelievably irresponsible message. Using real-world tragedy as a prop is bad enough, but The Medium’s prehistoric perspective on mental health has the potential to do real harm. I’m left feeling horrified for all the wrong reasons.