The Medium is a game of two halves – a game where you, playing as Marianne, dart between the world of the living and the dead. This distinct split is a defining factor of the story telling, the production of its soundtrack, and the rendering technology powering the game. It’s also a fascinating release in that it walks the line between delivering a next generation experience for the latest Xbox Series consoles – it’s not playable on prior gen hardware – while at the same time coming across as a homage to the early 2000s style of horror adventure game.
Produced using Unreal Engine 4 and developed by Polish studio Bloober Team – previously responsible for Observer and Layers of Fear – this game is somewhat different from other excursions into the horror adventure genre, by virtue of its use of third-person perspective camera angles, harkening back to the original Resident Evil. However, what separates this game is a unique feature that appears at points throughout the story – a dual viewport display. Essentially, the game screen is split in two in these scenarios, depicting two halves of the same world. During these sections, your control is mirrored, with roadblocks on one side limiting your progress on the other. This is the game’s defining visual feature and it’s also rather demanding: the game renders two simultaneous viewports, which can be rather demanding, especially with the way modern engines tend to work.
While there are commonalities in the two game worlds, we are looking at two distinct locations rendered simultaneously, with unique sets of assets per view also increasing the demands on the hardware in terms of streaming, GPU compute and CPU load. For example, rendering components like depth of field, ambient occlusion and motion blur are calculated twice, increasing the cost. On top of that, DXR-accelerated ray tracing is featured on the Xbox Series X and PC versions and the BVH acceleration structure that’s a fundamental requirement for this technology must be maintained for both viewports, taxing both CPU and VRAM (which may explain why RT is missing on Xbox Series S).
The Medium’s signature dual viewpoint effect could have worn out its welcome if it were used too often. Thankfully, that’s not the case – the pacing carefully balances different types of scenarios as you play. For instance, in several areas of the game, rather than playing in split-screen, you’ll use mirrors to jump back and forth between the real world and the spirit world. The mirrors themselves reflect the movement and position of your character but serve as a portal to the other side, creating a new effect in the process. During these segments, you can instantly zap between the environments as you work to solve puzzles. It’s an intriguing experience, marred only by some texture streaming issues from time to time. Fortunately, this doesn’t occur too often during normal play, but I was surprised to see it at all in a game running on the new systems, bearing in mind their high bandwidth SSDs.
If we examine the environments themselves, this is perhaps where The Medium impresses the most. In the world of the living, environments are packed with small, granular details. From the forests surrounding the Niwa resort to the nearby ruins to the abandoned hotel itself – it’s all spectacularly realised. Meanwhile, the spirit world is inspired by the Polish painter Beksinski, but that connection perhaps goes slightly deeper than usual. In this world, the dramatic shift in materials create a vastly different sensation and it works exceptionally well. The same can be said for the setting itself, which sets this title apart from the pack: the depiction of the Polish wilderness and the abandoned resort hotel lends The Medium a unique atmosphere that I found compelling throughout – it’s a hauntingly beautiful world to explore.