If you thought Bloober Team’s upcoming horror game The Medium looked about as wild as it can get, a new live-action trailer cranks the horror and intri💃gue up to eleven.
The trailer - which was produced in cooperation with VFX and animation studio, Platige Image - features the game’s playable protagonist, Marianne, as she 🐭navigates the game’s dual-realities, one of which is obviously more “alive” than the other. We see other characters from previously released pieces of gameplay footage, including the young girl named Sadness - who shows up in both her Spirit World a💝nd (presumably) pre-Spirit World forms - as well as the mysterious man who just looks like someone who is up to no good. The setting of the live-action trailer also seems to show off locations that we’ve seen in some of the early footage, such as the lobby of the abandoned N🍌iwa Hotel, as well as its corridors where Marianne will be stalked by the game’s primary antagonist known as The Maw.
The live-action ⛎trailer is exceptionally well done, which - to be frank - is also what makes it so terrifying.
Yesterday’s teaser tweet from the Bloo꧅ber Team’s Twitter account was scary enough, but everything - literally everything - about the new trailer is unsettling. The close-up shot of dual-reality Mariannes screaming while something claws her deep enough to draw blood. The first glimpse of The Maw’s elongated, curling fingers. The strange, sinister-looking man reaching down to t🍌ouch the cheek of Sadness. They all leave an incredibly unsettling taste in✨ my mouth, especially that last scene.
That has to be intentiona𝓡l though, right? After all, right after the man touches Sadness’ cheek, the entire world erupts into a whirlwind of chaos, with everything from statues to structures disintegrating into ash. A dizzying camera shows Sadness running away from… something, while Marianne fends off moths with her Spirit World abilities. The man, on the other hand, appears to meet some sort of fate involving a massive spider-worm creature - one that is sure to be in my nightmares tonight.
Although the trailer ends with M🤪arianne struggling to breathe from being choked out presumably by The Maw, the more disturbing scene right before that shows the real-world Sadness staring down the barrel of the mysterious man’s gun, before the gun fires and blood splatters across the face of the man. Spirit World Sadness wears a porcelain mask. Perhaps that’s why? How are the three characters connected? What the hell is that grotesque worm thing?
There is still so much mystery swirling around The Medium. So many questions left unanswered, with even more questions stemming from this live-action trailer alone. Considering the hour-long preview event that I was part of towards the end of last year, you’d think I’d be more equipped to handle anything related to The Medium as its January 28, 2021 release date approaches. However, Bloober Team - a team that I think is more than deserving of being called the video game equivalent of Masters of Horror - continues to reveal the tricks it ℱhas up its sleeves, while only increasing my desire (and nervous anxiousness) for playing The Medium.