Bloober Group has learn the nasty tweets and it is seen the movies during which skeptics brace for disappointment; it hasn’t ignored the pessimism. The Polish, horror-obsessed studio even admits it is made “shitty” video games previously. Now, it is out to show Silent Hill 2 Remake wasn’t a one-hit marvel constructed from a reliable, pre-existing blueprint. Talking with Bloober Group lower than 24 hours after its latest horror sport, Cronos: The New Daybreak, was revealed through the newest Xbox Associate Preview, and simply two weeks after the Silent Hill 2 Remake parade of reward kicked off, I realized the studio’s subsequent venture is meant to bolster a newly rising narrative: the Bloober Group redemption arc.
“We do not need to make the same sport [to Silent Hill 2],” director/designer Wojciech Piejko informed me throughout an interview centered on the staff’s first post-Silent Hill venture, which started to take form a number of months after The Medium was launched in 2021. Although Cronos: The New Daybreak and Silent Hill 2 Remake had been being developed on overlapping timelines, they arrive from largely totally different groups throughout the studio and are supposed to really feel like “totally different pizzas with totally different toppings–both scrumptious,” he mentioned with amusing. Silent Hill 2 Remake was higher than most appeared to count on, however Cronos: The New Daybreak seeks to show they will construct one thing particular from scratch, too.
The sport facilities on The Traveler, a mysterious one that strikes by timelines. On one finish is a future ravaged by a pandemic and inhabited by monstrous mutants. On the opposite finish is communist Poland circa the Nineteen Eighties. The Traveler is tasked with transferring backward by time to rescue VIPs who did not survive, disrupting the timeline to carry them into the longer term the place they can assist. If it appears like issues will get wonky in that basic time-travel means, I might wager you are proper. The duo informed me the sport is impressed by Netflix’s Darkish, a powerful sequence that usually felt like an oddly welcome headache for these attempting to make sense of its elaborate plot.
Regardless of being constructed through the COVID period and involving a pandemic of its personal, Cronos will not be supposed to be Bloober Group’s “large remark about COVID or one thing,” director/producer Jacek Zieba informed me. “We had been afraid of [the pandemic plot point] on the very starting,” Piejko added, as a result of it had felt just like the worst of the pandemic period was behind them and so they did not need to return to that headspace. They ended up preserving it in when it grew to become clear to them that the story labored too effectively to discard it.
With Cronos being the staff’s first authentic survival-horror IP, following years of horror video games akin to Layers of Worry and Observer, which had been mild on gamplay parts, the staff feels prefer it’s prepared for its subsequent section of evolution. Naturally, that is owed partially to its tackle Silent Hill 2. “It helped within the case of expertise,” Zieba mentioned, “to leap from first-person to the third-person digicam [with] ranged fight and different stuff. So the idea [for Cronos] after we began in pre-production was there [thanks to] the Silent Hill staff.”
From there, although, the staff sought to go in a starkly totally different path, partly to keep away from any finer comparisons between its remake venture and its authentic IP. It landed on a sci-fi horror that strikes by time and area, however the pair of video games do stay linked in a single different very important means: Bloober Group hopes Cronos will be the “second punch” of a two-hit combo for the staff, mentioned Zieba, likening the studio to a victorious underdog. “No one believed we may ship, and we delivered. That was an enormous honor, that we, as Bloober, may work with Silent Hill and Konami. As horror creators, we love Silent Hill, like, I feel, most horror followers [do.]”
Nonetheless, all the employees was keenly conscious of the tenor of the web’s criticism surrounding the Silent Hill 2 remake and the studio as an entire. When the staff was revealed because the developer of Konami’s main revival venture, a lot of the web response was pessimistic or skeptical. Individuals felt Bloober Group wasn’t reduce out for the job, not having made true survival-horror video games earlier than, and thus by no means having proven it may construct out deeper mechanics like stock administration and fight. Finally, the corporate put out a press release aimed toward most people during which it requested for persistence because it labored on Silent Hill 2, all whereas the individuals inside the corporate had been unable or unwilling to dam out the noise.
“It was powerful for these couple of years earlier than [Silent Hill 2’s] launch,” he mentioned, however added that the remake staff was powerful, too, for not letting it get underneath their pores and skin. “They made it. We made it. Bloober made it. And now, it is excellent spirits inside [the studio.] We need to present what we are able to do on our personal, how we are able to evolve our concepts.”
“They recreated a legendary sport,” Piejko mentioned of his colleagues on the remake staff. “They made the unattainable doable, and it was a bumpy highway due to all of the hate on the web. The strain was large on them, and so they delivered, and for the corporate, it is a tremendous second.”
The staff beforehand acknowledged it considers 2016’s Layers of Worry the studio’s rebirth, when it pivoted from aimlessly making immensely panned video games like Basement Crawl to as a substitute specializing in horror video games, even when they weren’t but the form of horror video games some gamers, and even some builders, had been glad with. Layers of Worry put Bloober Group on the map, however individuals contained in the studio understood that wasn’t its last type. Silent Hill 2 Remake is seen as the beginning of “Bloober Group 3.0,” because the best-reviewed sport within the firm’s historical past. Now, the staff is hoping Cronos can exhibit a extra homegrown shift right into a proud new period for the studio, backed by the optimistic reception to the revealing of Cronos: The New Daybreak.
When Cronos was revealed, “all of us felt aid,” Piejko revealed. “All of the feedback had been like, ‘Yeah, this seems to be nice. I really like the design of the character.'” To him and others, it was uplifting to see how the notion of the studio is already noticeably altering. Regardless of all of the strain of Silent Hill 2 Remake, there’s arguably nonetheless loads bearing down on the staff because it seeks to show it will possibly conjure magic solely of its personal, however the administrators informed me this style is the place they need to be, and so they’re keen to show they’ve what it takes.
“We need to be a horror firm,” Zieba informed me. “We need to discover our area of interest, and we predict we discovered our area of interest, so now we just–let’s evolve with it. […] And the way that occurs is extra complicated, but it surely additionally occurs organically in a means, like with [2016’s] Layers of Worry, individuals within the studio had been like, ‘Okay, we made some shitty video games earlier than, however we [can] evolve.”
“We gathered a staff that loves horror,” Piejko added. “So I feel, for us, it might not be straightforward to modify [to other genres], and we do not need to.”
Cronos: The New Daybreak arrives on PC, PS5, and Xbox Sequence X|S in 2025.
