Of everything that I’ve seen so far, the most intriguing element of upcoming survival horror game Cronos: The New Dawn is undoubtedly its dual setting.
With a story that has you hopping between a bleak post-apocalyptic future and the daunting tenement buildings of 1980s Poland, it seems like a fitting evolution of The Medium’s alternate world mechanics that juxtaposes two contrasting locations to brilliant effect.
Eager to learn more about how the developer Bloober Team is approaching this interesting blend of old and new, I discuss its varied locales with directors Wojciech Piejko and Jacek Zięba and learn all about its surprising historical inspirations, plus how it all ties in with a unique soundtrack.
Horror at home
Based in Kraków, Bloober Team games are frequently steeped in Polish culture. “When we thought about Cronos, we wanted to make a horror game in the housing projects that are very common in Poland, and were very common in the past,” explains Zięba.
As for why the 1980s were of particular interest, he adds that the period “was also a good moment because of what happened in Poland’s history, there was martial law in 1981.”
In the context of the game’s alternate history narrative, this martial law is due to the spread of a supernatural disease and attempted cover-up by the government. It’s a plot that Zięba says has the vibe of “Death Stranding, even a little bit of Nier: Automata, Silent Hill, and, of course, Bloodborne in the city with the disease.”
The New Dawn, the fictionalized city at the heart of Cronos, is filled with striking architecture, another element drawn from real life. “When we thought about housing projects, we thought, ‘okay, we have a district built by communists in the 50s, by Soviets. It’s a bit different, and it’s a bit unique overall.’ We have a lot of brutalist architecture, so we thought that would be a great backbone for our game,” Zięba begins.
“The New Dawn is our version of this district that we take from a real city to the game. We changed stuff here, but we believe that the brutalist architecture will have a big impact and be something interesting for us,” he says. It’s a style that the team argues “will be interesting to combine with retro futurism,” the “dirty, more analog” look of the game’s sci-fi components.
This is far from the first time that real locations have appeared in Bloober Team games. “We are always trying to smuggle something from the real world to our games. So, for example, Observer is happening in a building that one of our level designers lived in,” Piejko reveals. “Then with The Medium, we’ve got the real hotel transferred to a game.”
With Cronos, Piejko declares that the team hopes to “go bigger, because the game is bigger” by representing “a whole district” in Krakow. “The real name of the district is Nowa Huta, which means ‘New Steelworks,’ but we translated it to New Dawn,” he says, “but if you come to Poland someday, you can recognize a lot of places from the game that are really here.”
In tune
The two settings were decided on early in the development process, though they weren’t always part of one unified idea.
“The Cronos project was born by merging two ideas, Piejko begins. “When we were finishing The Medium, our boss, Piotr, gathered all the leads from different departments to start thinking about what our next game will be.”
“Eventually, he divided us into two teams, and Jacek and I were [on] different teams. Those guys came up with the idea of this disease in a tenement building that is turning people – with the vibe of The Thing, wondering who is infected and so on, while my team came up with the suited protagonist, the time travel, and a different disease to fight,” he says. “Then we took the best parts from each of those ideas and connected them to create a solid, more coherent vision. And that was how Cronos was born.”
The duality of the setting will also be reflected by the game’s distinct atmospheric music, which is being helmed by a frequent Bloober Team collaborator. “Cronos is again composed by our one and only Arkadiusz Reikowski. We are super happy to have worked with him for a long time. You can expect the same quality of music that you heard in, for example, the Silent Hill project and our previous games,” continues Piejko.
“This time, of course, the music relies more on synthesizers and a lot of drones, it’s more sci-fi oriented, he adds, “but it’s still mixed with this folk vibe. You can hear people singing, choirs. It creates this really great mixture of traditional Polish stuff with technology. […] It’s not only techno, it’s something deeper.”
Zięba compares the effect to that of the soundtrack from the anime Akira, which is “very futuristic, but at the same time slow.” The end goal is a score that’s not “quick, cyberpunk sounding,” but rather something that “you feel in a spiritual way.”
You will be able to see and hear everything that Cronos: The New Dawn has to offer when it arrives for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC later this year.
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dash.wood@futurenet.com (Dashiell Wood)
