Bloober Team has been hitting it big with their latest title, a remake of Silent Hill 2. And already, they’re looking to the future.
Details on Cronos: The New Dawn have been scarce so far, but in a recent interview, they’ve shed light on the game’s combat system.
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Bloober Team has announced Cronos: The New Dawn – a brand-new sci-fi survival horror game set to be released in 2025.
Wojciech Piejko, Bloober Team’s Game Director for the project, is taking inspiration from other fantastic games in the genre – the likes of Alan Wake, Dead Space, and Resident Evil.
I can’t reveal much right now but in Dead Space you need to cut-off Necromorphs limbs, in Alan Wake you need to use a flashlight on enemies, and in Cronos you will need to.. wait to see it ;]
Piejko makes specific reference to some kind of special mechanic, something that’s been a core part of the identity of these games.
But in order to make a gimmick shine, you need a strong grasp of fundamentals, especially when “just gun down your enemies” is an option in the player’s toolkit.
To that end, Piejko lays out an example scene of how to create fear and tension without necessarily forcing a combat encounter.
In the interview with MP1st, he goes through the scene in intricate detail – but to summarize, it involves showing the threat of a big enemy, having the player hide from it in anticipation of a future encounter, and then simply not delivering the payoff – letting the tension hang in the air.
It doesn’t see you; you have already fought this type of monster, and it’s strong and challenging, so you sneak behind its back. You search the rooms and find the key—now it’s time to go back and pass the monster again. On your way back, you hear the banging again, but it suddenly stops. You check the corridor, and the monster is gone. Where is it?
While the details of Cronos: The New Dawn and its combat mechanics are scarce, Piejko hopes that the interview will give players a strong taste of what’s to come. The game currently has a broad “2025” release date.
Cronos: The New Dawn And The History Of Horror Encounter Design
Back in Ye Olden times, the way a lot of horror games handled gunplay was to make the player character slow and cumbersome to control. The “tank controls” in early Resident Evil titles are perhaps the best example of this, but they’re far from alone.
And to their credit, mechanics like that are fairly effective and make a lot of sense in the game’s story.
If you’re playing as an untrained civilian who’s just stumbled upon a pistol to fight back with, it makes sense that aiming would be unwieldy – the gun is likely as foreign to them as you are to the game.
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Lots of modern games, though, rely on cumbersome mechanics a bit less. The design DNA is still very much present, but when you’re filling the shoes of someone with firearms training (as several Resident Evils of the world do), designers have to cook up something else.
Piejko speaks of a player being fully immersed in a scene, where “survival instinct takes over”. The less control-fumbling you have to do, the more immersed you feel – at the cost of making players feel more powerful than the monsters they should be scared of.
Where control restrictions fail, encounter design succeeds. And those designs are the main focus of Piejko’s interview.
Overall, combat in Cronos is leaning towards RE and Dead Space areas but we are still storytellers at heart, so please also expect a strong emphasis on story and atmospheric exploration. The Traveler relies on suit, weapons and abilities, but is still very vulnerable to the monstrosities lurking in the ruins of an old world. You will be outnumbered, and you need to be careful to stay alive.
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