Cronos: The New Dawn Is Unabashedly Polish, But Could Still Use Polish

Poland’s Nowa Huta district was forged from the ashes of the second World War, a devastating conflict that left the country in dire straits. This socialist realist utopia with a name that literally translates to “New Steelworks” was predicated on the promise that the proletariat would be empowered through its large steel mill, fueled by the idea that everyone would contribute to the rebuilding of the Soviet-controlled nation. They had all experienced the pain of the war, so they would have to come together to move forward. 

While the 1980s brought martial law and the dissolution in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Nowa Huta was defined through collectivism. Cronos: The New Dawn, the next horror game from Bloober Team, takes place in New Dawn (or Nowa Świt in Polish) — a district inspired by Nowa Huta — and is attempting to poke at this notion by using the team’s real-life connections to Poland. What if the communal nature that birthed this district and helped free it from Soviet control also helped facilitate an apocalyptic pandemic?

Even the walls reflect this mantra, as they are often caked in sludgey masses of corpses congealed together as if 99% of the Polish population had been jellied like a batch of summer strawberries. But this idea is more prevalent in its combat and enemy forces, which are referred to as Orphans. These slimy, disfigured husks don’t look much different than the typical zombie who has been corrupted by an otherworldly devil or affliction. Instead, the game’s themes are more reflected in how they act.

Once one has been shot enough times, its limp body collapses, just like a normal creature in most other games. But unlike most other games, this corpse becomes a ticking time bomb since other Orphans can bind with it to get even more powerful. For example, an armored Orphan sucking up the guts of a ranged Orphan means it will have tougher skin and be able to fire off projectiles. These hideous beings are, much like the Polish workers in the steel mill, stronger together.

It’s a thoughtful blending of themes and gameplay that started to come together once the merging mechanic was first conceived, according to lead writer Grzegorz Like. Like explains how he loves when the layers of a game reflect one another, and is something that calls back to Bloober’s work on Silent Hill 2. It’s even consistent on a meta level since Cronos is the result of Bloober merging together two game ideas when it was sketching out what to do after The Medium.

“Every time you make an artistic decision, you have to ask ‘Does it support the main theme?’” says Like. “If it does, it blends well because it creates more meaning. What Silent Hill does great is that it has meaning and everything revolves around the main topic. And we really wanted to do that in Cronos and have that kind of DNA deep in this game.”

Even though there’s a fitting parallel meaning in the mechanics, their implementation seems shaky, at least early on. Having to mentally keep tabs on fallen foes is novel because it adds a welcome layer of tactics to each encounter. Deciding what bodies to burn and which ones to guard, and then having to improvise when it all goes wrong, is tense in a way that’s not exactly like any other horror shooter.

However, the shooting in Cronos lacks a little of the immediacy and impact its peers have. Because guns can be charged for a more devastating discharge, there’s a tiny bit of delay on normal shots that makes it feel a hair off. Heads also don’t explode and limbs don’t sever when blasted, so on-target shots don’t evoke a rewarding amount of feedback like the top-tier dismemberment seen in genre titans like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space. And given how spongy enemies are — a shortcoming that also demonstrates how its ammo economy is too stringent at this stage — skirmishes with the Orphans aren’t always as smooth as they should be.

The buildup to these fights is also on somewhat shaky ground. While a horror game like this should sow tension and terror, the first two hours of Cronos lack the deft touch needed to evoke a chilling atmosphere. Orphans often pour in without much setup or are too predictable, and the relatively abundant light sources do little to hide the plague-ridden freaks. Its few attempts at jump scares are rudimentary, too, relying on tired bits like furniture falling over and using mannequins to imply a threat where there isn’t one. Given Bloober’s past with subpar scares, it’s hard not to see this as a continuation of its worst tendencies. However, the terrifying Silent Hill 2 remake and recently released footage from Cronos’ later levels provide some hope that these tepid introductory segments aren’t fully indicative of what’s to come.

This more gameplay-oriented focus is a welcome progression for Bloober, a team that has overly relied on threadbare or downright boring mechanics, since being more interactive shows how it is trying to advance its craft. Having loot to find, resources to craft, upgrades to seek, and an actual inventory gives it a mechanical backbone none of its other non-Silent Hill 2 games have had. There are bound to be some stumbles, but it remains to be seen how damaging these missteps are or if they’re faint enough to be acclimated to.

Even with a stronger emphasis on gameplay, Like and game director Jacek Zięba claim that narrative is still a priority in Cronos, as it has been in other Bloober games like Layers of Fear, Observer, and The Medium. But instead of just looking inward, Like and Zięba say it was studying other games like Returnal and FromSoftware’s oeuvre that aren’t as direct (although they say Cronos won’t be quite as vague as those games). Players shouldn’t expect events to be fully spelled out and should anticipate replaying the game or surfing Reddit after rolling credits to better complete their theories. Like states with a fiery passion that he “hates” — a word he emphasizes by sharply raising his voice — when games, movies, and TV shows pretend they’re so secretive when there’s not much under the surface. He says he’s confident this won’t happen with Cronos because the team has “done their homework.”

It’s impossible to ascertain how Cronos’ narrative will play out after its first act. The strangely monotone protagonist (who’s referred to as The Traveler) and fallen world are intriguing right from the jump and imply a level of mystery that invites the player to poke around. Like can’t contain himself when teasing the many twists that await players that will, in his eyes, shift how they perceive the world and the main character. He once again compared Cronos to Silent Hill 2 in that Cronos has a lot for players to mine. 

With a ton of backstory pulling from events from almost half a century ago and science fiction that touches on the future, it seems a game about a world-ending pandemic would at least accidentally touch or comment on something as contemporary as the COVID-19 pandemic. Zięba told GameSpot Cronos wasn’t a “big comment about COVID or something,” despite there being ample room to criticize inept governments or conspiracy theories that only made everything markedly worse. Zięba and Like extrapolate on this comment by pointing out that “there is a line” the team didn’t want to cross and the pandemic itself was still “too fresh.”

Even though there are films speaking to COVID like Help and Kimi that don’t treat victims with disrespect and instead opt to examine how the pandemic affected society or individuals, Zięba and Like say it would be “cruel” to “make a sensation” out of it. After pointing out how there could be tasteful commentary in media — as is the case with all types of societal ills — Like eases up a bit and notes that Bloober “did some things subconsciously and just vented” in a way that “reflected our mutual experience” of those harrowing times. Talks were had to nix the outbreak altogether, but, as Zięba reiterates, it stayed because it made the game better. And if something like that stays, Like says, it has to be elegant, not sensationalized, and inoffensive.

Bloober is, however, wholeheartedly reflecting its experience of being a Poland-based studio within Cronos. Its cyberpunk horror game Observer took place in Poland, albeit only inhabiting a single building. The Medium stepped things up by mostly being set in an otherworldly hotel near Kraków. Now in Cronos, players will be able to explore a Polish district.

Like most other aspects of Cronos, it’s much more ambitious than Bloober’s past games. Its Polish qualities are easy to see in the broader strokes — the dilapidated apartment buildings with location-specific architecture, the neon signs with Polish words, ominous graffiti scribbled in Polish — but there are small details that might only catch the eye of people from the area. Like recalls an anecdote of a local playing the game who wasn’t making much progress. When prodded why he wasn’t moving forward, Like says this mystery person was just in awe of the small details like specific cups, chairs, and telephones that reminded him of items his elders had.

Like himself was also born and raised in Nowa Huta, giving him a more personal connection to the game. While Bloober is twisting history to fit its lore — for example, the two-year martial law in Poland existed under different circumstances in the game — it still has many real-world ties. Like notes a version of the hospital he was born in is in the game, as well as the bookstore his grandpa would regularly buy him comic books at. Like jokes he was a “nightmare” for the 3D artists because of how particular he was about capturing Nowa Huta and its many details. A vast majority of Cronos’ players likely won’t even notice them, but they fill out the world and give it its own style, one Bloober has deep ties to.

“I can’t imagine [setting] Cronos somewhere else,” says Zięba.

Nowa Huta’s history supports the game’s themes of unity and individualism, and its brutalist architecture matches the Alien-esque cassette futurism look Bloober was going for. Everything came together and demonstrated how this district, according to Zięba, was perfect for the type of game the studio wanted to make. It remains to be seen how Cronos will come together, though. The unique merging mechanic holds promise, yet a handful of inconsistencies threaten to diminish it. The lush and visually stunning setting appears to fit the narrative well but might not be able to provide the necessary scares a survival horror game needs. Even in this state, it still looks like a big step up for Bloober Team’s original work outside of Silent Hill 2. It’s just currently unclear how big a step it will be.