Cronos: The New Dawn Stars You as a Soul-Collecting Time Traveler

After scoring a large triumph with the critically-lauded Silent Hill 2 remake, Bloober is acceptable to amusement the satellite what they tin bash adjacent – with a flimsy alteration of gait – successful an action-oriented fearfulness crippled called Cronos: The New Dawn. I got a accidental to beryllium down with Bloober’s time-hopping latest and find retired what makes the satellite of Cronos truthful compelling.

Cronos puts you successful power of a quality called The Traveler, a pistillate tasked with going into areas ravaged by a human-eliminating microorganism that is rapidly transforming them into monsters. The Traveler’s extremity is to not lone log her observations and find quality survivors, but besides to laic a way for Travelers that travel aft her – conscionable arsenic those who came earlier her did. But that task is easier said than done.

“The taxable of this crippled is merging and changing into thing new,” co-director Wojciech Piejko explains, earlier adding, “Hey, this is not a bully mode to really play this game, but ticker this.”

Piejko proceeds to aftermath up a sleeping force with a stomp that tin lone beryllium described arsenic Dead Space-esque. Upon waking, the force noticed that the corpses of different monsters were littered around, and rapidly went to devour one. Then another. Then a third. By the clip the infected quality had finished feasting (uninterrupted by Piejko), it had “merged” respective times, fundamentally leveling up its monster type. In doing so, it became stronger, harder to kill, much aggressive, and had entree to caller abilities to instrumentality The Traveler out, specified arsenic spitting toxic bile astatine her. After a just magnitude of ammo, it yet goes down.

The lone mode The Traveler could person prevented this happening is to termination the monster earlier it has a accidental to feast oregon escaped the country of corpses utilizing fire, a precious assets that can’t beryllium utilized capriciously. That said, bigger monsters mean bigger rewards, truthful it is sometimes a bully prime to pain immoderate resources for a bigger payday of crafting materials.

“This is the halfway of Cronos,” Piejko says. “Manage your resources, instrumentality risks erstwhile appropriate, and survive.”

Just due to the fact that a monster does not awaken does not mean The Traveler is safe, however. Anyone that tries to hoard resources volition soon observe erstwhile backtracking done areas that enemies person a inclination to prime inopportune moments to popular up and commencement merging with different corpses connected the ground. Not being alert of your situation tin beryllium a deadly mistake successful Cronos, but wasting resources whitethorn beryllium adjacent worse.

The demo I participated successful takes spot successful Nowa Huta, an eastbound territory successful Krakow, Poland that was erstwhile an concern hub of the erstwhile Soviet Union. In the future, it has been torn isolated by the monster-plague infecting the world. It is the Traveler’s work to place important radical that unrecorded oregon lived successful the metropolis and employment time-travel to rescue them from the pre-plague property of the 1980s. Since lone The Traveler tin hop done time, rescuing them involves digitizing their souls to transportation astir with her to instrumentality backmost into the present.

The Traveler is constricted successful however galore souls she tin transportation with her, which leaves the prime up to the subordinate to determine who gets saved and who does not. This tin impact Cronos’s narrative, arsenic antithetic radical volition person antithetic reactions to things The Traveler encounters and places she goes. As an example, The Traveler tin rescue idiosyncratic successful the past and bring them to the future, wherein she visits that person’s flat decades aboriginal and the erstwhile tenant describes their beingness earlier it each went to hell.

In different illustration given, 2 of the souls successful possession person a past and spell backmost and distant with each other.

Bloober says that Cronos volition incorporate an accent connected the studio’s trademark intelligence fearfulness contempt the enactment bent. After Silent Hill 2 released, which was developed successful parallel with Cronos, the Cronos squad absorbed their colleagues (or “merged,” to support it thematically on-brand) to assistance decorativeness the crippled out.

Oh, and passim Nowa Huta, The Traveler volition travel crossed immoderate little conversational survivors: cats. Kitties are locked distant safely successful assorted rooms passim the crippled and, upon being rescued, assistance with resources for The Traveler. All the cats successful the crippled are based connected the pets of the developers astatine Bloober.

“We had truthful galore submissions we had to commencement casting for them to determine who would get in,” Piejko says.

As portion of their 1-2 punch with Silent Hill 2, Bloober is hoping Cronos proves the studio’s mettle arsenic an industry-leading fearfulness crippled developer. The New Dawn’s premise and designs are helping it commencement disconnected connected an absorbing ft arsenic portion of Bloober’s travel there.