With the success of the Silent Hill 2 Remake, Bloober Team wants to prove that they’re not a fluke with their next work. Read on to learn more about the team’s next work and what they plan to do moving forward.
Bloober Team Wants to Continue Their Redemption ArcBuilding Trust and Showing Out
The past two weeks have been nothing but positive feedback from gamers and critics alike regarding Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake. Fans were pleasantly surprised with how well the game came out despite the numerous changes that the remake had compared to the original. That doesn’t mean that Bloober Team is done, however, as they have not forgotten nor ignored the skepticism and prejudice that were thrown at them during development. With their newfound trust, they want to prove that they’re not a one-hit wonder.
During the latest Xbox Partner Preview held on October 16, Bloober Team revealed their latest horror game, Cronos: The New Dawn. Wanting to not get stuck in the shadow of their own work, Game Designer Wojciech Piejko stated that "We don't want to make a similar game [to Silent Hill 2]," in an interview with Gamespot. He also described that development on Cronos was already ongoing back in 2021, shortly after the release of The Medium.
Director Jacek Zieba likened Cronos: The New Dawn as their "second punch" of a two-hit combo, where the "first punch" was the Silent Hill 2 Remake as he considers them an underdog. This was evident during the initial skepticism and pessimism that the studio received when they were revealed to be the developers of the critically acclaimed horror game, as they’ve never proven themselves capable of making a survivor-horror game.
Zieba said, "Nobody believed we could deliver, and we delivered. That was a big honor, that we, as Bloober, could work with Silent Hill and Konami. As horror creators, we love Silent Hill, like, I think, most horror fans [do.]" It even came to a point where the company put out a statement asking for patience from the fans.
At the end of the day, Bloober Team were able to pull through, scoring an 86 on Metacritic. "They made the impossible possible, and it was a bumpy road because of all the hate on the internet. The pressure was big on them, and they delivered, and for the company, it's an amazing moment." said Piejko.
Not Their Final Form: Bloober Team 3.0
Piejko described Cronos: The New Dawn as something they aim to tell everyone who can make something out of an original IP. In their latest game, you are meant to play a time-traveling individual called The Traveler, where you will be moving back and forth between the past and future to save several people to change the future that’s been ravaged by a pandemic and other mutants.
Using the experience they had gained from working on the Silent Hill 2 remake, Bloober Team is ready to evolve from their older games like Layers of Fear and Observer which had fewer gameplay elements. Zieba stated that "the basis [for Cronos] when we started in pre-production was there [thanks to] the Silent Hill team."
They’ve also stated that they consider this to be their latest evolution as "Bloober Team 3.0" with the release of the Silent Hill 2 remake. They’re optimistic with the initial reception that they got from their reveal trailer, where Piejko said that they’re encouraged by the success of the Cronos reveal and the Silent Hill 2 remake, which seemed to change the studio’s reputation for the better.
Zieba wants Bloober Team to be known as a horror company and that they’ve found what they’re good at saying, "We want to find our niche, and we think we found our niche, so now we just--let's evolve with it. [...] And how that happens is more complex, but it also happens organically in a way, like with [2016's] Layers of Fear, people in the studio were like, 'Okay, we made some shitty games before, but we [can] evolve."
"We gathered a team that loves horror," Piejko adds. "So I think, for us, it would not be easy to switch [to other genres], and we don't want to."
