I'm left feeling horrified for all the wrong reasons. Using real-world tragedy as an easy prop is bad enough, but The Medium's prehistoric perspective on mental health has the potential to do real harm. Needless to say, that's an unbelievably irresponsible message to drop into a mainstream videogame. It ultimately hinges its entire finale on the idea that the only solution is suicide. It displays a bit of sympathy for such people, but its overall thesis is that there is no true recovery, no way of processing or moving on. There's truth to the idea of toxic cycles of abuse and violence, but the way The Medium approaches that concept is totally alienating to any player who has themselves suffered traumatic experiences. These monsters traumatise other innocents, who become monsters themselves. Trauma makes monsters out of innocents, The Medium asserts-both figuratively and, in its world of the supernatural, literally. The throughline, such as it is, is trauma, as all of these things exist in the plot in order to provide damaging moments for each of our key characters.
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Whether trying to shock or affirm its own seriousness, it becomes completely incoherent in its rush to throw out as many edgy topics as it can muster-and blunders into such gross narrative beats as a lengthy sequence exploring the life and motivations of a serial child molester. With no focus, care, or sensitivity, the game invokes domestic abuse, rape, alcoholism, the Holocaust and Nazi experimentation, Soviet authoritarianism, and more, in rapid succession.
Warning: big spoilers ahead.Ī flashback scene that puts you in the shoes of a different, rather less endearing protagonist serves to kick off a grim deluge of hot button topics.
But at about the two-hour mark, the story takes a baffling turn that leads it down more and more uncomfortable paths.
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It seemed to be spinning a fairly standard but still compelling yarn about a mysterious series of killings at a remote holiday resort, and the conspiracy that may be behind them. I was intrigued to see where its horror mystery would take me. Over its first couple of hours, I was quite charmed by The Medium-I liked its throwback fixed camera angles, its grim post-Soviet atmosphere, and its endearingly worn-out protagonist.
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