Table of Contents
Highlights
- Traverse time rifts between a dystopian future and 1980s industrial Poland to extract human essences.
- Make morally complex choices that reshape gameplay, narrative perception, and unlock multiple endings.
- Embark on a journey through haunting characters like the Warden in a retro-futurist world steeped in psychological horror.
Residing in the grim realm of “Cronos: The New Dawn,” players are presented with a spectacularly peculiar sci-fi horror experience that offers time travel, psychological themes, and moral choices. Developed by Bloober Team, remembered for the remake of Silent Hill 2, with a release date set for September 5, 2025, on PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2.
An Industrial Hell
The game takes place in two radically different historical periods in a place called Nowa Huta, a district of Kraków, Poland. On the grim, dystopian side of things, it is a wasteland filled with abominations. On the other hand, it is a deep dive into the cruel industrial reality of 1980s Poland amidst the “Change”. The developers described the cataclysmic event as a “weird disease” that sadly ushered in the end of humanity. This contrasting setting merges Eastern European brutalism with retro-futurist technology into a deeply immersive and tension-filled atmosphere.
Here and There
The player is a Traveler, an envoy of a mysterious entity known as the Collective. Your deep hunting expeditions take you to find time rifts in future wastelands to return to the past. Once in 1980, in Poland, your mission is to locate and extract the “essences” of key individuals, described as very important people needed by the Collective. This process is not a traditional rescue; rather, it’s likened to “taking away souls of human beings” and is explicitly stated to be a painful procedure for the targets.
An Evolving Perspective
A central gameplay and narrative mechanic is the player’s choice in who to extract. These choices are significant because they offer more than just gameplay benefits in the form of “perks”. According to Lead Writer and Narrative Designer Grzegorz Like and Producer Klaudia Sewera, your selections will “affect not only the gameplay but also how you perceive the whole game,” suggesting a branching narrative, varying outcomes, or even multiple endings. Tons of replay value are practically guaranteed if the player decides to choose different choices for another playthrough or try to extract everyone’s essence in hard mode, New Game Plus.
Who Goes There
Players will encounter a diverse range of characters throughout this journey. One of the leading figures is the Warden, voiced by Alan Turkington, who is philosophically opposed to the protagonist. He will be the person responsible for maintaining the tools used by Travellers and overseeing the main hub area, where players will spend a significant amount of time, engaging in numerous interactions. Bloober Team states its commitment to “tell stories about people, about real people, about relationships between those people”. Many of the characters you meet have interwoven backstories, which makes the interactions matter as the player, together with the Traveller, starts uncovering the mysteries of this game.
Final Thoughts
What Cronos deals with is psychological and philosophical. Like its predecessors, the narrative explores personal identity, a crumbling conscience, and existential questions, while also building a nonlinear emotional narrative. The decision to set the game in Nowa Huta is a deliberate and meaningful one for its developers.
Known for its unique blend of socialist architecture, industrial roots, and complex socio-political history, Nowa Huta provides a rich, atmospheric backdrop that enhances the narrative. Its layered past—marked by utopian ideals, resilience, and cultural shifts—mirrors the game’s deeper themes of identity, resistance, and transformation.
By situating the story in this historic Polish district, the developers not only ground the gameplay in a tangible reality but also invite players to explore thought-provoking questions that resonate with Nowa Huta’s legacy and the challenges of modern life.
