Cronos: The New Dawn takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of the Kraków district of Nowa Huta during the 1980s. It seems like an oddly specific location, that is, until you actually ask the devs over at Bloober Team why they decided to set their upcoming survival horror game here.
“It’s a district where I was born and raised,” the lead writer, Grzegorz Like, tells me. “When I showed my mom the trailer, she was like, ‘Why did you do that? This was such a nice place, and you destroyed it all.’ But we chose Nowa Huta not because of ego reasons, but to, you know, show our crib to the audience.
“We have become experts at putting Poland into games. It’s the third game where we do this now. We did it in Observer, then we did that with the hotel in The Medium. And now we went big with Cronos and decided to recreate a whole district of Kraków, the district called Nowa Huta, a district with a beautiful history.”
Like goes on to explain the rich history of the Nowa Huta district, telling me how it was built just after World War 2 under Soviet influence, “or should I say, the Soviet boot.” People from all over the country came to this place to start a new life, a dream aided by the opening of the Tadeusz Sendzimir steelworks in 1954, which provided jobs to local workers and helped boost the economy.
“People from all around the country, the destroyed country, came to this place to build a dream, to build socialism,” Like adds. “They created [the Tadeusz Sendzimir steelworks] and at one point, 40,000 people worked there. We created more steel than Sweden, than whole other countries, so it was amazing. It’s built beautifully, but it’s still a fruit of a very dark time for Poland and a very testing time for the whole nation.”
Nowa Huta’s industrial architecture does make it an interesting setting for a horror game, with all the huge abandoned factories, sunken office spaces, and hidden communal spaces providing some interesting visual storytelling. As well as ample space for the infected monsters to jump out at you from. But it seems as if Bloober Team settled on this space not just because of this or how close to home it all is, but because of the social implications of this setting also.
“Martial law was imposed at the time to kill solidarity [amongst the people] by the government,” Like says. “[The Government] was starting to panic, because they thought they were going to be overthrown by the people and, spoilers, we did good with that. We pushed those motherfuckers back to Moscow.
“But we ask ourselves, what if the martial law was imposed because of something else, like a weird virus? In the real world, we have overcome oppression because we were able to come together. But what if getting together is the problem? And thus the merge.”
One of the staples of Cronos: The New Dawn is not to let the creatures that you encounter join together or merge. If you don’t dispose of their bodies, then they’ll link up to make an even stronger infected creature for you to have to face up against. So it’s certainly an interesting thought to take a location that is so deeply rooted in community and then strip that aspect away, leaving just the protagonist to wander through empty apartment blocks and community centres.
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