Cronos: The New Dawn Reveals Brutal Combat and Demands Heavy Specs

Bloober Team is back in the spotlight, and this time they’re not playing it safe. Cronos: The New Dawn, their upcoming Unreal Engine 5 survival horror game, just received a second gameplay trailer—and it’s loud, brutal, and surprisingly kinetic. This isn’t your usual slow-burn psychological scarefest. Cronos is drenched in post-apocalyptic grime, throws you into chaotic real-time combat, and lets you warp between the radioactive wastelands of the future and Communist-era Poland. Yep, you read that right.

The latest trailer aired right after Summer Game Fest 2025, giving us a closer look at what Bloober calls its “most action-forward” project yet. There’s clear inspiration from their work on Silent Hill 2 Remake, but Cronos isn’t interested in walking the same foggy streets. This game wants to go further—and harder.

You play as a Traveler, a mysterious agent working for a shadowy group called the Collective. Your mission: explore a devastated future Earth, hunt down ancient time rifts, and rip lost souls from the past—quite literally. You’ll be using something called the Harvester to extract people’s "Essences" from the ‘80s timeline, then bring them back to the present, where they can fight beside you.

If that sounds like a surreal concept, that’s because it is. But Bloober’s world-building already feels layered, with decaying brutalist architecture crashing into cyber-futurist tech, and biomechanical monstrosities lurking around every corner. The new trailer highlights fast melee combos, frantic dodging, and some truly grotesque enemy designs—far more Dead Space than Layers of Fear.

“Enemies you’ll encounter in this game will be nightmarish creatures, born from the remnants of humanity.”

Bloober isn’t messing around with what this game demands from your rig, either. Cronos: The New Dawn is powered by Unreal Engine 5 and, as expected, it’s making use of both Nanite and Lumen technologies. That means a ton of dynamic lighting, particle effects, and highly detailed surfaces—cool, but expensive. According to Bloober’s official specs, you’ll need at least a GTX 1080 or Radeon RX 5700-XT to even get through the door. Recommended GPUs jump to the RTX 3080 or RX 6800XT territory, which tells you all you need to know about their target visuals.

Here are Cronos: The New Dawn system requirements for PC:

While Bloober hasn’t provided clarity on the resolution or frame rates these specs are aiming for, the implication is clear: Cronos isn’t a light lift. Much like Silent Hill 2 Remake, which struggled with frame pacing and CPU-bound stuttering post-launch, expectations are high for better optimization this time. And fans haven’t forgotten that SH2 Remake’s first post-launch patch barely smoothed things out. So the pressure’s on.

That said, this new trailer might signal a turning point for Bloober’s reputation. For years, they’ve walked a fine line between narrative horror and technical underdelivery. But Cronos feels different. It’s fast. It’s angry. And most importantly, it’s not stuck in the slow, sad horror of the past.

“It appears that the team has learned a lot from its collaboration with Konami for Silent Hill 2 Remake. Thus, I’m kind of looking forward to it.”

The game also doubles down on its core time travel mechanic, which isn’t just story dressing. By letting players physically bring characters from 1980s Poland into the combat zones of the future, Bloober is hinting at some deeper RPG elements—potentially tied to player choices, story branching, or even how the Essences evolve once extracted. These aren’t companions in the traditional sense. They’re echoes, artifacts of a lost era, weaponized for survival.

There's still a bit of mystery surrounding how all of this will function in real-time, but the duality of timelines—and the thematic clash between cold-war nostalgia and a dystopian techno-hell—suggests a game with ambition well beyond standard survival horror tropes.

Here's the earlier Cronos: The New Dawn trailer:

Technically, there's reason to be cautious. UE5 titles can be beautiful disasters when not tuned properly. Bloober Team’s uneven track record with SH2 Remake and prior optimization issues still loom large. But with Cronos, the direction looks clearer. The studio seems willing to take bigger risks, and the feedback from Silent Hill 2’s release may have finally pushed them to get performance right on day one.

Cronos: The New Dawn is slated to launch this Fall. Until then, all eyes will be on Bloober to deliver the kind of high-octane horror that doesn't just lean on vibes but fully commits to gameplay depth and mechanical ambition. This isn't just another psychological experiment—it’s shaping up to be a full-blown sci-fi nightmare with teeth.

We’ll update with more gameplay and performance insights as Bloober ramps up the preview cycle. For now, the message is clear: Cronos wants to be more than just another horror game. It wants to be your next obsession—and it might just have the tools to get there.