Before the Vanishing of Ethan Carter, there was Come Midnight
A survival-horror/detective game developped by People Can Fly? Count me in!
When he’s not writing on Medium, Adrian Chmielarz is actively making video games. Chmielarz started by selling bootleg VHS in the 80s Poland. He did this for a few years before trying his hands at selling and reprogramming video games. Remember, games were more simple at the time. This enabled him to sell counterfeit games with “God mode” enabled, leading to acquiring even more money.
His first videogame, the first he would build from the ground-up was a detective story, one he would base on the photographs he had taken during a trip through France. This proved to be a success, at least in his home country. Soon Chmielarz founded Metropolis Software with Grzegorz Miechowski. A company he would leave, Miechowski would stay through Metropolis being acquired by CD Projekt before leaving too, in order to found 11 bits and develop This War of Mine and Frost Punk.
Chmielarz, now on his own, participated in the creation of another Studio: People Can Fly. Soon, the little Polish studio released their first game Painkiller that became an international hit. But for their second project, Chmielarz had other ideas. He wanted to develop a survival horror/detective story.
Plot was simple if not convoluted. Mike Ellroy, a private investigator is shot down while his girlfriend Diane is abducted. After having been brought back from Beyond, the detective discovers he can now sees the last 30 seconds of every corpses he touches. This newfound superpower would be put to great use in unraveling Diane’s kidnapping and the secret behind Ellroy’s resurrection.
Problem was, as Chmielarz put it, the success of Painkiller did not turn any of them rich. Even counting the reedition and the different versions, People Can Fly needed this new game fast. And so work began.
Once the team had a good build in hand, they went on trying to contact every publisher from Europe and beyond. Chmielarz distinctly recalls the Ubisoft representative being angry until she saw the actual Beta, but this was tempered by the fact every one answered. According to the game developer, problem was, every person in the room had come for a follow-up to Painkiller. They were waiting on a fast-paced adrenaline and had to deal with what resembled a mish-mash of L.A. Noire and Resident Evil. (Although, I would personally point out that the first level presented definitely resembles more an X-Files episode than anything else.)
No contracts were signed and money was running dry. They crunched for over a month to try and prototype a FPS they called Ravenwolf. Sending it to publishers, hoping they would return.
Life has this weird way of fucking with us, see at the same time People Can Fly was negociating with Epic in order to survive, a representative of THQ Nordic approcahed them, saying they were interested in Midnight Come, still one of the rules was that it has to work on consoles.
Chmielarz could finally breathe, he would soon be able to make his dream game. Or could he? Despite the efforts of the team, there came a point where THQ could stop answering their call. Ghosting basically but in a contract agreement kind of way. Chmielarz says that THQ owed People Can Fly a third of a million dollars, but that the lawsuit needed would cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Short story seems to be, THQ simply left ship. Chmielarz states they cut all funds towards Europe except for S.T.A.L.K.E.R But who can really know? People Can Fly puts in in a more gentle way, stating their partner was having financial issues. Both statements do not essentially contradict.
People Can Fly would go on working with Epic instead for whom they developed Bulletstorm and Gears of Wars: Judgement. Chmielarz would leave once again, founding his own little studio named the Astronauts with which he would create The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.
A narrative adventure in which the player takes on the role of a detective investigating the disappearance of a small child. The catch? Said PI is able to see the last thirty seconds of every corpse he touches.
What I find interesting is, through researching for this paper I stumbled upon this interview, in which Chmielarz states he made The Vanishing of Ethan Carter because Gabe Newell once stated that videogames had to mature with their player. A sentiment shared by Frederick Raynal, who would also try to appeal to a mature audience through making a survival horror about a private investigator searching for abducted children.
But ten years later.
