The Thing: Remastered – Trailer, setting & everything we know so far

One of the most underrated survival horror games of the PS2 era is coming back, here’s everything we know about The Thing: Remastered.

2002’s The Thing was a game based on the 1982 horror film by legendary director John Carpenter in which a shapeshifting alien kills and replicates a group of scientists and soldiers in an Antarctic research base, usually with very gory results.

Positioned as a sequel to the movie, it involved a team of soldiers arriving to support the characters from the film, only to discover their grisly fate – then try to avoid the same thing happening to them.

While technically a survival horror release similar to Silent Hill 2, The Thing was ahead of its time in many ways. The game featured a stress system and encouraged the player to look after their squadmates, not just their physical well-being but also their fear and stress levels.

Does The Thing: Remastered have a release date?

No, not yet. However, the developers have confirmed that The Thing: Remastered will be released towards the end of 2024.

What platforms will The Thing: Remastered be on?

The Thing: Remastered will be released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. This was revealed during an IGN Live session.

The Thing: Remaster trailer

Check out the reveal trailer for The Thing: Remastered:

The Thing: Remastered setting

Set in a Norwegian Antarctic research base, the first chronological chapter in the franchise was the 2011 prequel, also titled “The Thing.” In this film, a team of scientists discovers a spacecraft frozen in the ice with its seemingly dead alien pilot still inside.

The team removes what they think is a frozen alien corpse and attempts to thaw it. However, the creature wakes up and begins attacking the scientists before they manage to kill it. Unfortunately for them, that’s not the end of the nightmare, as the monster manages to infect the group and gradually begins killing and replicating them, one by one.

It attempts to escape in its spaceship but is prevented by the survivors. Days later, the events of John Carpenter’s original 1982 movie play out. Here, a US research team becomes alerted to the plight of the Norwegian station, and they begin to become infected. Eventually, just two survivors remain, with both of them wondering if the other is a Thing alien.

The game takes place shortly after this, with a new team arriving to aid the survivors, only for them to become the third group to become ensnared in body horror, paranoia, and a desperate fight for survival.

The original The Thing movie was actually a remake of an older film from 1951 called The Thing from Another World, itself an adaptation of the 1938 John W. Campbell Jr. novella “Who Goes There?” Carpenter’s film was far gorier than the original 1951 version and was more faithful to the written source material; the game continues this universe and style.

Gameplay

The player will need to explore both the US and Norwegian research bases, avoiding or fighting hostile Thing monsters while rescuing survivors in traditional survival horror gameplay, similar to that of Resident Evil or Silent Hill. However, in The Thing, dealing with survivors and squadmates is always risky business.

Like the movie, any squadmate could become infected by the alien parasite, themselves being killed and replaced by Things, who then work insidiously from the inside to pick them off. In the game, this created a system where not only did the player need to worry about their teammate’s paranoia, but they had to keep their own in check.

Players will need to perform tests on themselves and their squadmates to prove they’re not infected. This will increase trust and prevent squad members from turning hostile. If exposed, or when the time is right, infected squadmates will attack the player. Some of these events are scripted, but others are more random.

Squad members can be equipped with different weapons and items to make them an asset to the team in combat and to earn their trust. However, infected squad members could turn these weapons on the player and their allies, making all aspects of the survival horror gameplay a risk-versus-reward game of chance.

Of course, The Thing isn’t the only upcoming sci-fi or horror adventure, check out what we know about the next Mass Effect, Directive 8020, and Exodus.