Troy Baker plays a terrifying big bad in Bloober Team's The Medium

You might recognize Troy Baker for any number of video game roles - most recently, as Joel in The Last of Us 2 - but his latest role in Bloober Team's The Medium is unlike anything he's ever done.

Baker plays the next-gen horror game's primary antagonist, called The Maw, described as a malevolent "entity outside of gender," who stalks heroine Marianne and lets you know where you are in the world. Talking to IGN as part of their Gamescom presentation, Baker explained how playing The Maw is a whole new experience for him.

"I've played the brooding hero, I've played the hands-on-hips superhero [but The Maw] is something like I've never done before," Baker explained. "There's a fear and a challenge that comes with that, because you start asking yourself 'can I do this? Is this something I can do?'"

The Maw is mo-capped by a separate actor on stilts, with Baker providing extremely unsettling, croaky, breathy groans for the creature's voice. You can see a brief clip of the monster in an encounter with Marianne toward the end of the presentation, but you might want to turn on the lights first if you're watching at night.

The Medium is scheduled to release sometime later this year on Xbox Series X and PC. Back in June, we spoke with lead game designer Wojciech Piejko about The Medium's Silent Hill inspirations, how playing with different perspectives elevates fear, and performance on Microsoft's next-gen hardware.

The Medium is just one of the many upcoming Xbox Series X games we can't wait to play.