00:00My first reaction when I was told there was going to be this Hellraiser video game, to
00:13be absolutely honest, was at last.
00:17What kept you?
00:21I would describe our game as a discomforting and dark story about people with inner voids.
00:27It's like a mix between violence and action, all wrapped in leather, flesh and chains.
00:35We're making our game for players who are into these kind of psychological horror experiences,
00:41but also for die-hard Hellraiser fans who want to get immersed into this world for the first
00:48time.
00:51So the protagonist of Hellraiser Revival is this guy called Aiden.
00:57He's a troubled guy, had various addictions in his life, the most recent of which is that
01:03he's completely infatuated with his girlfriend, Sunny.
01:07They use the configuration together and she's ceremoniously kind of torn to shreds.
01:14So from that point onwards, he's trying to survive, make some kind of deal with the Cenobites to
01:20get out of this whole situation alive, but maybe also to have Sunny back.
01:24He was modeled pretty closely on Julia from the original movie and from the novella.
01:30They both share a kind of infatuation, a sort of like wretchedness that makes them
01:35need more from life.
01:39When drawing a line on pushing the boundaries of sexuality and violence, it was like a no-brainer
01:46creatively.
01:47Because Hellraiser, as a franchise, deserves to be really explicit and really violent.
01:53This game has a lot of sexual explicit stuff and a lot of gore and a lot of violence.
01:58So modeling things for this type of game was a challenge, especially to people who are
02:04maybe sensitive to things like that.
02:06You know, we had to look at references, so we were very careful what we were looking online
02:11and where we were looking at online.
02:13But in the end, we are all artists, so we look at our subject in a different eye, so something
02:18that's maybe sexual or very disturbing to others.
02:22To us, it's just a subject.
02:23We have to bring out the theme, we have to invoke a feeling, so we kind of, you know, detach
02:28from it or look at it from a different perspective than like a regular person would.
02:32If you've shown some of the stuff that we did to my parents, I think that would be probably,
02:37you know, very shocked and I was like, this is, you know, normal, this is everyday for me.
02:42People who are sensitive to mature content should be definitely wary of playing our game.
02:47It's not for the faint of heart, it's a truly visceral and discomforting experience
02:51and we did not hold back.
02:56If you want simple ideas, don't go to Clive Barker because you're not going to get them.
03:01He made certain that we understood the soul of the work, the soul of Hellraiser, he made
03:07sure that we understood that.
03:09From that point on, he was pretty nurturing.
03:10Any decision that we made, as long as we held that like soul of Hellraiser in our hearts
03:16as we made it, he was supportive of and he trusted us as people who knew games to translate
03:23that soul into this medium.
03:26Clive is an imaginative powerhouse.
03:31His head is a restless place of constant invention.
03:35If I had to summarise him, then I would, without any hesitation, call him a genius and a friend.
03:43And to know that we are very nearly 40 years from when we shot Hellraiser.
03:49And to know that Clive has been involved and had a lot of input into this game and to be
03:55part of it again myself is strange.
03:58And how could I have ever expected that when we were shooting Hellraiser at Cricklewood Production
04:05Village 40 years ago?
04:07It's remarkable and it's wonderful.
04:13One of the key concepts that we wanted to incorporate into our game was that duality
04:17and contrast between teams.
04:19Like this famous sentence, angels to some and demons to others, which always resonated in
04:24my mind whenever I was making decisions.
04:27It's all like in the eye of the beholder.
04:28For us it was like it can be macabre or it can be beautiful.
04:32The contrast between opposing things was very important to bring out in the game.
04:38The design goals that we set for ourselves when it comes to violence and gore is getting
04:43to the feeling of discomfort in our players.
04:47We wanted to feel discomfort while watching these gruesome scenes.
04:52But never to be gratuitous in a way.
04:54Never to do violence for violence's sake or sexuality for sexuality's sake.
04:59But to take it very seriously and to just honor the storytelling.
05:03It's all in service of the story.
05:06And Clive Barker's two stories never backed down from being violent or having these sexual
05:13themes.
05:14And we wanted to honor that.
05:20Okay, so when I saw the fan reacting to the announcement of our game, I basically did the
05:26most Hellraiser thing you could imagine.
05:29I cried.
05:30We know that we have a dedicated core fanbase of the franchise.
05:35But seeing how big the fanbase is, how much they actually like and approve what we are doing,
05:41just give us so much more motivation to keep going what we are doing and make a great game.
05:46We didn't really know for sure whether the world wanted a Hellraiser game like what we
05:53were making.
05:54And when they reacted to the announcement of the type of game that we were making, that
06:00this was a proper single player premium survival horror experience, and that that was exactly
06:07what they'd been wanting and kind of lacking.
06:0999 out of 100 comments or reactions or whatever that we got on the internet were just like
06:16beaming positivity.
06:18It was like such an outburst of emotions because in game dev cycles, you develop a game for
06:24two, three, five years sometimes, and you work in a really closed environment with your
06:30like colleagues.
06:32And there is no external recognition of that, right?
06:35And then at some point, it gets validated with such positive response from the audience,
06:41and that made me really emotional, right?
06:43And then also the whole team, I'm really proud of them for achieving that.
06:48That's like a really huge milestone for us as a studio.
06:54Fans are going to be scared, and they are going to have a great time being scared, which is
07:00exactly how things should work in the wonderful world of horror.
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