The Haunted: Hell's Reach is a third-person action game that pits a team of human demon hunters against the legions of Hell itself. This new action game is being developed by the most recent winners of Epic's Make Something Unreal contest--a homegrown project that will be brought to market as a full-fledged, cooperative multiplayer game by publisher THQ for the PC, Xbox LIVE Arcade, and the PlayStation Network. Game director Michael Hegemann and creative director Gerhard Weihrauch explain.
Watch The Haunted: The Hell's Reach in motion.
GameSpot: Give us an overview of The Haunted. What was the inspiration for making this game?
Michael Hegemann: The Haunted: Hells Reach is a fast-paced, third-person shooter/brawler that knows no compromise. All Hell has broken loose and the forces of evil are rising up. As one of four badass demon hunters, you make a stand against the hellspawn with a huge arsenal of deadly weapons and melee combat [skills] to send the minions back to where they belong. The game can be played alone or together with your friends in various multiplayer modes.
Quite a few people said it looks influenced by the Dark Tower universe, especially the first book. And it is. That style is so perfectly described--it's so distinct and memorable that it sticks with you.
The scenario is also heavily influenced by horror and action films as well as TV shows that most gamers of our generation watched as kids. It's like Evil Dead meets The A-Team. There is a trash/grindhouse vibe to it and we don't try to be uber-serious. It's all about the fun.
Gerhard Weihrauch: In terms of gameplay, the biggest influence was definitely the games created by action mastermind Shinji Mikami of Platinum Games. He's one of my favorite developers!
Resident Evil 4, God Hand, and Vanquish (all praised for their fantastic design) served as main sources of inspiration for The Haunted: Hells Reach. My goal was to combine elements of all those games into something new and interesting that fans of hardcore action games, like me, would enjoy playing.
GS: We understand that The Haunted is a third-person action game about a war between humans and demons. Where and when does the game take place? Who are the primary characters in the conflict?
MH: The game takes place in the near future when a demonic threat rises in haunted places that were once sanctuaries of evil. You play as a demon hunter who has to liberate these places, take them out of "Hell's reach," and prevent the demonic apocalypse. The fight takes you all around the world--from ghost towns, high mountain castles, ancient excavation sites, and even to Hell where you face the demon lord Abaddon.
The characters (Bruce, Hector, Jacob and Caleb) are four demon hunters who once bound their lives to soulstones and fight the purest form of evil in order to redeem themselves for their questionable past lives. They were villains in our world and are now heroes in theirs. Each of them has his own motivation in dealing with the demonic threat, which they express once in a while when killing minions. Jacob has found faith and sees himself as weapon of God; Hector is happy when things blow up; for Bruce, killing is not unlike professional engineering; and Caleb has his wisdom and deeper knowledge of what really goes on. Together they stand as one!
Inspiration comes from over-the-top style action heroes from the 1980's, and newer sources like 300, as well as game characters like Kratos. We try to get as far away from military-type characters as possible, since there are enough obedient soldiers already!
GS: Why go third-person, rather than being a first-person shooter? What does this different perspective let you do that a first-person perspective wouldn't?
GW: One of the key advantages of a third-person perspective is that you can see your character and everything around him. This grants players a much better overview of the gameplay situation and lets him judge threats more easily. In first-person shooters, the field of vision is always the limiting factor in terms of information that you can give players about what's going on, unless you add a lot of additional "helpers" in the form of heads-up display elements.
Another important gameplay element in The Haunted: Hells Reach is our melee system, which includes various attacks and executions. Following up a combat roll with an uppercut or combining a back elbow into a back kick just wouldn't work very well in first-person. At the very least, it would look pretty silly and feek disorienting. Take Mirror's Edge for example--as awesome as this game was, the first-person melee elements just didn't work very well.
So from a design perspective, a third-person view just lets us do more interesting things with gameplay than a first-person perspective. Also, I think that players connect more with their characters if they can see them.
GS: We understand that The Haunted is going to focus primarily on team-based multiplayer. Will there be any single-player component? If so, could you tell us about it?
MH: We are a tiny independent team and don't really have the resources or people required to create a full-blown single-player campaign that can compete with actual big-budget productions. Therefore we set the focus on the arcade and multiplayer experience. A lot of games have "horde" and "play as the monster" modes these days, but we aim to be the definitive game that is really focused on these particular game types. We don't need to make any tradeoffs since we are not a working with a huge intellectual property, so we don't need to as be careful about what we do. We can take risks and try out new things.
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