The mysterious and brutal adventure of Rogue Factor, Hell is US, comes out of our darkest dreams and on PlayStation 5 September 4. With a up-to-date atmospheric trailer freshly from the depths, inventive and artistic director, commentary, and commentary.
What was the inspiration for the empty designs of the enemy Walker and the strange blue fog (about 1 minute)?
There is no single inspiration. I look more like creating topics that we want to discover. So we wanted the enemies to be a physical manifestation of human emotions, and then I started thinking about how these emotions behave. Hazes are an expression of emotions, using the circle of emotions Robert Plutchik as an inspiration for their colors, and empty walkers are white and devoid of emotions, acting as a kind of fax of a man who is an anchor of emotions.
We could simply create ordinary monsters that were expressing emotions, like rage, but I thought it would be a bit negligible. What if it was a more cosmic horror, something inexplicable?
How many types of empty walkers can we expect in the game?
There are five types – primary, wild, defender, artillery and negator – each has three levels, so a total of 15 variants. And then there are Hazes, which are four emotions – regret, ecstasy, rage and terror – each with three levels, which gives 12 27 enemies in the game.
Which do you like best?
So the original, which is more basic and humanoid, is the most iconic. I like it very much because it looked really chilly in early conceptual art.
Wild is also chilly because I will always remember traffic capture sessions. They walk on these pointed, strange arms, so we hired dancers for those who literally had piles for Mocap on their hands, which was really engaging.
Negator also has those strange ears, which are actually his legs, and the way he attacks with them is quite clever, but yes, I think that the original is our little Baby Hollow Walker, so it’s my favorite.
Can you tell us a bit about the empty Walker with many gambling that we see at the end of the trailer?
This is definitely one of the most memorable moments of this particular dungeon. The game is not really about typical bosses as such, but more about significant fights in key moments in history. When many empty walkers are connected to one fog, we call it a shepherd, but what we have at the end of the trailer is ardent in which the empty walker – in this case the defender – is attached to many Hazes.
What you see at the end of the trailer is the end of the first act. This act concerns regret, so you go through all the stages of regret, and each fog has a name based on these stages. The combat loop is that these Hazes split up after killing one, a bit like a sludge of the enemy from RPG, and the finale enters the defender that you must kill.
In the trailer we also see a dungeon, which contains water wheels, and one more resembles a mountain mine. Can you develop ideas behind these specific dungeons?
Each dungeon has a theme and they are also associated with specific emotions. It is also related to the history of why this is a specific place. What was very essential to me at the beginning of the project was the possession of dungeons that were not current, even though the game takes place in the current environment. I wanted them to be impressive, fantasy that feel outside this world. And we wanted to play with the types of puzzles that we could not have in a realistic, contemporary dungeon, like an abandoned factory or metro station.
Some of the dungeons have many more puzzles than others, some are more about fighting, and some have many environmental changes, such as the one in the trailer in which you need to play with water level and the like. So they are all different and related to knowledge that you sometimes have to understand to solve the puzzle. One of our topics is “History always repeats” and although you come up with these artifacts from centuries, you realize that this applies to what is happening now. There is a lot to discover and play.
What other details would you encourage players to come in the trailer?
About 1.45 is a huge pile of something that you should pay attention to. See what’s up there. And then imagine how many things he represents. Because you can just think that it is a rocky hill in the middle of the dungeon, but if you pay attention to what it is, you start asking questions. How did it happen? How did they create it? What was around this machine? It can be quite terrifying, but engaging. There is symbolism everywhere.
Hell IS US introduces to the market on September 4.
