Clive Barker's JERICHO: FPS Game + Q & A!

 

Delivering a slice of the supernatural, Codemasters have announced the launch of the website for the much

anticipated action horror FPS game, Clive Barker’s Jericho. The site, an immersive and cinematic web space, explores the themes and content of the game in a style befitting this new nightmare from acclaimed horror writer and filmmaker Clive Barker. 

 

Through the use of video, sound and dramatic lighting effects, users have the opportunity to enter the disturbed mind of the author and experience the paranormal game world of Clive Barker’s Jericho they become immersed in the story and surroundings of the game.

 

Clive Barker’s Jericho website:
The website features everything you need to prepare you for Clive Barker’s Jericho… it is not for the

faint-hearted.

 

 

Download the latest thrilling videos

 

View stunning screen shots

 

 

More chambers and content will be revealed as the weeks progress but this site will grip any horror and

gaming fan...just remember to turn the volume up!  Beyond the website, themes from Clive Barker’s Jericho have been explored further in video, available to view online…

 

The Jericho of the game’s title refers to the Jericho Team, a seven-man strike force that protects government interests from paranormal threats. Trained in conventional warfare each team member is an expert in different para-psychological disciplines, including clairvoyance, alchemy, blood magic and exorcism.

 

Taking the disciplines of exorcism, telekinesis and pyromania three eerie and disturbing clips were produced and leaked out under the guise of being discovered by a 34 year old American, named John.  These digitised clips were ‘apparently’ part of a collection of over 2,000 hours of film and video unearthed by the individual somewhere in the USA; posing the question - ‘real of unreal?’

 

View the three clips and a never before seen fourth one at - www.youtube.com/strangeexperiments.

 

Clive Barker’s Jericho will launch in Autumn 2007 for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, the Xbox™ 360 videogame and entertainment system from Microsoft and PC.  For the trailer video, screenshots and to register for further blasts from this cannon of nightmares, visit www.codemasters.com/jericho

 

Clive Barker’s Jericho:
Q & A with Clive Barker

1. Q: You're both a writer and artist. Have you supplied much of the concept art for the games you've made? What else have you supplied? How much work do you actually leave to the developers to imagine?

 

CB: I like to contribute both images and story to the game’s projects I get involved with. Often the images are simply sketches to illustrate my thoughts for the designers. It’s certainly useful to be able to ‘talk’ in both words and pictures.

 

2. Q: How much of the actual gameplay elements – such as the psychically-controlled bullets – have you contributed to Jericho through your company Alchemic?

 

CB: “Brian Gomez and I debated from the beginning the kinds of powers the lead characters of the game would have.”

 

3. Q: Can you tell us why you’re excited about the Jericho videogame?

 

CB: I’m excited about the game because the story is I believe fresh and because of that we have a greater chance of scaring the S*** out of the players around the world! I’d carrying the idea of Jericho around in my head before I’d even talked to Brian about the project, so I feel very close to it. I’d love people to think of Jericho the way I thought of, let’s say ‘Alien’, when that movie was about to come out. Teased with glimpses but never given the whole monstrous truth until the story was told on the screen. Jericho should be the same. Unique and terrifying.

 

4. Q: Do your games tie in with your books? Is there an overall coherent universe to your writing gamers should be aware of?

 

CB: My games do not tie up with my books. At least so far. Jericho is the first games project I’ve been connected with which I really feel might be explored in novels and comic books (I have a huge passion comic books!).

 

5. Q: Your books can end with apocalyptic drama; the unravelling of reality, and the bleeding of worlds into each other - how will the climax of Jericho compare?

 

CB: The climaxes of my books do indeed end with apocalyptic events and unravelling realities. There should be a taste of that same sublime destructiveness in Jericho. Of course the ending depends entirely on how you play the game but one way or the other you’ll get to see fire and blood.

 

6. Q: What do you think are the advantages of videogames over traditional art-forms such as movies or novels?

 

CB: I don’t think of the media in which I work (movies, books, paintings, games) as having advantages or disadvantages when balanced against one another. For me, it’s very much a question of mood. There are days when the only thing I want to do is paint or write, others when I want to read or play a game. All the media have their joys and their limitations.

 

7. Q: What other authors have inspired you in your work? Are there any games that similarly inspire you

(Planescape Torment, for example)? Or that have impressed you with their story-telling?

 

CB: The list of authors who have inspired me is virtually endless but I could name Herman Melville, Edgar

Allen Poe, Ray Bradbury, William Blake, to name but a few. I am also very much influenced by painters, the work of Francisco Goya, of Ernst Fuchs, of James Ensor, (the Belgian surrealist). They are always there in my head inspiring me to do better.

 

8. Q: How does your setting in the Middle East tie in with the current history and politics of the area?  Is there anything you're trying to say with the title?

 

CB: I’ve liked the Jericho idea since it first came into my head because it marries up two of my passions

(History and Horror). Our protagonist’s journey through slices of other times in the game, their progress bringing them steadily closer to the Great Adversary who sits at the center of this Labyrinth of Time.

 

9. Q: Your "walls within walls within walls" description of Jericho gives the impression of Lovecraft-style extra-dimensional chambers, deliberate paradoxes that the human mind can't quite grasp, giving an edge of confusion to your nameless horror. Can a game represent this repeatedly looped world effectively?

 

CB: There is indeed a connection in the game to the kind of vast architectural spaces evoked in the work of H.P. Lovecraft. But that’s where the similarity ends I think. Lovecraft methodology was to continually hit at the presence of vast unnamable and indescribable forces, which as far as I’m concerned gets a little old after a time. There’s only so many occasions in a book when the author can tell me that the monster was so terrible he doesn’t have words to describe it before I become irritated. Right from the beginning of my career as an Imaginer, I’ve always taken great delight in presenting the reader, or in the case of ‘Hellraiser,’ the spectator, with precisely imagined and elegantly photographed villains. I’m not interested in a beast that the creator claims he can’t show me.

 

10. Q: There’s some pretty horrific stuff in Jericho – is there anything you would consider too violent to include in the game?

 

CB: There is indeed some intense and gory material in Jericho, but I’ve always believed that one of the tasks a maker of horror stories in any medium has is to his or her audience into areas of Taboo; places where they would not have dared to venture had the game not obliged them to trespass on treacherous ground. And in so trespassing, inviting the wrath of some creature that they have never encountered before.

 

11. Q: What’s your favourite character/creature in the game?

 

CB: I never play favorites with characters in books or games. Wait, that’s a lie. I love the villains.  Always have. Always will.

 

12. Q: Jericho itself is the oldest continuously occupied settlement in the world, yet your title refers not to the historical city but to the supernaturally talented psychic squads sent into Al Khali to resolve the mystery throughout the ages. How are these squads formed and bound together?

 

CB: There’s no doubt that if Jericho is liked by players we will take our psychic squad out on other adventures (assuming, of course, any of them survive.) The human appetite for mystery and terror has never waned even when, as now, the world is filled with very real terrors. Maybe that’s the connection.  Maybe we seek out games and stories that allow us a measure of control over the horrors of the invented world: a control which we do not have, regrettably, in the real world.

 

13. Q: There are definite ultimate evils in your work but there's little sign of good. Does this reflect something of your own outlook on the world?

 

CB: I disagree with the observation that there is little sign of good in my work. I would point to novels like ‘Imagica’ and ‘Weaveworld’ both of which have very powerful heroes and heroines. So too, do the stories I write for all ages, ‘The Thief of Always’ for instance, has a very strong hero called Harvey who stands up to a much stronger enemy the way the biblical David stood up to Goliath. And in the ‘Abarat’ books, of which there are presently two of the five novels published, there is an entire band of good guys who surround our human heroine, Candy Quackenbush.  Needless to say, the good guys are hopelessly outnumbered, but that’s all part of the fun, isn’t it?

 

Clive Barker is the author of over twenty books, including such bestsellers as The Books of Blood,

Weaveworld, Imajica, The Thief Of Always and Abarat I & II. He is also responsible for creating some of

cinema's most terrifying monsters. As a screenwriter, director and film producer, he is credited with the

Hellraiser and Candyman pictures, as well as Nightbreed, Lord of Illusions and Gods and Monsters. Clive

Barker was represented by his agent Keith Boesky for the Jericho deal. Clive Barker official site:

www.clivebarker.info

 

ABOUT ALCHEMIC PRODUCTIONS
The Jericho property was realized by Clive Barker and Alchemic Productions

(http://www.alchemicproductions.com), a company that works directly with the creators and innovators of

intellectual property from film, literature, music and the visual arts.

 

Clive Barker’s Jericho, the game, is being developed by Madrid-based studio Mercury Steam

http://company.mercurysteam.com.