"Banning, ranking or limiting was an unofficial team goal" - How Hellraiser: Revival Expands Cenobite Lore While Staying True to Clive Barker

Hellraiser: Revival understands Clive Barker on a much deeper level than grunts and sex—it's a deeply authentic extension of the horror master's snobbish universe.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Hellraiser: Revival.

The first five minutes of Hellraiser: Revival will raise your eyebrows. It starts with a BDSM-flavored sex scene complete with piercings and blood and a veritable buffet of sex toys strewn about the room, then turns into a nasty example of what hooks and chains can do to flesh. If you're sweet and innocent, you might want to grab a few pearls, but for Clive Barker fans like me, it's a sign that Revival is committed to the writer-director's sexy subversive spirit rather than watered it down. And I am not an easy woman to please. The original Hellraiser rewired my brain when I saw it as a teenager (yes, I have a therapist), and the Blood Barker books are in my top five books of all time. I was bracing myself for disappointment, but that opening proved that Revival didn't want to shy away from the body horror or sexuality found in Barker's work. Hellraiser's world is one of horrifying and hedonistic extremes, so trying to avoid either is like trying to switch Beyond Meat's patties into prime gear. And the deeper I got into Hellraiser: Revival, the more clear it became that the game's understanding of these extremes went beyond pure, awkward sex.

Expanding on any existing story, especially one as iconic as the Hellraiser series, is a challenge for anyone. Fortunately, developer Saber Interactive was able to work directly with its creator, Revival's Nenad Tomic. The executive producer told Xbox Wire that Barker was "deeply involved with the game from the beginning" and shaped everything from the "visual style and story motifs to the characters and characters." From a player experience perspective, it's important that the OG Pinhead, Doug Bradley, takes center stage because no one wants a bad fake to crash the party.

Some similarities are obvious. Saber Interactive has made it clear that Revival's main character, Aidan, was inspired by Julia from Barker's novel The Hellbound Heart and its film adaptation, Hellraiser, and you can see the game playing with the same themes of obsessive dependency, sexual need, and simple behavior. Julia is willing to act as a honey trap to secure victims for her oozing lover, while Aidan is ready to make a deal with Pinhead and then go on a killing spree to get his daughter back. It's cute and twisted at the same time, and if nothing else the man who rolls his eyes when you ask him to share his fries. Never settle, ladies

What other classic 80s horror movie would you like to see revived in video game form?

"Like Julia, Aidan is a character who experiences a fundamental dissatisfaction with life," Hellraiser: Revival narrative director Anthony DeFault tells me. "His heart longs for purposeful emotion and vitality, and like Julia, the object of this fixation is someone with an even deeper dissatisfaction, which accelerates his self-destructive tendencies. In Aidan's case, it's his girlfriend Sunny.

"The most important difference between the two is that Julia has repressed her passion for a long time and is trying to play the 'good housewife' role, while Aidan has pursued it," DeFalte continues. "This troubled and criminal history makes him more worldly and especially equipped for violence.

"It was a deliberate departure from the Julia mold, as Aidan is a player character in an FPS horror game. We wanted to offer the player a variety of gameplay experiences, including stealth, exploration, and enemies you can't fight directly (Kirsty's experiences in the movies), but also "gamey" experiences like combat challenges and resource management. For them, a more competent character like Aidan made sense."

Throughout the story of Hellraiser: Revival, we see flashbacks of Sonny and Aidan's relationship and get a better understanding of how a powerful sacrifice is formed to send you to the Labyrinth, the hellish dimension of the Cenobites ruled by Leviathan. The bonds that bind you must be stronger than meeting at a work Christmas party and sharing a love of Netflix reality shows for that kind of work. Aidan was a drug addict, now Sonny is his solution - she changed his life and he's not sure what it's like trying to move on without him. We also see what happens when only one half of the couple worships at the altar of pleasure and pain thanks to a couple named Sean, whose story we learn through letters scattered around the world. Spoiler: Not a happy ending.

Also making sure fans get to see all their favorites — Pinhead, Butterball, and my personal nightmare fuel, the Chatterer — Hellraiser: Revival contributes to the culture by diving deeper into the idea of an organized religion, the Scarlet Church, that develops around cenobites. Movies have toyed with this idea before (see Hellraiser: Deader ), but Revival kicks things off with a doctrine, some extreme interior decor choices, and a brutal path to ascension. In its teachings, pain is a gift that can be given and received, and is even a kindness, though it does not go beyond exploiting people in recruiting new members.

"Practically, we knew the player couldn't fight the Cenobites, and running away from them wouldn't support the whole game," explains De Fault. So we had a good reason to invent some kind of force that would often oppose the player for them, while still evoking the Cenobites and feeling like it belonged in the Hellraiser universe.

"From there, the leap to a snobbish-inspired cult made a lot of sense, especially given the religious themes in Clive's work," he says.

The church's congregation is mutilated believers whose hobbies include sticking knives in people and wearing latex. De Fol explains that, like the similarities between Aidan and Julia, the church in some ways represents Frank from the original Hellraiser.

"They are people who are so dissatisfied with life, so desensitized to it, that they go to incredible extremes in search of intense experiences that make them feel vital," he says.

Without wanting to start any lawyers, we looked at actual cults and cult-like organizations.

But like Frank, as you'll see in the game, the Scarlet Church isn't really ready for the reality of what the Cenobites have to offer. They seek Cenobites because they want hedonistic pleasure or power, as opposed to what Cenobites really are, which is more spiritual ("explorers, in the next realms of experience").

Another key player in the cult is a no-nonsense doctor named Colin Marlowe, who has an approach to elective surgery that makes even Beverly Hills trophy wives think, "Move on now." And then there's Charlotte, who gives insight into why someone might follow church teachings and write things like this. "There is divinity in my misery, there is glory in every ugly part of me" and "for the first time in my life I feel accepted and understood. I can be myself... my true self... The Scarlet Church gave me that truth." For him, submitting to the church represented acceptance, identity, and a way to make the parts of himself that he despised sacred rather than shameful.

"Without wanting to start any lawyers, we looked at real cults," reveals de Fault. "I think most people who fall prey to these systems do so because they're desperate to belong, to be free, or to think they're 'one of the good guys.'

"And in a way, the Scarlet Church provides those things. There is an intense acceptance and intimacy and a promise that they will enlighten others (including by force) to share those "gifts" with them. These elements of "gravity" are conveyed to the player primarily through the voices and writings of the cult members themselves."

While cult members tend to kill you and promise to destroy you after you die, ambient stories, documents, and audio recordings (horror games alone seem to keep the Dictaphone business alive) help reveal various characters' motivations for joining the cult and following its teachings beyond the confines of san. For me, it's a worthwhile extension of the legend without risking compromising the original themes, which is more than can be said for some of the spin-off films. yes

Like any self-respecting church, it has a "very arch, Sander Cohen" prophet, Bruno. His character was one area where the development team worked closely with Barker to keep it authentic to the Hellraiser universe.

"He's a wasteful, aimless artist, and we knew we wanted him to be a 'fun' villain compared to Marlowe and the snobbery, but it was important to Clive that he stayed on the right side of believability," says Fowlett.

"It made me realize that despite the campiness and fun inherent in mainstream B-movies, the world of Hellraiser is a very intimate thing for its creator, and therefore for us."

From the first trailers, it was pretty clear that Hellraiser: Revival would go beyond what most games would dare. "It was an unofficial goal of the team to at least be banned, unranked or limited somewhere in the world, as a barometer of whether we've done our jobs right," DeFault reveals.

"But in a video game, it's not enough for the player to simply see taboo things; it's necessary to make them do taboo acts as well. So we ask the player to do extreme violence, engage in sex play, and just generally stick their hands in a bunch of very questionable places. Disgusting, or solid choices like a more intimate first-person perspective."

One mission involves a sex club owned by the Cenobite cult, while another has you scavenging for sex toys (including a dildo that promises to "reshape your guts") and a beating scene. All very unanimously well-behaved, these sequences manage to walk the line between self-awareness and pure titillation, making perfect sense in the storyline with an unapologetic glee. I mean, certainly a group obsessed with peak pain-pleasure has a twisted club. It's just good business sense. You know what they say: do what you love and you'll never really work a day in your life.

This mission is the only part of the game that allows you to feel engaged with the "forbidden experience" theme of Barker's work, and De Fault argues that this is why people read (or play) Hellraiser.

Asked if there were any scenes the team had to hold back, De Fault points to a sequence where, in Aidan's flashback, we clearly see someone...snake stroking his pants...to pictures of Sonny.

If we had shown his actual genitalia during this act, it would almost certainly have pushed our age rating over a threshold and taken the game off sale in most places.

"It's pretty obvious what he's doing, but if we had shown his actual genitalia during that act, it would almost certainly have pushed our age rating over a threshold and taken the game out of sales in most places," he says. “So we set up the room so you can't walk in front of him while he's doing it.

"It's a little trick that doesn't take away from the moment in any way. In fact, the strong mental image you're given is probably more distressing than anything we could have made from Pixels!”

Between pushing the boundaries and showing the restraint to stay within the realms of a playable game, Saber Interactive has created something that gives the minor Pinhead a real chance to explore a new dimension of the Hellbound universe. The fact that Clive Barker was guiding the development team means that when it comes to Cenobite's storytelling, Hellraiser: Revival honors his vision rather than just milking his name for influence. It all adds up to a satisfying take on what makes the Cenobite mythos so compelling and a valuable addition to the canon. Just maybe wait until grandma goes to bed before you turn on the console.

Hellraiser: Revival is out now, and you can check out what our reviewer made here.

Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development at IGN and a huge millennial. He's been a professional nerd since 2006 when he started working for Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. He loves horror movies, horror movies, horror games, Red Dead Redemption 2 and boyfriend Love and Deepspace.