‘Hellraiser: Revival’: Team ‘Unofficially’ Wanted to be Banned

Hellraiser: Revival is a favorite among most of us here at Dread Central. In an era of asymmetrical IP horror games, Revival’s commitment to a strong, narrative, single-player experience really sealed the deal, tempting us to open Pandora’s box and see what delights were held inside.

In our 4-star review of the game, Christian McKnight even wrote, “Hellraiser: Revival is bloody, grotesque, sexy, and a new gold standard for IP horror games. Pain and pleasure, all in one.” Our own Editor-in-Chief, Brad Miska, also reflected on the game, writing, “It’s some of the most disgusting, depraved, fucked-up shit I’ve ever seen in my entire life. You can really feel Clive Barker’s soul living through this game. It’s spectacular.”

Well, according to narrative director Antony De Fault in a new interview with IGN, that fucked-up shit wasn’t just the point, but a matter of serious consideration among the developers. “It was an unofficial goal of the team to be banned, unrated, or restricted at least somewhere in the world as one barometer of whether we’d done our jobs right,” De Fault shared with them.

From the very first reveal, Hellraiser: Revival certainly looked nastier and less compromised than most horror games, but imagery alone wasn’t satisfactory. As De Fault explains, “In a video game, it shouldn’t be enough to have the player simply see taboo things; it’s necessary to get them to perform taboo acts too. So we require the player to engage in extreme violence, to engage in sexual play, and just generally to stick their hands in a bunch of very questionable places. This didn’t mean bucking traditional survival-horror mechanics necessarily, but it did mean making them more sensual, or disgusting, or making firm choices like the more intimate first-person perspective.”