Hellraiser Revival studio had an ‘unofficial goal’ to be ‘banned, unrated, or restricted’ somewhere in the world
“We’d done our jobs right” if the game pushed the boundaries, its lead writer says
The team behind Hellraiser: Revival was aiming to get the game banned or censored somewhere in the world, as proof it had delivered the extreme content the series is known for.
That’s according to narrative director Antony De Fault, who told IGN the team at Saber Interactive wanted to make sure the content was as graphic as that in the Hellraiser movies and horror writer Clive Barker’s original novella The Hellbound Heart.
The game features full-frontal male and female nudity as well as constant references to self-mutilation, extreme gore, aggressive sex acts and other questionable content throughout.
According to De Fault, however, pushing the boundaries wasn’t just a case of simply showing the player outrageous things, but making them interact with them too.
“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 explained.
“But 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.”
Despite this, De Fault says at least one change had to be made to ensure the game didn’t take things too far, citing a sequence where one character is seen pleasuring himself to images of the player’s girlfriend.
“It’s very clear what he’s doing, but if we’d made his actual genitals visible during this act, it would have almost certainly tipped our age ratings over a threshold and eliminated the game from sale in most places,” De Fault explained.
“So we just arranged the room so that you can’t actually get around in front of him while he’s doing that. It’s a tiny tweak that doesn’t take away from the moment at all. In fact, the strong mental image you’re given is probably more unsettling than anything we could have made out of pixels.”
While Hellraiser: Revival is available uncut in most countries (albeit with the highest rating available), it would appear that the team did at least achieve its unofficial goal, because the Indonesia Game Rating System decided to gave the game a rating of RC (Refused Classifcation), essentially banning it from sale in Indonesia.
