Clive Barker's Undying

...Released on 20 February 2001 in the US and 8 March in the UK, the game had been undergoing development for some time before Barker's involvement - DreamWorks already had a partially developed game based on a Steven Spielberg project from way back at the beginning of 1999, but needed some help with the storyline. Overhauls from Barker included the main character getting a complete make-over and changing his name accordingly (from Count Magnus Wolfram to Patrick Galloway). The multiplayer mode (and its attendant spells) was a casualty along the way. Electronic Arts / DreamWorks Interactive promise that the game would deliver "arcane magic, supernatural abominations, and ancient horror" was enhanced by the several layers of reality that Barker generated for them, giving the game what he describes as "the texture of a novel". He also lent his vocal talents as well - recording the voice of Ambrose (suitably the black sheep of the family). Barker has said that Jeremiah's family has "more secrets than the Kennedys and a good deal darker." Galilee 2, anyone..? Electronic Arts have a massive website dedicated to the game, featuring screenshots, background material and downloadable movies. Those of you interested in the development process should check out an absolutely fascinating 'developers diary' article at Gamespy.com - who also have the teaser and 6 other movies available to download as well as the back story of several of the characters. Check out IGN.com for a couple of movies too. Despite having almost as many delays as the PC version, June 2002 did finally see Undying's bow in a Mac version from Westlake/Aspyr Media. Ultimately though - and despite good critical reaction - poor sales have resulted in Brady Bell confirming that, 'the Undying franchise is dead,' meaning no PS2 version, or follow-up titles... "They had done some of it and I said, make it more weird. Weird, driven, hard - I'd written hard on the story because my first responsibility, I felt, was to get the story part of it right and be sure that the story made emotional sense. That seemed to be the heart of the problem. Once we'd done that, then we could start to fiddle with design and first up was character, because that's really what an audience is going to respond to. Next up was environment and I did nothing with the monasteries and the walls of the manor as that fell to the designers completely and with Oneiros I just said that I want to make sure that its depths are as vertiginous as possible. It can't just be a pretty piece of Lovecraft. It's got to have a weird kind of logic to it, which it's got." Clive Barker : Part Two By Smilin' Jack Ruby, Fandom.com, 13 December 2000 (Note - full text at fandom.com) "[DreamWorks was] looking for a partner to develop the story, the creatures in the story and bring it to conclusion... This was a great way to see the bones of the thing and then be invited to put the flesh on it." Barker, DreamWorks Play Games By Bill Higgins, Variety, 27 April 2000 "My enthusiasm as an artist is not rooted in any particular medium, but in the act of imagination. I am motivated by the images and scenes which arise from my subconscious." Playing Undead By David Hancock, The Times, Midland Metro, 2 September 2000 "[Undying]'s a dark fantasy with lots of levels, lots of realities in it. It's not horror in the sense of Hellraiser. It's horror which is very bloody, very graphic, with plenty of monsters, no question; but also a big adventure level in it. There is the sense, as you are visiting different dimensions and alien cities, that a monster in an alien city is a different thing than a monster sitting in your kitchen sink! "When you put alien forces of one kind or another in your kitchen sink, your attic or your basement, as I did in the Hellraiser and Candyman movies and in a bunch of short stories, plainly those monsters operate as horror figures. If they are simply flora and fauna in an alien landscape, then, perhaps, they don't scare you so much. In a way, it's like 'When in Rome...' you know?" Clive Barker : A Renaissance Man Of Gothic Proportions By Gil Kaan, Genre, Issue No 86, October 2000 "The Undying, the game I am doing with DreamWorks. Comes out on February 14th, Clive Barker's Valentine. They are making a trailer. It runs about a minute to a minute and a half. It's pretty cool and they are just doing a cut of it now. I will try to get you a copy of it for the site. It really looks great. That comes out in February." Confessions By [Craig Fohr], Lost Souls Newsletter, September / December 2000 (note - interview took place 25 August 2000) "I still believe that [A great quest will have, maybe, a circular structure]. I certainly believe that quests are clearly nonlinear narratives. There's also very plainly... the idea about the pursuit of knowledge, which begins as outward knowledge but ends as inward knowledge. It's certainly something we talked about as far as this game is concerned. When you deal with issues of family, as this game does rather grimly, you can't help but look inward. I hope we'll be talking, even today, about me coming back and doing another game with DreamWorks Interactive. I think we have all kinds of things that we can yet do. I think that the investigation, the journey has only just begun. The DreamWorks Interactive team educated me on what we could or couldn't do. I asked why we couldn't do certain things, didn't get an answer, so we simply did it. Technology is moving along at such a speed that we will have engines that will create novels in the form of games... and I want to be there when it happens. "We'd change things a bit, but I'd love to see this as a movie. The basic laws of telling these kinds of dark stories are universal laws about good vs. evil, about tainted families. This is a big family saga. The corruption of families is a large part of horror fiction. You look at Lovecraft fiction. He deals with family members that should not be family members at all. Poe does the same thing. American horror fiction has very regularly dealt with the horrors of inbreeding and so on. I think in this curious kind of way, what is being honored in Undying is American Gothic fiction. That's the feel of this." Crossing Over By Eric Twelker, Amazon.com, January 2001 (N.B. full text available at amazon.com) "We had this fellow called Magnus. Count Magnus Wolfram. Who was bald, tattoed, looked like a comic book hero. And I got them all in a room, and I said, 'Look, does anyone in this room know a count? No. Does anybody in this room know anybody called Magnus? No. Does anybody really want to be in this guy's skin? Since this is a first person play, why would you want to be in this man's skin? Why would you want to play [as him]?' And so we threw him out, and I said, 'Look. You've got a gay man in charge here. Bring me somebody I want to sleep with. Bring me somebody fabulously sexy.'... "Brian Horton about ten days later sent me the character that now appears on the screen. Who was wonderful, he's everything I wanted. He was just the right kind of character. He seemed like somebody you would want to be, somebody you would want to play, whose skin you would want to occupy for a period of time. Even if you are going against the hordes of hell, at least he was going to do it with a smile on his face." Clive Barker's Undying Interview By Jason Bergman, www.sharkygames.com, 21 February 2001 "In a way, [Undying] does go back a bit to the Books Of Blood, the feelings I had when I wrote those books, which was that there were no rules. There are some things in this game that are just outrageous. Ambrose, particularly in his transformed state, is really just disgusting. I also think, if you look at this game, it's designed like a movie, it feels like a movie. It's not brightly colored like a Pokemon game, it has sepias and grays and occasionally eruptions of red. "I think, in a way, you can tie Undying to Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft. Some of the landscapes definitely bring to mind some of the weird, inter-dimensional spaces that Lovecraft evoked, while once you get inside the house, and you see all the twisted, messed-up family, you're in Poe territory, the same territory that informs The House Of Usher. So I think we paid our dues to our literary forebears, and then moved on into something wilder." Clive Barker By Paul Semel, Gamespy.com, [13] December 2000 Click here for comment by others, screen shots and more artwork from Clive Barker's Undying Games Index | Home page This page has been created for information and entertainment purposes only. All quotes remain the copyright of the original owners.