With Hellraiser, Turok, Stuntman, and John Wick games in the pipeline, Saber Interactive had a lot to show off at Gamescom last month, as GameCentral speaks to industry legend Tim Willits.
Saber Interactive is quietly becoming one of the rising stars of the games industry. With its unusual mix of unglamorous simulator games (truck-driving game Road Kings, for example, made its first appearance at Gamescom) and big action blockbusters featuring highly recognisable IPs, it seems to have found a way to avoid the games industry woes that have seen many rivals laying off staff.
At Gamescom, we played three Saber Interactive games – Clive Barker’s Hellraiser Revival, Turok: Origins, and Stuntman: Hollywood – and interviewed the company’s chief creative officer Tim Willits, something of an industry legend after his time as studio director at id Software.
All three games were highly entertaining and playable and Willits, as ever, had plenty of interesting points to make, about both Saber Interactive and the future of the industry itself.
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
The cumbersomely named game, derived from the much-loved horror movie franchise, is scheduled for an October 8 release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC. We actually played it at last year’s Gamescom, but this year’s demo level took place at a later stage in the game.
Hellraiser: Revival’s first person perspective action pivots between two physical levels – above ground in the real world (albeit a somewhat twisted Clive Barker world of fetish clubs and the like) and a hellish, labyrinthine underworld. The new demo started in the former, in an upmarket yet seedy private club, which we had to negotiate using all the available tools, most notably several weapons for which, in the survival horror tradition, we had limited ammo.
Armed with a revolver, shotgun, and submachine gun (the latter initially lacking ammo, although we eventually found some for it), plus a machete, our character Aidan Lynch also holds the Genesis Configuration in his left hand. This elaborate puzzle box provides extra powers which come in handy when low on ammo, such as the ability to grab fire from braziers and project it at enemies.
Above ground, Hellraiser: Revival’s gameplay mixes puzzling with shooting. Initially, a couple of enemies have to be dispatched in order to acquire a key to a storeroom, which yields some useful ammunition, plus raw materials that can be crafted into healing draughts, and a combination safe. Normally, we would have searched the room for clues to its combination, but time was at a premium.
The enemies took some dispatching; pulling off headshots helped, especially against those who wore helmets, as did firing fiery or electrified blasts from the Genesis Configuration – particularly when we needed to finish off weakened enemies. In one phase, enemies spawned from sort of upright coffins and pursued us pretty relentlessly; when several were close to each other, Genesis Configuration blasts provided a modicum of very useful splash damage.
Eventually, after some pretty intense sequences of taking out waves of enemies and looting their bodies for ammo, we acquired a ticket to put into a machine, which moved the action to the underworld. Here the gameplay switched between running while being pursued through a stone labyrinth and puzzling.
For the latter, we had to use the Genesis Configuration’s telekinetic abilities to rotate sections of a room to create a navigable path, while avoiding traps which would chop us to pieces. Careful manipulation of our surroundings allowed us to create a path to an area containing a useful object, before reconfiguring the room to reach the end. Aidan proved to be a pretty human and believable character to control, without the ability to jump very far.
In terms of atmosphere, Hellraiser: Revival is superb, with a gloriously sadomasochistic undercurrent. Although in this year’s Gamescom demo, there were far fewer skin-flayed Cenobites around than in last year’s one. It looks fabulous, and feels pretty responsive, albeit within the confines of typical survival horror mechanics.
Willits is keen to point out that Clive Barker himself has been heavily involved in its development: ‘He’s helped us – he knows the game, he’s approved concept art, he’s approved the story.’ It will be interesting to see whether some of the more traditionally prudish territories ban it, since it does have a lot more sexual content than most games, but it stands a good chance of introducing Barker’s unique oeuvre to a younger audience, which may not previously have come across it.
This is a very different kind of game to the original Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, published by Acclaim in 1997 for the Nintendo 64. As its name suggests, Turok: Origins functions as a prequel to that game and its successors. It still preserves a certain amount of the Native American style mysticism, that gave the 1997 game much of its uniqueness, but it feels like much more of a modern shooter.
