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So that was one thing we had to solve. There were narrative holes, there were mythological holes. By mythological holes, I mean that I think that when fantasy and horror is good it is because the mythology is good. And if you're inventing a mythology, as opposed to doing what [Bram] Stoker was doing, which is taking a piece of folklore and turning it to his own advantage, if you're inventing a mythology, then you'd damn well better get it consistent. And it wasn't, so we had some work to do there. What they had already achieved however, was immense atmosphere. Like physical beauty, because the game was lovely to look at, which is no small thing. And particularly in a horror game, I'm of the opinion that if we could have something that looked beautiful, and then really terrible things happen in that context, we'd have something really original. So they had created this beautiful, elaborate, gothic environment, with Irish landscapes around it. I'm part Irish, so I was correcting them on a bit of that stuff. And then the rest of it, we had some real baseline imagining to do, because we had another world to invent, Oneiros, this other universe. Which, if we do a second game (which I hope we do), we will investigate even further. So there was a lot to do, there was a lot of work to do, but I think it was worth it, it was all enriching.
Sharky Games: Had you ever considered working on a video game before?
Clive Barker: No.
Sharky Games: Not at all?
Clive Barker: Occasionally somebody would invite me and I would say no, and I don't know why I said yes [to Undying] to this day. They came up to the house, the drawings were beautiful, and they had some music, which was beautiful. There was a sense that they were doing something that had some real scale to it. It had some real mythology to it; it had some poetry to it. And that appealed to me, I felt it was worth looking at, and why it was worth doing.
Sharky Games: As far as the actual development of the game goes, how involved were you, once you came on board?
Clive Barker: Well, I was there constantly, at the other end of a phone whenever there was a question about plotting, or the way a character should look or whatever. I was there to answer their questions. We would meet very regularly to draw, to critique, to talk about why this didn't work, or why this did. In other words, it was an ongoing dialogue, and it went on for eighteen months.
Sharky Games: Besides the protagonist, did you do any designs or help develop the other characters in the game?
Clive Barker: Sure, I'd like to think my finger is somewhere on everybody [in Undying]. There were a couple of characters I thought were too pseudo-decadent. And we changed those. A couple of the monsters I thought were either ludicrous [laughs] or too big. There was one monster, which was the size of a couple of skyscrapers. That's not scary, it's too big. You know, if a monster gets that big there's nothing to be scared of. What's it going to do, shit on you, sit on you? It was hard to know where the threat comes from. I wanted to humanize the game on every level. I wanted to make the game real.
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