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Sharky Games: How do you feel that your experience in creating mythologies and horror in other media helped Undying?
Clive Barker: My chief gift to the game was an eye that had not seen the game before. My chief gift was a man who had not been lost in this forest. I was just able to be clear headed, and say "you know that doesn't work." And they would say, "Well yes, we think it does." I'd say, "Look, go through it with me." And when we would break the things down, they'd go on, "Yeah, yeah, of course." Some of it's logic, I'm a logical plotter. Even though my novels are filled with fanciful elements of various kinds, I use the fanciful elements in very rational ways. I don't want to ever feel as though the fantastic should be a get-out clause. It should have its own rules and regulations and you should hold by them. Otherwise it's anybody's guess what happens next, you make it up as you go along. I really strongly felt the need to make this game have the richness of a novel. You've got forty hours of gameplay here. That's a big book! And I thought that in that time you've time to have a lot of nuancing. You've got time to really have some fun with the characters. To really give characters shapes and arcs. I don't know why games don't do it. Is this what you normally write about?
Sharky Games: Yes.
Clive Barker: So I throw the question back at you, why is so much gaming so simplistic?
Sharky Games: Well, there are typically two types of games. There are role-playing games, where the emphasis is on characters and storytelling, and then there are action games, where the emphasis is on the action. And I assume that when you came to the project, Undying was pretty much a hardcore action game.
Clive Barker: And I added the other stuff. You see I believe that the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. Because my novels are action novels. Coldheart Canyon, my new novel, is action packed, and it's filled with strangeness and violence and love affairs and romance and bizarre sex and ghosts and all that. Did I mention the bizarre sex? [laughs] But all this happens to characters that I think you believe in, you care for. You may even be surprised that you care for them. Some of them are real pigs, but you end up caring for them because I've taken a lot of time to build up their back-stories and their lives, the texture of their lives. And I wanted to do some of that in the game.
Sharky Games: Are any of the running themes in your work present in Undying?
Clive Barker: Yes. The opening of doors into other spaces, betrayal, family betrayal, visible transformations, appetites, the desire to have, to eat, to taste, to eat drink and be merry [laughs]. To partake of the flesh, even if it's your brother's. All those things. And the creatures, you know, I'm a monster maker, and there are plenty of monsters in the game.
Sharky Games: What sort of conceptual artwork did you provide?
Clive Barker: It was just sketches, sketches and more sketches. God knows they must have folders of them by now. Probably after I'm dead they'll turn up at Sotheby's [laughs]. The whole idea was that this should be an exchange. You can't be prissy about this. I think this was about me getting down and dirty with the guys. It was fun. It was very fun.
Sharky Games: Seeing as how you provided reams of sketches, do you feel like your original vision for the characters was carried through?
Clive Barker: Yes, I do actually. I think one of the strongest things about the game is the characters. I think they have an individual life, a cinematic life, if you will. Yeah, I'm very pleased with that aspect of the game.
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