Clive Barker Says He’s “Genuinely Astonished” by How Far Hellraiser: Revival Goes
Ten days after Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival launched, the man who created Pinhead and the Cenobites has finally given his verdict, and it is a glowing one. In an exclusive interview with Dread Central, Clive Barker said he went into the project worried that Saber Interactive’s survival horror game would get sanitized for a mainstream audience, only to come away impressed by how uncompromising the finished game turned out to be.
Barker Feared Censorship, Got the Opposite
Barker explained that he was invited onto the project early and stayed involved as an advisor throughout development, weighing in on the look of the Labyrinth and making sure the team understood the spirit of his original mythology. That involvement came with some worry attached. According to Barker, he was fearful at one point that the game would be overly censored for retail, a common fate for adaptations of his famously extreme horror work. The final product changed his mind entirely.
“I’m genuinely astonished by how far they’ve been able to push it.”
Clive Barker, to Dread Central
Hellraiser: Revival puts players in a blood-soaked take on Barker’s Labyrinth, built with his direct input on tone and atmosphere.
Doug Bradley Returns as Pinhead, One More Time
Much of Barker’s praise in the interview was reserved for Doug Bradley, who reprises Pinhead for the game after playing the character in the first eight Hellraiser films and voicing him in Dead by Daylight’s since-delisted Hellraiser chapter. Barker described Bradley as inseparable from the role at this point and credited his restrained, detached performance style for making Pinhead and the other Cenobites unsettling rather than campy, the same direction Barker says he gave Bradley all the way back on the original 1987 film.
What Hellraiser: Revival Actually Is
Developed and published by Saber Interactive, Hellraiser: Revival is a first-person survival horror game that casts players as Aidan Lynch, voiced by Xalavier Nelson Jr., as he searches for his girlfriend Sunny while evading the Cenobites and other threats in the Labyrinth. The Genesis Configuration, the game’s version of the puzzle box that opens the gateway to Hell, doubles as both a weapon and a source of abilities like telekinesis, while other enemies are built to be avoided entirely rather than fought. The game released on October 8 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2, and Dread Central’s own review scored it 4 out of 5.
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Picture Source: Saber Interactive (Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival)
