A few days ago, we spoke with Hell is Us creative director Jonathan Jacques-Belletete, discussing the powerful themes and world of the game and the nation it’s set in: Hadea. Given how much work went into it, we wanted to know if there’ll be more.
And the grand answer? Anything can happen. Jacques-Belletete said Rogue Factor has very much founded its unique and recognizable style, the one we see in Hell is Us, which he believes will be central to every game the studio produces in the future. Whether that’ll be a new Hell is Us title or other story set in the vast nation of Hadea, he could not specify, though he did say he has enough material for dozens of shows, games, and books.
“The team and I still have a lot to say and show about the world of Hadea and would love to continue creating within it,” the director told us in an interview, saying he had spent years and thousands of hours carefully crafting every bit of Hadea from scratch. Taking influence from across the globe, Hadea is one of the most detailed fictional nations and settings I’ve ever seen in a video game, and certainly on par with the greatest virtual worlds and universes out there.
This is despite the fact that this history and world are very much in the background, related but not directly involved in the protagonist’s personal story.
“Tomorrow, I could send a synopsis to writers to start novels and stuff like that about the past. Or, as you played, if you paid attention to the details, the Limbic Invasion in the game is the sixth one; there were five before. “
“Pick any one of the five, and we could have a whole game, or a whole movie, or a whole novel with just that one. We have the people who took part in, let’s say, the Second Limbic Invasion; we have their names, and who was the king at that point, who did what, how did the invasion happen, how was it quelled, etc,” Jacques-Belletete explained.
“But there’s still so much to say, so much to show, and I think we could ride that wave for quite some time.”
For obvious reasons, the creative director did not want to disclose precisely what the studio will be working on next, but I am now officially hyped for a new game in Hadea, or at least in a world created by Jacques-Belletete and his team, who have clearly shown their storytelling merit and capability to produce awe-inspiring, detailed, and exceptionally thematically dense worlds and stories.
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