Clive Barker's Jericho Interview (con't)

FiringSquad: How will the player control the Jericho team? Will it be like a tactical shooter with the entire team around or more like a standard first person shooter with only one team member at a time?

Brian Gomez: The squad is pretty much with you from start to finish, although for the purposes of story, there will be times where you’re on your own or accompanying just a small portion of the squad. Although you’ll be playing the game as Capt. Ross throughout the story, you’ll get the chance to play with every one of your squad mates. Early on in the game, Capt. Ross…wait, I’ve said too much already.

FiringSquad: How will each member of the Jericho team differ from each other and how will that affect gameplay?

Brian Gomez: Each Jericho team member has a different primary and secondary weapon, and those span a wide spectrum of military firearms – small automatic pistols, up through assault rifles, sniper rifles, and a huge chain gun. What really sets the team apart from one another and from other games, though, is the incorporation of their occult specialties. Each member of Jericho is a specialist in one of the arcane arts or psychic disciplines and they can use these powers in a variety of ways. On top of that, Ross’ psychic specialty is a power called “threading”, which allows him to act as a sort of “mixing board” for combining his team’s powers. So, for example, he can take the pyromancer’s fire-spirit, mix that with the telekinetic’s shockwave, and now you have the psychic equivalent of napalm!

FiringSquad: The game takes place in a lost city that has returned. How would you describe the city and its various locations?

Brian Gomez: Al Khali is like a set of Russian nesting dolls – one layer of time trapped inside another, inside another, inside another… When the team begins their mission, they’ll start in a modern-day archaeological dig site. But as they move closer and closer to the source of evil that has cursed the city, they’ll pass through different layers of time and come face to face with previous armies and civilizations that have attempted to seize the secrets of Al Khali for their own purposes. Sharp-eyed players should be able to recognize familiar features of the city as it changes from age to age. For example, you might pass the crumbling ruins of a medieval fortress in modern day Al Khali, but when you travel back to the Crusader era, those same ruins are now restored to their former glory – and now they’re occupied...

FiringSquad: What sort of enemies and missions will the team have to deal with in the game?

Brian Gomez: Most of the enemies that the player encounters wandering the streets of Al Khali are the fallen soldiers of armies past that have tried to conquer the city for their own purposes – and failed. Insane, possessed, and with plenty of time to kill, they’ve kept themselves busy reinventing their own bodies -- replacing limbs with weapons, turning their own blood into venom, building wings out of flayed flesh and bone… (Hey, everyone needs a hobby, right?)
Besides the unfortunate souls that are trapped in Al Khali, there’s also a cult of religious zealots known as The Dark Rapture that would like nothing more than to sacrifice themselves to serve the minions of Al Khali. I don’t think we’re giving anything away by saying that the cult leader, Arnold Leach, had something to do with the city’s most recent reappearance, and the player will be racing Leach and his minions to unlock the city’s secrets.

FiringSquad: What other unique elements will Clive Barker's Jericho have?

Brian Gomez: One of the really cool features that Joe Falke at Codemasters came up with was the spontaneous interactive cut-scenes. Taking some inspiration from God of War, we’ve got sequences in the game that require the player to hit buttons in time to trigger pre-scripted cinematic sequences, especially against some of our larger boss characters. But besides these pre-scripted sequences, we’ve also got spontaneous sequences that can happen at any time. For example, we’ve got some flying enemies that, if the player doesn’t fight them off fast enough, might swoop down and snatch you up into the sky, triggering a hand-to-hand fighting sequence high above the battlefield. Since it’s not pre-scripted, you never know when or where it’s going to happen… it really keeps you on your toes!