Hell is Us Interview - Creating Language to Envision Something New

We chat with Creative Director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête about his transition from Eidos Montreal to Rogue Factor, and the creative decisions behind not just Hell is Us, but how they're rethinking better ways to work on video games.

I've taken some time to add a transcript of the interview in case it's easier for you to read through rather than listen to the audio for one reason or another. The text is lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Also be sure to check out our hands-on preview for Hell is Us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T58VnYMkg0

-Bloodworth

I’m Jonathan Jacques-Belletête. I am the Creative Director and the Art Director on Hell is Us.

Bloodworth: I want to start with you and your timeline because before when we talked, it was a different building. (laughter) It was Deus Ex. And so I want to get a little insight as to what happened when you were deciding to move on and what the choices were there.

Jonathan: Sure. So at that part right? We’re not going to start in 1999, right?

Bloodworth: Right, right, right.

Jonathan: That’s 26 years in this bloody industry.

So, yeah, I was part of AAA for most of my career. So all the big Montreal, well not all, I mean Ubisoft and Eidos. I was at Ubisoft when Eidos was opening in Montreal and they needed people. They said, it’s going to be Deus Ex. I said, “Fuck, yeah.”

I was the Art Director on the Deus Ex franchise, Human Revolution, Mankind Divided, then the Deus Ex Universe. Then we even had Final Fantasy XV in Montreal. It’s widely known now. It’s not a secret anymore. They ended up taking it away from us, but I was a production designer of that. Then we did Guardians of the Galaxy.

And then towards the middle of Guardians, it was just kind of like, (sighs) you know, AAA, yeah, whatever. Not been there done that, but it’s just… It’s super cliché. This family thing. This garage thing. Because even when we started Eidos, that feeling was there: these underdogs. People at Ubisoft were like, “You guys will never succeed. Even Warren Spector wasn’t able to do it a second time. How come you guys think…” and that. We were so hungry. That energy of being underdogs. I really missed it. A garage thing.

Me and Yves [Rogue Factor General Manager Yves Bordeleau] have been friends for a very long time. We’re actual very good buddies, and we’ve always thought one day we’ll make a game together. But the timing was never right. And one night, I literally picked up… Honestly, I was fed up. I was not happy anymore. — It’s not about Eidos. It’s not about anyone there. These people are literally my friends now. They’re my friends for a very long time. — But I was like, I’m just not challenged anymore, you know? So I picked up the phone. I said, “Yves, let’s go eat.” And one thing led to another, and it was like, “Ok I’m coming over man, and we’re going to make a game.”

It was more than a game. We literally made a 180 with the studio. It was still a studio very much ingrained in making licensed games, mostly for Games Workshop, which I’m extremely knowledgeable in. I’m a huge fan, and all that kind of stuff. But we were like, let’s go a step further. Let’s try to do our own thing, and let’s try to have a real philosophy for the studio and build a bigger team, even though it’s 50 people. And here we are, six years later. So we’ve been on the game for five years, but we started this journey six years ago.

Bloodworth: So when you started, did you have the project in mind or was it more about building the studio?

Jonathan: So, the first year of these six years was a mixed bag of these things. How are we going to do that 180 with the studio and what’s the philosophy we want? What’s going to be the model? What kind of studio do we want to become?

I was already also thinking about what kind of game. But it’s really more when we started pre-conception. Look, the game is a series of ideas and things that are really dear to me that I had been playing with in my mind for a very long time, which is nothing unusual. Most designers have little things that they’re like, “One day I’ll do this.” And again, this seemed to be the right time.

Bloodworth: How did you want this studio to work differently than all the places you’ve been in the past?

Jonathan: It’s funny because it also ties in with all this stuff that’s been happening in the industry. It’s really a dire time for our industry. I think it’s because there’s factors that are not our fault, but there are also factors that are. Game development has become way too expensive and big, and making games that cost… Why do we make games that cost 300 million dollars? Why? That’s insane. You need to recoup this money, and there’s no more creativity. — That’s not entirely true that there’s zero creativity in those games. It’s a bit of a cliché, but you know what I mean.

And also in Montreal we have this thing that the minute a studio has success, it has to be bigger and bigger. “Now we’re going to make six games at a time!” We just wanted to be a hundred people, but not anymore, “we’re going to be a thousand!” Why is it always like that?

And those studios (because I’ve lived it many times) they get lost in that. It’s very easy to have a team that builds a specialty and a way to work together, but then you dissolve that. Then they’re all put on different games. And the studio develops a game that they’re really good at, but the next game they do is a completely different type of game, and to me it’s not rational. It makes no sense.

So, our references (as cliché as it sounds) were, let’s be the Montreal FromSoftware. Let’s be the Montreal PlatinumGames. Let’s be the Montreal Ninja Theory, before they got as big as they are. And let’s just develop a type of game that we really enjoy ourselves to begin with. Let’s develop the expertise for that, the skillsets for that, and let’s just build from there. And the next game, it’s going to be a game like that again. Is it going to be the sequel? Is it going to be another new IP? But the foundation has been laid and we’re building upon that. That’s where it comes from. It actually seems obvious to me that this is how it should work. I might be wrong.

And in a way, it’s helped us survive these hard times that have been happening. We’ve been lucky as well. You know, you also make your own luck. But it’s helped us survive, and the storm’s not finished either.

Bloodworth: Yeah, because you’re talking about the cost and budget of everything, and even for this, you’re saying five years. How do you figure out, “ok, we want to do this original crazy new idea, but we also have to be sustainable?”

Jonathan: It looks more expensive than it is. We wear a lot of hats here. (laughs) It’s not a cheap game, but it’s definitely not an expensive game compared to others. It’s cost less than what I think a lot of people would think it has. So, that was part of the strategy as well.

Bloodworth: From what you’re saying in the presentation today as well as when I’ve read you talk about the game before, you definitely have a lot of philosophy behind the game design of Hell is Us. So, talk a little bit about what led to that and your “Player-Plattering TM.”

Jonathan: Yeah, “TM,” yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, there’s philosophies and analogies and also just coining words and terms that just give substance to thoughts. I just find that modern contemporary adventure games or exploration games or RPGs, with the quest markers, and objective markers, and the maps, and the mini-maps, and the markers you can put yourself on the maps, and the compasses that are basically detecting everything around you, and quest journals, blah, blah, blah — They give everything to the players on a silver platter. I started with that thought. Basically, you don’t really have to think, or you don’t really have to explore or figure things out profoundly because it’s all on the silver platter.

So, since we’re trying to do the opposite. We’re trying to do it in a way where the player figures it out, I called it “player plattering” — the player makes his own platter of what he thinks things are and how he should proceed.

Just like on Deus Ex with the art direction, which was a mix of cyberpunk and renaissance, and then I called it the “cyber renaissance.” (laughs) It’s the same thing. It makes abstract ideas concrete, and then people on the team are like, “oh yeah, yeah, yeah.” So, it’s good for that.

And then in terms of how I’ve always approached games, either when I was an art director or now, it’s with analogies and metaphors and then you let them inform your designs, right?

So, for example, the enemies in Hell is Us, they’re literal manifestations of human emotions. That’s what they are. And I was thinking, an emotion cannot move by itself. If you wake up angry one morning, your anger has a certain AOE. It has a certain area of effect, depending on the magnitude of your anger. But you cannot send it to work by itself. You have to get in your car. You have to drive to work, and then you bring the anger with you, yeah? So maybe along the way, you’ll find something that makes you happy, and then it’s not anger you brought with you, it’s joy, which is good. But it’s got a limited autonomy, right? You have to bring it.

And I was like, “that’s kind of interesting.” So with the enemies, there’s the emotion, which is that weird, fractal-y, geometrical enemy. We call them the Haze. That’s the actual emotion. And then the whitish humanoid shape, we call them the Hollow Walkers. Because they’re just hollow. They’re just containers for the emotions, and they can bring them somewhere else, as enemies if you will. They can be like their conveyor. And they’re also facsimiles. The Hollow Walkers represent facsimiles of a human who experienced that emotion. Now is it a direct link? Is it actually that person or not? Whatever, the game will tell you. (Or not.)

So, by thinking like that about emotions, it just informed the design of those enemies and even the gameplay. You know, the gameplay loop with them where the Haze starts inside, and you have to send it back…

So, yeah, I’ve always been like that. By finding themes and allegories for these themes, and then you let these things inform how you’ll design things. I find it helps you make something a little newish as well.

Bloodworth: What is the design and structure of letting people find things on their own? It’s clear that you’ve got some puzzles that are for right now and some puzzles that are for later, but it might take a bit to figure out which is which. So, how do you manage players figuring it out, but not getting too frustrated? “Oh, I can’t find a thing, where is it?”

Jonathan: Absolutely. So that’s been a journey, definitely, for us. I wouldn’t say we struggled, but it was trial and error, and then it’s not going to be perfect. I think it’s quite enjoyable, but there are some places it works better than others. It’s normal right. Like, I say all the time that BioShock was an absolute masterpiece, one of my most awesome games of all time, but you can’t compare the shooting to Call of Duty. Nothing is absolutely perfect in all of its things, and sometimes the shooting in BioShock was great in moments, and not as great depending on the enemies…

So, some of these things that you’re mentioning, I think overall work quite well. There’s places where it’s quite elegant, places where it’s less. I think it’s just the nature of what we do. But this being said, yeah, there was a lot of iteration.

So, everything used to be all in the same space in your data pad or in your headspace. Also the way it was presented, it was just too much for the player. We could see in play tests that the minute that a player didn’t know what to do anymore, he would start reading every single piece of paper that he had, and it was just for the main quest. And we’re like, no, no, these papers are just lore…

So, we started making categories. It might not be super obvious in the first hours of the game, but in your inventory, the first tab is the items that are related to the main story. The second tab is the items that are either related to a mystery or a secret. And the third tab is just lore. That’s just there to have fun, but there’s nothing to like, “Oh my god!” to crunch numbers and take notes. None of that, ok.

So first we did that, and then we also realized that maybe a little bit of a stick and carrot would be interesting. So, that’s why then you have the… (Is it the exploration tab that it’s called?) You can actually see, not a list, but just question marks of all the good deeds and also the secrets. Good deeds are the secrets you can do for people, how to help people, but they’re secrets. And the mysteries are Tomb Raider-ish, Indiana Jones-ish kinds of secrets. So, we give you some information that some of them exist, with those pixelated images and such. So there’s a bit of a completionist stick and carrot thing there, and it helps to make some sense of it and being able to compartmentalize which of my information is crucial, which is something that I can chase, and which is just lore and floating information.

But there’s still a bit of wanted murkiness in this so it doesn’t start feeling like a quest journal or a mission statement. But it’s a balancing act and only the players and you guys will tell us if we’ve succeeded or not.

Bloodworth: Similarly, you have a lot of these RPG-style elements in there. You’ve got, for one, the in-depth conversation trees and just how many different things that can pop up there based on what you’ve already learned. As well as weapons that level up, these extra accessories and things, but you don’t have character stats.

Jonathan: No stats.

Bloodworth: So yeah, talk to me about that. This much RPG, but not that.

Jonathan: It’s very simple. It’s actually almost an anecdote. So at first, we were thinking of stats. Rogue Factor has a background of heavy stats, because the two games that they had done prior. (I wasn’t at the studio at that time.) They were Games Workshop licenses, but also the ones that are very board game-ish, very heavy stats — Mordheim and Necromunda.

So, this idea of having characters with an insane amount of stats, and skills that are upgraded separately, and bonuses… They know what it is. They know what it means to do that. Some of the programmers, I think, were a little fatigued of that, and like I said, they know what the complexity entails and in terms of balancing. And quite early, some of them voiced that “Do we really have to do this a third time? Can we wait a little bit before we do that another time?”

And me and Bruno, my gameplay director, we thought about it, and said, you know, there’s some truth to what they’re saying. There’s a lot of baggage that comes with this, when you put all these things in a game. And if we’re saying it’s an adventure game anyway, usually adventure games are a little lighter than just pure RPG. And we said, we’ll do the progression through other means, and our hero will be stat-less. So we took the decision and we just ran away with it really. It’s fine.

Bloodworth: Conceptually, how do you end up with 1990s European civil war with tanks and APCs, and then you have ipads and drones, and then a guy that’s just like, “oh there’s a sword, cool. I’ll just start swinging a sword around and going into dungeons?”

Jonathan: (laughing) All these things are not lost on us. Definitely not.
So, in terms of the tech, I see it a bit like a Metal Gear Solid, right? It’s quite known that I’m a huge Kojima fan, probably even more of a Shinkawa fan. His art direction, his art director, and all the great designs he’s done through the years. But let’s just take Metal Gear Solid 3, which takes place in the 60s, right? But there’s still the Shagohod, right? Way more advanced than anything in the 60s! There’s still those flying, you know, when you’re in that river there, there’s the soldiers that are kind of patrolling in those hovering board-type things. And there’s still a base that looks more sci-fi than everything else. Some of the bosses and equipment are like, “How the hell did you get that?” There’s always a flair, a slight 60s flair, but fundamentally, the tech that’s presented to you is way beyond the 60s, you know?

It’s kind of like that. It’s a game. So, the idea is that it takes place in 1993… and obviously, like I said, it’s not a AAA game. The budget was limited. So, the 90s flair is there. I wish that it could have been even more present, some more variety in the kit system for the characters, for the clothing, and this and that. But, it’s still there if you pay attention to how they’re dressed, if you pay attention when you find computers in the game or the appliances in the homes, the cars, stuff like that, right? But, the faction whom this APC belongs to (and that gear, and that drone, and that data pad) is that Metal Gear Solid thing that is chronologically ahead of the game’s time period.

At the same time, the data pad is very much inspired by the Palm Pilot of the days. It’s more advanced, but nonetheless, you recognize the old-school-ness of the display. The buttons are all physical buttons like back in the day. It’s not touch. When you consult it, you see less of it, but when you look at the prop in the inventory, it’s very much like Sony Walkman-y type of buttons and that type of stuff.

Then, the civil war and the Eastern European thing. So, obviously the country’s invented because when you display such harsh conditions, I didn’t want to say it’s that country, you know? The world is not invented. It happens on Earth in 1993, but the country is an invention.

Bloodworth: Yeah, I got very Resident Evil 4 vibes.

Jonathan: Exactly, which because of the language in Resident Evil 4 and the accent, you know it’s Spain, but you don’t know what the village itself is. Us, it’s even pushed further. Even me, if you say, where is it kinda-ish in the world? I don’t know. It’s not important what continent or part of the world it’s in.

However, it’s quite obvious what the inspirations are. It’s a mix of the British countryside and Eastern European. So why I mixed these things is that just pure Eastern European’s been done a lot. And also the type of civil war that I’m referencing has a lot to do with like Bosnia and things. So I didn’t want to say it’s just pure Eastern Europe, but also, there’s STALKER and all these other games. There’s a lot of Eastern European-feel games. I didn’t want to just be that.

And I wanted to have a bit of an eerie feel, almost like a phantasmagorical feel to the game, and that’s when the English countryside comes in. The super mossy things and the big broken trees and stuff like that. It’s much more English, and it has hints… You know, the early Walt Disney movies were highly inspired by those parts of Europe, right? Snow White and Cinderella and Pinocchio, and all that type of stuff. I mean, they’re not nearly as dark as my game, although, they were darker than contemporary Disney. But there’s a reason why they went there. There’s something fantastical about it, and that’s why I mixed that. It’s not just Eastern Europe, it’s these two things together…

And then, because you mentioned it (and we’re fully aware of this) the thing that is like, “Oh my god! This girl! She obviously has the gear to kill that thing, and there we go! I’m putting the poncho on. I got the sword. I got the drone. I got the pad, and I go!” Well, it’s a fucking video game.

And there’s an Easter egg in this whole concept. It’s detectable, and I’m not going to say what it is. It’s detectable in what you’ve played now. It’s detectable in other signs as well. But there’s tropes in our medium, especially back in the days where we just really didn’t question why the games were like that, and I find it quite funny.

So, Remi has done a lot of aikido and… Bo? What’s it called? The martial art with the stick there. So, he kind of knows how to handle like a polearm and everything in a martial art-y way. But of course, the fact that he just finds it — and also everything fits, you know? It was a woman, but oh, he’s got the same size. Some women do, but generally, I can’t wear my wife’s clothes, you know what I mean? So, we’re fully aware of it, but we just ran with it. I’m super cool with it. (laughs)

Bloodworth: Just to wrap it up real quickly. What are your thoughts on combat, because you’re saying you don’t want to be as super-intense as a Souls game, but I think several of us are like, “We’re having a hard time!” It’s not like we’re beating our head against the wall, but just finding the rhythm in there.

Jonathan: Yeah, so interesting question. It’s also good because you guys are also like a free play test session at the same time. (laughs) Well, not free because this whole event is… but you get my drift.

So, we do want it to have a pace that you have to learn, like a taste that you have to kind of get acquainted with. And the ballet of the lymbic pulse, and the fact that your stamina is attached to your health, and all this. But we do want it to be mid-core, a mid-core game. We’re not fully there yet.

What’s interesting at this point, though, is that all the levers, all the knobs, all the sliders of how the combat works are all there, and in the code, and in our tools. It’s just to find the right balance right now. And that’s what we’re absolutely on at the moment, amongst other things, but it’s a huge focus to find what the base experience that we’re saying should be mid-core will be. It’s not fully there yet. We’re getting tons of very interesting and telling data. We’re still adjusting.

What’s interesting as well is that we’re leaving a lot of difficulty options in the game. So you’ll be able to also fine-tune. So, yeah, it’s got a bit too much bite still.

Bloodworth: Thank you so much for talking. That’s all we’ve got the time for that, but good to see you.