The story, which we learn in part from the intro, is set in 1923, shortly after the first Great Depression. To write the story of Undying, they enlisted a true horror novelist and director of the Hellraiser films, Clive Barker, one of the people who, after Stephen King, knows best what scares us most about being “alone in the dark”… Well, at Dreamworks, they’ve taken on no small task of trying to top Half Life’s fantastic atmosphere in their horror game. That said, since Half Life, I could count on one hand the FPS-esque games that have really captured my imagination. No matter the revolutionary 3D engine, no matter the double-barrelled shotgun or the violence of the chainsaw, when you’re playing alone at home and not counting your frag in a Quake game, you want to be immersed in a cosy story, not just hunting artificial intelligence-powered “bots” from track to track.
Since Half Life, we’ve known how much a well-crafted story can matter in an action game with an interior view.
