A new 15-minute gameplay video for the action-adventure game Hell is Us, presented by Creative Director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête. This video provides new information on the game's key features, from its narrative to its design features and combat system. Hell is Us is scheduled for release in 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
Hell is Us’ narration
The story of Hell is Us takes place in a fictional country called Hadea, a hermit nation ravaged by civil war. Players take on the role of Remi, who was born in this country, and after many years abroad decides to return to his homeland to find answers about his past.
A deep and demanding combat system
While combat is an integral part of the gaming experience, Hell is Us should not be considered as a “souls-like” title, but rather as one where combat is designed to offer a well-seasoned difficulty level without being overly punitive. Players will have to learn to master a range of different moves and adapt to enemy attacks. They will be able to rely on a variety of weapons and skills, as well as the help of KAPI, a drone that will prove indispensable during fights as it can, for example, distract opponents or enable special attacks.
“Player Plattering”, a design choice encouraging exploration and reflection
The game features a singular approach to game design, that can best be described by the term “player-plattering”, which encourages exploration and reflection by eliminating traditional forms of assistance. Hell is Us doesn't feature markers or quest journals detailing exactly what to do, but there's no shortage of points of interest and secrets to uncover: players must use their curiosity and instincts to discover places steeped in history that will lead them to explore ancient, forgotten dungeons.
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Note: The #HellisUS #Trailer is courtesy of Publisher NACON and studio Rogue Factor. All Rights Reserved. The https://amzo.in are with a purchase nothing changes for you, but you support our work. #XboxViewTV publishes game news and about Xbox and PC games and hardware.
Hell is Us’ narration
The story of Hell is Us takes place in a fictional country called Hadea, a hermit nation ravaged by civil war. Players take on the role of Remi, who was born in this country, and after many years abroad decides to return to his homeland to find answers about his past.
A deep and demanding combat system
While combat is an integral part of the gaming experience, Hell is Us should not be considered as a “souls-like” title, but rather as one where combat is designed to offer a well-seasoned difficulty level without being overly punitive. Players will have to learn to master a range of different moves and adapt to enemy attacks. They will be able to rely on a variety of weapons and skills, as well as the help of KAPI, a drone that will prove indispensable during fights as it can, for example, distract opponents or enable special attacks.
“Player Plattering”, a design choice encouraging exploration and reflection
The game features a singular approach to game design, that can best be described by the term “player-plattering”, which encourages exploration and reflection by eliminating traditional forms of assistance. Hell is Us doesn't feature markers or quest journals detailing exactly what to do, but there's no shortage of points of interest and secrets to uncover: players must use their curiosity and instincts to discover places steeped in history that will lead them to explore ancient, forgotten dungeons.
JOIN THE XBOXVIEWTV COMMUNITY
Twitter ► https://twitter.com/xboxviewtv
Facebook ► https://facebook.com/xboxviewtv
YouTube ► http://www.youtube.com/xboxviewtv
Dailymotion ► https://dailymotion.com/xboxviewtv
Twitch ► https://twitch.tv/xboxviewtv
Website ► https://xboxviewtv.com
Note: The #HellisUS #Trailer is courtesy of Publisher NACON and studio Rogue Factor. All Rights Reserved. The https://amzo.in are with a purchase nothing changes for you, but you support our work. #XboxViewTV publishes game news and about Xbox and PC games and hardware.
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GamingTranscript
00:00Hi everyone, my name is Jonathan Jacques-Belletet, I'm the Creative Director and the Art Director
00:20on Hell is Us.
00:21I hope you enjoyed the trailer that you've seen recently.
00:24Today we're back in a spotlight, we're going to show you a bit of gameplay, a bit more
00:27of what you've seen in the trailer, and I hope that you will enjoy this part greatly.
00:31All right, so let's start with the basics.
00:33So Hell is Us is set to be released in 2025.
00:37It's for pretty much everything, so Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and PC.
00:43So the game is a bit of a take back to games from the 1990s.
00:47We're a team of passionate people.
00:49The average on the team is like 20 years of development experience, so we're from different
00:54generations and we have a lot of love for how the games in the 90s were made and how
00:57they were played and experienced, especially the fact that, you know, there was no handholding,
01:03there was no silver plattering, you kind of had to figure stuff out by yourself.
01:07You were really in control of your exploration and your own discoveries, and this is what
01:11we're trying to do in Hell is Us, obviously with modern flair and kind of like modern
01:17knowledge of game design and whatnot, but very much puts you back in the driver's seat
01:22of your experience and of your exploration and then the result and the joy of your discoveries.
01:29So Hell is Us takes place in a country called Hadea.
01:32Hadea is in the grips of a vicious civil war.
01:36You play the role of Remy.
01:37Remy is actually from Hadea.
01:39He was born there, but his mom smuggled him out at the age of five, like it sometimes
01:43happens in those countries.
01:45And what I mean by that is Hadea is a hermit state, it's a turtle state, it's completely
01:49closed off on itself.
01:50Nobody goes out, nobody comes in, and that's why Remy's mom decided to smuggle him out
01:55so he can have a better life.
01:56He grew up in the foster home system or the foster system in Canada.
02:00He's always wanted to come back to Hadea.
02:02He wants to find his parents again.
02:04He wants to kind of like confront them.
02:05He's got a lot of questions for them.
02:06He understands why they abandoned him, but yet, you know, abandonment is pretty much
02:10the biggest trauma that a child can have, and there's like a loop that hasn't been closed
02:15properly for him towards this situation and his parents.
02:18When the game starts, Remy has finally been able to infiltrate Hadea.
02:23During the brutal civil war that I was talking about, Remy is a ON peacekeeper.
02:28He quit his post, he went AWOL, infiltrated the country, and this is where the game starts.
02:34Remy remembers two things, and that means the players remember two things.
02:37It's that his village of birth was called Jova, and his father was the blacksmith of
02:42Jova.
02:43Those are the only clues you begin the game with, and these are the only clues that Remy
02:46also know.
02:47So equipped with this knowledge, with these clues, you begin the game and you try to find
02:51your way to Jova.
02:54You must be lost to wander around Sinedra Forest.
02:58I'm afraid I have very little to offer.
03:01A group of strange-looking soldiers arrived here last night in an APC, and perhaps you
03:08can ask them for help.
03:11It's not the first time I've seen them.
03:13They always seem to be snooping around here for something.
03:17They park their APC just beyond the woods, to the north.
03:23Once in the woods, follow the wind chimes.
03:27They will lead the way through.
03:30The gate to enter the woods is locked.
03:33Here, take this key to unlock it.
03:41Okay, so let's talk about this design philosophy that I've mentioned earlier, which is, you
03:46know, I said the word silver plattering, is something that I had been thinking about
03:49for quite a few years, and the team as well, which is, if you look at modern day or contemporary
03:54adventure games and RPGs, pretty much everything is given to you on a silver platter.
03:59What I mean by that is when you explore, everything appears in front of you, you know, you have
04:02your compass on top of you that's like a sixth sense, like a magical sense that detects,
04:06you know, all the caves and all the cool stuff around you, and the towers and this and whatnot,
04:10it just appears magically, and you have your map, and you have your mini-map, and you have
04:14your quest markers, and you have your objective markers, and you can drop your own markers,
04:18and you have your quest journals, and it just never ends.
04:20And if you think about it, what happens with that is that you're not truly, truly exploring,
04:25you're just kind of like flying by wire, and when you find something, it's not really your
04:29discovery, it was kind of handed to you on a silver platter.
04:32So what you're looking at now is we're having a discussion with a bloke named Ernest Cadell,
04:36he's telling us certain information, and then he tells us, it's quite far, you need to iterate,
04:41you might find people that are willing to give you a ride.
04:45It's up to the north of my house, so you're going to have to use your compass, but your
04:47real compass, right?
04:48With the coordinates on it, north, south, east, west, blah, blah, blah, and follow that.
04:52And he tells you that in the Lost Woods, in order to find your way out, just follow the
04:56wind chimes.
04:57He says, I've attached them there for my kids when they were young, because they kept getting
05:00lost in those bloody woods.
05:02And then he tells you, follow the sound of the wind chimes, and you'll find your way
05:06on the other side of the woods.
05:08That's how we do it.
05:09It's very organic, it's very realistic, you know, someone in real life could have told
05:13you the exact same thing.
05:15So the environments, the visuals of the game, are not just there to illustrate, they're
05:19there to communicate.
05:20So you need to play the game, you need to open your eyes, you need to open your ears
05:23to what NPCs tell you, and you'll find your way, and you'll discover things, and you will
05:27truly own your discoveries and the great joy that comes with that.
05:39So here's another scene or another section that could be considered part of our player
05:51plattering philosophy.
05:53So here's a puzzle, and there's obviously a solution to the puzzle, but nothing eventually
05:57is going to tell you, you know, if the player ends up kind of like taking a bit of time
06:01to find a solution.
06:02There's not going to be any artificial kind of ways that are going to help him or tell
06:06him what to do.
06:07Remy's not going to start talking to himself, or i.e. talking to the player with, you know,
06:11little clues and whatever.
06:12It's really up to you to figure them out.
06:13And in the way that the player plattering is inserted in this, we have a good example
06:16here with your trusty drone named Cappy.
06:19By the way, you can tell now that Remy has his poncho, and he has his sword, and he has
06:23his drone.
06:24So it's after he's acquired them, right?
06:26Because at the beginning of the game, you saw he was not dressed like that.
06:29Now there's a reason why he ends up dressed like this, there's a reason why he needs these
06:33things, this equipment, but we don't need to get into these details today.
06:36So anyway, there's an ancient language in the country, and you kind of find it throughout
06:41the game.
06:42And the drone has a software, one of his many softwares, and this specific one can translate
06:48the ancient language.
06:49So this puzzle, the way that it works, you need to kind of like explore and observe your
06:53environment around this specific puzzle in order to find the clues on how to solve it.
06:58You need the drone, your trusty Cappy, his name is Cappy, also there's something behind
07:02that of course, and you translate those old texts, it gives you little passages of a poem
07:08or a psalm or something like that, and through what they tell you and the order in which
07:13they seem to have to be pieced back together, you find your clues on what this puzzle does
07:19and how to solve it.
07:20So again, the players are kind of like just led to their own devices, but things are there,
07:26the answers are there, and you have to explore, and again I repeat it, you have to open your
07:29eyes, and open your ears, and you'll figure it out.
07:49So by now, you've seen a lot of what I guess is like exploration and looking around and
07:53talking to people and doing puzzles and all that kind of sweet stuff.
07:57But if you've seen the trailer, you of course notice that there's another big aspect to
08:02the game, which is third-person melee combat.
08:05So we like to say that the game is 50% exploration and 50% combat.
08:10The game is not at all only about combat, and it's definitely not at all just walking
08:14around and figuring stuff out.
08:16It's the combination of both, and we also think that the way that we've combined them
08:19is quite refreshing and quite unique, and hell is us.
08:23So like I said, combat is an integral part of the game.
08:25I do want to emphasize now that we're not a Souls-like game.
08:29The game is a lot more mid-core, it's have fun, get in it, and hack and slash, it doesn't
08:33mean it's easy, it's not overly hard.
08:35There's a learning curve, there's subtleties, there's little things that we've invented
08:38just for the flair and the flavor of hell is us.
08:42It's very crunchy, I think the friction is pretty good, and I hope you'll enjoy it.
08:46So there's a wide variety of enemies in the game, so we have kind of like the more common
08:51enemy type, which we call the Hollow Walker, so it's these kind of humanoid, bipedal, white
08:56enemies that you can see here with the holes in their faces and their chests and whatnot.
09:00So obviously there's a reason why they're called Hollow Walkers, and there's different
09:03types of them and different kind of tiers of strength and powers, but when you're facing
09:08pretty much the biggest threats in the game, it's what we call like a dual entity, so it's
09:12like a Hollow Walker has a haze inside of it, so it's when the haze is present.
09:17I'm not going to get into the details right away of what the haze represents, it's all
09:20part of the lore and what you'll figure out in the game, but when you're facing a combo
09:24like these dual entities, and you can go to like three of them, four of them, there's
09:27the herders, there's the fervents, and different types like that, but that's when you really
09:31need to master the combat system, that's when you start having to use all the tools and
09:36techniques at your disposal.
09:37The drone has tons of skills to upgrade it, and the drone is very much your little sidekick
09:42to help you in fighting multiple enemies at a time.
09:45He's not a sidekick in the sense where he talks and he has an AI, he's very much a drone
09:48that has its own protocol to do this crowd management during the combat, so you have
09:53your different weapons, you have your limbic skills, attack to weapons, which is basically
09:56you can say this is magic, even though in the game it's not considered magic, it's kind
09:59of like a scientific base to them, but that's when you really need to master all the little
10:03subtleties of the combat system, use all the tools in your arsenal and at your disposition,
10:08and get in the melee with these kind of dual or triple or quadruple entities, and being
10:13able to manage them and be victorious.
10:17So like I mentioned, here specifically you can see a combat against a limbic entity that
10:22has multiple hazes attached to the hollow walker, that's when it gets really complex,
10:26it gets very overwhelming because you're alone, but you got your trusty little Cappy.
10:30So you need to use its skill, so for example Cappy has a skill where you can distract an
10:35entity, either a haze or a hollow walker, you can use the forward charge, which is one
10:39of my favorite, you also have the typhoon, you have the super dash skill, which is another
10:44one of my favorites, where you can start dashing sideways, forward, backwards, really
10:47really fast, it gives you like this Japanese action game style, and then you also have
10:52your limbic skill, so you need to find the glyphs in the game, and you need to attach
10:55them to your weapons, and this is when you start getting powers that come from these
10:59weapons that allow you to take care of these enemies in much more powerful and kind of
11:04like impressive ways, that's when the VFX and the sound effects all come together and
11:08give you this combat bang that we all like and love.
11:12Okay, so now let's take a little pause from the combat, and let's go back to the investigation
11:17and the exploration, so like I said there's no silver plattering, there's none of these
11:22kind of like fly by wire, it's up to you to figure out what your kicker is, what I mean
11:27by kicker is what you're supposed to achieve at this specific moment, what you're actually
11:30looking for, where to look for it, and how to look for it, right?
11:34Remy and the players are at a ratio of information which is 1-1.
11:39It's in Akers and Marshes, it's quite a ways from here.
11:45So one of the tools that we're providing you to still kind of help you a bit and manage
11:49this 1-1 kind of like knowledge ratio is your data pad, think of it as a bit your investigation
11:54wall if you want, but in a digital 90s format, so your clues, your leads, the important people
12:02that are related to your investigation, trying to find your parents and a lot more eventually
12:06are all stored here, they're linked together by the relationships and now it's up to you
12:11to go and investigate about them.
12:20So as you can see here, some of the areas can be quite wide opened.
12:24This one here called the Casa Marshes is one of the bigger ones and as I spoke quite a
12:29bit already, the game doesn't hold your hand or doesn't really tell you where to go, so
12:33out of your main leads or clues or ideas that you have in your head of what you're
12:37supposed to do or where you're supposed to go at any given moment, you will also be attracted
12:42by a lot of points of interest or just little things in the environment that pique your
12:46curiosity and as you walk towards them or explore, that's when you'll start also making
12:51a ton of like peripheral or side discoveries on your own, things that you cannot solve
12:55right away or things that you might think that there is a thing to be done with it when
12:59there's none and it's all part of the fun stuff and the kind of like experience that
13:03we're providing in the game.
13:04So as you can see here, there's a tree with people that have been hung.
13:08Like I said, this takes place during a very vicious civil war between two different ethnicities
13:12in the countries that are still basically the exact same people and you found this tree.
13:16It's actually not part of the golden path or not part of something tremendously important
13:20in the game, but there's still something around it.
13:23There's still something to be found and it's probably linked to more stuff that you can
13:27do in relation to it, but that you had to do your own exploration to find it and even
13:32more of your own exploration and investigation to figure out what it's linked to and what
13:37you can do from it if you want.
13:47So here we are in a dungeon in the game.
13:49So yes, the game has dungeons.
13:51This was really important to us.
13:53Like I said at the beginning, there's a bit of a love letter to games from the 90s, but
13:57one of the challenges was the game takes place in a contemporary setting.
14:00The game takes place in 1993 and yet we still wanted dungeons in the game and I didn't want
14:05the dungeons to take place in an abandoned metro station or, you know, in an abandoned
14:09factory because it's the modern era.
14:11I still wanted the dungeons to be very ancient things and this brings us to another really
14:15important aspect of the game or one of the very important themes of the game, which is
14:19history, historicity, deep history.
14:21So history that goes even before history.
14:23So there's a lot of mysteries and a lot of lore and the origin of what's going on in
14:26the country and the link to the Civil War is all tied to that deep history and also
14:30what has happened since.
14:32I won't get into too much details because that will be part of another video for you
14:35guys, but you can see a bit of it here and it shows you the varied palettes and moods
14:40and atmospheres that we have in the game, which also I think is something quite interesting
14:44and unique that we're doing in Hell is Us.
14:47Thanks a lot.
14:47Thanks for being with us.
14:48I hope you enjoyed it.
14:49I'm extremely grateful to have you guys following us, the team as well.
14:53So just to repeat, the game Hell is Us will be released in 2025, Xbox Series, PlayStation
14:585 and PC, and there's a lot more coming soon about the game.
15:03This is just the beginning.
15:04We'll explain other aspects of it and get into some types of gameplay.
15:08But for now, thanks so much for watching and I'll see you guys in the next video.
15:12Bye.
15:16a bit of the minutiae.
15:18So stay tuned and speak to you soon.