During the years of their estrangement from one another, Galloway has unwittingly become the video game equivalent of Barker's consistent character, Harry D'Amour, in that he seems to attract or be drawn to bizarre and occult phenomena, resulting in his development of certain powers and capabilities (not least of which is a peculiar psychic capability, allowing him to see what others can't and hear what others refuse to: more on that later), not to mention myriad enemies, both terrestrial and otherworldly.
CLIVE BARKERS UNDYING JOURNAL KEY SERIES
Clive Barker really doesn't have a great deal of luck when it comes to video game adaptations of his work: if you examine the author, artist and director's back history with the video game industry, you will find a sad trail of burned out or abandoned projects, some of which came almost the point of release before being canned, others of which found their ways to store shelves in hideously unfinished or mechanically broken states ( Jericho springs instantly to mind).Įasily the most successful, but often the most overlooked and certainly the most poorly marketed, is Undying, a project that was originally intended to catapult Barker's peculiar brand of bizarre and disturbing horror into the video game world and beyond, but which ultimately ended up being a beloved but not terribly well known cult classic.Īccording to Barker's own accounts, the game was designed to be the first in the series a series which, in itself, was intended to be a stepping stone into a far wider franchise, including books, comics and, potentially, maybe even films and TV series.įor those of us who have played the game and come to love it, the failure of this wider franchise to manifest is tragic beyond endurance: the game, whilst flawed in certain technical areas, maintains a fantastic style and sense of immersion an elaborate and fascinating, almost Lovecraftian mythology and a number of scares ranging from the extremely subtle to the garishly overt.Īs protagonist Patrick Galloway, the player is charged with answering a summons from Galloway's old field Sergeant and personal friend, Jeremiah Covenant.