Jonestown… Waco… Heaven’s Gate… Images and feelings associated with these events are still burned into the fabric of society many years later. The aptly-named Paranoid Productions will draw on these events for their debut game, The Church In the Darkness.
Set in the 1970s, The Church In the Darkness will ask players to take control of Vic, a former police officer who is searching for his nephew at Freedom Town, a commune formed by the fictional Collective Justice Mission. Freedom Town is run by Isaac and Rebecca Walker, a married couple who might be trying to make the world a better place. But their commune could be a cult and their motives could be a bit more sinister.
As Vic, players will explore Freedom Town in a new way every time as each playthrough will ascribe new motivations to the Walkers and the other residents of Freedom Town. Using an overhead style similar to Metal Gear, you’ll need to use stealth to investigate the camp, but you also might have to resort to violence to make your escape.
The Walkers should sound familiar to a huge number of people as Isaac will be voiced by John Patrick Lowrie (the Sniper from Team Fortress 2), while his real-life wife, Ellen McLain (GLaDOS from Portal), will portray Rebecca.
Another familiar name, Richard Rouse III, is the Creative Director at Paranoid Productions. Rouse has bounced around the game industry a lot in the last 20 years, but he’s probably best known for The Suffering, an absolutely underrated game from the PS2/Xbox era.
The Church In the Darkness will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One in early 2017.
