Horror game from Halo and Destiny Writers will launch a new universe of connections

A new horror game announcement almost always fascinates me, but when a studio reveals that a game starts to launch a whole new horror universe, that’s the first step to really grab my ambitiousness. Probably the situation with the upcoming first-person horror game of Motherters, IRE: Preface.

As the name suggests, IRE: The Prologue is the beginning of the IRE Universe, a brand new series part of CJ Cowan, who previously served as storyline leader at Bungie and helped bring Halo and Destiny’s years of legend to life. Cowan’s expertise is to expand the world (such as IRE) to unveil, but it all starts with the first game, based on my hosting demo, which will attract game fans like Alien: Alien: Sylien and Amnesia.

In IRE: A Prologue, the player plays the role of a young girl named Emily, who in 1986 found herself trapped in a ship’s schedule while the monster roams the hall. Like Alien: Isolation or the recent amnesia sequel, The Bunner, , the monster is an AI enemy, not a script. This means that every interaction can take many ways, and since you will cycle the entire world over and over again, there is good reason to believe that you need to be hiding over and over in the shadows while lingering around to outperform the creature.

In my demo, I like to catch the glimpse of the beast, which seems to be a completely primitive monster, and the story of the game is called Drüdgen. Cowan told me that the team was inspired by the aliens in 1979 that hide their central monster, making it even more terrifying.

“The more we hide monsters, the more we can really scare the player. And (we can) put calories into important parts of the game. So we ended up building a bunch of complex systems around it where the monsters turn off the lights within their radius, and even if you know, you can start in those remote places. Soon.”

While I barely caught an image of this creature, what really attracted me was the weird sound it made. They are hard to describe, but the way I talked to Cowan about them sounds a bit like a monster is swallowing or drowning. Cowan reveals how specific sources inspire these sounds. “The initial inspiration for Monster Audio was Bear Bear,” Cowan explained. “It was some really cool sounds, almost trying to talk. There was something interesting in the game (later) that started to imitate Emily's voice and talk to her.”

I found that announcing this game as the first part of the wider universe is an interesting choice. I wonder what the advantages of this approach are, and Cowan is what the person who walks through this symbolic fork on the road.

“If you look at the people on the team and our experience, we have done a lot of franchise in our past work, from Halo 2 to Halo 3 to Halo 3 to ODST and reach for it. Everyone wants to think we have a huge plan and the whole arc of the chief has the entire arc of the chief (the layout) (that’s not the case). You know, we’re trying to figure it out for ourselves.

“It's the leaders on the team who are passionate about it, establishing the franchise and slowly stripping the tiers of that franchise over time and digging it deeper and deeper. So there's a lot of things in this game that's what happens next. I'm so excited about it.”

Cowan smiled as he shot down my follow-up question, whether IRE will be an anthology or a continuous storyline—“I won’t spoil this!”—but he did mention how Hub Space Emily would often return to a safe area where items players can find on the go, such as audiotapes and photos. In my opinion, these items, perhaps in other aspects of anger: a preface, if they want to feel angry in the first game and the game that will follow, they will become breadcrumbs.

IRE: When Halloween arrives in time on PC on October 28, the preface will kick off its wider story universe. On October 13, the free demo will arrive at Steam earlier on October 13.