A dark sci-fi world, no signposts and a deep secret: Hell is Us offers an adventure like in the old days for those who dare.
Hell is Us has no quest markers, no compass, no map and no puzzle-solving help. But it has a dark, unusual sci-fi setting in which a supernatural catastrophe is taking place.
Why, wherefore, where to? That’s for you to find out: and you alone. Because instead of having everything spoon-fed to you by the game, you have to listen carefully to conversations, observe the semi-open-world game world closely, combine the two cleverly, and carve your own path through the fictional land of Hadea.
There is a lot of fighting, but not in the way you would expect in a 90s civil war setting.
Table of Contents
The story
Hell is Us is set in the year 1993 in the fictional country of Hadea, a hermit state that is completely isolated from the outside world. A brutal civil war has been raging there for years.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, a mysterious catastrophe of biblical proportions, known as the “Calamity”, has also occurred, causing strange white figures with holes in their heads and chests to walk around everywhere in the country.
But our hero Rémy hasn’t even noticed these “Hollow Walkers” yet, as he sets out to find his parents in the turmoil of the civil war. Rémy was originally born in Hadea. But as a small child, he was smuggled out of the country by his mother and now he finally wants answers: Who he actually is and why his parents gave him away back then.
Rémy is a peacekeeper with the ON, the Organised Nations – the Hell is Us counterpart to the UN – who are currently on a peace mission in Hadea. He is not officially on the mission, however, and has gone AWOL to search for his family. And there’s no real lead either: Rémy only knows that he comes from the small town of Jova and that his father was the blacksmith there.
But what Rémy will soon realize is that his combat experience will only help him to a limited extent against the Hollow Walkers. Because they are completely immune to any kind of conventional firearms. It is only when Remy finds a drone and a mysterious sword from another time that he can fight back.
Why you can’t kill the critters, why they’re there at all, and where the blade and drone come from: these are all mysteries that you are supposed to uncover in the course of the game. Or maybe it’s better to say: you can uncover.
No quests, no map
According to developer Rogue Factor, you don’t have to uncover all the secrets in the game to see the ending. But if you put in the effort and really walk through the game world with your eyes and ears open, you’ll find plenty of puzzles and mysteries.
The easiest way to do that is to talk to NPCs. Here, for example, Rémy asks a farmer how he can get to his hometown of Jova as quickly as possible. The farmer explains that it’s quite a long way on foot, but that soldiers are waiting in a nearby forest with a transport vehicle that might be able to take him.
In many other games, there would now be a quest progress overlay, a new marker on the map, and an indicator on the compass. But not in Hell is Us. Because all Remy gets besides the key to the fence gate is just the information that he should follow the wind chimes in the forest to get to the soldiers with the APC.
Not only is there no mini-map, but there is no interactive map in the game at all. You may find static map pieces in the game world from time to time, but you have to figure out where you are and where you’re supposed to go yourself. I think that’s great because it forces you to take in your surroundings and become more invested in the game.
Not only is there no map, there aren’t even real quests. Instead, Hell is Us, similar to The Outer Wilds or Atomfall, only has “investigations”. This is a kind of mind map in which Rémy collects all the clues found and connects them. But what you do with them is up to you.
The joy of exploration
Rogue Factor doesn’t do this because they’re evil sadists, but because they want to make exploring a game world fun again. You should follow your own intuition and curiosity, which means you’ll often be on the wrong track, but you’ll be all the more pleased when you find the answers yourself.
In addition to the upper world of Hadea, which is divided into several sections, most of the secrets lie buried in underground dungeons. And despite the 90s setting, these are not subway stations or factory halls, but ancient temple ruins and burial sites that hide the prehistory of Hadea and perhaps also the reason for the Calamity.
There are tablets of stone everywhere, inscribed in an unknown language that Remy can translate with his drone KAPI. It will also light your way from your shoulder or when hovering. One puzzle requires you to put three text passages in the correct order and then simply select the matching symbols at the door lock.
You don’t have to be a genius to do that, but Rogue Factor emphasizes that Remy won’t suddenly start telling himself the solution to the task after five minutes of wandering around. So it’s entirely possible that you’ll get stuck here for a while and have to continue your search elsewhere. This is supposed to happen again and again in Hell is Us when you don’t realize what you can use an item for until hours later. What, for example, you need this bloody teddy here at the gallows for? No idea! Although there are no quests, the team explains that the structure of the game already differentiates between important main and purely optional side investigations. So you should be able to master the main path without too much difficulty, but for some of the bonus tasks you will have to make a real effort and really pay attention to every little detail.
The fights
These head-butts are only half the story, though, because the other 50 percent of Hell is Us is… yes, you’ve guessed it: more head-butting.
At first glance, the game feels almost “Souls-like” with its target locking, stamina management, blocking and dodging – but it’s actually much more forgiving and action-packed. In addition to normal close-range attacks, Rémy can also use special attacks to beat his enemies’ faces in.
Rémy’s abilities are divided between two menus at the bottom of the screen. The left menu shows the so-called “Limbic” or weapon skills. In the game, Rémy can use not only a sword but also other melee blades from “another time”, such as a halberd or a double-edged axe.
Each weapon has four different skills on the left shoulder button of the controller, for example an area attack. But to unlock them in the first place, you have to find the appropriate glyph for each skill in the game world and attach it to the weapon.
On the right side of the screen, on the other hand, are the threatening skills, i.e. four special attacks on the right shoulder button. With the help of KAPI, you can then whirl through enemies like a tornado or run over groups of enemies with the bull rush.
This may sound quite simple at first, but in fact, the fights should be quite tactical. Not only are there different types of Hollow Walkers with various attack patterns and abilities, but there are also the so-called “Hazes”. These are red or blue waber things that the Hollow Walkers carry inside them. There can be up to three Hazes per Walker, and in no time at all, a supposedly small group of enemies can become a superior force.
KAPI is not only good for special attacks, but also for crowd control. You can use the drone to distract enemies so that you can concentrate on other walkers. Incidentally, this also works if you don’t want to fight at all, but simply want to sneak by.
Dialogues & Trade
Remy will soon arrive in his home village of Jova, but that’s far from the end of his journey. His parents are still missing and the villagers are suffering from the double whammy of civil war and monster invasion.
Nevertheless, you should not only be able to find new clues for your investigation in such settlements through conversation, but also exchange important equipment. For example, a little girl explains to Rémy that soldiers loaded the people in the village onto buses and took them away. Maybe his parents were among them.
These aren’t real conversations, by the way, because you only ever choose certain topics from your investigations, but you’re not allowed to select different possible answers. Other characters are voiced in English and French, by the way, and a German voice-over is not planned. Rémy and KAPI also remain silent throughout the entire adventure.
Nothing on a silver platter
With Hell is Us, Rogue Factor wants to develop a love letter to games from the 90s. So a game in which nothing is served to you on a silver platter and you have to work for everything.
The 50-person team from Montréal, Canada, also wants to have designed the game world so that your own curiosity is better than any on-screen display. Quote: “If your instinct tells you that there is something to discover here, then it is very likely that there is.”
Incidentally, Rogue Factor is led by creative and art director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête. At the time, he was already one of the leading minds behind Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided at Eidos Montreal as lead art designer.
Although his new game is supposed to be something completely different from the Immersive Sims with Adam Jensen, one principle remains the same: you should find your own way through this adventure.
Editor’s conclusion
So, I have to admit, I was almost a bit uncomfortable with how Rogue Factor repeatedly emphasizes in interviews and trailers that you have to work for this game. Because, sure, that naturally spurs me on to take on the challenge, and I notice it in myself that open-world monsters drowning in comfort features now feel more like the opposite of an adventure.
On the other hand, not all other studios are stupid, of course. Features like map, quest markers and talking to yourself don’t exist without reason. Because you want to avoid unnecessary frustration and maintain the flow of the game. Rogue Factor has yet to prove whether Hell is Us is fun in the end despite a challenging search or whether you throw in the time sword in the middle of it all.
For me, the whole thing still sounds very interesting. Exploring game worlds and investigating, as in Outer Wilds, are exactly my thing. But what really got me curious was this cool scenario with the mix of civil war and biblical sci-fi apocalypse. We’ll find out this year whether it will be a success, because Hell is Us will be released for PC on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series on September 4.
