Clive Barker's Jericho: Introduction

“…and God created The Firstborn in his own image.  An entity neither male nor female, dark nor light; a singular being that was both beautiful and terrible to behold.  Disturbed ty the power of his creation, God left it unfinished, banishing The Firstborn from reality to the Abyss, forsaken and unloved.”

These are some of the opening lines of Clive Barker’s “Jericho” a very mediocre, yet all around awesome, game released in 2007, developed by MercurySteam and published by Codemasters.  “Jericho”, despite being relatively well-known as a pile of complete crap, has gone mostly forgotten to time.  It wasn’t good enough to make an impact and it wasn’t bad enough to be memorable.

Those opening lines though, the Biblical text, it does a serviceable job of pulling you into this world.  Every level of the game, opens with some expositional text, further fleshing out the world.  These are the things, which make “Jericho” stand out, which make it, in some ways, exceptional.  Not just the opening scrolls of text, introducing you to the next section of game or taken from the fictional pages of Biblical Apocrypha that make it great.  Given Clive Barker is the writer, or at least the guy developing the world of the game, there’s a pretty rich world here, dense with history and characters.  It’s just sad almost everything built around this world is so terribly mediocre in comparison.

In this multi-part essay, I’ll be breaking down sections of the game’s narrative, its lore, and its characters and, of course, its gameplay.  This mini-breakdown will act as an introduction to all of these things, to sort of get our feet wet and outline what each part will focus on.

We’ll start with, arguably, the most important part of any story, the central characters.  Boy, oh boy, is this an odd cast.  Props for filling that diversity quota though MercurySteam, pretty sure we’ve got enough diversity here to please just about anyone.  We’ve got seven characters which include: three women, a character who is potentially bi or lesbian, an Autistic savant, a big Mestizo guy, an Asian-American woman, who is also schizophrenic, a wacky Southern priest, a level headed black man and a boring white dude voiced by Steven Blum.  As Yahtzee pointed out in his review, all we’re missing is someone in a wheel chair to truly complete the spectrum of political correctness.

In the game’s defense though, the diversity, doesn’t exactly feel intentional or forced.  It’s not here to please anyone, nor is their race, sex, etc. their core characteristic, they just happen to be diverse, which is as it should be.  It partly doesn’t appear to be going for diversity points, because the narrative presents the characters as nothing more than your stock “Aliens” marine archetypes.  Mostly though, the characters get a strong pass, because there’s actually quite a bit more to them beyond their diversity and occupation.  The characters, as with many things in “Jericho”, each have, who’d have guessed, complex and interesting backstories.  Problem is, most people will miss the compelling backstories, either because they’re not going to take the time to read the dossiers unlocked in the extras menu or because nobody is ever going to play the game more than once, let alone on the highest difficulty.  You can only unlock these backstories by doing specific tasks in-game, so if you’re not some freak like me who actually took the time to 100% “Jericho”, you’re only getting the backstory on a few of the leads.  Once again, there’s compelling stuff here, marred by the game’s mediocrity and unwillingness to explore any of its characters.

Now, how about that concept Clive Barker provided?  It’s phenomenal and filled to burst with potential.  There’s enough in this game to fill up more than a couple movies, enough to fill more than a couple seasons of television.  Each time slice (a section of history stolen by the Firstborn upon one of its attempts to break into our world) has its own developed history and distinct feel from the one that preceded it.  You've got one world with a Roman mayor, in the vein of Caligula, who continues to indulge himself on his perversions, creating a time slice filled with sex, violence and cannibalism.  To him, this is not the hell that it has been to others, his hedonism is perfectly compatible with what The Pyxis (the name of the prison/dimension of the Firstborn) offers.  On the other hand, you've the Templars who are driven mad living a perpetual war where they cannot die, in a world without a God.  Eventually their insanity drives them to grafting armor and weapons to their bodies as tribute to God.  You've got this delusional bishop, who believed that marching Christian children into battle would guarantee success, who spends his days in The Pyxis, hiding from the vengeful ghosts of those children he led to slaughter.  There's just so much to each section, and such a comprehensive lore to the overall game, that you as the player, are just a small part of a story much larger and greater than that of the immediate narrative.

Finally, the gameplay!  Yet another aspect of “Jericho” which was also filled with potential.  You've got a horror themed, team based tactical shooter, wherein each character in both squads have unique supernatural abilities.  On top of your squad mechanics, you've got the ability to swap and control different teammates on a whim, allowing you to utilize their unique abilities and equipment.  While majority of their abilities can be used whenever, others have abilities which are a little more situational or only useful when you’re in control.  One character can freely manipulate bullets, allowing a single shot to combo into multiple headshots, against enemies who aren’t even lined up.  Another can use incantations to stun enemies or set them ablaze.  Another has the ability to astral project to other areas to manipulate objects out of reach.  Yet another can slow time.  This isn’t even all you have at your hands, there are six characters you can control and each of those characters has two unique abilities.  That’s twelve supernatural abilities in total.  You’d think all these mechanics would be utilized in unique ways, but they are not.  Instead, you’ll eventually forget about the game’s rudimentary squad mechanics, because you cannot actually issue any meaningful orders and all combat situations are the same.  You’ll also probably just stick with the one character whose ability you find the most useful, as the game offers very few situations that may require a little more experimentation or a specific character’s abilities.

All this room for a tight, tactical and tension filled horror game, complete with unique mechanics, a compelling cast and a strong and realized universe from Clive Barker, yet they managed to fuck the whole thing up.  How can they have all this awesome on their hands, all this potential, and all they managed to make was a mediocre, brown/grey corridor shooter?  That’s something best answered by someone who isn’t a hardcore fan of a mediocre game.  Instead, next time, we’ll be taking a closer look at these characters and who they are.