INTERVIEW: ILL Team Reveals Why This Game is Just So Damn Brutal

If you’re familiar with ILL, the developing title from Team Clout and Mundfish, then you probably know just how violent it’s shaping up to be. It’s a harrowing title bursting with gore, visceral imagery, and horrific, mutated enemies prowling around every corner. There’s every opportunity for ILL to be one of the most brutally realistic horror games ever made.

Given that this nature of gratuitous violence can sometimes be divisive, I sat down with Team Clout’s developers to ask them why they’ve chosen to make such a gory game. Why does ILL need to be so mind-blowingly realistic?

ILL Pushes Players to a Place of Terror

Weeks ago, we received an all-new look at ILL by way of a fresh trailer, which detailed the game’s story. ILL isn’t all just about the gore, and there’s a solid narrative running under the blood and guts of this horrifying project. Of course, that trailer was still also about the sheer level of violence and brutality in the game.

When I interviewed the guys making ILL, I simply had to ask what drove them to want to make a game so deeply visceral. Why now are they making something that almost glorifies incessant violence? I should stress that I’m very excited to play ILL, and these questions don’t come from a place of criticism, but curiosity.

The team explained:

We have to highlight John Carpenter’s The Thing and Half-Life 2. The primal sensations evoked by the body horror in The Thing, combined with the terrifying atmosphere of Half-Life 2 became the benchmark for the physicality, visceral nature, and suspense we want to deliver in ILL.

Striking that exact balance, where fighting for survival is incredibly fun yet genuinely terrifying – is exactly what we are aiming for.

Inspirations aside, I wanted to know what experience the team was bringing to the table to facilitate this level of cinematic violence. It goes beyond just that, though. ILL has a non-stop eerie vibe that permeates every sequence we’ve seen thus far. It’s set to be a scarefest of a title, that’s for sure.

They said:

Our team’s portfolio includes working on such acclaimed films and series as Until Dawn, IT: Welcome to Derry, V/H/S/Beyond, Longlegs, Azrael, and various Sony Pictures horror projects.

Over the years, we’ve accumulated so many of our own ideas and creative solutions, and ILL is our dream project where we can finally realize our boldest, most creative visions.

We strive for a realistic visual style, doing everything we can to ensure that the events, the environments, and the terrifying monsters feel as immersive as possible – making players feel like they are physically inside the game’s world.

If you’ve seen the most recent ILL trailers, you’ll know exactly what they’re talking about. Enemies are unpredictable, the environment is a non-stop threat, and the dark, dingy atmosphere of the facility you’ve woken up in all make for a nightmarish experience.

Are you looking forward to ILL? Let us know what you’re thinking about this game on the Insider Gaming Discord server.

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