Manhunt has certainly lived up to the controversial billing – a stealth game that embraces the darkest part of humanity instead of shying from it. Now that the Rockstar developers have enjoyed a well-deserved holiday after shipping Manhunt for PlayStation last winter, it’s time to take a look back at how this project came together. Who’s that creeping around the corner with an aluminum baseball bat? Why, it’s Manhunt’s Lead Artist and Producer, Andrew Hay!

Gaming Age: First off - great game. I found during gameplay that I alternated between striving for and enjoying the higher-level kills, feeling guilty about enjoying the violence, and occasionally getting queasy - those crowbar kills, yikes. Why dive into the underground culture of snuff tapes?
Andrew Hay: It made for an entirely new game concept, something totally original. There’s nothing out there like Manhunt, a survival game with stealth, action and horror elements. Wrapping the game up in a story about snuff films allowed us to unite all those disparate elements, and create a game that has at its core the idea that first got us excited. A game where you’re the prey, and you’re on the run. Glad that you enjoyed it!

GA: What sort of movies did you use for research? 8MM, etc?
AH: 8MM, Romper Stomper, Marathon Man, Jacob’s Ladder, but Manhunt is inspired by moods, scenes, tension in a whole host of movies. Reality TV was also big influence as mass-market voyeurism has taken over our media in the last 5 years or so. Manhunt is in some ways the extension of that genre to its ultimate end .

GA: The music is great - it has a real "Reese getting chased by the Terminator" sound to it. How do you tailor the background music to fit a dark game like Manhunt?
AH: Our in-house sound designers Allan and Craig wrote amazing tracks, and designed them to seamlessly blend to in-game cues. There’s no actual score, only elements that fade in and out as you perform actions on screen. It’s also tied in with the sound effects in the game, you’ll notice that the music slows and stops as you hide in the shadows, leaving only the sound of Cash’s heart beating. Everything about the audio experience of Manhunt was meticulously designed and implemented; aural cues and effects were key to game’s design.

GA: What was the inspiration for the stealth kills?
AH: There really wasn’t any direct inspiration as far as movies or other media, although to some extent they developed out of the way murders have been represented in horror films since Hitchcock. We were trying to make them look like a horror movie, not look like 'real life', as we wanted to make a horror game that was actually scary. Cinema has really defined horror / fear in the arts for the past 50 years, and we borrowed from this cinematic language as much as was appropriate. It was a concept that grew out of the story, created from the idea that Starkweather is capturing footage from the hunt and showing the player the effects of their actions; they serve as a grim reminder of the story of the game.

GA: The use of the USB headset in the game as a method of interacting with Starkweather and the gangs was a stroke of genius. Who came up with this idea, and will it carry over into other Rockstar titles?
AH: That was part of our ongoing effort to maximize every opportunity for player immersion and increasing the terror of playing Manhunt in the dark. Playing the game with the headset requires you to be silent because noises you make affect the game. You’re forced to literally hold your breath when you’re trying elude a suspicious hunter while hidden in the shadows, for any noises you make have serious ramifications. When Starkweather growls “Go on, finish him!” directly into the same ear in which Cash wears the wireless earpiece, we wanted the player to be shocked, then grow increasingly uncomfortable with a psychopath handing out commands and praise. We can’t say for sure that headset technology will end up in other games, but we’ll take a look at it if it makes sense for the game.

GA: How large was the finished script?
AH: The script for the cutscenes plus the story based in-game text comes to around 25 pages. However, there is an enormous amount of incidental dialogue for the gangs and other characters in the game that adds up to at least 500 pages of text. Over 8000 lines were recorded for the gangs in the game, breathing life into the hunters you attempt to avoid.

It was at this point in the interview where I made the mistake of attempting to coerce some info regarding the next GTA…waking up in an alley with a separated shoulder and a grade 3 concussion is never fun. Don’t mess with Rockstar, folks. Big ups to Rob “Pickle King” Fleischer for arranging this interview and subsequent beatdown.