Hi, I’m Tom Heaton, game director of The Devil In Me. Today I’m going to talk about some of the inspiration for our game and especially for our villain, Granthem Du’Met.
The Devil In Me is the story of a film crew making a documentary about American serial killers. They are lured to a remote island hotel, trapped and hunted by a serial killer who is inspired by HH Holmes.
HH Holmes was born in 1861. He was active in Chicago in the 1890s and his name is associated with the World Colombian Exposition, also known as the World’s Fair, which was held in Chicago at the time. Holmes had a shady past by the time he arrived in Chicago. He was already qualified to be a doctor, and it was suggested that he made money digging graves and raiding murderers to sell corpses to medical schools. He also has a complicated personal life. Business partners, wives and girlfriends have a habit of disappearing, often leaving substantial sums of money to HH Holmes.
In the frenetic, energetic years leading up to the Colombia Show, HH Holmes built a hotel to cater to the huge crowds that would come to see the spectacle. It was a huge three-story building that took up an entire block. The first floor has an elegant reception area, bar and pharmacy shop. The third floor contains the living rooms. But the second floor is unique and dangerous. After Holmes was captured, investigators found it to be made up of secret passageways, hidden rooms, trap doors, torture chambers, and rooms specifically designed for murder. In the basement there were tables for chopping and sorting bodies and acid tanks to destroy evidence as cleanly as possible.
Holmes approached the murder mission with intelligence and enthusiasm, creativity. He experimented and perfected his techniques. He is ruthless and highly motivated. He gave too much to the needy who came to his hotel to hope for some comfort while they took part in the glory of the World’s Fair.
As the Dark Pictures team searches for inspiration for a potential serial killer game, HH Holmes stands out as someone who will offer a fascinating and unusual stereotype of how a serial killer might work. .
You will meet Holmes in the opening sequence of The Devil In Me. He greets an innocent couple on their honeymoon at his splendid hotel. He’s pompous, charming, and not condescending. His mind was clear, calculating, observing, figuring out the best way to maneuver these innocents and prepare the hotel for the next guests.
The Devil In Me’s modern-day villain, Granthem Du’Met, is a HH Holmes so obsessed that he built his own contemporary murder castle. He was inspired by Holmes’ methods, but he also wanted to beat his horrifying killing count. Some sources claim that Holmes had close to 200 victims, so that’s a big question. He was also inspired by the world of 19th-century HH Holmes, and you’ll see this in the latticework, the outfits he wears, and the music he enjoys playing as he delivers the finishing blow to him. his next victim.
The threats in the previous Dark Pictures games have been psychological and supernatural, but in The Devil In Me the threat has a deeper, deeper basis: nothing more than a human. That might seem like a restriction at first, but this person is intent on your death. He has meticulously planned it, and he will deliver it in the most wonderful, creative, and meaningful way possible.
We had a lot of fun designing these deaths, taking on the warped and brutal universe of an obsessive killer, trying to be as innovative and creative as HH Holmes, and we Can’t wait for players to get their hands on the game and walk the corridors of Granthem Du’met’s modern murder castle.
Read slowly, keep looking back, and if you hear classical music, it’s really nerve-wracking!
