Creating Death

A closer look at Death with Creative Director Joe Madureira

Designing Death was pretty interesting because everyone has these preconceived images of what Death is—the Angel of Death, the horseman called Death, the Grim Reaper—and we had a very specific plan for how this character would be. We wanted him to be a lot different than War, who was a big, tough fighter. With all of the horsemen, we wanted it to be very clear that they are not human. It’s not a guy in a costume. It’s not a human person. You’ll see pieces of bone coming through the skin. He’ll stand a little more hunched, and we see how far we can push it from the direction of playing like a human creature without losing people’s ability to empathize with him and relate to him. He definitely strikes a lot of cool poses, and he’s always hunched over. The way he climbs is a little more like scurrying, and he’s very acrobatic, but in a sort of scary way. We definitely wanted him to be imposing and not just like a hero; not like Batman or Captain America or a traditional hero. It’s almost more like playing a villain. That’s one of the things that I love about Death more than any other character that we’ve done. Our version of Death would be more of an assassin—still a killer, but a different type of killer. You know, light weapons, light armor, and very agile. He can climb walls, and he can do a lot of stuff that War couldn’t do. But we didn’t want to give him a face; we wanted to leave a little mystery. That’s why he has the mask. There are certain things we kept as the character evolved, and we tried different looks. Whenever we took those things away, like the mask or the scythes, it just felt wrong.

When we decided to give Death the mask no matter what, we did realize that in a lot of the cut scenes, because there are so many cut scenes nowadays, that you really rely on expression a lot. Subtle like lip twitches, or eyes narrowing, or whatever it takes to make a snarl. You kind of need a face, and you need facial features, so we were worried that because there’s a mask, it’s all hidden from you. How were we going to convey all this drama? We had to play around with that quite a bit, and I think what we ended up with was really cool, partly due to the fact that Michael Wincott’s voice is just so awesome—he could be behind a paper bag and he would still sound pretty awesome.

In trying to build this very recognizable character that is obviously Death, we were faced with the additional challenge of wanting players to be able to customize them so that my version and your version might look different, and that presented challenges as well. When you start mixing and matching the pieces, they could look strange, and usually when you create an iconic character, you don’t change anything about them. We had to have this character that was iconic within our world and still be able to dress him up however we wanted. We developed these archetypes that never stray too far from that version of death we were trying to create. It still looks like the character, but it has the flavor of a rogue, or as we call it, the wanderer. And we have increments, and they’re just different aspects of the character. In addition to that, we did feel like we were gypping people if they didn’t get to see the Grim Reaper in all his glory, so we do have a Reaper Form that manifests itself in subtle ways throughout the game. Ghostly hands slam a door open in front of Death to let him into a room, or sometimes you actually do turn into him, and he is the robed skeletal nightmare with a giant scythe and everything. It’s more like what people expect, sort of like the idealized version of Death.

All of the horsemen have a pretty awesome steed that they ride. Ruin was War’s mount in the first game, and for Death we created Despair. Not surprisingly, Despair is skeletal, and he’s got this brimstone and—I don’t even know what it is—unholy fire coming off of him. It’s really awesome to summon him and ride around on him. In the first game, Mark Hammel played a character called the Watcher, who basically directed War around the game world. We decided that because we don’t have a guide in this game like we did in the first game, we would give Death a raven companion called Dust. He follows you around and he does act as a guide, but it’s in a more subtle way. He might fly down a hallway or just circle around important areas that you should explore, but he never speaks to you or hits you over the head with knowledge. You just hear him cawing, and he lands on your shoulder. It gives a lot of character to Death, and we felt like whenever we tried to remove it, the overall character wasn’t as cool because this bird wasn’t around, so Dust ended up becoming a pretty important character in this game, as well.