20 Years of The Suffering
Q & A with Richard Rouse III and Andre Maguire
In 2004 Midway Games and Surreal Software released The Suffering, an original horror game for the PlayStation 2, original Xbox, and PC. It’s been 20 years since its release, but that hasn’t stopped this horror classic from receiving praise online to this day for its twisted setting, horrific monsters, and memorable gameplay.
The Suffering follows Torque, a man sentenced to death for murdering his family. The moment he arrives in the haunted prison, as the tagline says, “all hell breaks loose.” Torque must fight to stay alive in a pitch-black penitentiary crawling with grotesqueries, the whole time exploring the events that led to his incarceration. As described by Chris Carle at IGN in 2004, “These guys [Surreal Software and Midway Games] know how to scare people, and they're committed to doing so. They've done their homework and applied it to yield an impressive work of terror.”
We couldn’t be more excited to brag about the fact that we get to work with two of the developers on The Suffering series here at FarBridge. Richard Rouse III, our studio creative director was the game’s creative lead & writer, and Andre Maguire, one of our lead designers, was lead level designer on The Suffering.
To celebrate the anniversary, we sat down with Richard and Andre to reflect on their time working on this project, what ended up on the cutting room floor, and some of their favorite memories.
Q: How would you describe The Suffering to someone who hasn’t played it before… or hasn’t played it lately?
Andre Maguire: The Suffering I might describe as a Fast Action horror game with a choose-your-own-adventure story line and a cast of characters that will give you nightmares.
Richard Rouse III: What Andre said!
I remember when we started development we were thinking how to set ourselves apart and we decided to call ourselves an action horror game instead of a survival horror game. I remember a big goal of ours was to not be as slow and “weak” feeling as Resident Evil and Silent Hill - which were the huge horror franchises at the time, and still are in a lot of ways. We liked those games but wanted to do something different.
The Suffering by Surreal Software & Midway Games
Q: What’s your favorite memory from the development of The Suffering?
Andre Maguire: I’d say the early creative process. Being able to work with such a talented team developing a title as unique as The Suffering was amazing! Initially we were working as an independent Studio and it wasn’t super clear if the project would be able to move forward but, then we signed with Midway and it turned out they loved the concept. That allowed us to ramp up the team and really focus on building out the mechanics, characters, story line and environments. I loved working with Midway because they were always so willing to take a chance on unique projects.
Richard Rouse III: There are lots of good memories. I remember when we finally got the targeting controls to work was a super good feeling - we had used “lock on” targeting as a lot of shooters back then did and it never felt fun. We eventually were inspired to try true dual-stick aiming and getting it to feel good was very challenging but eventually it came together. Later in development I remember a playthrough of the whole game with our publisher Midway where I started to realize how much the game had come together. That meeting eventually led to them giving us more time to work on the game -not because we couldn’t have shipped on time, but because they suggested we add more narrative to the game and we definitely had lots of ideas of what to add.
The Suffering by Surreal Software & Midway Games
Q: It’s been 20 years since The Suffering was released. Are there any modern day games, movies, or overall characters that make you wish you could incorporate aspects of them into the world of The Suffering?
Richard Rouse III: I don't think of it that way - it was definitely a product of that time, and I am happy to keep it that way. Though I do think I wish the game had a slicker inventory system….
Funnily enough, there was a Japanese movie called Tokyo Gore Police that appeared to rip off our Slayer monster design - which I thought was hilarious, and kind of the biggest honor, that we made something cool enough that someone else wanted to steal it.
Andre Maguire: There have been many UX improvements over the years that would have fit The Suffering really well but, as Richard said, we were dealing with much simpler tech at the time. The terrain tech was limited to height maps. We really struggled with dynamic lighting and of course the art was much more limited due to the memory constraints we were dealing with. That said, I’m still proud of how much content we packed into The Suffering games.
The Suffering by Surreal Software & Midway Games
Q: A review of The Suffering complimented the game’s storytelling and how easy it felt to be transported into a different realm. What did you learn from making the world of “The Suffering” that influences the games you’re working on now?
Richard Rouse III: I always liked to say that the game had a real “sense of place” to it. That means it was a believable enough prison layout, but also with a lot of little details that told the story of the people who lived in that one. It got specific about some of those details in a way lots of games of that time didn’t. We still like creating worlds with that level of specificity and flavor to them.
Andre Maguire: We would work very hard to avoid taking control away from the player, not force a particular action or suddenly cut to a cinematic. I still think that approach is the best way to go.
A, Richard: Absolutely agree. We did still have some key cut-scenes - I remember we tried not to have even those at the beginning, but then we decided having a few cut-scenes really helped anchor the game. But a lot of our storytelling moments benefited from not interrupting gameplay - it made the game a lot scarier.
The Suffering by Surreal Software & Midway Games
Q: Are there any current projects you’re working on that have a bit of influence from The Suffering?
Richard Rouse III: We’re definitely working on a few! Horror is very big to us at FarBridge, and though we haven’t announced anything, we have two projects in the early stages that are both really different from The Suffering, but also use them as an inspiration. More about that when we can share it.
Andre Maguire: Yea, there were so many things we learned while making The Suffering. Particularly in terms of crafting horror that doesn’t just rely on jump scares. Not forcing player decisions or painting the player character into a specific role.
The Suffering by Surreal Software & Midway Games
Q: Are there any favorite bits from The Suffering that ended up on the cutting room floor that you’d want to revisit?
Andre Maguire: We did have to pair down the number of features we were planning. The Slayers were initially going to be able to climb on walls in addition to ceilings. We were working on a way to get them to corkscrew down hallways. We got a little closer in the 2nd game.. Ben developed some great monster variants too. The Mainliners had variants with landmines embedded in their heads. There was a massive Burrower that had pickaxes for arms. We wanted Torque to inherit all of the creature attributes as the game progressed but we ended up having to pair that down a bit as well.
Richard Rouse III: The Suffering was actually one of those rare games where after the opening design document was written, we didn’t have to cut that much. Sure we iterated and changed things, and we sketched lots of monster ideas, but there were no characters or monsters that were cut that actually had code and design work put into them. In fact we added more toward the end. We did cut a town on Carnate Island where the corrections officers lived as a playable area, but we did show it in the distance. If he was in this interview, our weapons/effects artist Joe Olson would remind me that we also had a corrections officer billy club as a weapon that we did cut, which he was bummed about.
The Suffering by Surreal Software & Midway Games
Q: What inspired you to pick the different creatures and enemies in this game? (and why are little girls with creepy voices SO scary??)
Richard Rouse III: We were super inspired by the unique style of art our concept artist Ben Olson did - he had been drawing these crazy, twisted, disturbing figures for a while. It wasn’t your normal scary stuff, it was more surreal. But we thought that would work perfectly in a game.
I also wanted to make sure there were themes to the characters that pulled it all together and made the world make a little bit of sense - that’s part of creating a world with its own dark and disturbing rules it has to follow. So we came up with the idea of having each creature be themed after a different method of execution and picked which monsters to do around that. And of course, execution fit the prison setting perfectly.
Andre Maguire: Ben’s monster concepts always inspired us to be creative with different game mechanics. We’d check out stuff he was working on and find ourselves saying “We’ve got to figure out some new mechanics. We have to put this monster in the game!”
The Suffering by Surreal Software & Midway Games
The Suffering by Surreal Software & Midway Games
Q: Last but not least, The Shining is noted as an influence for The Suffering’s flashback scenes. What was it like getting the idea to incorporate the flashbacks into the game, and how would you encourage game developers, who also find themselves stuck before a “lightbulb moment”?
Richard Rouse III: I distinctly remember Andre coming into my office and pitching the idea for those blurry visions where we keep playing but in slow-mo while some blurry semi-playable scene plays out in front of you. Do you remember that, Andre?
Andre Maguire: I think we did the flashbacks first and then we added the visions. A big part of the Suffering concept was that players would determine if they were innocent or guilty. The story you got reflected your actions throughout the game. I can’t remember exactly how that feature came to be but it really tied things together. I love it to this day! Don’t be afraid to develop concept art before you have all the mechanics figured out. Sometimes the concept art can inspire new ideas you never would have thought of otherwise.
Richard Rouse III and Andre Maguire
New worlds to get lost in are on the way…
As the 2024 spooky season ends, the FarBridge team is working on immersive, thrilling projects we hope to share more about in 2025.
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Happy Halloween!