Section I: Introduction

Unspeakable captures the disturbing and frightening nature of the horror genre in a compelling third-person action/adventure game. By alternating periods of tense and cautious exploration with frenetic and stylized combat sequences, the game seeks to create a uniquely tense and visceral gameplay experience. Though the player is well stocked with weapons and ammo, the strength and quantity of the enemies he must face creates a feeling of nearly insurmountable odds. In the dark world of Unspeakable , creatures jump out of shadows, fall out of trees, and erupt out of the ground, attacking the player in the most frightening ways possible.

Unspeakable features a continuous game universe, where the gameplay is unbroken by cut-scenes or other distractions, causing the player to feel constantly threatened and unsafe. Storytelling is kept to a minimum and is conveyed through in-game events and voice-over dialog that the player hears through various devices (a voice crackling out of a disconnected speaker, voices echoing out of a quarry, the twisted speech of the creatures themselves ). The continuous game-world will be key to making Unspeakable a thoroughly terrifying game to play.

The player controls the prisoner Torque, a hardened inmate in his late 20s, sentenced to die for a murder he may or may not have actually committed. Torque is around 6' 2" with black scruffy hair and a darkish skin tone, though he is of unspecified ethnic origin. He has the hardened, muscular physical frame of a long-time prisoner, and he wears a dirty, torn prison outfit. Torque has kept himself safe in prison by exuding a don t mess with me tough attitude, something he communicates through his wiry build and his aggressive body language. Underneath this tough exterior hides a man who is not quite psychologically balanced, who fears far more than he would ever admit to. As a side effect of his mental instability, Torque has flashbacks to the events from his past, throbbing images that depict the events that led up to the crime for which he was imprisoned. Torque is also subject to blackouts, during which he becomes extremely violent and the player sees him transformed into a massive monster who is a ferocious melee combatant.

The setting of Unspeakable is Carnate, an unspecified, dark and foggy island off the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States. Though the date is not specified, it seems to be around present day. The island is home to a decrepit, decaying federal prison, Abbott State Penitentiary, with architecture that makes it appear to have been built in the late 1940s. This is where the antisocial prisoners that are considered beyond rehabilitation are transferred. Scattered around the island are numerous other abandoned structures of various ages, including a quarry, a long abandoned asylum , a crashed slave ship, a lighthouse, and the small cluster of houses where the prison workers lived.

At its core , Unspeakable is the story of Torque s quest to confront his own demons and the events that happened to land him jail. In the grand horror tradition, the details of the world of Unspeakable are kept vague and largely unexplained, allowing the player s imagination to fill in the gaps, forming mental images far more frightening than what can be portrayed on a TV screen. The story of Unspeakable starts with Torque being transferred to the island prison. From his cell , the player overhears the prison being overrun by bizarre creatures, the screams of the guards and other prisoners echoing through the halls. Freed from his cell in the ensuing chaos, Torque precariously makes his way through the island, fighting off hordes of creatures everywhere he goes, desperately trying to find a way to the mainland. Torque meets a few other humans on the island who have not been killed by the creatures, and they each have their own, incorrect theories as to why the island has been overrun . The player is left not knowing what to believe. At the end of the game, the player must face his monstrous alter ego and, having defeated him, a flashback of Torque s crime is finally revealed, with the nature of the crime determined by the way the player played the game.

Unspeakable merges the highly popular horror setting with proven third-person action gameplay and a unique story and locale to create a gameplay experience distinct from anything currently available. The player will not just control Torque but actually become him, battling his way through a world gone awry while coming to grips with his past and conquering his own personal demons.