Clive Barker’s Jericho – BarkerCast Playthrough

Today we have a playthrough of Clive Barker’s Jericho on our YouTube channel, a game that inspired our Dungeons & Dragons campaign created by Ryan and his brother Rob Danhauser. This one’s been promised some time ago, so let’s get on with it. Here’s the link to the Playlist and embedded below:

Released around the same time as Mister B. Gone, in October 2007 for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, Jericho featured an original mythology conceived by Barker himself, filled with cosmic horror, Biblical mythology, ancient civilizations, occult warfare, and some very imaginative monster designs.

“I have worked with the guys at Mercury Steam over a period of years now, developing, sending drawings backwards and forwards, sending ideas backwards and forwards, always trying to push the envelope, always looking for the taboo, the forbidden. Always trying to find images that have not been seen before. This is hard. In gaming there is a tendency, as there is in every other art form – and it is an art form – for games to resemble the games that came before them. So we have a lot of games that look as though somebody had been reading Lord of the Rings, a lot of games that suggest someone saw The Matrix and while, of course, you can never be completely new because it’s not the nature of the human imagination to be able to push out everything that you know, wherever we found something in the work that looked too much like something else in somebody else’s work, we threw it out.” – Clive Barker, Transcript of a press event with Mercury Steam at the Casino de Madrid, Spain, 10 October 2007.

The game was developed by the Spanish studio MercurySteam, alongside Alchemic Productions, and published by Codemasters. Long before MercurySteam became known for titles like Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Metroid Dread, Jericho represented one of the studio’s first major international productions. Barker’s involvement went well beyond licensing his name. He served as both the game’s writer and producer, creating the original mythology, story, characters, and supernatural framework that underpins (pun intended) the entire experience. It’s easy to recognize his fingerprints throughout: from the theological horror and body horror to the morally ambiguous characters and the unsettling notion that evil has existed long before mankind itself.

“I’ve actually had the idea for this game [Jericho] for a long time. The Rub’ al-Khali, which is where the game takes place, was in Weaveworld, but it occupies maybe 50 pages of that 800-page book, so I knew I’d have to go back to this place.” –  Clive Barker, published in Gory Days by Paul Semel, Complex, February / March, 2007.

Before Adam and Eve, before humanity itself, God created another being known only as The Firstborn, a creature that was neither male nor female, neither wholly good nor evil. It was simply… wrong. Ashamed of what He had created, God imprisoned the Firstborn within an extra-dimensional prison known as “The Box”. Yet the creature’s influence never truly disappeared. Throughout history it repeatedly attempted to escape, each time corrupting civilizations and leaving behind layers of suffering that became embedded within the mysterious city of Al-Khali. The soundtrack for this game was composed by Cris Velasco, and you can listen to episode #127, where we interviewed him on our website.

Rather than existing in normal space and time, Al-Khali has become a twisted crossroads where multiple historical eras and captured bits of our world, differentiated by specific architecture, overlap. As players move deeper into the city they encounter fragments of different civilizations trapped together: World War II Nazi fortifications, Medieval Crusades, Roman occupation and Ancient Sumer.

“The concept is that somewhere in northern Africa there is a walled city which is not just a walled city but walls within walls within walls. It’s like Russian dolls, spaces within each other, and trapped inside each space is a slice of time where the warriors of good have gone against ultimate evil and have lost… Some are evil, some are not, and you have to make up your own mind.” – Clive Barker, Hollywood Reporter, 18 July 2006.

Each layer represents one of the Firstborn’s previous escape attempts, giving the game an almost dreamlike progression where history folds in upon itself. We travel between these loops by crossing the Breach that transports you between each one.

Instead of controlling a single hero, players command an elite seven-person strike team from the Department of Occult Warfare. The Jericho Squad. Each member combines military training with supernatural abilities, and players can freely switch between them throughout much of the game.

Captain Devin Ross serves as the squad leader. Although he dies very early in the story, his spirit becomes the player’s point of view, possessing the surviving squad members as needed, as well as healing them.

Sergeant Frank Delgado is the team’s heavy weapons specialist, carrying a massive rotary cannon while wielding powerful pyromancy, using the Chickasaw spirit Ababinil that’s contained in his right hand.

Lieutenant Abigail “Billie” Church specializes in sanguimancy (blood magic user). Armed with twin swords she can use her own blood to create a blood or fire ward against enemies.

Corporal Simone Cole functions as the team’s psychic scholar, diagnosed autistic at age 4, she is able to analyze supernatural phenomena while manipulating reality through a custom built computer used to run cabalistic and chaos mathematical sequences that have a profound effect on the physical world.

Father Paul Rawlings is an exorcist priest carrying twin Desert Eagles, whose faith allows him to channel divine energy (Vlad’s Curse) against the horrors lurking within the Box.

Corporal Xavier Jones serves as the sniper, combining precision marksmanship with Astral Projection to take control of enemies or objects, allowing players to scout ahead and solve environmental puzzles.

Finally, Sergeant Wilhelmina “Abby” Black employs occult-enhanced sniper abilities, including her memorable Ghost Bullet power that lets players steer projectiles through the environment in bullet time.

Instead of controlling one officer assigning squad commands, Jericho encourages players to inhabit each character directly, giving us access to every supernatural ability, allowing flexibility in how we play the game, while also helping flesh out the personalities of the team.

As for our opponents, serving the Firstborn we first encounter General Arnold Leach, who kills Devin Ross in a cutscene. Once a respected member of the Department of Occult Warfare, he became corrupted by the Firstborn and engineered a chain of mystical blood soaked sacrifices that allowed the ancient entity another chance to escape.

As the squad descends deeper into the Box, they encounter echoes of history’s previous failures. Among them are: the Roman Governor Cassus Vicus, the Crusader-era Fallen Priest, Nazi commander Ernst Friedrich von Heidegger and the corrupted Sumerian priests who originally imprisoned the Firstborn. Travelling through each historical era consumed by the Firstborn’s influence, we understand Barker’s central idea that evil endlessly repeats itself throughout human civilization.

When Jericho launched in 2007, reviews were decidedly mixed. However, over the years, the game’s reputation has steadily improved among horror fans. Many players now regard Jericho as an overlooked game, with outstanding lore and unforgettable ideas that deserved stronger gameplay. Discussions across horror gaming communities frequently call for a modern remake that preserves Barker’s world while updating the mechanics for contemporary audiences. In fact, there are still mods available to play the game with fixes and cosmetic changes, and a Russian modder created a “remastered Jericho”, the legality of which is dodgy at best…

“It’s the first of what will be a series of stories about a group of militarily trained but magically gifted men and women who deal with powers that are beyond anything that you or I would ever imagine…
“I want to do three of these, just three, and make it the Jericho trilogy in which this son – I gave a clue there, I didn’t intend to. Okay, the First Born is the son of something. Oh well. It’s not a terrible thing; it’s kind of funny. But when we have the trilogy together I think we’ll have this fucking huge confrontation between what may end up being a suicide club of men and women who are willing to give their souls and their bullets to the business of destroying the son of something. I mean, in a way it’s already there in the ‘First Born’.” – Clive Barker Waxes Gory On His Cult Shooter Jericho, GamePro at www.gamepro.com, 5 September 2007.

Perhaps the greatest disappointment surrounding Jericho is that Barker openly discussed plans for a sequel shortly after the game’s release. Unfortunately, those plans never materialized. One of my personal disappointments is the abrupt ending, shortly after you defeat the Firstborn, which leaves enormous questions about the fate of the Jericho Squad.

“I’ve already told Code-masters where the next game will head,” he says. “It starts on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean, with 666 children in the hold…” – “Vintage violence”, Clive Barker talks to Tim Wapshott. The Times, 27 October 2007.

Looking back nearly two decades later, Clive Barker’s Jericho feels like a game that was perhaps ahead of its time creatively, even if its gameplay struggled to keep pace with its imagination. Sure, the hallways are a bit of a shooter gallery on rails, but the concepts were original and interesting, the architecture and villains were somewhat layered and cool, and if you play it through, inhabiting each member of the Jericho squad you might end up feeling some form of familiarity and fun in the way the game can be played differently, with different powers and abilities to solve the challenges thrown at you.

Could a remake finally allow Barker’s vision to achieve its full potential? I certainly think so. With modern graphics, refined combat, smarter squad AI, and the same twisted mythology, a new Jericho Squad could easily find the audience it always deserved. In a world where Silent Hill can get a remake, or the Elder Scrolls Oblivion can be remastered using the Unreal Engine to improve its graphics, why not Jericho?

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