‘Twisted’ Territory

‘Twisted Metal: Black” is just as its name suggests--dark and disturbing. The PlayStation 2 game from Sony and Incog Entertainment Inc. features psychopaths on a murderous rampage. Its 15 characters are escapees from an insane asylum. Their liberator is a fellow named Calypso, who promises to grant a wish to the survivor of a series of gladiatorial melees.

But it’s not the dismembered bystanders or the gushing blood that shocks. It’s the haunting stories behind each character. Take Mr. Grim, a Vietnam veteran who wears the stapled skull of his best friend, whom he was forced to kill and eat while they were imprisoned. The cannibalistic episode drove him mad, and Mr. Grim is out for revenge. The Preacher has rabid followers who attach explosives to their bodies and hurl themselves at their enemies.

Given these sick puppies, one would guess few topics are sacred. As it turns out, the creators of “Twisted” did hold back on some key details. David Jaffe, the game’s 30-year-old producer and lead designer, talks about what inspired these twisted tales and how the game has grown up from the wacky, cartoony franchise that began in 1995.

Q: What were your creative goals for “Twisted Metal: Black?”

We had three goals. The first was pure nuts-and-bolts game play. We set out to make the deepest vehicle combat game that had ever been made. The second goal was to use the PlayStation 2’s immense horsepower to really create a living, breathing version of the “Twisted Metal” universe, and that meant having things like real-time weather, having traffic on the road, having pedestrians running around interacting with the players. The third goal was to create a dark, moody piece that had a deeply depressing ambience to it.

Q: What overall effect were you trying to achieve?

The only barometer I ever use is what I think is cool. I was just in a place where I was just into dark, creepy disturbing fiction. I wanted the player to get immersed in this kind of disturbing, dangerous and unnerving world that you really wouldn’t want to live in, but one you could journey into through a video game and experience what that’s like. Obviously, it’s not an intellectual game by any means. We wanted to create a really fun arcade game with this dark world that you could interact with. There’s this one scene where this guy crucifies himself to the wall with a nail gun. I had never seen that. So whenever my little thing went off and I said, “hey that’s cool,” then it basically went into the game.

Q: Where did you draw your inspiration?

There was a lot of inspiration derived from movies like “Silence of the Lambs,” “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Seven.” There were also elements drawn from the things we either saw or experienced. For example, there’s a character called The Preacher who’s inspired by my growing up in the Deep South and being around a lot of intolerance in terms of religion. The character No Face was inspired by an art piece I saw at the [Museum of Contemporary Art], which was this really cool piece where this artist had gone in and used “Photoshop” [image editing software] to remove the eyes, mouth and nose of a woman. It was really striking, and it kind of stuck with me. The asylum on the hill was based on my high school, which was on a hill in Alabama.

Q: What was going through your mind when you were creating Mr. Grim?

He was the grim reaper. He was death on a bicycle. But the rule was that he had to be a character that could exist in the real world. We didn’t want to have any fantasy elements or supernatural elements. So we had to create a story for him. Working with the writers, we came up with this idea of him being a Vietnam vet who was tortured and was riding around with a human skull for a motorcycle helmet. It pushed my buttons.

Q: This is edgy stuff. How far did you want to push the mature themes and the violence?

I wasn’t going after anything so much as I just wanted to entertain myself. One could look at that as an irresponsible way to do your work, but Sony had assured me that this was a mature-rated title, that it would be marketed only to those who can buy those kinds of titles. Assuming that, I said what do I want to see? That’s how I’ve always done my creative work. To add any other thought process to it in terms of what I want to achieve just gets in the way of the work. For me, I’ve always liked this stuff. I like creep shows. I like Halloween. I was out to make a game that I thought was cool. I knew that the title needed some rejuvenation, some new blood. We wanted “Twisted Metal: Black” to be a force to be reckoned with.

Q: Were there any taboo topics?

We didn’t want to make any statements with the game because these characters are pretty nasty. Not that anyone would look at these characters as role models, but we didn’t want people to think that we as game makers had a message. So there were some stories that came up we weren’t too jazzed about. For example, the asylum was originally a high school, based on the one I went to in Alabama. But we didn’t want players to have the experience of driving to high school with guns and running over students in the wake of the Columbine shooting. To be perfectly honest, a lot of people who have gone to high school have that fantasy. But given this day and age, we didn’t want to give players that interactive experience. It just didn’t seem right.

Q: What about Sony? Did they ask you to change potentially controversial elements?

Sony certainly had some issues. We talked about the father-daughter story changing to the employer-employee angle with Doll Face because they were worried about the child abuse angle. The Preacher was also a character we had to reexamine. Originally, he was affiliated with a church, but now he’s an evangelist who was rejected by the church. It was very important that we made it clear this guy was no longer affiliated with any church. I totally understand Sony’s need to do that in our culture. But I have to say it’s a shame that in our culture, we have to censor ourselves. The good news is that Sony allowed us to deal with these subjects. That’s good for the games industry. The worst thing that could happen to this industry is that we look like comic books, and people perceive us as being only for children.

Q: Where did you draw inspiration for the aesthetics of the game?

I looked at photographs of Joel-Peter Witkin who did a series of books based on dead bodies from Mexico. He does these creepy, surreal photographs. Also medical books from the early 1900s. And we looked a lot at “Seven.” That movie did an amazing job of keeping the audience immersed in a dark and gloomy environment. We really wanted the player to feel that sense of grime and depression.

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Times staff writer Alex Pham covers the video game industry.