Rogue Factor’s civil-war dystopia reveals inner struggles

Developer Rogue Factor

Publisher Nacon

Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series

Origin Canada

Release September 4

Can you imagine hating a neighbour so fiercely that not even a nationwide invasion of otherworldly creatures – demonic manifestations of humanity’s most basic instincts – would make you pause your efforts to exterminate them? Perhaps not, but there are certainly points in history when that would likely have been the case. In Hell Is Us, though, this is not a hypothetical scenario, it’s a summary of the crisis that has enveloped the fictional country of Hadea, a closed-off state bordering the not-so-fictional country of Canada. Hadea is caught up in a vicious civil war between two major religious factions, the Palomists and the Sabinians.

Most individuals would be desperate to escape such a grim situation, but Rémi, our protagonist, will go to any lengths to infiltrate the war-torn region. So much so, he has decided to enlist in the peacekeeper corps of an international organisation, the ON, to ensure legitimate passage through Hadea’s hermetically sealed borders. So we learn from our captured hero as he’s interrogated by a sinister-looking figure who looks like Jabba The Hutt made over as a Southern preacher. The main story of Hell Is Us, unfolding as an extended flashback narrated by a captive Rémi (courtesy of an unhealthy dose of truth serum), starts three decades ago when he was smuggled out of Hadea. His only memory of that traumatic separation from his parents is of the words of his mother as she was sitting him down in the back of a truck set for Canada: “Never come back”. And the only fragments of information he has to help guide his quest to reunite with them point to a place and an occupation: his father used to be the blacksmith of a village named Jova.

Hadea is a bleak place, with the scars of conflict visible everywhere: in the slaughtered animals and half-demolished homes, in the shell craters gathering murky water, in the rusting agricultural equipment and the hastily dug roadside graves. Alongside those markers of despair, hidden in the depths of Senedra Forest or under a reservoir in Lake Cynon, stand ancient catacombs apparently untouched by the destruction around them. We suspect the Hollow Walkers, the monsters that have infested the land, adding to the population’s woes, emerged from there, even though we hardly come close to revealing their secrets during our two hours with the game.