Hacker Exclusive Preview

At this year’s Comic-Con, developer conglomerate Foundation 9 unveiled a comic book starring three original intellectual properties. Designed as a way to get feedback on early game concepts, the book included one story each from Backbone Vancouver, Backbone Emeryville, and The Collective.

So a month ago, when we first heard rumblings about a new game from The Collective, our mind jumped back to the sword-wielding cybernetic ninja epic from that book: Silencers. Had Comic-Con crowds liked this concept enough to trigger it into development? Well, we can’t be sure, but that was not the game we were hearing about. In fact, it’s pretty much as different as you can get from The Collective’s contribution to that comic. Harker is a new next-gen vampire based survival horror title.

Now, we know what you’re thinking: "The Collective making an original game? That’s like Blizzard shipping on time." (It’s happened before, but just seems weird.) But with Marc Ecko graffiti on the walls, Dirty Harry posters on the floor, and The Da Vinci Code’s Mona Lisa staring at us from across the receptionist’s desk, we entered the studio’s walls a few weeks ago to check out Harker, and were excited to find something that’s both original and builds on the company’s past.