With the Chronicles of the Grand Inquisitor, we set out to create deep world-building for Deadhaus Sonata in the spirit of the old radio plays from the 1930s. Furthermore, we were working on something secret called the Eternal Infamy System**, which we plan to change how people understand narrative and RPG systems in games.  These new technologies combine traditional storytelling, user-generated content, cloud technology and AI, giving gamers experiences they have never seen before. We need a ton of lore to train our AI systems, and the radio plays also serve this purpose! More about the Eternal Infamy System in another blog. Without giving too much away, the Eternal Infamy System is the focus of the currently playable.

The Chronicles started as a way to introduce all the classes within the world of Deadhaus Sonata. Thus, we go through stories of vampires, revenants, wraiths, banshees, liches (yes, we use the old English spelling), ghouls, and wights. Keeping in the tradition of Eternal Darkness, we also spell "magick" the proper way! We have great fun creating these, and we want to bring back the voice that was lost with games like Legacy of Kain and Eternal Darkness, and the radios are a step forward in this direction. We started thinking about expanding Chronicles when we created Of Banshees, one of my favorite episodes from Season 1. I love the banshee scream in this episode!

The process starts with writing, then voice acting, the script, and finally, with sound and audio. @Jack Lindsey @FelipeBraz @George Ledoux do amazing work on these; great work, guys! You can listen to the audio forms on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other places. However, we wanted to go beyond audio and try some visualizations for these radio plays, thus the visualizations for the Chronicles you see today. The art styles have changed many times, and now, the chronicles define the game's art style.

In the first season, we used Adobe Stock Images, stylized them in Photoshop in a pencil sketch motif, and used After Effects, and got some great results. Once the final audio was ready, an average episode of 5 minutes took 2-3 weeks to complete the visuals.

From Of Vampires

We were not going to attempt to do visuals for season two as the average length of episodes expanded to 30 minutes from an average of 5 minutes, as it would be too time-consuming. However, @Golden Xan stepped up to do several episodes and went further to add animations. This was an insane amount of work, and we cannot thank him enough, and they turned out to be amazing. Thank you @Golden Xan, excellent job! The results were incredible but even more time-consuming than before, taking at least six weeks to complete.

From Of Morsels

Alas, it became impossible to keep this up and with the last few episodes, so we threw in the towel and used a looping video for graphics. Of Nightmares, my favorite episode from season two, had a looping animation. The loop was actually pretty good, though!

From Of Nightmares

For the third season, some breakthroughs in AI gave us options we had not had before. Instead of using stock images, we could quickly generate AI images of the character and world of Deadhaus Sonata. Also, the auto-transcript feature of Premiere Pro allowed for much quicker editing. We stayed with the pencil sketch theme with the AI images and, for the first time, created some visuals close to what we imagined with the scenes in the chronicles. Edvard Toth leads the way in making the images while @Jack Lindsey and I run support. We understand many people are opposed to using AI, but in this case, this is an excellent example of how AI can help with the process, allowing you to do previously impossible things.

First Shots of Alaric

Reveal of the Red Lady

Homage to John Carpenter's The Thing

Over time, the art style changed and settled into the style found in The Judged, as seen below. We liked the stylized high-contrast color and comic book style so much that we adopted this styled look for the game.

Finalized Art Style for Chronicles

Visual Target Image

We changed Deadhaus' hyperrealistic art style because many AAA games using this technique look identical and indistinguishable. We wanted Deadhaus Sonata to stand out in every way, including the visuals. Over time, we could create very high-quality images that we love and feel are ironic for universe. Here are some examples:

The Ark

Anu Maht

Blood Lust Alaric

The Red Lady With The New Art Style

With the game's development going well and the new possibilities for the chronicles, the third season is "no holds barred." The episodes often exceeded 30 minutes, approaching almost one hour in length. The Prison, The Pillar, and The Child set a milestone by requiring a staggering 123 images!

The Messenger

Season 3 is scheduled to have 15 episodes and will conclude in November 2025. It's insane, but we love it and hope you do too!

**Patents Pending