Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller is a point-and-click adventure game released in 1994 by Game Tek and developed by Take‑Two Interactive Software. It was available both for DOS and 3DO. The game was notable for being one of the first CD-ROM-only games to use speech with hi-res graphics, and has been described as very similar to Bloodnet. Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones and Stephanie Seymour are among the voice actors who lend their voices to characters in the game. Seymour herself also appears on screen at one point, while Hopper and Jones appear via computer animated representations.

The story is told through a variety of partial screen FMV movies. The game is set in a dystopian 2095, and the United States of America is under the control of a brutal fascist-theocratic dictatorship called the "Hand of God". Unlike the religious dictatorships of the past, this government not only has the ability to send sinners to hell... they can prove they have done it.

In this third-person perspective, dystopian environment, players pick between Gideon Eshanti or Rachel Braque, two loyal police officers (and lovers), agents of a new law enforcement agency created by the theocracy: Artificial Reality Containment (or ARC), a Cultural Revolution-like organization that enforces a ban on cybernetic technology in general and virtual reality in particular.

The story begins one night when they find they have been declared enemies of the state and on the run from the very government they worked for. Thus begins a quest to uncover the secrets behind the theocracy's reign of terror, one that will lead them from the corridors of power in 2095 Washington D.C. to the very depths of Hell. Along the way they recruit allies from the criminal underworld and run errands for the demons that now populate it.


 * Emotion Eater: A gang that you can have dealings with as part of a sidequest has a racket where they "strip-mine" fear from the minds of mental patients and sell it on the black market like a drug.
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin: It's a Cyberpunk Thriller... about Hell.
 * Going Through the Motions: The game's repertoire of character gestures is exhausted early... And often.
 * Hell on Earth
 * Mysterious Informant: "Deepthroat".
 * Novelization: Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller by Chet Williamson.
 * Psychopomp: A device by that name fulfils its namesake's role of guiding people to the afterlife.
 * Seven Deadly Sins: Each member of the Deadly 7 represents one. Their counterparts, the Clean Machine, represent the Seven Heavenly Virtues.
 * Uterine Replicator: The Fecund 5088 birthing unit — a bald female cybernetic head and torso — offers her prenatal charges "soothing sounds and music", "comforting visual displays", and "direct projection of parents' voices into fetal chamber." She's also "programmed to respond to doubts you may have about the moral dilemmas some find inherent in [her] existence."