Bizarre head line of the day: Von Trier's "Antichrist" is getting a video game tie-in...

Never in a million years would I even think of associating anything that Von Trier has ever done with video games. However, the idea is an interesting one. It just seems odd to have a game based off of an indie film, as opposed to a big studio production.

Source: Slashfilm.com

Antichrist, the new movie from Lars Von Trier, was perhaps the most talked-about movie at Cannes this year. It continues to make headlines as it slowly winds towards theatres outside the Croisette and Scandanavian countries. And now, evidently, it is going to spawn a video game. A post on the video game message board NeoGAF led to some wild Googling, which turns up a Politiken.dk article (Google translation, which may contain movie spoilers) announcing the game’s development. What’s the deal? It’s after the jump.

According to the article, development on the game is being led by Morten Iversen, who wrote the Hitman games, and subsequently formed his own company, Zeitguyz, which created a game called Recoil: Retrograde. The article mentions Zentropa Eden Games as the developer of the title. Indeed, Iversen is listed as ‘game developer’ on the main Zentropa website. Lars Von Trier will approve (or not, one supposes, as it may happen) the final design.

Eden, as the game will be called, will be a first-person thriller/adventure game that invites players to confront their fears. Willem Dafoe will reportedly reprise his role in voice-over, though the game will not replicate the film, picking up afterward instead. (Not having seen Antichrist, I can’t surmise what that means for Dafoe’s performance.) Iversen says the experience will be “strong and very personal,” “controversial” and that it “…must be your own personal hell - a bit like a nightmare version of ‘Mystere’.” First one to help I.D. exactly what ‘Mystere’ he means there (the Cirque de Soleil show? seems weird) gets a no-prize. Iversen evidently was interviewed on Danish radio this week; if you heard that broadcast and have more details, let us know.

The game actually sounds quite ambitious. In addition to challenging your fears, staying true to the spirit of the film and potentially referencing other Trier films (as menioned here) there will possibly be some real-world interaction via the Internet. This is from the Google translation of the Politiken source:

Then the game will adjust its action according to similar responses including know that via the Internet news media downloads bizarre news clips and videos from the real world into the game universe.

Eden will be a PC title, and while early in development is planned for a release within a year, potentially either on the Antichrist DVD or as a download. A throwaway line in the Politiken article also mentions a graphic novel, which I would almost assume to be a joke if I didn’t imagine that was the source of the Willem Dafoe image above. Seriously, what the hell is going on here? (OK, according to a couple emails, the article doesn’t mention a separate graphic novel, but graphic novel-like cutscenes. Which makes more sense.)

EDITS: That should likely be ‘Myst’, not ‘Mystere’, making this a nightmare version of Myst, which sounds about right. And bjaelke, the NeoGAF poster who mentioned this in the first place, offers clarification about the material pulled from the ‘net: “They are based on what fears you have (part of the questions you answer before starting the game). So if you suffer from arachnophobia the articles are likely to contain something about spiders and what not.”