The past year of Dead by Daylight has been jam-packed with release after release, and things aren’t slowing down either with the fast-approaching arrival of Chapter 23, Sadako Rising. We had the chance to sit down with DBD’s Creative Director to explore this crossover and what it means for the game’s future.

On March 8th, 2022, fans of Dead by Daylight and the iconic Ringu franchise will get the chance to explore the continued lore of the game’s universe, with Behaviour Interactive and Kadokawa (the Ringu movie rights-holders) teaming up to bring Sadako and Yoichi into The Fog.

In a sit-down Q&A with Dexerto, Creative Director Dave Richard talked about the process of gameplay development for Sadako Rising, ensuring that this portrayal of Sadako respected the Ringu source material, and news on some much-needed QoL changes.

“The Planets aligned to make it possible”

Why did it feel like now was the perfect time to introduce Sadako into Dead by Daylight?

Sadako has been in our list of Killers we wanted to add to DBD, and the planets aligned to make it possible.

What does introducing the Ringu franchise, which is a psychological horror, mean for the game’s future? Does it suggest more ghosts, or vampires, going forward and integrating more influences from other cultures?

Sadako and the Ringu universe was definitely a giant opportunity for us to explore a very precise part of the pop culture of Japan, and it’s something that we love to do.

In the past, we’ve integrated Killers that are influenced by cultures that are foreign to us. We’re curious people, and we love to be able to create this universe for our fans so that they can discover what horror means and what monsters exist in other cultures as well as their own. It’s still something that we want to do. So, all of those possibilities are things that could happen.

The interesting thing about the Ringu Chapter is that it made us re-evaluate, more than just in theory, what having a character like Sadako means in Dead by Daylight. She is not a character that’s “in your face”, and it’s not a horror movie about gore and attacks.

How do we show that in a game where the main actions are maiming Survivors and getting them on hooks? So, re-evaluating how we make these things kind of opened creative paths for us to think about a different type of creature in the future.

What was the creative decision behind lowering the hooks in Trials with Sadako? Is that just due to her height, or was it a conscious decision based on her character?

It was very interesting to work with Kadokawa, our partner for this Chapter. They obviously know their character a lot, they have passion for their universe, and they had rules that we had to respect for this character.

We had to respect Sadako’s height, and we had to respect the fact that she does not touch anyone directly. We had to sit down with the team and find creative solutions to a lot of different metrics that would be problematic and implement mechanics that would be problematic in DBD.

Her attack, her power, and how she interacts with the hooks and the Survivor are based on psychic powers. So we could have used only projecting the Survivor on the hook, but lowering the hook was a nice option.

The Spirit and Sadako both fit into the ‘vengeful spirit’ meaning of The Onryō – why was this name the right fit for Sadako and not The Spirit?

They’re Yōkais in Japanese culture, and are both vengeful ghosts. We also considered The Onryō back in the day, and the only thing that prevented us from doing so is that we usually have English names as a base for our characters, and then we translate them into all other languages.

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So, what are we going to call this character, because she’s actually a spirit? We validated that in Japanese, The Spirit is not called The Onryō, and we’re like ‘we can actually use that name for this character that’s going to be very fitting’.

Storywise, does this mean that The Entity is adapting and changing in the lore? The types of Killers they’ve looked for in the past all lean into that slasher-style of gameplay.

The Entity is… an entity that we can’t explain, right? We can’t understand how it’s thinking and what its plan is – is it planning? Is it random, is it insane? We’re not sure what it is exactly, as a developer, but as a player and as a person inside that universe, it’s the same.

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So we’ve already established that The Entity is consuming emotions, and so a character like Sadako that is feeling a lot of rage and is creating a lot of pain for others would be an exquisite candidate to be integrated into the realm of The Entity.

Did you have any other ideas for weapons or methods of attack that you were originally considering for Sadako?

Exploring the movie and the character, there were ideas of using water. We think that she is a character that might come from the ocean, right? Her link to water is very important. At some point, when the Survivor gets hit by the attack, we wanted to flash an image of the curse video on-screen, which is something that did not make the cut.

For the Glyph, her main psychic power that we see in the movie – called the Nensha – is very interesting and unique. It’s not something that we’ve seen in other characters. The fact that she can project an image on a piece of media, that’s when we thought that Glyph that’s projected through her would make the most sense and be really cool.

Revisiting an iconic horror character

What was the thought process behind the new Condemned gameplay element? How did you go about integrating ‘7 days to live’ into gameplay?

We knew day one that this was going to be important – the fact that Sadako’s curse works like a virus, and the doom and gloom feeling of getting that phone call and having just seven days to live. A match is much shorter than that, so we had to find other solutions to that.

We’ve thought about different things that we wanted to try: is it seven minutes, is it like it is right now, seven notches? But we all thought that it was a pretty clever wink to the franchise to make it seven notches.

Sadako’s well has little presence in the actual Trials themselves – what was the reasoning behind keeping this out of gameplay?

That was part of the iconic objects that we really wanted to use, so we’ve talked about using it for her power, for the Mori. Technically in our levels, it’s such a big object, and the way we build the level procedurally with the tiles and the gameplay, it was not a good fit. So we thought, ‘if this character had a very unique way to spawn into the lobby when you select the character’, that would be pretty cool.

She gives DBD a very different feel – this kind of quiet horror.

We never really feel comfortable with Sadako on the screen, even when you’re the player that’s playing her. If you select The Trapper, you’re like, ‘hey, it’s The Trapper, it’s the big guy! Yeah, let’s go’, but Sadako is creepy and she’s always crawling under our skin.

How did it feel to have the opportunity to continue the story of Ringu within DBD? Particularly with Yoichi and his journey since the movies.

We’re really grateful that Kadokawa allowed us to go on with this idea and create new lore that doesn’t exist for this character. Yoichi is the only character that survives an encounter with Sadako, and the fans there are wondering ‘what happened to the little boy in the movie?’ and so it was a tremendous opportunity to be able to do so.

Why was it important that you continued Yoichi’s story, and what drew you to him as a Survivor?

He is the mix of both of the protagonists of the movie. So we can have a little bit of Reiko and Ryuji in him. So exploring this character was like exploring the two other main characters that we didn’t do.

A lot of inspiration that you’ll find in the lore and the traits of Yoichi – and even in his look – are based on, or inspired by his father and mother, and so that was very interesting to us. There are a lot of different components in there to play with.

Were you ever looking to bring in Reiko or Ryuji as characters at one point?

[We] definitely considered them – they’re quite iconic. We’ve seen also from the community that they’re characters that they wanted to see. But like I said earlier, the planets didn’t align for these ones.

Why is having him become a Marine biologist the right fit, and what was the process of coming up with his Perks in relation to his psychic abilities?

When we conceptualized the character, we wanted to make sure that he was going to go into a science field just like his father. So we wanted the players to understand that he is brilliant, that he’s educated, that he’s respected in a science field. Since his encounter with Sadako, he never stopped looking for answers. Just like his mother, he is still investigating.

Since he knows that Sadako might be living in water in the open sea on the coast, we imagine that that’s what oriented him towards scientific studies that are related to the ocean.

For the Perks, we wanted to show different facets of his personality and traits in each of them. Some of them will show off his connection to the dark world, to the spirit world; to the fact that he’s linked to his father still that talks to him in spirit form. We wanted to show a little bit of this empathy and psychic connection that he could have with the other characters.

Boons, loadouts, and the future of Dead by Daylight

Are Boons something that you’re invested in going forward with in the future?

For a game that’s been running for a little while like DBD, when we get the opportunity to create new creative space in gameplay space, it’s very interesting to the team. When the Scourge Hooks and the Boon Totems appeared, it gave the team an opportunity to explore new types of mix and match Perks themes.

There are going to be others designed in the future. Will every Survivor from now on have a Boon? No. We’ll kind of fill up that demand for now, and maybe a new type of mechanic is going to appear in the future?

Speaking of the future, are we ever likely to see something like a loadout system, where we can save builds for our characters?

It’s definitely something that showed up as part of something the community would like to see and as part of our quality of life improvements that we’d like to see.

The game grew tremendously in the past year, and there was a lot of new Perks. So a way to search Perks, to save loadouts, to categorize them properly would definitely help.

How does it feel to now have Sadako, Yoichi, and Ringu itself opened up to new people – especially with a game that has a Gen-Z audience that might not have seen these movies?

It’s a great feeling. On the team, we’re a lot of different individuals that like different types of content in horror. We all have our favorites that we’d like to see in the game at some point. I’d like to say that we’re curious and that we like to discover as well. What’s new, what’s old – what different people love.

So being able to, just like Sadako – it’s like a virus – to show to the community what we love and why we love them, and then seeing the community that already know about Ringu explain to the rest of the fanbase what it’s all about, and seeing that people get excited and they have that spark that we had the first time we saw the movie is a great feeling.

Who is your favorite DBD Killer and Survivor? I imagine that it would be Sadako and Yoichi right now because obviously, you worked so much on it, but…

That’s hard to choose. I see why you would say that – it’s the brand new Chapter, we worked hard on it, but I love all of our family of Killers and Survivors. When I play, I still play OG Wraith. You know, this is my character – I’ve always played Wraith.

Every time we do a playtest internally where we don’t have to playtest the new Killer, I’m going to go as The Wraith, and it’s always surprising because he’s so old. That’s what’s cool about the game, everybody can choose their way to play in the fantasy they like.

What suggestions would you have for new players and fans of Ringu looking to come into the game and play as her?

There are different ways to play DBD, and my advice would be to play it in a way that you are having fun. It’s not because there is a winner and a loser in the game that you need to focus on that all the time. 

What’s fantastic with Sadako is that you have the opportunity here to really be creepy and scare the Survivors that are playing. It’s pretty fun when you just embrace the fantasy of it and you use the television to pop out and terrify.

The Condemned status could make for a very interesting story if you manage to kill someone because of it, rather than go through the normal process of the game. Take your time to experiment, to have fun, to mix and match with Perks as you get used to playing her.  

What makes Sadako quite powerful is her ability to map control. She is able to teleport through these different televisions. So knowing when and how to use that is key to being quite the Killer with Sadako.

Dead by Daylight: Sadako Rising is out on March 8, 2022.

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