Saber checked Hellraiser: Revival against Barker's novella, and against Barker

Saber Interactive narrative director Antony de Fault told IGN he did not know the franchise before Hellraiser: Revival. He started with the novella The Hellbound Heart, read it twice and let it sit until he thought he understood what Clive Barker was after. The aim, as he states it, was to make the best Hellraiser adaptation that has existed so far. He also says the bar may be too high to clear completely, and that the attempt itself was the point.

Plenty of people inside the studio were already devoted fans, and the look stays closer to the films and the book than to the later sequels. De Fault describes his own job as a filter: catch the spirit of the original and the same emotions, then be free to change the rest. His view is that a lot of the follow-ups are not especially respected even by fans, so an outside eye was useful if the game was not going to drag in every piece of fan service.

The player never controls Pinhead, but the character has more of his own will than in most of the screen versions. The plot turns on a mystery tied to him, and de Fault says Clive Barker signed off on those choices. He says the two of them agreed on where the heart of Hellraiser sits. After working through the idea together, the team wrote the script, and Barker, in de Fault's retelling, answered that this was what he had wanted. De Fault came away thinking Barker had long wanted to step past the films and open the world up the way the game does.