Dead By Daylight’s Sadako Rising: Creating the curse

blog.playstation.com:

Dead by Daylight’s Sadako Rising Chapter has surfaced, bringing Sadako – known in Dead by Daylight as The Onryō — and Yoichi Asakawa into The Fog. Inspired by Kōji Suzuki’s novel Ringu and its original acclaimed film adaptation, Sadako’s arrival presented many exciting challenges for the design team.

Adapting the Onryō

The daughter of a famed seer from Izu-Oshima, Japan, Sadako’s psychic abilities surged when a journalist made the fatal mistake of calling her mother a fraud. Lured to an old well and sent to rot in a watery grave, Sadako’s powers manifested into a cursed videotape that doomed its viewers to death in seven days. She emerges on the final day, crawling from the television, glaring with murderous rage. 

Given that she possesses psychic abilities, Sadako isn’t exactly hands-on in her approach. In Dead by Daylight, however, a Killer’s objective is to down Survivors, pick them up, and carry them to a hook. It was imperative to explore how Sadako could engage in these dark activities while maintaining true to her character.

“We wanted to avoid all physical contact with Sadako directly,” reveals Game Design Director Matthew Spriggens. “She would look very strange carrying larger Survivors on her shoulder – especially someone like Jeff Johansen. Instead, we relied on the telekinetic nature of Sadako’s power for everything from breaking pallets, damaging generators, and even picking up Survivors and placing them on hooks.”

“Right from the start, we were looking to capture the haunting and creepy quality of Sadako from the classic Ringu film,” reflects Spriggens. “How she moves, slowly and deliberately, to menacingly creep up on her victims. We always saw Sadako as more of a stealth Killer – you would know when she