[0:01] Welcome to England, Mr. David.
[0:03] >> Hello. I am Alex Brightman and I am an
[0:07] actor and a writer and a voice actor. I
[0:10] play Chris David, who's an American who
[0:12] inherits this crumbling old British
[0:13] hotel. So, There Are No Ghosts at the
[0:14] Grand is this crazy amazing mix of
[0:17] genres. First-person, story-driven
[0:19] mystery with ghosts, renovation, and
[0:23] musical numbers.
[0:24] >> Let me welcome you to the Grand,
[0:30] a hotel famous across the land.
[0:34] >> And during the day, you're fixing it up.
[0:36] Kind of with like you're painting walls,
[0:38] scraping wallpaper, blasting gunk with a
[0:39] sandblaster. But at night, the whole
[0:41] place changes completely. The hotel's
[0:43] crawling with ghosts, monsters, creepy
[0:46] stuff. And the same tools you were using
[0:48] to renovate, now you're using them to
[0:51] fight back. The paint sprayer is now a
[0:52] weapon. Furniture cannon now starts
[0:55] doing damage and it gets nuts. Totally
[0:57] wild. But the clock's ticking. You've
[0:58] got 30 days, 30 nights to get the job
[1:01] done before things [music] unravel
[1:02] completely. So, while you're doing all
[1:04] that, you've got this smart-aleck
[1:05] Scottish tool, favorite character in the
[1:07] game. Literally this paintbrush with a
[1:09] face giving you advice, encouragement,
[1:11] the occasional insult.
[1:13] >> When you said bring the Grand back to
[1:15] life, is this what you meant?
[1:17] No. I mean gear, we like A PAINT SO NOT
[1:20] SOMETHING ALL THAT
[1:22] >> Outside the hotel, the whole setting is
[1:24] this seaside town to explore. Little
[1:26] shops, winding streets, fishing boats,
[1:28] even this rusty scooter you'll see. It's
[1:30] all charming and weird, kind of full of
[1:31] secrets. And by [music] the way,
[1:33] speaking of musical numbers, this game's
[1:35] got ghosts, renovation tools, haunted
[1:37] hotel rooms.
[1:38] And if that's not weird enough, suddenly
[1:40] someone breaks into a full musical
[1:41] number.
[1:49] >> [music]
[1:51] >> Ska songs, punk stuff, jazz. And it's
[1:53] not just for show. Each character has a
[1:55] song that reveals something about them,
[1:57] like their fears, their past, their
[1:58] secrets. But the twist is, this is
[2:00] great.
[2:01] I'm singing with them.
[2:03] >> It's hard to watch, but [music] hard to
[2:05] resist.
[2:06] Our town can't cease to exist. Slip away
[2:10] into [singing] the abyss. Down in the
[2:13] deep, deep dark.
[2:15] >> Chris, the character that I play, duets
[2:16] with every one of them. So when they
[2:18] open up, he answers. Sometimes sort of
[2:20] gently, sometimes not, sometimes a
[2:22] little aggressive. But the cool part is,
[2:24] you, the player, actually choose what
[2:26] Chris I sing.
[2:27] >> It's green.
[2:28] >> I'm on your side.
[2:29] >> Then why are you lying to me?
[2:32] Mhm.
[2:34] >> I I'm not.
[2:38] >> His verses change the tone of the song
[2:39] sometimes or push it in a different
[2:41] direction. You're shaping the
[2:42] conversation through music. For someone
[2:44] like me who loves theater and music and
[2:46] weird storytelling, this is honestly one
[2:48] of my favorite parts of the game. Makes
[2:49] it completely [music] unique uh and
[2:51] fascinating. You get these moments where
[2:53] someone's telling you this world lore in
[2:54] a song, and then you, as Chris, sing
[2:56] back. And so it starts to shape the
[2:58] story. So it's got everything. A little
[3:00] horror, a little comedy, a little
[3:01] musical stuff, and somehow it completely
[3:03] [music] works.
[3:04] >> So, you're the new owner of the Grand
[3:06] Hotel huh?
[3:07] >> I'm not staying. I'm just here to sell
[3:09] the place.
[3:09] >> Well, I hope you do better than the last
[3:11] guy. He disappeared, you know.
[3:13] >> My father? Yeah, I know.
[3:15] >> So I play Chris David. He's an American,
[3:17] which I know a lot about. Uh he inherits
[3:19] this old, sort of half-collapsed hotel
[3:22] on the English coast, the Grand, from a
[3:23] father he never knew. He shows up and he
[3:25] just thinks he's going to renovate the
[3:26] place. Really, he's there chasing
[3:28] something deeper.
[3:29] Chris has his own secret mission that
[3:31] not even the player is fully [music]
[3:33] aware of. He's searching for something.
[3:35] Breaking into places, stealing stuff at
[3:37] night, while during the day he just
[3:39] renovates the Grand and acts like
[3:40] everything is normal. So everyone in the
[3:42] town thinks they've got him figured out.
[3:44] This brash American guy who doesn't
[3:46] belong here.
[3:47] But Chris is misjudging [music] them,
[3:49] too.
[3:50] The ghosts, the villagers, the hotel
[3:51] itself, none of it is what it first
[3:53] seems. And what makes this really fun to
[3:55] play is that he's not always honest with
[3:58] you or with himself. [music]
[4:00] >> It's a good idea to keep the cot close.
[4:03] >> [snorts]
[4:03] >> Be careful. One background check and
[4:05] you're done.
[4:05] >> Yes, I know. I know. I'm going to need
[4:07] them to trust me if we're going to pull
[4:09] this off. But don't worry, they don't
[4:11] suspect anything.
[4:12] >> He does this thing that players don't
[4:15] see.
[4:16] He's unreliable. He's secretive. And
[4:18] half the time you're not even really
[4:19] sure what he's seeing is actually real.
[4:21] But he also has heart.
[4:23] He's trying to make sense of this place
[4:24] and of himself. And slowly, through
[4:27] these ghost hunts and these weird
[4:28] musical numbers and strange encounters,
[4:30] you start to slowly see the truth come
[4:33] eking through.
[4:38] >> I tend to get cast as people who are
[4:41] morally flexible. Let's just go with
[4:43] that. And Chris totally fits that, but
[4:45] in a different way. He's not really a
[4:46] villain,
[4:47] but he's also not very honest. Um, he's
[4:51] carrying this past that he doesn't
[4:52] really fully understand. So, he's making
[4:53] choices that the player might not always
[4:55] agree with or understand, and that's
[4:57] really fun for me. The sort of mystery,
[4:58] the complexity, um, and I love
[5:00] characters where you're not quite sure
[5:01] if you trust them, or they kind of say
[5:03] one thing, but they really mean another,
[5:05] and you don't know which one's which,
[5:06] and the cracks start to show slowly. So,
[5:08] Chris definitely has those, those
[5:09] cracks. Um, he's not evil, but he's just
[5:13] complicated. He's layered. So, yeah, it
[5:14] has been a real blast playing someone
[5:16] who is trying to do the right thing,
[5:18] but also kind of doing a bunch of
[5:19] sketchy stuff behind your back.
[5:23] >> I'm not here to renovate and decorate.
[5:26] I'm here to investigate. And to help me,
[5:29] I've got a talking cat.
[5:30] >> You're the one doing all the talking,
[5:32] you know, Mason.
[5:34] >> And a set of power tools that also talk.
[5:37] >> Well, hello there. I'm Robert C.
[5:40] McBrushy. It is also a blast to be
[5:42] working beside McBrushy.
[5:44] >> And am I allowed to say who that No, I'm
[5:45] not allowed to say who's playing it.
[5:47] Then I won't I won't. Okay, I won't. I'm
[5:48] getting a lot of this. Don't say it. But
[5:50] he's this talking power tool, Mick
[5:52] Brushy, who helps you throughout the
[5:53] game. He's a grumpy, Scottish, mildly
[5:55] passive-aggressive sort of machine-type
[5:58] thing, and he's very good at getting
[5:59] paint off of a wall. And whoever's
[6:01] voicing him,
[6:02] whoever's voicing him,
[6:04] total legend. You are going to love it.
[6:06] Mark my words.
[6:09] It's really
[6:17] Oh.