when a single screenshot from the new game was published in Vivendi's weekly newsletter. Written above the picture was, "They say bullets taste like chicken," and written below was, "Hope you're hungry." Vivendi promised that more would be revealed in a few days, at the upcoming E3. F.E.A.R. was formally announced at E3, with the reveal of the game's title, a trailer, a brief plot outline, the genre (first-person shooter), the platform (PC), the release date (fourth quarter of 2005), and the probable rating (M). The following day, a non-playable demo was made available to journalists. Development had begun with the game tentatively titled Signal. Writer, director, and lead designer Craig Hubbard stated that the game "evolved out of a concept we started developing right after Shogo". Kevin Stephens, Monolith's director of technology and one of the game's lead programmers, later elaborated that the concept was to make the player feel like the hero of an action film. It was this ambition which led to the development of reflex time; Hubbard said he wanted "to make combat as intense as the tea house shootout at the beginning of John Woo's Hard Boiled", and defeating "enemies with style" was crucial to this. In a 2008 interview with IGN promoting F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, he explained, Another key influence was the Wachowskis' The Matrix (1999). In particular, the lobby scene was the team's initial point of reference for how the game's combat should look and feel. With these influences in mind, and wanting to create as immersive an experience as possible, reflex time came to play a key role in the game's combat mechanics. To further the sense of immersion, Monolith also employed stylistic elements such as a silent, nameless protagonist with an unknown background, and allowing the player to see the protagonist's body when looking down or sideways. Hubbard states, "it was a conscious decision not to give the player an identity. We wanted players to be able to become the protagonist without any reminders that they're supposed to be someone else." Atmosphere As well as its core first-person shooter gameplay, F.E.A.R. is also a psychological horror, and was specifically influenced by Japanese horror, with Stephens citing films such as Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998), the Pang brothers' The Eye (2002), Takashi Shimizu's Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), and Nakata's Dark Water (2002). Hubbard also cites Ringu and The Eye as well as