It’s no surprise that Abubakar Salim, head of Surgent Studios, does the voice acting for the main character Zau in the game Tales of Kenzera: Zau. He is, after all, famous as a voice actor for games like Assassin’s Creed: Origins and as an actor in shows such as the upcoming Season 2 of House of the Dragon.
But it is fitting for him to give a voice to Zau because the game’s story is about grief. Salim decided to make the game in honor of his father, who died 10 years ago. He talked in an interview with me about that loss as if it were still fresh, with emotion in his baritone voice. It was good for me to have that conversation, as I lost my mother 2.5 months ago.
This universal reality — that someday we’re all going to lose our parents or someone close to us — is what may draw audiences of Tales of Kenzera: Zau, which is heartfelt single-player action adventure platformer about the love between a father and a son and the transformative power of loss — and love.
Salim put a lot of care into the game. He founded Surgent Studios and built a team of 30. EA Originals will publish the game on the consoles and PC on April 23. Salim said his pitch for the 2.5D platformer was approved in part because the Originals team “saw the heart in it.”
As he said in a press briefing, the game is about a question we might all ask. “What would I sacrifice to bring my father back, to hear him again, to touch him?” he said.
The Metroidvania-style game is about a young Shaman, Zau, who makes a deal with the God of Death to bring his father back. Some asked him why he made a game rather than a film, as he is an actor who played Bayek in Assassin’s Creed: Origins. He felt the more you stay in the Metroidvania world, and grief, the more you stay in it, the more comfortable you get in it. And he noted that he loved playing games with his father.
It takes place in Kenzera in 2089 in Amani, a bustling coastal city that is the cultural center of Kenzera, the home of Zuberi. It’s a city of tech, innovation and progress. The world is a land of African myth with diverse geography, and it is occupied by lingering spirits trapped in the world of the living, yearning for peace. There is even grief in the art style. Ackeem Durrant, the art lead and character artist, said Bantu funerals have a lot of colors paired together, noting how they’re mourning someone but also celebrating a life. Bantu is a huge region in the south of Africa.
It has colors like purple that represent spirituality and peace, and others for fear and loss (woodlands), anxiety and responsibility (highlands) and anger and acceptance. (the deadlands). The latter is about overwhelming emotion that must be channeled into something. The game was inspired by Castlevania, Super Metroid, Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest and more. There is also some inspiration from Devil May Cry and God of War.
These details made me more interested in the game, but our conversation also spurred me to think about the decisions he made along the way and how they might serve in connecting the players to the theme and art about grief. It was also interesting to hear his views on diversity in an industry that still doesn’t have as much of it as we would all hope.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: There are so many interesting things you’ve accomplished here. You’ve made a game about grief that people would accept. It’s maybe a sad thing that a lot of people would want to avoid this kind of game, avoid this topic. How did you think about that?
Abubakar Salim: It’s one of those things–it’s a topic and a journey that is universal. We’ll all go through it. It could be through a parent, a sibling, a job. You can’t hide from it. That’s what makes it so beautifully human, in a way. No matter who you are or where you’re from, it will cross your path. As to why I wanted to dive into it, I think it’s because there’s this element of sadness and fear that’s part of it. But that’s only one shade. There are also elements of celebration through the idea of it. The beauty of just being human. Life that comes through grief, through death.
I wanted to put a spotlight on that. I wanted to talk about that and share it. Even though the protagonist is driven to bring his father back, wanting to essentially reverse the elements of the life process, through that you learn about how beautiful life is. That’s what I wanted to highlight and spotlight through the journey of it. It’s definitely something that was on my mind. Why does anyone want to play a game about grief? But it’s more than that. It’s about the love of life and the love of those we’ve lost.
GamesBeat: This is something that you’ve sustained as an idea for about a decade?
Salim: I’d say it’s only really evolved properly and come to fruition in the four years since starting the studio. The seeds of it were there, but it needed to be figured out. After I’d lost my father about 10 years ago, the first few years were a bit of a blur. It was a bit of a shock to the system. I was trying to figure it out. I read all those books, self-help books, five stages and all that jazz. Nothing really connected with me. I realized that the longer I live, and the more I celebrate my father’s life and my relationship with my father, the more I enjoy my own life and the people around me. And I got more comfortable with the idea of him not being here.
It’s only these last four years where I’ve been able to–I’m going to figure this out alongside the team. I’m going on this journey of exploration as an artist, through a video game medium. Let’s go through that and see that. I know that it’s not like I’ll just release this game and I’ll be healed. It’s going to be with me for the rest of my life. But it’s something that I know that I’ve done a take on. As I said before, I’m hoping that with this game, when people play it, they realize the journey is complex, and it’s not as isolating as people may feel it is.
GamesBeat: I lost my mother two and a half months ago. It’s a very different feeling now. I do feel like I’m on the other side of some kind of life change. But I don’t know where it winds up.
Salim: It constantly evolves. I just recently had my daughter. She’s 19 months old. I thought I was all good, and it suddenly unearthed all these other feelings, just by having my daughter. For a short period of time, I think, I was very much–I was not angry. There was anger there and there was sadness there, thinking about how my father would have loved to be there. But at the same time, it makes me think of the father that I’m going to be. If it wasn’t for his passing, I probably would have approached it differently. That’s the thing about this whole journey. It evolves and changes over time. You’ll never necessarily get over it. It’s something you just get comfortable with. Almost like a scar. I don’t think scars are bad, necessarily. Some are beautiful and some are ugly. But it’s history.
I remember feeling, “Oh, I just have to get through this day, because I feel really bad right now.” But there have also been times where I thought, “Life is actually really beautiful.” I lost my father when he was 66. I’m 31 now. So I wonder what he was thinking at that age. Did he even imagine the idea that he would go at 66? I don’t know. But one thing is for sure. I’m sure he had moments where he thought, “Life is good. What a beautiful world.” I’m trying to remind myself that yes, things are pretty cool right now.
GamesBeat: The other thing that doesn’t seem intuitive is that you would do this Metroidvania style of game, rather than something maybe more cinematic.
Salim: There’s a few elements to that. At its core, the reason it had to be a game is because my father introduced me to games. He bought me a Mega Drive, realizing that TV wasn’t my thing. I couldn’t really connect to film. Books were very hard for me because I’m dyslexic. Games, he realized, were what I enjoyed. It just made sense for it to be a game.
Specifically, the genre, in my eyes–it encapsulates the idea of grief, the journey of it. You’re thrown into a world that you have no idea about. Over time you get comfortable with it. It gives you the tools to get through it. That’s grief, right? The first time you feel angry during the process. When that beast kind of turns its head again, you know to deal with it. That’s because it provided that tool. That’s sort of where my head was in regards to–the core theme here, that journey, needs to match up to the genre of what we’re trying to do here. That’s how it works.
GamesBeat: From the presentation, I got a sense that you found ways to communicate emotion through the landscape.
Salim: That was important to me, again. Beginning from the level design, we didn’t want to just make a water level or a fire level or a forest. Everything had to have a reason for why it was there, how it was laced with history. I remember the first time going back to my parents’ house after my father passed. It felt alien. It didn’t feel like home anymore. When you look at the woodlands, it’s a forest, but there’s a sense of fear. There’s a sense of something around the corner. That’s where the level design–it was inspired by that sense of fear, that sense of not knowing. What are people going to think of me after I die? What is death like? Is it really darkness at the end of it all? That element, each of these levels were laced and inspired by that. Again, we didn’t have a big team. We couldn’t make these kinds of crazy, bold decisions without committing to them.
GamesBeat: There’s the Greek myth of Orpheus, going back to recover his wife in the underworld. Is there some inspiration from there, or from other mythologies?
Salim: There was a famous African tale, Congolese actually, about a king who loses his wife, the queen. She passes away, and he puts the whole village in mourning. He says that it’s only until his wife comes back to life that people can begin eating again. He brings a witch doctor, a healer, a nganga, to go into Kalunga and bring his wife back. The tale is very haunting and beautiful at the same time, and kind of weird.
The healer goes into this plane and meets the wife. The wife refuses to go. She can’t leave. That’s just part of it. And as he looks across the river he also sees the spirit of the King. She says, “Don’t tell him this, but he will be here soon.” And she passes him a bangle as proof that she’s all right. The healer goes back and gives the king the bangle. The king realizes that he can’t reverse this, that he’s lost in these emotions. And when he lets everyone go back to eating and living their life, he passes as well. He gets his wish and joins his wife.
That story really stuck with me. It’s the sense of–the idea that he’s evolved. He’s gotten past an old version of himself and become something new. That’s where that inspiration – the idea of Zau saying, “Hey, death, give my dad back” – came from.
GamesBeat: Where did you find the line between fiction and non-fiction, given that you want this to be fun? How much of it did you want to be autobiographical?
Salim: It comes from–Zau’s journey is very different and very specific. It’s their journey, which is very different from my own. Even if we’re all going through the same thing. It was important for me to say, “This is your story.” Even voicing the character, playing the character as an actor, I found myself having to be the actor and find the hooks. Even though I wrote the thing, I had to figure it out and break down where Zau is and who Zau is, in order to portray him honestly and truthfully. It was inspired by my journey, but it’s Zau’s own journey. That needed to be respected. Stories, whether sad or happy, need to be good. That’s the element of–that execution is what makes them fun and enjoyable.
GamesBeat: How did you dig into the notion of being an African story as well?
Salim: That just comes down, again–really it was inspired by the stories my dad told me as a kid. My grandfather was a nganga. My father told me stories about how he was able to talk to spirits and heal other people’s spirits. Even if my dad wasn’t necessarily a big believer, he enjoyed the aspect of the storytelling around it. Because this game is so close to home, it felt like it had to be told through this lens and this idea. At its core, it’s about grief. It could have used a Greek setting or a Norse setting. But for it to be as honest and authentic to my father, it had to be inspired by the stories he told me.
GamesBeat: Did you want to see yourself, or someone who looked like yourself, in the game?
Salim: It helps. There’s something about it that–it also inspires other people who look like me, who want to tell these kinds of stories. You can tell these stories. Something I’ve found very powerful about it is that there are a lot of cool African game developers out there who want to have their stories heard, but they almost feel like–is there an audience for this? Are there people out there who want to hear this? Because we haven’t seen it before. Maybe that audience doesn’t exist. But it does.
There’s always an audience. At its core, it just has to be a good story, an enjoyable story. It doesn’t matter how you look. We’re all human at the end of the day. As long as you can connect with me on a universal theme, that’s strong enough to carry it. However, I’m also aware of the perspective that you’ll bring is going to be far different from the perspective or someone in, for example, eastern Europe.
GamesBeat: It seems like this is a good way to convince people that they should care about different perspectives and different stories.
Salim: That’s the thing. It’s a way of celebrating different perspectives and different stories and different cultures. That to me is key. I know for a fact–you look at the Yoruba pantheon of gods and the stories that come out of there. There’s so much there. I want to hear them all. It gives this element of–it’s going to be totally fine to do so. That’s the element of it all. And also on the business front, I’m very aware that I’m representing and leading this company. It’s going to inspire someone, again, who looks like me to think, “I can have a voice. I can say something cool. I can share something awesome as well.” But it does come down to what you want to say, what story you want to share.
GamesBeat: I feel like it’s a shame that we’re in another period of time where there’s a backlash against diversity in games. It seems like people still need to be convinced that they should give games with different perspectives a try.
Salim: I feel like it comes from a place of–I always put it down to almost a cry for help. More like a cry for, “Just be real with me.” I feel like with our game especially, I’ve always said that it doesn’t matter where Zau is from or what setting it’s in. At its core it’s about what it means to be human, that human journey. The added elements around that are just a bonus.
People want that. It exists. That’s the thing. These perspectives exist. I don’t know. I feel like sometimes there’s this–I feel like no one’s listening. That’s the problem with the internet, or that I find anyway. I know I’m an internet kid. But at the same time I feel like there’s a sense of disconnect there. But as I said, the game speaks from a truthful and honest place. That’s all I can do, all I can give. Whatever anyone’s opinion is, that’s their opinion. But as long as my team and I feel comfortable sharing something that feels honest and truthful, that’s the best we can do.
GamesBeat: You have a very accessible feeling and theme in the game, the theme of loss. Did that affect how challenging you wanted to make the game? Whether it should be more approachable or more difficult?
Salim: It’s a bit of both. The options that we’ve given allow players to enjoy the story and go through it that way, but also to provide a sense of challenge. Don’t get me wrong. There are elements of the game that are very challenging, that even I find challenging. That’s an enjoyable aspect of it all, being able to conquer that obstacle. But at its heart, it’s about making it accessible, making it open to as many people as possible.
GamesBeat: Were there particular games from your childhood that you wanted to draw on?
Salim: It’s a mixture of things, games as well as TV shows. Dragon Ball Z was a huge inspiration for me. Shaman King. Games-wise, Ori and the Blind Forest was a big one. Devil May Cry. It speaks to not only the childhood love for these media, but also the appreciation of the art and how they share that.
GamesBeat: When you were assembling the team, did a lot of the other people involved have similar experiences as you that they brought to it?
Salim: They all opened themselves up in regards to–by being allowed to. There was a sense that, through my vulnerability, other people said, “Yes, I can share my own journeys as well.” The team could share that, or if they didn’t want to that was totally fine. We definitely found a medium of, “You know what, this is my perspective on this. This is how I would want to see it.” It was all about listening to one another.
GamesBeat: How important was it that you played that lead role yourself?
Salim: It’s funny. I didn’t want to do voice-over in the game to begin with. I think I was a bit terrified of giving too much. But the team said, “You’re a voice actor. This is your job.” Okay, maybe I should do this. It was important, but at the same time it wasn’t. It was a cool thing to jump in and play the character, and also to test my writing and see how well I would receive it as an actor. Does it sound good or not?
GamesBeat: And there’s still an ambition or a hope to take this to other media, right?
Salim: Definitely. I always say, I’m of the generation where I would play Pokemon on my Game Boy, watch the TV show, and collect the cards. I want to be immersed in these worlds. That’s very much where it comes from. Tales of Kenzera is a universe I want to explore in film and TV and comics. We’re already doing that with the comic we’ve got, the digital comic that comes with the game. It’s exciting to be able to tell stories that–the story has to respect the medium. That’s how I see it and how we want to approach it. It has to make sense.
You look at Zau, for example, it had to be a game. It can’t be anything else. It can’t be a TV show or a film. It had to be a game because of what we wanted to tell. We’ll look at different issues and different perspectives and different characters through the different opportunities. It’s also supposed to be inviting. I want to see other people’s stories within this universe and share them that way.
GamesBeat: Do you feel like you’ve come to an interesting conclusion about the themes in this game?
Salim: It’s definitely given me another way to look at it all. It’s made me feel a lot more comfortable with it. Funny enough, I almost feel empowered by this game. Because of the creation and exploration of this game, it feels like it’s all right to talk about it. It’s all right to share and be vulnerable with people, because I’m not the only one who’s gone through this. That’s quite comforting. We’re not isolated in this journey.
It’s also opened up a lot of people to connect and talk with me about their own experience, like you telling me about losing your mother recently. There’s a dialogue that we can have in regards to that element of it all, having gone through it. You wouldn’t necessarily get that from just isolating yourself, closing yourself off from it. There’s something beautiful about being empowered by an experience that feels so crushing from the get-go. That’s progression. That’s evolution. That’s moving forward.