Shadows of the Damned: Japanese legends collide with EA and Mexploitation films

Shadows of the Damned: Japanese legends collide with EA and Mexploitation films

At a recent press event in San Francisco, eclectic game creator Goichi Suda took to the stage and described his new game Shadows of the Damned, as “a psychological action road movie…and a romance.” 

This title, however, is much more than that. It marks the pairing of Japanese video-game legends Suda (known for his work on titles such as Killer 7 and No More Heroes), Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil and Devil May Cry fame, and Silent Hill music composer, Akira Yamaoka. It is developer Grasshopper Manufacture’s first high-definition title and a big-budget action release featuring a Latino lead — a rarity in games. Finally, it is arguably the biggest pairing to date of Japanese talent and American publishing. Shadows of the Damned is a deliberate attempt by Grasshopper to reach a global audience with the help of a big dog: publisher Electronic Arts.

That is a lot of bullet points for one video game, and it certainly piqued my interests. After Suda told the audience that the game is almost complete and will hit stores worldwide on June 21st, I wondered how it was coming along. My gut impression after playing the demo is that it showcased a brilliant imagination, but I worry that the temporary marriage between Grasshopper Manufacture and EA may result in a toned-down product.


 

 Shadows of the Damned: Japanese legends collide with EA and Mexploitation films

Hands down, the best thing about Shadows of the Damned is the creativity that permeates it. Much will be written about the exotic guns or Shinji Mikami’s controls, but the demo was too short for any of that to really grab me. The things that made an immediate impression were the uniqueness of Garcia Hotspur (the main character), the Grindhouse/Mexploitation influence of film director Robert Rodriguez, and Suda’s ability to weave these together in his own Japanese and punk-inspired world of demons.  

The game features a professional demon hunter, Hotspur, who must travel through hell to rescue his demon-kidnapped girlfriend. True to Suda’s penchant for punk-influenced characters, Garcia has the look of a band member from Los Lonely Boys or Ozomatli. When I asked Joel Wade, Executive Producer of EA Partners, how they decided on a Latin demon hunter as the protagonist, he revealed, “Goichi Suda is a big fan of Robert Rodriguez.” 

Bizarre and over-the-top design choices like Johnson (Hotspur’s talking-skull partner who transforms into a variety of guns) really outline the brilliance and creativity of the game. When you’re playing Shadows of the Damned, you know immediately that you’re experiencing the work of a legitimate auteur who is paying homage to the work of another auteur. It sounds far-out because it is, and it could have easily been an incoherent mess, but Suda pulls it off. 

Shadows of the Damned: Japanese legends collide with EA and Mexploitation films

Yet not everything about Shadows of the Damned is all brains, eyeballs, and strawberries (all delicacies for the baby demons that guard doors in Suda's version of Hell). While the developers intended to make a true Grindhouse-inspired psychological-horror game, I noticed two things in the demo that suggest they fell short of fully realizing this vision.

First, Shadows of the Damned lacks the over-the-top violence and gore found in exploitation films such as Machete and Planet Terror or even the raw and visceral styling of EA’s other horror franchise, Dead Space. For example, when you kill enemies in Dead Space 2, you often have to dismember them. Their mangled corpses remain on the ground and leave you the choice of either getting excited by the carnage you’ve dealt or repulsed by it. In contrast, when you kill a demon in Shadows of the Damned, they simply disappear much like the dark enemies of Alan Wake

Second, Hotspur’s weakening of his enemies by using a “light attack” — similar to the flashlight in Alan Wake — before killing them with one of his guns seemed to ramp down the intensity. God Mode was turned on during the demo, however, and this made it difficult to gauge how tense the action scenes may or may not be in the final release.

Before I started playing the demo, I asked myself, “Is this marriage of Japanese talent and Western publishing a good thing?” By the time I was finished, my answer to that question was, “Perhaps not.”  

Shadows of the Damned: Japanese legends collide with EA and Mexploitation films

By collaborating with EA, Shadows of the Damned faces cultural pressures that may not be good for the game. Shinji Mikami recently confessed in an interview that, “Originally [S.O.D.] had a much more unique style, even much more extreme than this,” but EA wanted it toned down to get, what he called, “a more basic style that people can understand.” In another article about Suda, columnist Nick Cowen acknowledges that Japanese developers are under pressure to Westernize their games. 

I can’t say for certain because I haven’t played the final game, but I fear that Shadows of the Damned will be weakened by its goal to appease Western audiences. At a time when the industry is debating the trite nature of our games, we need Japan to keep its originality. More specifically, we need Japanese developers to take the best lessons from Western developers and grow within their own style and culture. What we don’t need is for a collaborative project between three of our greatest legends to be “toned down.”