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Enslaved: Odyssey to the West


Keyofx

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Enslaved

 

Developer: Ninja Theory

Publisher: Namco Bandai

Platforms: PlayStation 3,Xbox 360

Release: ? :|

 

Enslaved takes place decades and decades after the third and fourth world wars have ravaged the world. Players take on the role of Monkey (voiced and mo-capped by Andy Serkis), a man who has lived a solitary life on the run from nihilistic machines -- remnants of a forgotten war who continue to carry out their objectives, even though most of the human race is now dead.

 

Unfortunately, Monkey gets captured and ends up on an airship with a young woman called Trip. The two escape from the airship, but Monkey is knocked unconcious and awakes to find a headband stuck to his face. The band was placed there by Trip who needs Monkey to help her return home, but is aware that he's misanthropic and solitary. So, she threatens him with a headband that will crush his skull if he doesn't do as she says. This naturally leads to a very tense relationship between two people who are prepared to kill each other, but need to work together to survive.

 

The story is written by Alex Garland, and is very loosely based on the ancient Chinese novel, Journey to the West. Combat will be similar to Heavenly Sword, but there will be a greater focus on tactical play, with Monkey able to use a dragonfly-esque camera to scout out enemies and detect weak points. For example, Monkey can learn that a particular robot's machine gun attachments are weak, then pull the guns off and use them for himself.

 

Alex Garland!!

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High motion picture production like values :

 

 

1.) "Directed" by Andy Serkis (Gollum!)

 

2.) A cinematographer was hired to make the "camera work" in the game more conventionally like that of an actual motion picture scene.

 

3.) Alex Garland (screenwriter for 28 Days Later) worked on the story to flesh it out.

 

4.) Tools and story telling approach will be similar to the cutscenes from Heavenly Sword with facial expressions and motion capture providing body language cues during dialogue.

 

5.) The game is loosely thematically based on "Journey to the West", the Chinese novel about the adventures and taming of the great powerful (and tricky) Monkey King.

 

Plot :

Principle antagonist is robots who are harvesting human survivors and taking them westward on automated airships for some reason. Set in a dark post apocalyptic future where mankind is almost extinct and takes place in the vine covered ruins of New York City with some recognizable land marks.

 

In the game, you play a blond, spiky haired, tattooed or scar-branded (it's hard to be sure) muscle-bound male survivor. His name is Monkey and is used to doing things on his own. Andy Serkis does his voice and served as his motion capture source. He smashes robots with his bare hands and is kind of rude and aggressive and self centered. When you smash robots you get orbs. Smashing robots real good gets you more orbs. Orbs let you upgrade Monkey's fighting and weapons. Monkey mainly fights with a staff (like the Monkey King!).

 

You are reluctantly protecting a civilized, educated, red-haired woman named Trip who has managed to gain power over you by hacking a head crushing "slave collar" device taken from a robot airship, and then attaching it to your head while you are unconscious. If she's not happy it's bad for you. Thus you are "enslaved". She wants you to escort her back to her village. She also seems to want you to help others when that might not be such a good idea. She's your conscience and a pain in the butt. You apparently intend to make her suffer when you get her home safe and get the collar removed. As the game goes on, she gradually teaches you to value others more than you did before and you gradually "corrupt" her into seeing that sometimes the barbarian really knows best and that many of her community oriented ideals are just naive.

 

Trip sneaks through smaller passages and hacks computers to solve puzzles that Monkey can't get by on his own.

 

Neither Monkey or Trip know enough about the city they are traveling through to really understand it. Part of the fun is watching them misinterpret stuff that is common to our every day experience. There are audio and video files that you find that gradually tell the story of what happened to mankind.

 

Robots are of varied levels of sophistication starting with metal piston and hose types and leading to those that mimic living things. They are in varying conditions, and different actions will be required to disable them. Gameplay is melee and combo oriented but also has a newer tactical dimension. For instance you may tear a loose machine gun off of one robot with faulty guns, and then throw a robot with a bad power supply into a bunch of other robots, and use the torn off gun to detonate the power supply and take all the robots down (or something like that).

 

 

Trip has a camera/butterfly barette that give you some ability to see remotely sort of like Rau's spirit bird in "Mark of Kri".

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Cool, Mark of Kri! That's a game very close to my heart.

 

Kinda curious about this even though I am not a fan of The beach.

He also did Sunshine and 28 Days Later. The man is untouchable.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Nithin Sawhney is doing the soundtrack! Did any of you know he did the Heavenly Sword OST as well?

 

 

And come on, at least Ninja Theory try to be unconventional. Some of you guys should be taken out back and spanked!

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Yea, it looks like Ninja Theory has some excellent British talent exclusively on their side. Serkis, Garland and Sawhney!

 

That makes the game worth following right there, even if it does end up a tiny bit average like HS.

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Loved the OST for Heavenly Sword (and really enjoyed the game as well). As we were discussing on the HS thread last week, it's the hype that led to disappointment for most. It was a pretty good game otherwise.

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