Enslaved As It Should Have Been

[De Ronneman]

Did he just praise Okami? I think he did. Didn't he? Seriously, I'm going paranoid!

But anyway, everyone allready hailed his idea for Journey to the Space-West, so I'm going to say it's going to suck, because it's really hard to make us sympathise with a robot, so a human/monkeythingy would be somewhat more workable.

 

[giort08]

"They copy it all into the head of a random menial droid that happens to be called Tripitaka because fuck you" - Love it XD

 

[Necrofudge]

Eh, I didn't really like the idea. I was never a fan of futuristic interpretations of past events that were intended to be full of magic and whatnot.
Or it could be because I hate when the character I'm playing as is a robot. It lacks the pizazz of hidden potential.

 

[Jay Cool]

Croshaw's idea is cool, I would probably pay full price for that game, it sounds fun. My only suggestion being that it should be "Monkeybot's" pole that should change forms, for example:

Need to climb? It splits into climbing picks. Need to reach a high ledge? A hook appears at the end and it extends up to the ledge.

Need to launch a rocket at the boss's open mouth? Shift into a shoulder mounted RPG.

Need to surf over some hot lava? Split into LAVA SKIS!

Finally, it would be a sweet pole vaulting pole, which would actually make sense if you wanted to curb or increase difficulty of platforming, depending on the style of game: For higher difficulty, you would hold the vault button for as long or as hard as you want the pole to extend, increasing the distance of the jump, but if you wanted to make easier, just have it extyend automatically depending on the jump gap.

After all, everybody loves upgrades, and an upgradeable swiss army pole would be pretty damn cool.

 

[ThePants]

I'd play that game. Seems like this story would've already have had a *good* video game adaptation....

 

[xengk]

What the Hell! 160 post later and no one mention Starzinger/Spaceketeers yet?!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starzinger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCqBQpwWY0

 

[PanicxBoss]

Hell, I didn't even recognize that Enslaved had anything to do with Journey to the West until Yahtzee mentioned it, and I've read the book! I feel like the developers should have taken the route suggested at the end of the rant, as that would definitely be a game I would enjoy playing. Plus, it's a shift away from the stereotypical duo of grizzled, one-dimensional space marines accompanied by implausibly hot women that everyone seems to be stealing from each other these days. And that's certainly be a refreshing change.

 

[geodynamik]

Yahtzee wrote:

It makes me wonder why creators do this. Adapt works when they don't intend to follow the source, I mean. In that case, why not just create their own IP? Of course I already know the answer to that question: because new IP doesn't have "brand identity" and wouldn't sell as well.

I would put forward the idea that today, if you don't reference some sort of inspiration source, no matter how closely or far you deviate from it, people are going to accuse you of unoriginality or ripping off ideas. They will then go on to state how "your IP is simply a combination of game x with game y while ruthlessly making references to cake - can't anyone come up with original ideas any more?" The answer being yes and no. Sometimes the influences are obvious, other times they are not. Sometimes the author is possibly unaware of the influences himself and others will tear him apart for it if it resembles something they are intimately familiar with.

So before that happens, why not just pick one of your inspiration sources and run with it as a premise for your game. Then the finger pointing and comparisons can be reduced to a minimum.

I'm going to ask people who go see the movie Skyline to keep this in mind. Its got its faults, but its a sight better than Independence day which its constantly being compared to. Independence day was fine for its day if all you were looking for was a yahoo cowboy movie with the latest special effects, but it would hardly stand up as an A list movie today (at least I hope not).

 

[thepyrethatburns]

We already had a faithful...ish adaptation of Journey to the West on PS1 (Although things went off the rails in the last chapter or so, and someone added Xiaolongnu and a dryad named Lady Kikka to the "main character" pool), and it was called Saiyuki: Journey West.

EDIT: Actually, the company who made it apparently mixed in characters and concepts from an unrelated myth that they made a video game adaptation of. But since the actual plot is still Journey to the West, it's still a more faithful storyline.

Yeah, a number of people have mentioned that game. Being one of those who has it, I wonder how Yahtzee would have liked it as compared to Enslaved.

 

[Mel Theofficegamergirl]

I've read bits and pieces of journey to the west (it's really really really looooong) and have seen various movie and foreign show adaptations. I don't think that the entire story could be put into just one game. multiple games or perhaps a series.
all this talk about monkeys makes me want to go play ape escape...>_>

 

[MadTinkerer]

Okay, I don't have time to read the whole thread right now, so if someone else already mentioned this, kudos to you. THERE ALREADY WAS A JOURNEY TO THE WEST PLAYSTATION 1 GAME.

It's called, appropriately, Saiyuki: Journey West. Other than you being able to pick the monk's gender (and apparently the (Japanese) creators actually justified it via pointing out slight vagueness of gender pronoun in the original text), the story is basically exactly like the original.

(Though bear in mind that Journey West is the Chinese equivalent of the legend of King Arthur: many, many versions have appeared since the original Le Mort Du Arthur and the "original" canon wasn't the first version. That's not even counting the crazy manga spinoffs like DBZ, that's just counting the more or less "faithful" retellings.)

Saiyuki is a turn-based tactical RPG, from the pre-Disgaea days, so it tends to be a bit slow-paced, but it's fun if you enjoy tactics RPGs.

 

[MadTinkerer]

We already had a faithful...ish adaptation of Journey to the West on PS1 (Although things went off the rails in the last chapter or so, and someone added Xiaolongnu and a dryad named Lady Kikka to the "main character" pool), and it was called Saiyuki: Journey West.

EDIT: Actually, the company who made it apparently mixed in characters and concepts from an unrelated myth that they made a video game adaptation of. But since the actual plot is still Journey to the West, it's still a more faithful storyline.

Yeah, a number of people have mentioned that game. Being one of those who has it, I wonder how Yahtzee would have liked it as compared to Enslaved.

Aw crap, never mind.

 

[rddj623]

Great stuff Yahtzee. A truly inspired and interesting interpretation. Too bad the game is nothing like that.

 

[RobPsyence]

If a poem is a 600+ page book then yeah its a poem...not.

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

Incidentally, what is it with female video game characters and exposed midriffs? It's like the first thing to get rationed in times of crisis is the bottom four inches of all the world's baby doll T-shirts.

thanks for noticing. can be a bit annoying, but tripi is not a good example. there are more of these over the top and over the boob ladys with clothes wich can only fit because of tons of superglue and even then you´re asking yourself why this person never crys out of pain because the tons of titties seem so heavy, that they could bend their spine like bender bends tubes..

i mean, well. sometimes i miss real girl-charas which were not made as a jerk off fantasy or damsels in distress^^[and here goes tripitaka^^]...