Killer7 and the Art of Indirect Horror | Ghastlycrate

let's talk about horror I'm not the greatest afficionado of it in all honesty you could say I'm a rather screamish guy when you get down to it but it's a genre that always fascinated me mostly because fear isn't something that is easy to comprehend and as such it can be even more of a challenge to depict properly shock imagery is usually the namesake that creators will double down onto and while I think that it can serve its purpose well if done right it still be fair to say that a more emotionally incline Creator will be tapping into an unsuspecting cover of constant dread that dread manifests itself in a lot of ways Silent Hill 2 is commonly cited as one of the greatest horror games of all time due to its masterful understanding of the unknown balancing all of it around a highly personal psychological story a personal favorite of mine the Zero Escape series mixes sci-fi with Escape the Room scenarios where you love of trust towards colorful characters is put to the test what about examples where it's clear that something wasn't necessarily set out to be an explicit take on horror think back to those times when you'd pop up a game or a movie that is commonly considered kid-friendly only to be put off or traumatized by unexpected element or some uncanny valy level depictions of things for me personally as a kid that used to be Oddworld a game that traumatized me with it's demois alone to the point that I actually asked my parents to give me an N64 instead of a PS1 now even though examples like like these concern themselves mostly with only very specific moments in games it's still fascinating to think about games that have the capability to strike an atmosphere of horror throughout an entire game where it might not have been the full intention to do so not just something that will evoke it through deliberate imagery but also through some incredibly subtle usage of narrative framing devices that transcend its own genre conventions it's not an easy feat to do I imagine it requires a certain level of finesse and elegance that might just come as a lightning in a bottle but today I want to look back on one particular game that ended up being just that if you asked me to describe killer 7 in one word I'd probably have to go with insane probably because it's a word that describes its creator suda 51 pretty well suda comes from the same school of video game as coima namely a guy who is fueled entirely by an almost cultural anacronismo are drawn from Western pop culture his company grasshopper employ the slogan of Punk's not dead which isn't merely a visual statement but more so acknowledgement of a certain ideal of subversion usually that subversion is easy to notice super fire wrestling Pros main campaign was about a wrestler who realizes in the end that he only fought to prolong his suicide No More Heroes is about a pathetic nerd who sheds the player Avatar Association after having ridiculous twists thrown at him near the end Shadow the dam was a buddy comedy about saving a love interest who turns out to be an antagonistic force that the protagonist loves unconditionally either way you get the idea killer 7 on the other hand is just a complete trip that as hard as nails to accurately describe so much to the point that it comes across is incomprehensible in fact you can make so many different videos on the things that are in this game that me zeroing in on just one of the elements that stood out to me might just do it a service to what the game is well I'm not going to try to delve too deep into the story itself I really don't know where to start with this game but the game itself oh it knows where to start I don't think I've ever played a game that went straight from 0o to 11 within its first few seconds from its company items to its haunting non-descriptive title screen I already knew I was going to be in for something special the signature demented laughter of the heaven smile immediately sets aone for what's to come and it instantly becomes one of the things a player will have ringing in the back of their minds throughout the entire game when it comes to my personal experience of Puda 51's titles the first game I ever played from him was no more Heroes a game I still consider a personal top favorite it's a really anarchic Punk piece of boisterously awesome characters with a lead character has pretty much a perfect representation of its Target player base it's a dumb game but it's a dumb smart game that takes its setup and uses it to deconstruct the player mentality of being number one won and winning that game was suda's last game in an explicitly directorial role and even though I remained a fan of his subsequent games it's safe to say that they did lack a somewhat distinct touch that was imprison and no more Heroes eventually I finally got a hold of a coveted killer 7 a game that was something of a myth to me every time I talk about pseudo 51 this game would come up in a conversation as his magnum opus but no one could ever put into words why that was I didn't understand why that was until I actually got to play it where the game's first 5 minutes after Bo doing it up instantly drew me in with its Insidious Intrigue when hour were in I tell myself this is a game that isn't for everyone and I wouldn't have it any other way what killer 7 does it does great in spite of its incredibly simple gameplay the game is something of a myasthma in terms of genres it's a rail shooter but not quite it's got a lot of puzzles but it's hard to call it a puzzle game it's an action adventure that is strictly limiting on the adventure part to put it in simpler terms by focusing on a lot of individual moments that don't stand up on their own that much despite being serviceable it's clear that this is a game where the gameplay serves as a vehicle for a narrative and that narrative is bizarre I'm going to try my absolute best not to spoil many of the game's elements because if you've played the game I imagine you can infer certain elements I talk about here and if you haven't played the game you're definitely going to want to in short terms the story is about ultimate World Peace being threatened by a suicide terrorist group called Heaven smile that only exist to cause Terror for the sake of Terror the terrorists are notorious for their Insidious laughter and they can't be identified through regular means do their way of killing people and the way they blend into the populace the world's only hope at combating the terrorists are the killer 7 a group of expert assassins who are the only ones able to identify a person that has Heaven smile The Twist behind the killer 7 however is that the group is really only one person a wheelchair bound old man called Harmon Smith who exhibits a multiple personality phenomenon that allows them to actually transform into the seven different assassins all of which are experts in various forms of infiltration combat and reconnaissance the plot sounds simple on paper but it quickly becomes completely ridiculous once theur start to unveil the game's true backstory which involves political pretexts conspiracies demigod figures and Supernatural symbolism by making the protagonist of this game assassins are put into a long-term story spanning years where the killer 7 are brought in to contain disturbances in a world that's ever evolving funnily enough that's kind of where the point of horror starts coming into play in the context of the story the smiles are mostly circumstance as opposed to cause the prol chapter immediately introduces our understanding of who the protagonist and antagonist is but as far as runin go it's pretty much the only major one in the entire game you'll be having and this is where things get a little perplexing and more unsettling the relationship between Harmon Smith and the antagonist Kun Lan seems very friendly in a way the smiles have nebulous leaders and they exist to exacerbate political and materialistic situations in a game that are quite frankly terrifying most of the time and occasionally tragic in others the game's first chapter is about tracking down a political doctrine that is of utmost importance to World negotiations and the chapter ends with the destruction of an entire country a fact that the protagonists just casually accept over the Year this sort of ends up becoming something of the essence behind every chapter things constantly take an Insidious turn of unpredictability the world killer 7 depicts is increasingly broken under devic of Terror and politics in today's capacity I imagine that many of those themes might be a lot more topical or hit close to home and your role in it all is best summed up by garan's signature line Don't make me say it again I'm a cleaner your purpose in this game isn't to save the world but to eliminate contention your Hired Gun the person who is only there to do the government's dirty work so even though the player might feel the need to want to fight for a greater good there's none to be found here quite frankly it becomes increasingly clear throughout the story that the killer 7even themselves for all intents and purposes only end up being the lesser of 20 different evils and they're not even necessarily the least evil when you count for all of them that said plenty of games depict crapsack worlds and it doesn't necessarily make a game sustain a horror atmosphere and of its own so what does Killer 7 do specifically that cinches the deal to put it in a word I'd call this game evil even though it probably more fair to call killer 7 a thriller game I mentioned earlier in the video that horror is built heavily upon the premise of incomprehension this is something that sud the 51 isn't necessarily a strange stranger to and is an advantage he's had when making games for a western audience mainly because his take on Western tropes and sensibilities come from a Japanese point of reference but what killer 7 does a large majority of the time is TI the incomprehensible aesthetic themes to Insidious undercurrents and fittingly enough a lot of people would argue that foreign produced horror is more captivating than domestic horror because they have less understanding of certain sensibilities and techniques that may be standard to a different region I'd also be remiss not to mention the fact that suda does come from a hor tinge background as among other things he was responsible for the Twilight syndrome series on the PlayStation 1 as well as Michigan report from Hell on the PlayStation 2 the most immediate thing of player will probably notice with the game is its visuals which are entirely cell-shaded in comparison to the Wind Waker which compromis an incredible amount with environments employing traditional textures and shading almost everything in killer 7 is a solid color or gradient with high emphasis on black Shadows that make the game look like a no arconic book come to life grasshopper has never been the biggest studio and prior to killer 7 many of their games had character models that would look and Anime in some uncanny ways while that partially translates to killer 7 the visual style makes the grimy unappealing elements look more visceral in a way that upholds a surreal atmosphere everything aside from Smiles you don't encounter a single living being in the levels you Traverse which creates a solitary atmosphere the only friendlies you interact with in the game are the remnant psyches of dead people with your assistance being tied up in bondage gear while everyone else is someone that you killed all these Remnant psyches speak in Warped text to speech patterns which sound Eerie and unnatural as the it conveys the fact that you are the only one able to speak to things that are barely even human anymore the dialogue itself is written in somewhat of an idiosyncratic manner while it's easy to comprehend it's structurally something that you sometimes imagine would make more sense in another language which makes the game all the more intriguingly otherworldly and uncanny the world itself is depicted in something of a toxic manner where innocuous living areas Estates and recreational landmarks have been tainted by the suicidal Smiles infesting these formerly tranquil areas if anything isn't depicted an unsettling way visually it's going to be depicted in terms of personality is the only sunless UNR fite the game gives us in is a trailer park where intermissions takes okay never mind in spite of the simplistic mechanics they somehow all end up with the narrative justification such as the way the killer 7 are accessed a seemingly insane unrelated ability that a character may have or an oddly conspicuous item that continues to crop up hell even the game's movement system ends up having something of a reason for existing the way it does in a way that manifests itself into the dreading of hindsight the on Rails movement helps add to the compressed feeling of helplessness and makes the encounters all the more tense because of your limited movement even though the game has been criticized for its gameplay I think it in averly ends up contributing to a tense horror atmosphere it's not a feeling I imagine would be maintained if the game settled for a more high-speed action game like many pre-release trailers would imply the slower methodical approach ends up not only contributing to how tense it becomes but it also becomes a more integral framing device for the game structural narrative and then of course you have the smiles the smiles are depicted as terrifying malformed monsters but that's only the way the killer 7 identifies them they come in so many insane shapes forms and sizes that it begs a question how they are interpreted to the common eye Smiles are also born in some of the most bizarre ways from hives to duplicators to even specific Smiles being able to produce more of them like like we talking about birthing from either side of the coin this is a faction of enemies that is unsettling you also can't detect the enemies until you scan the room for them which causes a constant feeling of dread as you Ponder on whether there's any more in the room that you missed these guys aren't just scary in what they offer in terms of presentation but also because of the gameplay soundtrack in this game is well absolutely Sublime masafumi Takata has been my favorite video game composer since no more hero and his qualities shine through here the music is such an Insidious melodic Edge to it the talent which he would later utilize more in the dangan rompa series I couldn't think of a better soundtrack to defect some of the hellish depths this game goes into finally the antagonists in this game easily deserve an award for being some of the most despicable antagonists put into games these guys will make you hate them and things they responsible for doing which in of itself is terrifying Curtis Blackburn in particular still sticks out to me as one of the most detestable characters to be put in gaming the more you find out about him the less you like him [ __ ] is also probably one of the most affable antagonists due his incredibly fascinating relationship with the protagonist but it only serves to make some of the conspicuous undercurrents all the more Insidious the the protagonists are always on a mission that have a dreadful quaintness or have layers of devilish truth behind them either about the circumstances of the world or about the characters themselves and that's where it all comes together you eventually end up dreading having to discover more of the game and what's behind there but your morbid curiosity keeps you pushing the final level of the game becomes one of the most haunting things I've ever played is everyone warns you about an entirely evitable horror that you're getting way over your head and you're just better off abandoning ship one of the most unorthodox settings ends up being one of the scariest as a result as you piece together evidence that you might have just been better off not bothering to tamper with in the first place the absolute level of discouragement leveled On To You by everyone else just fills you with a morbid sense of fear and dread from everything especially considering with what you've learned throughout the game every chapter begins with the forboding and maniacal laughter of what's to come and ends with a somber Melancholy giggle alongside a poetic message that serves as a haunting look back on the events that transpired also in case this wasn't made clear this is a game in which a Luchador headbutts bullets and with the government creates a Super Sentai group because of political reasons somehow it all makes sense and is a better war game than most goddamn games released these days this game is bewildering in every sense of the word despite the fact that I've touted its qualities and atmosphere it's still hard to overlook how nonsensical main the game's elements are which are equally as effective in making an impact somehow it successfully concoct something scary funny and awesome in one package one of the most tragic scenes in the game involves one of the most awkward out of context exchanges what the hell is this game one of my favorite games ever which you should probably go byy if you haven't killer 7 is a game you play for the sake of an experience rather than the gameplay itself but it's elegant in all of its Insanity which requires a certain level of Mastery from a dedicated Visionary this is a game I just don't see a AAA company ever green like ever again due to how unorthodox it was even though no more hero serves well as a spiritual successor of some incredibly interesting themes underneath the satire it's safe to say that no game suit 51 makes anytime soon will be able to compare the dynamite that is killer 7 it says a lot that much of the plot had to be cut out and covered in a book focusing entirely on Cutting Room floor material even though a lot of it is contradictory but in spite of the pocy of it all the ending and themes come across as definitive it manages to ultimately become a comprehensive package that is one of the most intoxicating atmospheres in game games while balancing it with some amazing colorful writing fantastic suspense and some of the most memorable characters this side of gaming it's a game that feels like it was made on a life or death dare and quite frankly it's a game that makes the game industry feel a lot more colorful if you haven't already played the game I highly recommend it since no matter what you might think of it there's no doubt in my mind that you'll see games more differently once you've experienced it

Channel: Ghastlycrate

Views: 60,041

Keywords: ghastlycrate, killer7, suda51, grasshopper manufacture, grasshopper, gamecube, ps2, capcom, video games, no more heroes

Id: Jiu06vo237c

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 09 2016