What was already a striking art style, inspired by Japanese watercolour and wood carving art of Hokusai et al, is not so much heightened as brought into its truest form. In Ōkami’s case (a game that has already undergone a couple of exploratory renovations in the past dozen years) the effect is transformative. The old wallpaper is ripped off, replaced with patterns of an intricacy and sophistication that would have been impossible when the thing was first erected. In this way, the art of the video game remake is less like the restoration of an old masterwork, or the snapping of a blurred photograph into focus, and more like the renovation of an aged building. In many cases, only the 3D skeletons that underpin the original are preserved the skin and texture of the game is freshly repainted on to the mesh. It’s a misnomer, underselling both the process and results of rebuilding old video games in today’s technology. As the story unfurls before you, with its cast of sotted old swordsmen, snap-backed village elders, fidgety teens and all the rest, Amaterasu leaves a steady wake of colour and life behind her.įirst released in 2006, this rerelease, titled with artless straightforwardness Ōkami HD, is the latest in a gathering trend of video game companies treating the jewels in their back catalogues to a so-called “remaster”. ![]() And while Amaterasu is goddess of the people, one eye is always on the sparrow there’s always time to feed birds, boar, hares and horses (and inspire their faith as a reward). You battle not robots or tanks, but shamisen-wielding baboons and furious carp. Leap into the air and you release a fluttering confetti of rusty maple leaves. As you pad through shrines and bamboo fields, flowers bloom at Amaterasu’s paws. To crib Palahniuk’s format: the god we follow ends up following us.Ĭonsidering that this is a video game, a form that more than any other relies on a confluence of keen technologies, Ōkami’s preoccupations are surprisingly pastoral. With a swipe of the bristles you must light their fires, fix their bridges, repair their tools, replace their lost objects and, when cleaving passing demons in two, save their lives. ![]() More often, however, you are a god of small things, engaged in the mundane busywork of answering the prayers of the villagers who live within your domain. ![]() With a flourish of that mystical calligraphic brush clenched between your fangs you can, for example, paint entire suns into the world, daub leaves back on to the branches of barren trees, or splotch a missing star on to a lapsed constellation. ![]() Sure, as the benevolent goddess Amaterasu, freshly incarnated as a white wolf, you have the power to change the world in extravagant ways, both galactic and molecular. If the American novelist Chuck Palahniuk skewered the almost-lie that money buys happiness with his quippy adage that the things we own end up owning us, the newly rereleased Ōkami (and pretty much every other video game in which you play God) spoils the idea that the life of a deity is in any way enviable.
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