Enslaved
Enslaved is a loose adaptation of the Chinese classic, Journey to West. Instead of traveling to India to retrieve sutras (sacred texts), the protagonist of Alex Garland’s script is traveling back home to reunite with her father. Foisted upon each other, the characters must navigate each other as well as the dangerous wasteland. Thankfully, the game’s strong atmosphere and relationships are the most rewarding parts of Monkey’s enslavement by Trip on her journey home.
While the point of the journey differs, Garland puts Triptika (Trip), the protagonist in the original story, with the same companions (in namesake at least) but each with a different purpose. The player takes on one of these companions, Monkey. Monkey finds himself on a slave ship and inadvertently through Trip’s actions is set free. As he races to get off the ship, he follows Trip to the graveyard that is New York of the future. Waking up, Trip informs him that she has put one of the slave headbands on his head. Her voice is his control and her death will kill him. She needs Monkey to get her back to her father, through a land swarming with treacherous mechs, and then she will let him go. Thus begins their journey to the West. Along the way they pick up another companion (only two unlike the original story’s three) and take Trip’s personal quest to its fruition.
The dynamics created by Garland’s changes to the original story provide for some novel character interactions.
The protagonist and his sidekick is not new to video games. However, the reluctant ally creates some interesting opportunities of which the script takes advantage. The dialogue is particularly noteworthy along with the motion-captured cutscenes. Andy Serkis directed and starred in the scenes that shape moments between Trip and Monkey. They are brief but carry with them both nuance and heft. Sitting around a campfire motivations between the characters become clear and at the same time with little exposition the characters reveal much of the world they are in. This in fact becomes one of the best parts about Enslaved, how it is able to deliver so much with so little. Video games are not known for this kind of subtlety and it is refreshing. Though kudos here must be given the script, it is the excellent animation that conveys emotions in spades. A roll of the eye and a twitch of the face dispel with the uncanny valley issues and in a whole range of motions the characters come alive. The animators combined with the voice actors providing their own motion capture is the little piece that helps elevate the delivery in this game.
Trip and Monkey are later joined by Pigsy, a character that bares the physical similarities of his namesake.
His infatuation with Trip adds to the dynamic, but not in a trite love-triangle sense. A mission before them, the characters are focused. In this sense, it is a little odd how Monkey takes a number of the homicidal attempts in stride, but when he finally erupts the moment is almost perfect. Though Pigsy is a late addition, it is remarkable how he fits in with the cast and indeed his character develops through his own short arc. It is the intimate setting of these three characters, their interactions, with the wasteland around them that sets this game apart from much of the apocalyptic fare. They only have each other, they need each other to live, and this is their personal tale.
Supplementing this great story and characters is an above average game. The best thing that can be said about it is that it does not get in the way. The worst thing is that it is not particularly memorable. Monkey has a staff and is a burley hulk of a man. Trip is a teenage girl with an uncanny ability to manipulate computers. Working together is a necessity to traverse the wasteland and thankfully it is not a chore. The sidekick dynamic can be its own worst enemy when the non-playable character’s artificial intelligence is lacking. Luckily, in two play-throughs, not once did Trip die.
It is not that it is hard to kill her, she just won’t surrender herself to enemies if one is judicious in one’s playing. Trip needs to be protected from the onslaught of mechs, but she also needs help in platforming. To the developers’ credit this never gets frustrating. In fact, she is necessary at times to distract enemies and get through a level. Monkey has a limited repertoire at his disposal in taking down enemies. Though he can get upgrades from Trip, these prove to have limited usefulness. Though limited, strategy is still required as the difficulty ramps up. With multiple enemies and the need to protect a number of items, Monkey needs to keep track of his opponents, stun them to minimize damage, and finish them off quickly. The gameplay could have allowed for combos and heightened damage. Its omission feels like a missed opportunity for more depth.
Trip and later Pigsy are good complements to the gameplay. They do a good job of not getting in the way and the game is wise, even with two NPCs in play, to not over-burden the player with responsibility. The end result are what feels like unencumbered gameplay segments, even when you have to carry Trip across the Brooklyn Bridge. Segments of platforming are paired with moments where Monkey on his Cloud, a floating disk. The disk is used for both platforming and combat and they provide a welcome change of pace without outstaying their welcome. The platforming is an area where the game has a small misstep, it is too easy. The game highlights handholds and the player is almost guided through the level. It provides little challenge once one gets the visual cues. Even when the environment is breaking down and Monkey must double-time it, there is little difficulty and the platforming serves only as a way of progress and not as a puzzle itself.
Even though mechanics of platforming fall short, the environments they are placed in are absolutely gorgeous. Built on the Unreal engine, the game is at its best in the first third where it depicts a ravaged New York. Overrun with foliage, the game is a sharp contrast from the other Unreal game’s (Gears of War) destroyed beauty. That does not mean the results are any less breathtaking. As the camera pans across the level or as the escape pod comes to crash land it is obvious that special care was taken in making the world that Trip and Monkey inhabit alive in its own way. Humans no longer inhabit Manhattan, but it still provides a fertile environment. At one point Trip comes across a lone fish tank, a self-contained echo system. Then the harsh reality of this new world crashes in upon it. It serves as a revealing moment of whether humans should be part of this New York.
As the story carries the characters, the environments change to a more mechanical world. Though gaming fans might be used to this, the beauty of the world is still present. Though there is a change it is not for the worse.
That first breathtaking moment of passing over desolate and overrun in foliage New York stays with the player to the end. Consequently, the soundtrack by Nitin Sawhney, of Namesake fame, provides the right tone of electronic and instrumental to go along with the mashing of nature and mechanical. It adds to the environments the level designers created, while also punctuating the cutscenes at the correct moments. It is another part of the aesthetic that feels perfectly timed with the story’s beats.
Enslaved is a game where a number of its parts are not on equal footing. Thankfully, no part suffers so badly as to discourage playing it. The game excels at atmosphere and emotion and the rest fall in tow. Though the gameplay does not stand out, it thankfully does not hinder the rest of the game either. This is a game that will suck players in with its characters and its fourteen chapters will keep them dutifully enraptured. The game gets you to laugh and connect with the characters. In the video game medium this is a rare and laudable feat. The end is a cliff-hanger, but thankfully Garland’s script wraps up the main arc. The wasteland and its stories can still be told, and I look forward to Ninja Theory telling them, but Trip’s journey here ends, though neither she nor Monkey expect what they find.
