The road to the grave: a halberd movie delayed by the game

TrekToYomi, an action adventure game developed by two studios, LeonardMenchiari and flying wild * * *(flying wild * * *), and released by DevolverDigital, tells the story of a lonely Japanese warrior based on traditional Japanese samurai. According to the producer in the production team, The Road to Death was originally inspired by Kurosawa's films. The production team skillfully used unreal engine to blend black and white pictures, and the background was set in the Edo era, which brought us an experience of watching Japanese classic old halberd films.

(The Road to Death)

Kurosawa's focal plane aesthetics

Kurosawa is known as the "film emperor" in Japan, and even Coppola, the introducer of The Godfather, once said, "If I were to make a film with Kurosawa, I would rather be just a little assistant." Kurosawa's representative works include human films Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Desire for Life. For players who have seen Kurosawa's movies, they should fully appreciate the tribute of "A Dead End" from the picture to the plot. "Sword and halberd films" in Japanese film industry are similar to China's "martial arts films", which is a unique classification in local film culture. The most common scene in the halberd film is a brave warrior, ready to fight the enemy in a dark scene.

There are many scenes in the game where the halberd pieces are very strong. )

As far as the author is concerned, from the beginning of the game, it is the interface of the general opening of the film, which is carried out all the time. In addition, the gameplay of the game is low, more like watching a feature film, black and white retro samurai, and the deliberately designed widescreen ratio of the game. It can be seen that the production team intends to give players a participatory viewing experience. Generally speaking, if the black-and-white picture is not handled properly, the details of the picture will be too vague, which will affect the viewing experience. Therefore, black and white theme is a difficult challenge for directors and game producers. But "The Road to Death" shows us a good control of light and shadow. The scenery is layered and deep, and the scene composition has ulterior motives. In particular, the weather changes in the game, such as strong winds, heavy rains, fires, etc., are the classic features of "Kurosawa-style" movies, and the weather is used to contrast the emotions of the characters.

(The game composition is exquisite)

Off-topic, I have to say that in Japanese games played by Europeans and Americans, the Japanese cultural atmosphere is relatively positive, such as "Soul of Tsushima Island" and "The Road to Death" which I evaluated today. It can be seen that the production team has made great efforts to study the background of the game content, and at the same time, it can be seen how successful the cultural export of Japanese sword halberd films is, because Europeans and Americans are playing games now. Similarly, if you don't look at the developers, the games made by Japanese game companies with European and American backgrounds will almost be mistaken for European and American games, such as Hideo Kojima's Silent Hill and Capcom's Resident Evil series. When I was a child, I never knew that these games were actually made by Japanese. This is a very interesting phenomenon.

A unique plot that blends Japanese culture.

At the beginning of the story, the atmosphere of the sword halberd piece was created. In order to keep the contract with the late teacher, Hongzhi vowed to protect his hometown and relatives from threats. There are four endings in the game, one of which is a hidden ending, which was set by the production team to ensure the most primitive experience of the sword halberd film, and the other three are normal endings, namely "love ending", "justice ending" and "blackening ending". There are many people on the Internet who complain that the game adds the part where the protagonist enters the grave, and think that the plot design is neither like a sword halberd film nor a fantasy film. I guess these players may not play the hidden ending. If we look at this story with a hidden ending, it is the taste of a sword halberd film, and there is no fantasy part of grave robbery.

(hide the ending, kill the final BOSS in advance, normal sword and halberd routine)

However, even if there is no hidden ending, I think this plot arrangement is good. It combines the classic Japanese sword and halberd routine with the yellow world in Japanese traditional culture, and shows a tragic warrior story. The biggest shortcoming of the game plot is that the understanding of western values is added to the ending, which leads to the profound meaning of the ending is far less than that of the pure Japanese classical sword halberd film. Although the game has three endings, it is determined by the player's choice goal. All options are Aiko, which corresponds to "love ending". After overcoming the yellow trial, the protagonist is finally with his lover forever. This ending is more like the result of westerners comparing samurai to knights and romanticizing them.

(Love ending)

If all players choose the game for the trust and loyalty of the owner, then the ending is a "just ending". In the just ending, the player sees that the protagonist Hong is teaching a child fencing, just like the scene where Hong's master teaches Hong, which has a strong spiritual connotation. However, it still reflects the westerners' understanding of Bushido. Japanese sword halberd movies implicitly criticized this tool used by the shogunate to rule the people. The producer of "A Dead End" obviously didn't understand what "righteousness" was expressed in the original sword halberd film.

(just ending)

Finally, if all players choose the last item, it is the "black ending". After killing the enemy, the protagonist puts on the enemy's armor and becomes a new demon. This is a reflective ending. Although the game doesn't say which one is the bad ending that the developer wants to design, the player should be able to make a close guess according to the content of the options.

(Blackening ending)

A slightly monotonous and repetitive gameplay.

Compared with the excellent picture and composition style that can catch the player's eye at a glance, the game can be described as the opposite. This game belongs to the typical "recruit players, but can't stay". Even if the basic operations in the game are fighting and exploring, let's talk about fighting first. Players can obtain weapons such as bows and arrows, guns and so on in stages throughout the game. Mobs can be divided into two categories, humans and zombies in the necromancer, which makes the gameplay monotonous. There are too few kinds of monsters, but there are still many monsters. It takes half a day for each game to enter the next stage. Moreover, although there are many key moves in the game, the visual effect is not obvious in actual use, and it is difficult for players to master them quickly, resulting in high repetition of battle scenes.

(The battle scenes of the game are similar from beginning to end, and the repetition is too high)

And the fighting difficulty of the game is not small. Although the game map uses a 3D map, the fighting process is still two-dimensional, which means that enemies in the same direction can only fight players one by one. The fighting mechanism of the game has some characteristics of the soul game, including the complex combination of tricks, the endurance of the protagonist, and high damage. Especially in the BOSS war, BOSS basically makes tricks, which can be said to be one disability and two deaths.

(The game has many key matches)

The game can also use dangerous objects in the scene to kill a large number of enemies. Obviously, this is because the production team wants to enrich the combat gameplay, but it does not cure the symptoms. If you set more enemy types and weapon types, it is the fundamental way to improve the gameplay.

Let's talk about exploration. There are few explorers, long-range weapons and ammunition, props to increase life endurance and some collections that have nothing to do with the process. The author thinks that if the game developer can add some notes to some hidden scenes as explorers to supplement the plot, it will also make the game more interesting. The game adopts a fixed perspective mode, that is, the map is divided by scenes and the perspective of God is adopted. When the player moves in a scene, the angle of view basically does not change or moves very little. This perspective has been used in old games such as Silent Hill and Resident Evil a long time ago. There is generally only one set of hidden scenes in the game, and the road to death is not very good at exploring the gameplay, which will have a negative impact on the gameplay.

A small bright spot with Japanese cultural charm

In the game, the player's blood returning place and archiving point are "shrines", but the shrines are disposable shrines, which can't be used again, so the player can't archive in the same place, nor can he return blood repeatedly, so that each battle scene is cleverly separated, and no matter how many enemies there are in front, the player can only empty them at one time. This design is better than automatic archiving in this kind of action games.

(shrine is a key interactive content in the game, which can archive and restore blood volume)

Then, the game designed several sections of low-difficulty decryption with Japanese characteristics, which enriched the content of the game outside the battle. Unfortunately, a few decryptions are mainly concentrated in the later stage. If there is more decrypted content, the game may be more playable.

(game decryption)

Write it at the end

A game that focuses on a specific narrative style, such as Road to Death, often has the most polarized reputation. Some players think that the artistic style of this game is perfect, while others think that this game is simply boring. In my opinion, the artistry of the game screen and scene design is impeccable, but the gameplay is indeed lacking, with some flaws, but there are still some brilliant places.

The greatest value of this game is to show the classic halberd on the screen again and again in another way after half a century. Through excellent mirror operation and black-and-white basic picture performance, this is the westerners' most sincere tribute to the legendary Japanese film era.