The Giant Monster Series, part 3...

When Godzilla was first designed the creators were looking for dinosaurs as their main inspiration. As sequels were released Godzilla needed allies as well as new opponents to fight on Monster Isle. Designers went back to work crafting monsters that were rooted in nature and even mythology. The serpent like Manda was based on classic Eastern dragon designs, the spiky Ganimes on the other hand was more like a giant crustacean. The Japanese seemed to be going through the same creative roadblock of Western movie producers. Gigantic versions of natural creatures were good but lacking. Godzilla did not quite look like any actual dinosaur and that lack of connection seemed to work. The better monsters had more fantasy inspired cues and took many artistic liberties.

Toho studios hit their stride in 1964 when they released King Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster. They combined classic and science fiction designs into one creature capable of giving Godzilla and his allies a run for their money. The gold scaled three headed dragon, possibly a wyvern, was from Mars, sometimes credited as the uncharted Planet-X. Toho was combining extraterrestrial elements with their version of giant monster storytelling. This opened up the daikaiju format exponentially. The creatures could come from nature, or they could be the result of a mutation brought on by radiation, or they could even come from outer space. The rest of the world ran with possibilities but none did it better than Toho. Godzilla and the other daikaiju were proving to be extremely popular with young audiences. Kids loved the spectacle of the monsters destroying models. They understood that Godzilla was not a villain and the destruction was collateral damage from his battles. Toho began introducing villains that were unlike earlier daikaiju. The new monsters began developing personalities. Little by little the daijaiku were becoming like the classic Hollywood monsters. They were even developing a following the world over. Toho was listening very closely to their fan base and began designing villains that were multidimensional as well. Godzilla's next truly worthy challenge would appear in 1971. Hedorah, the Smog Monster was a creature born from toxic pollution. It polluted the air around it and reduced cities to sludge. It was actually a very powerful opponent and like King Ghidorah it managed to give Godzilla a good thrashing in their first meeting.

Hedorah was much more than the Blob (a 1958 cult classic) with eyes. It was drawn from the zeitgeist of environmentalists. Those too young to remember the atomic weapons used against Japan were keenly aware of the effects that pollution were having on their health and homes. Toho used the film to educate kids on the dangers of pollution as much as it did to entertain them. The generation being raised on giant monster films were also absorbing lessons from comic books, manga, anime and cartoon shows. These young men and women would become the early generation of game designers. They went through a similar learning curve that movie studios had when they first began working in the giant monster genre. Some of the challenges of making a convincing giant monster was a technical one. Software and hardware were very limited in the late '70s. It was tough to get audiences to commit to suspension of disbelief when they were looking at boxy shapes instead of creatures. Developers learned that visuals and effects were only part of the draw of the giant monsters. Control was a make or break point for every title. The ones that found the perfect balance of control while managing the expectations of gamers did the best. It took almost 30 years for graphics and control to reach a point where audiences could be completely engaged in the experience and accept the giant monster as more than a backdrop.

If a current generation player turned on their game system they could expect to be floored by the visuals of a creature like the Hekaton monster from Bulletstorm. The player may not realize that the creature came from somewhere beyond gaming, That somewhere was a combination of influences from science fiction cinema and giant monster movies. The developers at Epic Games had used their insight when designing the Locust aliens in the Gears of War series and were now pushing the envelope as to what was possible. Only when they had enough experience, from a Gears of War trilogy, were they able to create Hekaton in Bulletstorm without breaking the engine or game play.

Even the games that were not violent or graphic were pulling tremendous cues from the giant monster genre. Pokémon for example was a mostly nonviolent battle game targeted at younger gamers. The series had introduced several monsters that were inspired by daikaju legends. Some were subtle and some were overt. Tyranitar could be considered the Godzilla equivalent of the Pokémon universe. As if it were not obvious the series even introduced a Mecha Tyrnaitar as well. The use of robotic daikaiju dopplegängers first happened in 1974 when Godzilla fought Mechagodzilla. Since that time there has been a robot equivalent for almost every major Toho monster.



Even titles that did not feature giant monsters were still drawn to the appeal of the genre. Since 2007 Team Fortress 2 had pitted the Red and Blue armies against each other. In 2012 Valve introduced a third army with the Mann vs Machine multiplayer campaign. The new army was made of robotic copies of all the main military classes. Fans of the game went wild at the announcement. Of course the older players clearly knew where Valve had drawn inspiration for the new army.

Some of the best games of the current generation have exploited the giant monster in one way or another. Several of the most memorable action sequences in first person shooters used the creatures as set pieces. The Leviathan battle from Resistance 2 and the Thresher Maw versus the Reaper from Mass Effect were among the best moments on the new console shooters. Mass Effect was notable for pitting enormous science fiction technology against gigantic alien lifeforms. They had clearly been paying attention to what Toho had contributed to the genre some 40 years prior. The creatures and robots featured in those games had an incredible scale and would have been impossible to render on older hardware. Their purpose however was more than simply for the sake of showing off the horsepower of the new consoles. They were the set pieces that designers had been chasing for over a decade.

Many first-person shooter game designers wanted to give players a feeling that they really were a one-man army trying to save the world. It worked previously by putting the player on another planet or featuring backdrops that filled the entire horizon. For the first time though programmers were able to animate creatures that actually filled more than the field of vision for the gamers. These colossal beasts could now also interact and create a game play challenge. Insomniac and Bioware studios maximized the impact on players by making sure the world presented in their games was as realistic as possible. They included the details to support the environment that players were fighting through as well as the technology that allowed them to battle alien lifeforms and humongous creatures. The soldiers and teammates in the game had personalities and were written well enough for gamers to relate to them. When the gigantic creatures appeared the players were ready to stand side by side with their allies.

This type of interactivity, immersion and emotional draw was not limited to the FPS format either. Role playing, adventure and fantasy titles had also been pushing the limits of what was possible for gamers. The original God of War actually tapped into the origins of the giant monster mythos. The search for Pandora's Box took the Kratos to the ends of a deadly desert. It was where the leader of the Titans, Cronos, had been exiled. Cronos was also of the father of the Greek pantheon. Because he was jealous of their power he ate each god after they were born. Zeus escaped this punishment and returned with full power to release his siblings and imprison Cronos and the other titans. The version of the legend was worked into the plot of the game. There was a mountain strapped on his back as punishment. The mountain was actually temple to Pandora wherein there were traps and puzzles to challenge players.

The Playstation 2 hardware was not powerful enough to render massive characters, instead Sony Santa Monica used scale and perspective to trick gamers into thinking that Cronos was as enormous as described. In the first full shot of the character he was presented many miles from Kratos. Then as he got close the team framed just part of his face on the screen. They created a portion of the level on an outcropping of the mountain. As the camera pointed down the gamer could see a portion of the massive chains that bound the titan. They could also make out an arm and head of Cronos as he wandered the desert. Since very little of the titan was actually shown the engine could animate just those part while keeping the rest of the level static. The illusion was very well done. Producer David Jaffe and his team were fans of giant monster films and used their composing techniques to make the gods in the game look as massive as possible on the hardware.

The final level of the game featured a battle with a gigantic Ares and Kratos. Again, using the tricks of scale and perspective Sony Santa Monica created a miniature version of Athens for players to walk around. The hardware was able to render the level by scaling down all of the scenery, reducing the details and bordering the edges of the level with a bridge and mountain range. The studio introduced a convincing pair of giants that still moved like regular characters.


Eventually the hardware caught up with the vision of the designers. When God of War III was released on the Playstation 3 the Titan set pieces had no equal. Cronos and several other titans featured in the series all became self-contained levels. They walked around Tartatus, the underworld of Greek mythology, all while swatting at Kratos and trying their best to crush him.

Other studios were having a field day with the processing power of the new consoles. Capcom shattered the bar when it came to the scale of giant monsters in a video game. In Asura's Wrath the players were not battling giants or even titans but instead planet-sized mechanical deities whose fingertips enveloped entire continents.

Capcom became very successful at creating games that featured a strong contrast between playable characters and giant monsters. We shall look at what they learned about monster, character and game design during these releases in the next blog.

Copycat Culture, part 1...

Thanks to my long-time readers for putting up with my long tangent on cars and space shooters. I think I got it out of my system, at least for another week. Right now the pendulum is swinging back to fighting games, I know, big surprise! I wanted to preface the news on the fighting game front with a bigger theme. Every form of entertainment is synthesized from the human experience. The collective culture, interests and life lessons that every creator had was part of the creative cycle. You might remember hearing that there were Seven Basic Plots to every great or even not-so-great story. The ways in which that story were presented were also remixed in infinite ways. Perhaps the story was told in a poem or through a song. Perhaps the story was on a stage, a television set or a movie screen. For our generation the video game was the biggest medium for exploration in each of those seven basic plots. For the first time in the history the audience got a chance to take an active role in the plot. They no longer had to imagine what it would be like to be a part of the story when they were instead the central figure. A well assembled team of designers, programmers and artists could point audiences in the right direction, give them tools to succeed and provide just enough challenge to make the players think that they did everything themselves. It was the invisible hand of a producer that made sure all of the pieces worked well together so that audiences never felt disconnected from the action on screen. These game creators could not separate their own influences from seeping into the games they designed. The stories, comics, cartoons, music and movies that they grew up with and continued to enjoy colored the games they produced. In turn the games they released influenced their peers and the next generation of artists, designers, programmers and composers as well. It was a circle of storytelling dating back to the dawn of civilization. The only thing that changed was the format in which it was consumed.

Several of the most successful franchises were influenced by many sources. Some of these influences were subtle and others were very overt. The earliest video games mirrored the content of popular movies, comics and cartoons. Back in the early days the developers sometimes did not try hard to cover up these influences, especially where the Japanese designers were concerned. International copyright law was a different beast in the '70s and '80s. Characters, levels, in-game art and even box art in early arcade, console and PC titles were often poached. The developers and publishers knew they could often get away with it because they changed enough elements as to define an entirely new work of art. Of course for sharp-eyed audiences could pick out what the developers took from other sources. Hardcore Gaming 101's big writeup on gaming "influences" was a perfect site to see these game comparisons. The site displayed a bunch of art that was pretty much stolen and featured in Japanese, US and European games. Audiences tended to overlook the poached content so long as the game itself was well done. Many of the small companies that relied on outside inspiration for their first console hits eventually turned into publishing giants. Konami, Namco, Capcom and Sega were just a few of the companies that managed to grow exponentially during the '80s and '90s despite some poached art and designs. The entire library that each company produced was still very original and completely surpassed the few instances of stolen art that they got away with. The only reason that I bring this up is because poached art and design was at the heart of the Chinese gaming boom. The fastest growing economy in the world would soon be telling the developers and publishers from Japan and the US what they wanted to see in mainstream media. Since the entertainment companies seemed more focused on a profit rather than original content they would probably acquiesce to the Chinese demands. Yet what the Chinese gaming consumer wanted was at the core not much different than what the Japanese, US, UK or Europeans wanted. They longed for a great experience that was original and memorable. What they got instead were often rehashes of a popular genre.

Valve's Team Fortress 2 was a runaway hit with PC gamers. It was only a matter of time before imitators came out of the woodwork to poach the art style, character classes and gameplay of the first person shooter. None were as blatant as Final Combat. The Chinese title did very little to distinguish itself from its US inspiration. The studio went so far as to release trailers for each class of character as Valve had been doing over the past few years. Certainly the Chinese PC gaming market was starved for a quality FPS but was this really the way to go? The country had put a ban on console systems and arcade games in 2000 and did not lift that ban until 2014. This meant that a generation missed out on the formative years for both the Playstation 2, Playstation 3 and Xbox and Xbox 360. Audiences could still purchase modified consoles sold as home computers rather than gaming consoles. These hybrid PS2/3 and Xbox systems often came with Linux and a few dozen games pre-installed on the internal hard drive. Of course these modifications were done without the approval of Sony or Microsoft, the respective manufacturers of the consoles. Those that played PC titles could find a way to download the hottest games from the West but were always eager to play comparable experiences created at home. Games that reflected Chinese culture and tastes instead of being force-fed a diet of what was hot according to the west. Rather than invest in new technology, experiment with new formats or trust the designers to come up with an original idea the publishers often chose to copy what worked. The developers did an exceptional job of copying and running with it. It was good for a quick profit. It explained Final Combat and a number of other copycat titles that China developed. To be fair the idea of poaching popular games was something that the neighboring nations of Taiwan and Korea also had a hand in. Those other countries mixed and matched popular western culture to suit their needs.

The fighting game genre was no different than any other. As one of the more popular formats of gaming the Chinese were starved for an original fighting game that spoke to the community. What they got was a game that was as innovative as any fighting game released in the US or Japan in the past decade. The reason for that was because it also took tremendous influences from the characters, mechanics and balance from numerous different franchises. I had talked about Xuan Dou Zhi Wang aka the King of Combat on my 1UP and Capcom-Unity blogs previously. The game was worth revisiting because it continued to grow and evolve. It certainly was not the same game now as it was a year ago and would be a different experience next year. Every few months the publisher Tencent would roll out a patch that fixed the online gameplay, balanced the roster and introduced entirely new characters into the mix. One of the more recent was a Movin' In Circles from Ridge Racer Type 4. I sincerely doubt that Namco was paid for the use of the song.

Players would have a relatively short learning curve with Andrei because they could use many of the earlier set-ups and tactics from Street Fighter. Yet Andrei and the other fighters in the game were unique because they did not only borrow attacks from the Street Fighter series, they also borrowed elements from the King of Fighters, Tekken, Virtua Fighter and Guilty Gear. To be completely honest there were even elements of Blaze Blue, Capoeira Fighter 3, Sengoku Basara X and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure in the series as well. The addition of moves and attacks that were previously only seen in 3D fighting games and sword-fighting games was a welcome change of pace. Although King of Combat was rendered in 3D it followed the mechanics of 2D fighting games very closely. This blending of formats was handled very well, although some in the community could not get behind the game because of how blatantly it had copied the characters from other titles.

It wasn't enough to dissect the way that Andrei played. Audiences were looking for some originality in his design. A light-skinned playable boxer hadn't been seen in a 2D fighting game for some time. Most had been black characters, which was only fair since they reflected the legacy of actual boxing champions. Yet to say all of the great heavyweight champs were only black would be a slap in the face to some of the more recent champs. Ukranian brothers Vitali and Wladimir Klitscho were light skinned as well. Between the two they held every heavyweight title through most of the turn of the millennium.

In 3D fighting games the black boxer was not the trend. Steve Fox from Namco's Tekken series was a fair skinned British boxing champ. He had some devastating attacks but what really set him apart from his contemporaries was his lighting-fast defense. He was designed to take advantage of some unique dodges that left opponents wide open for a counter-attack. Andrei did have a touch of Steve in his design but also the other British boxing champ Aleron from Capoeira Fighter 3. Even the non-playable Joe from the original Street Fighter could have been an inspiration to Andrei. The original arcade boxing hero was Little Mac from Nintendo's Punch-Out series was the one that started it all. There was a hint of the baby face and haircut of Little Mac in Andrei's appearance as well.

The studio has actually gotten a lot better about masking the influences from other fighting games with the debut of Andrei. The previous character that Tencent had introduced was so blatantly stolen from another IP that many in the community were wondering if the company had any shame at all. The next blog would look at this character and what he meant for the series. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!