El Shaddai needs no introductions: one of the most beautiful and artsy games to come out of the peak 360/PS3 era that has a so-so combat system and a very unfocused and barebones plot that's also a reinterpretation of the Book of Enoch. Very easy to appreciate on the surface, but very hard to stay engaged with as it has a chronic lack of depth. Still, worth the ride if you're into these kinds of japanese oddities. I would rate it a perfectly good 6... ¿So how come that I'm giving it a 7?
The 2021 PC "Remaster" (AFAIK it's just a straight up port, but nowadays ports can't be marketed without some fancy words) is about what you'd expect from these types of rereleases but what I didn't expect is that it includes an extract of the El Shaddai novelization that coincidentally includes a new ending for the game. The prelude actually explains that El Shaddai faced a lot of development troubles and the novel was meant as a way to release the intended experience in some way or another.
The writting isn't top notch stuff, but I think the concepts at hand help a lot into giving a proper third act to the game that ties together the elements of the game for a pretty climatic payoff... and then the novel kinda just speedruns through a whole sequel. I'm not kidding.
It's pretty interesting, and it's sad that the original game couldn't really do everything its creators wanted to do. The director/writer/designer is still repping El Shaddai really hard to this very day, he actually just released a whole new spin off manga staring Enoch and Lucifer, so finding out about all of this just made me look at this weird little experiment in a much more positive way. This was someone's passion project, they got the one chance to make it a reality, and things didn't go according to plan... but they still pushed through and managed to finish it even years after the development ended and then bring it to a whole new generation.
When it's all set and done, even if I think the end result was lacking in some areas, I wish every release had the passion and ambition this had.
THIS WAS MADE WITH GAMEBRYO, THE ENGINE OF FALLOUT 3. ARE YOU KIDDING ME????
The 2021 PC "Remaster" (AFAIK it's just a straight up port, but nowadays ports can't be marketed without some fancy words) is about what you'd expect from these types of rereleases but what I didn't expect is that it includes an extract of the El Shaddai novelization that coincidentally includes a new ending for the game. The prelude actually explains that El Shaddai faced a lot of development troubles and the novel was meant as a way to release the intended experience in some way or another.
The writting isn't top notch stuff, but I think the concepts at hand help a lot into giving a proper third act to the game that ties together the elements of the game for a pretty climatic payoff... and then the novel kinda just speedruns through a whole sequel. I'm not kidding.
It's pretty interesting, and it's sad that the original game couldn't really do everything its creators wanted to do. The director/writer/designer is still repping El Shaddai really hard to this very day, he actually just released a whole new spin off manga staring Enoch and Lucifer, so finding out about all of this just made me look at this weird little experiment in a much more positive way. This was someone's passion project, they got the one chance to make it a reality, and things didn't go according to plan... but they still pushed through and managed to finish it even years after the development ended and then bring it to a whole new generation.
When it's all set and done, even if I think the end result was lacking in some areas, I wish every release had the passion and ambition this had.
THIS WAS MADE WITH GAMEBRYO, THE ENGINE OF FALLOUT 3. ARE YOU KIDDING ME????