影の塔 - In the shades of deception
Hudson Soft has recently announced a new Wii release under the title Kage No Tou, meaning ‘Tower of Shadow’, whose release should take place sometime in 2010. One simple glance at the trailer (below) will surely justify the generally positive response to this presentation, since the concept of using body shadows as the central element for a game is appealing and original enough to make this one of the most promising Wii releases for the near future. The images shown so far reflect a game that is still “work-in-progress”, albeit some very interesting details in that which seems to be a very well-planned gameplay scheme.
What these images also show is this studio’s brazen willingness to copy, paste and viciously manipulate the aesthetics from both Team Ico games in what has to do with distorted shadows, the boyish character, locations and above all, lighting and color. While I’m certain that the end result will be substantially different, judging by the detachment between the actual video presentation and the early stills in Hudson’s website, Tower of Shadow is aligning with a constellation of titles whose early advertising campaign sought desperately to appeal to an Ico loving audience. I am reminded of Kizuna, Prince of Persia 2008, Blood of Bahamut among others, whose more or less subtle exercise of effortless self-promotion, by resembling to either one of the highly acclaimed Ueda masterpieces, absolutely disregards the principles of creativity or plain old common sense.
Personally, I cherish videogame designers’ attempts to pay homage to the great titles of insurmountable influence anyone who has visited my blog Pixels at an Exhibition will verify that much. However I’ve also been known on several occasions to express how insulted I feel when such direct approaches replace subtle references; when the original value of the work is deeply affect by the false pretense of fine videogame art. I ask: are these authors naïve enough to think that this process of coercive pairing with excellence will lead their petty little works to a similar degree of greatness? Consequentially, the whole affair becomes something other than noble and sincere author-to-author reverence, readily projecting that dark and despicable contour of plagiarism, what shadow cast against a sundrenched limestone wall.
2 years ago
