Resurrection | Heavenly Sword
By Greg Giddens
Heavenly Sword was released back in September 2007, six months after the release of the PS3 console. It was a highly anticipated game for PS3 owners due to the promise of cinematic storytelling and action, as well as its format-exclusive status. The crop of PS3 exclusives was, at that time, somewhat limited – and with developers pulling out of exclusivity deals left, right, and centre, Heavenly Sword was considered a rare opportunity to own something that the Xbox360 crowd would miss out on.
The cinematic promise was met head on by Heavenly Sword, delivering exactly that, but many found the game lacking compared to the hype that had surrounded its release. The reality is, Heavenly Sword did achieve what it set out to do, but having being chopped down from the originally planned trilogy, the game was left suffering slightly from not having too definitive a structure.
Though it received mostly positive reviews ad reasonable sales, the game never really captured much attention. This could well have been down to the timing, released only shortly after the Xbox360 Elite model and only shortly before the release of the more hotly anticipated release of Halo 3, moving the spotlight firmly onto the Microsoft crowd.
Playing primarily as Nariko, daughter of a warrior clan leader, Heavenly sword sees you hacking and slashing your way through a highly imaginative and immersive story. The concept is simple – hack up all the enemies on screen, kill a boss, rinse and repeat. But what Heavenly Sword does is add little slices of brilliance to an already tried-and-tested formula to create an experience seldom seen in other games of similar substance. Using the Sixaxis control system of the PS3 to guide cannons and arrows to their targets is a particularly memorable section – a very simple yet clever and enjoyable way of using the control mechanism, and fabulous fun to replay.
//The creation of beauty
What really makes Heavenly Sword so captivating is the story, and the characters you meet whilst working through it, along with the cinematic approach to the narrative. The voice acting is brilliant, the script flows and the story is driven along with out having to be pushed or pulled. It all smoothly glides form one level to the next, helped along by some of the most awe-inspiring cut scenes you’re ever likely to witness. Facial expressions are captured phenomenally by Heavenly Sword, everything is bright and crisp to look at, and the characters are truly brought to life by their brilliantly delivered dialogue. One of the most astounding achievements of the whole game is how much of a presence each character has. We are all familiar with how actors can own the stage in plays and films, but often in games this is harder to pull off. In Heavenly Sword, however, each actor demands your attention; the dramatic direction from Andy Serkis and the filmic quality of the scripted sequences ensures their presence is appreciated.
Interestingly, characters in Heavenly Sword share similar physical characteristics with their voice actor counterparts as far as facial animation is concerned. Motion capturing was used to translate movement into the game with great effect, and the characters’ faces give away the actor behind the proverbial mask. Nariko is played by Anna Torv, well known for her role as FBI agent Olivia Dunham on the TV series Fringe. The in-game character Nariko is a perfect digital representation of Torv – the resemblance is astounding, and further demonstrates the attention to detail with regards to the overall presentation.
The story draws players in with all the above tools and with its accessible humour, most memorably emerging from the relationship between King Bohan and Roach. The whole thing often seems more like a film than a game, but it still maintains its playability. The comparison between the two media is all too common, but it’s fantastic to see a games developer showing film directors how it’s done, rather than the other way around.
The story may be short and the combat occasionally tedious, but it doesn’t damage the enjoyment of playing the game. That’s because Heavenly Sword isn’t about playing a game. It’s mostly about experiencing a narrative.
It’s representative of what games seem to be evolving into: works of art. Few other titles provide the player with such beautifully crafted storytelling, presentation and entertainment. Still one of the strongest games on the PS3, Heavenly Sword is a true Hollywood blockbuster, in game form.
video games are not and will never be art.
Oh my, I can see this one kicking off…
Do you really think some games aren’t, and never will be, considered art? Art is considered to be a production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance, this description would easily work for games.
Great article Greg, I played through it earlier this year and was blown away by how accomplished the storytelling was. The gameplay was pretty shallow (though the slo-mo arrows were awesome!) but that didn’t matter a jot to me.
Very much a heart/head divide when it comes to criticism though. Head says 6/10, heart says 8.
How are we defining art, though? As in, how is it even defined in he first place? Is it self-selecting? By that logic, anything that strives to be art necessarily is, and it can only be judged on whether it’s considered to be effective art or not. Or is it a case of having to earn its status as a work of art? In either case, if some people think it is, then it is for them — and whether other people agree is kind of immaterial.
I can’t understand why this game is so under appreciated. It’s a great game, but why didn’t it sell?
Essentially it has no replayability (they couldn’t even throw in a skin or two?) and it’s still selling for 60 bucks in my neck of the woods. I bought it at release, but how can you expect people to pay 60 bones for something compared to what all the newer games have to offer? HS’s lack of success is (imo) due to a pisspoor marketing job. This game is too good to not be snapped up at 30 bucks, but now it’s almost 3 years old (who even remembers it if they didn’t buy it?).
[Comment Removed by Editor] No name calling. Not on my watch.
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The “Videogames as Art” crowd continues to evangelize their toys as something meaningful. Their friends have moved on to bigger and better things, meanwhile they’re all left playing those dumb little games.
So what next? A bunch of man-children (gamers and developers alike) attempt to shove emotion and meaning where it doesn’t belong – in a play thing.
Sites like this are sorely misguided. Granted, that happens when a bunch of children are faking their way into adulthood.
I thought the pigeon-holing of the medium as “toys” was long since dead. Why should they be toys? Can’t the interactivity of games be used in a meaningful way? Granted, Heavenly Sword is a game that relies heavily on the tropes of film, but there are others that are more than mere objects of casual entertainment.
We try to cover as many sides to gaming as possible, and Greg’s observation – that Heavenly Sword seemed to be a landmark release in forwarding that particular facet of the medium – seems to push nothing on anyone.
I tend to think being prescriptive about what games *should* be is a little counter-productive. Where will that get us? It’s far more enlightening to examine what developers are trying to achieve through their games, and analyse how (and how well) they’re doing so.
So I think there’s room within gaming for all sorts of approaches, including artistic ones. Whether you admire that side of it or not is another thing, and totally your perogative.
EDIT: Fraser, Jenova Chen (Flower) did a talk on exactly that at Develop Conference the other week. I think you’d have really enjoyed it.
I must ask, though, who are these children you speak of?
Wow, one of the most close-minded and ignorant posts I’ve ever seen. Heavenly Sword is art. MGS4 is art. Flower is art. It’s actually much easier to justify all games as art than it is to exclude all games. There are varying levels of quality, as is true with all mediums, but games have evolved passed simple toys. Keep living in your elitist world if you like. You’re missing out.
[Comment Removed by Editor] Leigh’s a friend of ours, so probably not the most advisable thing to personally insult her on our comments threads. Whoever you were talking about, though, you’d have got a naughty sticker for that.
I’m sorry, but anything praising what this game attempts to pass off a story is entirely laughable. Have you not attempted to view this story in a remotely critical manner? This is quite literally, the first game I ever stopped playing for no reason aside from the story being awful.
The conflict at the heart of the story is that Nariko uses the Heavenly Sword, fights with it, and then has to deal with the resultant effects of the curse. Well, why does she get cursed? For no reason whatsoever.
She meets Bohan who has her father captive. Bohan threatens to kill him if she doesn’t give up the sword. Nariko’s father tells her to run. Instead, she uses the sword. Bohan doesn’t kill her father. Nariko doesn’t rescue her father. She uses the sword, gets cursed, and then runs.
Uh, what? Why does she just get cursed for the sake of getting cursed?
A much more powerful message would have been sent by having the player use the sword, temporarily save her father, and then have Bohan hunt him down and kill him later, anyway.
Games need to advance in terms of story before they get more widely accepted. Just try and explain the plot of this or any other game to a non-gamer see how long it is before they start cracking up. Praising a game’s story that has a plot contrivance so large, you could pass the entirety of China through it is not the way to help advance this movement.
My reply to idiots who like to claim “games aren’t art” is to ask if they can find one other thing besides video games that they can just blanket claim “is not art”.
I’ve yet to find someone actually figure out a response to that.
Clearly it’s just cultural xenophobia and myopia.
PossibleMisnomer — I assume “idiot” was a typo. Play nice.
The definition of art is a tricky one, depending on the definition you go with your right in saying that anything that strives to be art could be conceived as just that. I reckon art is a very personal thing, and so what you may consider art may be wildly different to what others think. I do think this status of art is something that should be earned rather a term simply given to any and all creations, but again the decision to title something ‘art’ should be down to the appreciator, not the masses.
Games are so much more than just “toys” now days, even simply calling them interactive entertainment doesn’t fully explore what they are, and have, become. I would even go so far in saying that out of all visual mediums, games have evolved the most and have a bright future of continued growth in the years to come.
You say you stopped playing the game because of the story, so I put forward the view that you may not have seen enough of what the game offers to truly be able to judge the game in its entirety, due to the so called “cracks” you mention in the story.
Nariko had little choice but to run off at the point you mention, the odds were too heavy against her.
I feel your point on games needing to advance in terms of story is partially true, the narrative and the story in games could do with improvement, but at the same time, developers are making head way in that field, occasionally pulling it off brilliantly, games like Bioshock and Heavenly Sword I believe have achieved something very special in terms of story and narrative.
Considering some of the crap from even the most famous painters that is considered “art”, video games have been art for a long, long time.
Considering some of the complete crap by some of the most famous “artist” that is considered “art”, video games have been art for a long, long time.
The grown ups have moved on to accomplish many things. Here’s a list of some of them.
Nuclear weapons.
WW I and WWII, now with more Holocaust.
Vietnam.
Let’s just say war since there are too many to name.
World poverty.
Religion, with murder ordering popes and Inquisitions.
Rape.
Female castration.
The Tuskegee experiment.
Slavery, commercial and sexual.
Corporations.
Red when you can come up with enough “art” to make up for one tenth of the things the “grown-ups” have screwed up, add your comment.
I’m not going to give Bioshock much credit either, because the majority of the game’s telegraphed, and there are numerous plot holes in that one as well. (namely, the VitaChambers) “Brilliant” is not a word I would use to describe many, if any, stories in games today. “Solid” is about as praiseworthy as I’d get.
As you point out, Nariko had no choice but to run. That’s precisely what she should have done from the beginning. But she doesn’t. She stops for just long enough to curse herself and gain absolutely no tactical advantage from the situation. It’s utterly nonsensical. I’m sorry, but I can’t tolerate that. It works in a comedy, but it doesn’t work when you’re trying to convince me that Nariko’s got no other option but to ignore the one instruction her father gave her. Maybe some of the character dialogue, interaction, and writing were great, but unless you can find some compelling reason that makes that huge oversight (this is no mere “crack”, it’s the conflict upon which the rest of her story stems from.) reconcilable, I would not claim that Heavenly Sword has a “good” story, much less a great one.
I personally will not stand up and give someone a pat on the back for things like that. If it were a given to me on paper, it’d come back to these guys with margins full of red ink, and “Good start, needs work” scrawled on the first page. We need to come a long way. It’s been nearly 30 years, and we are nowhere near where we need to be in terms of narrative. I would applaud it if more and more game sites were to do things like break down the writing after the fact (maybe, say after a period of 2 months, so as not to spoil things.) and critically look at it more thoroughly. Was the story good? Was the plot compelling? Was the character interaction good? Be critical of the specific aspects of where the game falls short, and lavish your praise upon the good aspects.
I get the feeling that until the criticism gets better and more constructive, we’re never going to see the actual writing rise above anything more than “part brilliant, part horribly slipshod.”
I completely agree about the Vita-Chambers, those truly trivialised death, removing the fear of many of the enemies, but I strongly praise the narrative for its immersion.
Nariko probably should have run right at the start, but having her continue to fight felt, to me, more than just a way to progress the games story, it felt like a very tangible human reaction to dealing with that kind of situation, stick out your chin when you should have ran.
I have to say, the idea of revisiting a game several months post release for a critical deconstruction does intrigue me.
The greater issue of the Vita-Chambers is that once the citizenry knew they existed, there would have been nothing less than total chaos when they were denied their usage. They’re clearly advertised inside of Rapture, and they’re clearly marked. You gotta believe that there’s no way any of Ryan’s opponents wouldn’t have either made a concerted push to own those highly desirable Chambers, or just destroyed them.
As far as Nariko’s situation goes, once she uses the sword, Bohan either needs to kill her father, or Nariko actually needs to go and get him back. If Bohan’s so scared of her in her current state that he needs to keep her father as insurance, Nariko should be smart enough to realize this and overwhelm him. If Bohan’s truly supposed to be an intelligent, cold villain, as he’s played up to be, he needs to kill her father once he realizes that her father gives Bohan no strategic advantage. If either of those things happens, fine. I can accept it as a Popeye moment. But I can’t accept that this is the one thing she’s been told to never do, and she decides to go ahead and do it anyway, only to flee. That one sequence ends up undermining Nariko’s character, Bohan’s character, and every bit of plot that ties into that sequence. I just can’t let that slide.
Even if I can’t make you realize that this game’s story is rather poorly executed, I at least hope that you’ll give the critical retrospective idea a chance. Detach the critique from the enjoyment, and break down whether or not the writing was actually effective. We can make progress, I just don’t think anyone’s motivated enough to do so. When Epic’s claiming that Gears of War has enough story for a trilogy and nobody publicly calls the game out for its distinct lack of story, something’s wrong. When people are so misguided that they don’t realize that they’re doing a bad job of things, they’re not being pushed enough to change.
Nice selective comment monitoring. What a joke.
dcbronco — don’t jump the gun. Your comment was auto-spammed for including the word “rape”. You’d be surprised how many incredibly dodgy porn sites try to advertise their wares over here.
I’ll reset it now, though the comment *is* pushing it. Play nice, people, please. This is a really worthwhile discussion to have but a couple of people are straying close to spoiling it.
so any change of a sequal?
i loved heavenly sword, its got to be one of the most enjoyable and unique games ive played in a very long time.
im sick of video games being the same ol same ol.
every game sticks to the same, like FPS are the same.
how about a mix up guys, playing a new game with the same features but different lvls is getting extremely old and boring.
this is why im really looking forward to heavy rain, its different theres no game like it.
take a few games due out soon like wolfenstiene what does it offer that other games never have.
thats right nothing, its time for that to change.
Oh of course she’s a friend of yours. lol. You further paint a picture of what kind of site this is – now, it’s one that deletes discourse that doesn’t match dogma. Sad.
There were no insults waged at Alexander, only a critical assessment of who she portrays herself to the world from the work she presents.
I leave you with another glowing quote:
“Ironically, Flower owes its brilliance not to some fantasy that it’s reinventing game mechanics, that it’s creating absolute belief, that it’s video game Zen, or that it’s a ‘video game that’s not a video game.’ In fact, its playability hinges squarely and mundanely on just how gamelike it is…”
It’s a whole lot of hot air that means absolutely nothing, like so much of this “videogames as art” writing.
Hot air from people who are trying to amount to something unachievable.
Funny joke. Because being a grown-up constitutes rape and murder, right?
Because we can’t grow by acting, living, feeling, experiencing, bettering ourselves and, by extension, others.
Honestly, there’s no real way to respond to what you wrote because it doesn’t make any sense.
Grow up.
A sequel to Heavenly Sword looks unlikely at the moment; developers Ninja Theory are working on several new IP’s that are eating up their time. IT Manager “Peonic” announced the following last year:
“We’re not abandoning HS just on a whim because we want to go off and do something different – there’s a great huge raft of reasons behind us taking the direction we are – and it’s also the nature of the business that I’m not allowed to share any of those reasons with you.
As for the ‘you’re just not doing HS2 NOW’ comments – well one thing you learn in this industry is that you never say ‘Never’. So I’m not going to say we’ll “never” go back and make HS2 – but it’s something I personally see as extremely unlikely.”
Originality is seldom seen now days in games, but it does take a fair bit of bravery to develop something new with the financial risk involved, especially in a global recession.
RedLev, you called someone a “woman-child” — I can’t see how that was in any way a critical assessment of her work or the way she presents herself. I’m not going to engage in this. You’ll notice I’ve left up a number of comments here that disagree with the article, or that disagree with other people who are posting. All I’ve got rid of is the sort of childish namecalling I’ll be damned if I see on our comments threads.
In other words, debate politely, eloquently and intelligently, and we’ve no problem at all. But keep on the way you’re going and it’ll just get deleted.
So please enlighten me as to how to describe this.
“Seriously, let’s all maybe read a few more books, guys, let’s maybe watch a few more films, let’s try to gain some further cultural sophistication. Let’s try for real sexuality instead of just half-dressed celluloid constructs.”
How am I supposed to describe a writer whose work advocates that further cultural sophistication can be gained from reading books, watching films, and not living in the real world?
This is a child’s philosophy: that learning, intellect and the self are comprised of nothing more than digesting information and rehashing it; becoming what we consume rather than learning who we are.
“How am I supposed to describe a writer whose work advocates that further cultural sophistication can be gained from reading books, watching films, and not living in the real world?”
You’re not. Leigh’s work is absolutely, completely irrelevant to this article and games-as-art discussion, in every possible and conceiveable way.
Please let this be the end of it.
dam i was really looking forward to that.
oh well only if they patchet the game for trophys, ive been trying to find heavenly sword its impossiable to find looks like ill have to get it of ebay.
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