Just kidding, I'm not done talking about the game.
- I really have to stress how much of a platformer the game is. It's not how it's marketed, not how it's described in genre labels, nor how it's remembered when it is, but the reality of El Shaddai is that roughly half of its playtime is occupied by traversing its world and environments through the design language and verbiage of platforming in either the two or three dimensions. It's really important to the game's unique identity as part of the vague shared lineage of arena-centered combat games, as the common baselines explored in the field usually only go as far as the occasional hidden ledge or nook to hide a power-up in--that the relevant avatar can jump at all is rarely utilized outside of the action's combat applications. El Shaddai completely divests itself of combat for significant sections at a time and is only elevated for the restraint, not only because of novelty or the fighting being the game's most undercooked aspect (though both factor in), but because thematically or as atmospheric texture battles of blade and bruises aren't always the best way to go about telling the story it wants to tell.
- the chapter spent in Azazel's vision of human evolution unfettered of its natural course is hugely memorable for the aesthetic break it introduces in the game's arc, but also the pointed dialogue it's engaged in as self-critical genre commentary. The absolute excess of the motorcycle-fueled action choreography that relentlessly paces Enoch's wild drive down the highway, the sudden diversion into an arcade-minded romp, the ridiculous tonal fit of it all with rock music blaring all the while and delighting in exploding spectacle for its own sake... none of it fits what El Shaddai is, and that's the entire point in the game allowing itself to reach knowingly into the bag of tricks its peers often have, many times in this specific context, even. It underlines the fundamental absurdity of the competition and the parodic intent of the sequence, especially the lingered on shot at the end with Enoch slowly, laboriously walking nonchalantly out of the fires of an explosion he just caused for no particular reason. It does all of this quickly, in a mode of play that allows one to just focus on whatever takeaway there is to be gleaned from it all, wherein that freedom to come to one's own conclusions is what sells the riffing quality of it if one decides to read such in. Similar attempts at genre parody have been made by developers like Taro or Suda, wherein their mistake is always overestimation and preoccupation with their own cleverness instead of allowing jokes to simply sit and speak for themselves.
- everything about Nanna and Ishtar is the coolest. You're dealing with parallel figures in the game's own narrative with different circumstances about them--with one being strictly dead to start off with--but as the game goes on those existences converge and one becomes the other, returning to the role she already had in the game's backstory, before her death. It's cyclical in its treatment of reincarnation as a thing that has no clear beginning or end in the reality as depicted by the game, and highly informed by the historical Inanna and Ishtar, their worship and eventual syncretization into a figure whose individual origins could no longer be clearly differentiated.
- Lucifel is such a satisfying character to feature so heavily in the narrative. His bearing and easily offered casual camaraderie suggest a kind of comforting jocularity in his role as Enoch's closest ally and the one who offers shelter along the long road as the functional save point, but there's also a kind of disquieting quality to him as everything appears as a smug diversion to the point of constant nonchalance in the rhetoric he offers, however ostensibly helpfully. The business-like pretense and artifice extends to his constant rapport with God, in conversations that are amazingly evocatively written for how little of substance is ever said in them; they're officially mandated progress reports from a boss one is on casually friendly terms with about a job that is getting done but not without amicable nudging of the ribs along the way. Lucifel does what's expected of him, but he takes great delight in the absurdity of the responsibility being his to begin with, and as such has no investment in anything that occurs beyond base amusement. That's why the omniscience of his role of observer and recorder turns a touch unsettling, from how involved he is in all facets of Enoch's journey--even recovery from falling into pits is facilitated by the snap of his fingers--and how little he seems to care or allow himself to be guided by concepts like empathy. There is no grand or even smaller betrayal by Lucifel through his actions the game contrives, but all his interactions with a character like Armaros, a genuine and caring person, and all his manipulations in tugging those strings for his own ends and the indifference toward the ultimate fate thus engineered really aptly illustrate that while he's very literally on the side of the angels, this is one mean streak bubbling just beneath the accommodating surface.
- I consider the game something of a narrative miracle, and certainly an anomaly in its wider context. If we're to understand El Shaddai as part of a lineage codified most iconically by Devil May Cry, then we're talking about a genre that's been paved with misogyny from its inception--at "best" the instances have been such where women are sacrificed or merely ignored for the emotional dignity and personhood afforded to the men present, but those are the rare cases--patriarchy swallows all unconditionally, just chews them up leaving different lasting marks. The aforementioned DMC, Ninja Gaiden, God of War, Bayonetta... these are franchised leaders of the pack either commercially or critically beloved in what enthusiasts term "character action" if no other term suffices, but they're distinguishable at a glance for the pervasive attitudes infesting all of them, in the ritualized hatred and exploitation of women featured or participating in them, making all the devil's bargains along the way to make the experience palatable or just tenable. If this is what defines the sub-genre, it's really no wonder to see the trickle-down effect in action for what kinds of works permeated the market in El Shaddai's timeframe. Games like Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, the series's second foray into dead-wife thematics where the woman is no one except the loss of what a man once possessed. Games like Lollipop Chainsaw, ostensibly framed in a women-doing-things-yeah hopeful feminist bent but in reality best characterized by enemies and bosses who incessantly hightlight the player character's gender through weaponized insults and slurs not because of any critique of the act being offered but because there are irreverent jokes to be made at her expense and the possibility of violent player-directed retribution justifies all abuse so delivered. Games like the Splatterhouse reboot, which took the archaically charming genre homages of the original games and "updated" them in refusing to critically examine them at all, inventing a crass meanness which previously could only be inferred, and sexualizing the perennial distress of the protagonist's girlfriend as erotic pictorial collectibles hidden around the game to motivate the player further in caring about a woman in the only way the developers conceived how. More examples exist then and now, but there is no significant deviation from the patterns so established, enduringly tying the performatively awesome and violence-defined genre to expressions of equally as violent and destructive masculinity in misogyny.
The above is necessary to my own understanding and appreciation of where El Shaddai breaks from convention in ways almost nothing else ever has, to a degree that feels singular not only for its representative genre but the wider medium. The most direct way to get at the game's exceptionalism is to identify and interrogate the roles of women in it; who are they and what do they get to do? There are only four, but each of them provides a window into the game's disinterest in wallowing in exploitative portrayals. Nanna and Ishtar feature the most centrally, and I've described why I love their narrative roles; Ishtar as the revolutionary figure and prophet of legend both in the past and the present work so well with the game's dramatic, mythic arc, acting in parallel to Enoch's journey to the extent she'd easily be considered a deuteragonist were she ever directly playable. Gabriel is only visually represented by her mural, her avatar as the swan accompanying Enoch at times with her fellow archangels, and her guiding voice--this kind of supplementary role would be typically gendered were she the only one tasked so, but the three masculine archangels are also always there, providing the same verbal guidance as she is, providing parity. For the last, there's Ezekiel of the fallen angels, a tremendously rare portrayal of an old woman in video games: unglamourized, uncaricaturized, and treated as the same physical confrontation and threat as the other adversaries are. Ezekiel's role is prominent and intertwined with Ishtar's, as their martial sparring takes center stage in the game's climax, accompanied by the more important battle of values and wills that occurs in the midst of it. Enoch is in no way participant to their interaction, as he only witnesses it from afar, yet it's framed as integral to the game's dramatic culmination as anything the player directly does as him.
As mentioned, misogyny doesn't only affect its direct targets, but also restricts and reduces the kinds of behaviour and social roles men are allowed to have and express. The wider subject of video game violence and the attitudes of its perpetrators and avatars informs all of this, as El Shaddai patterns itself after its sick-nasty, bro genre familiars and carries with it those trappings and expectations. Yet it is so uncommonly kind to its cast and characters, so invested in their emotional realities that even with most of the actors on stage being men, it cannot diminish them willingly to posturing machismo and possessive vindictiveness in accordance with how this kind of conflict ought to play out like as gender essentialism would have it. It's a game about love through and through; nothing else motivates the characters and the brave and cowardly, altruistic and selfish things they do through the course of it. No one in it desires the flooding of the earth that may come to pass, and no one makes excuses for their choices in the clash of ideologies the conflict turns to; they simply live according to what they genuinely think is the best for the people they see themselves responsible for. All the antagonists go out this way when overcome, not cursing Enoch for foiling them, but regretting no longer being there for others and partaking in that reciprocal love. Armaros among their number is the clearest line to the game's essence, as he loved humans from the stories Enoch told so much that he descended to Earth and internalized and adopted their culture, becoming a performing artist and at peace with himself to the extent that his offspring is the only one among the human and angelborne nephilim whose existence is not gripped by constant agony. Armaros and Enoch's friendship is put to the fore in the chapter where Armaros takes on the playable role for the sole instance of the perspective shifting away from Enoch's, in a choice that's important to underline the unconditional affection between the two despite their organizational opposition, dismantling any notions of aggressive antagonism. The very last thing Enoch and the player do in the game as an active participant is overcome Armaros's fallen form and set him free in a final gesture of friendship, and of love. El Shaddai goes so far beyond the gender politics normalized by the rest of its rotten compatriots that it cannot even be seen to operate on the same wavelength--it completely rejects the premise of violent modes of play only being used to tell stories of equally as violent and dehumanizing content, twisting the expectations from biblical exploitation to the mythically humane.
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Like I said earlier, this is a game I always liked and one which I think was better in the now than in my memory. That lingering affection likely was influenced by the things I see in it now, but who knows if I had the capability to recognize or verbalize them before. It pays to reassess, even when you think you know your own thoughts.