Go West

When I was a kid, one of my favourite shows on TV was Monkey. Like so many other children of the eighties I’ve known, I would watch this show religiously after school. Whilst I watched many cartoons during my school years, I do recall Monkey, along with the original Dr Who, as being one of few live-action series I really enjoyed. I recall Monkey fondly with its sense of adventure, the action sequences involving gardening implements and the Buddhist philosophies that served as a framing device for the entire episode. It was only years later that I found out this series was an adaptation on the classic Chinese story Journey to the West – and was not the only one at that.



This now brings me to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West: a game made by people who boldly claim to have taken more than a few inspirations from Journey to the West. Well why not? There have been many adaptations of the text so why not a game? The only problem I can see is that a classic seventies TV show did the job so well that anything else is left in the dust. Indeed, I recall being ten years old and reading a comic adaptation where the story was missing one of the pilgrims (Sha Wujing/Sandy) and immediately thinking it wasn’t the same story I’d come to know.

Being an anime geek, I can name quite a few adaptations of Journey to the West. Aside from the obvious, Saiyuki and the original Dragonball, other noteworthy entrants are Alakazam the Great and Spaceketeers. All of which follow the source material quite closely – In fact the only JotW-based anime that deviates the most from the source is Goku Midnight Eye – a futuristic anime featuring a private eye protagonist who shares Sun Goku’s name and shape-shifting staff. Indeed, such is the deviation that it owes little to the source material but the makers didn’t claim it was such an adaptation anyway.



Unlike Enslaved: Odyssey to the West: What annoys me is that the claims made by the developers haven’t really delivered on their promise. Firstly: the player characters are numbered two: Pigsy isn’t a player character and both Sandy and the Water-Dragon/horse are conspicuously absent. Secondly, there’s not much of a connection to the original text. So why even bother? The afore-mentioned Goku Midnight Eye proved you can take inspiration from another source but to claim a full-blown adaptation of said source is another matter entirely.

Why didn’t they just take elements from the source and come up with something new? Were the makers too scared to? Or is it really that difficult to get something new made in a profit driven industry?
Indeed, Portal proved that something new can work but why did it succeed when many others have failed? Was it because it was included in a box with four other familiar games? Was it because it was made by the distinguished company Valve? Was it because it had black humour and a catchphrase destined to be repeated a million times afterward?
Of course, there is the possibility that was actually a really good game but who’d believe that?