How the hideous beauty of an unusual Capcom game came to be
Kunitsu-Gami designer Shuichi Kawata: “It's an indispensable element in my designs to have some charm in the midst of the horror."
Many modern video games are a drab mix of browns and grays, maybe with some dark greens and rusted reds. Not Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, the kaleidoscopically colorful recent release from a small development team at Capcom.
The strategy game puts players in control of Soh, a sword-swinging hero who cleanses poisoned Japanese-inspired villages set down a winding mountain road. Soh frees cocooned villagers and clears a path for the titular goddess through towns, forests and cemeteries, while marshaling the villagers at night to fend off invasions of nightmarish monsters called Seethe.
Some of Kunitsu-Gami’s enemies are blue, some bronze, often with long red tongues… the goddess wears white and lavender…Soh is cloaked in blue and gold, and their sword cuts a streak of pink, black and orange through the air.
The game’s vivid colors are beautiful and not surprising if you’re familiar with the resume of its director—and art director—Shuichi Kawata. The last game he helped lead, 2019’s underwater exploration adventure Shinsekai: Into the Depths (launched into Apple Arcade, now only available on Switch), was also a treat for the eyes.
I recently asked Kawata about Kunitsu-Gami’s look. We corresponded over email, with translations provided to me by Capcom.
The game’s colors weren’t just a creative choice, he told me, but a way for Kunitsu Gami’s relatively small team to make a game that stands out.
“I think there is a reason to keep the colors less saturated,” he said, referring to the muted color schemes in so many popular games. “However, as you said, it ends up looking similar.”
Kawata: “I wanted to create the impression of fireworks and kaleidoscopes that we often see in Japan, to give the battle scenes a sense of glamor and individuality.”
He continued: “Considering the size of this team, I thought about what could be possible and what I could do to leave a strong impression on players.”
His goal: “I wanted to create the impression of fireworks and kaleidoscopes that we often see in Japan, to give the battle scenes a sense of glamor and individuality.”
An art style’s origins
Some games start with a gameplay design, while its creators dabble with various possible settings and visual styles. Kunitsu-Gami’s gameplay and visuals were in sync from the start, Kawata said.
“I’m a fan of old Japanese folklore and other bizarre folktales, so I thought it’d be interesting to incorporate them into a game that is set in the mountains of Japan, where a messenger from another world appears every night and you must fend them off to protect the gods.
“Another major part of this idea was that I thought it would be compatible with tower defense," he said.
Kawata and his team strove for a style that could be dense with details. Because the game’s camera would be far away, they needed the game’s characters to be recognizable from a distance, especially during crowded night time battles. The team expected the characters to be between a 20th to a 35th the size of a computer monitor, so they “tried to create the best silhouettes and details for the characters and background assets to match the size.”
The villages in the game were initially modeled with real-life miniatures, which Kawata said helped establish a “sense of presence.”
“I also wanted to create something that was fun to look at’ rather than something just beautiful, and I do believe that looking at miniatures is fun!”
As for the colors, he said, “I was influenced by Japanese nishiki-e and ukiyo-e, especially samurai paintings, which are very colorful with wonderful visuals.”
“What if there were realistic images that people from that time period imagined when creating those paintings?” Kawata said. “This was the idea behind that, and I thought that by using modern 3D CG, it would be possible to create interesting visuals.”
Gross and gorgeous all at once
The seethe enemies in Kunitsu-Gami are somehow both beautiful and ugly, I told Kawata. I wanted to be sure he didn’t take that as an insult.
“I'm very happy that you feel that way!” he said. “It's an indispensable element in my designs to have some charm in the midst of the horror.
“I think of a character with conflicting elements; like the overall proportions seem cute, but the elements that you first notice are ugly.
“I try to create characters that have a balance of opposing elements, and that sense of balance in visuals is a very personal factor.”
When I emailed Kawata my questions about Kunitsu-Gami’s art, I included a couple of screenshots I took during a fight a giant swordsman named Bupposo, one of the game’s “festering seethe” bosses.
I was curious what Kawata made of these images and what he sees in them that I, as a player, might not.
“I had a lot of fun while creating Bupposo myself,” Kawata said. “It's not something to brag about, but I really do like the design. I wanted to keep it simple, but also wanted to make the items worn and fashionable!”
“The Festering Seethe strongly reflect the Japanese way of thinking about sin, especially the element of ‘Kunitsutsumi,’” he said. Those are offenses against society, and sure enough, the background of many of Kunitsu-Gami’s enemies involve belligerent, jealous or vengeful people who harmed their neighbors.
“For this character, I incorporated elements of anecdotes about an old swordsman,” Kawata said. “The face, body balance, details, and coloring of the character are intended to make it look cool and austere, while its movements are a bit unreadable and has a unique way of using swords.”
I’d thought the large sword looked terrific, especially the rope around its hilt.
“I thought of it as a part of the background and a votive offering,” he said. “Weapon creation was handled by a different person, and this question allowed me to feel that we had accomplished creating a well-designed and appealing sword.”
The Okami factor
Capcom’s promotion around Kunitsu-Gami has occasionally invoked Okami, a 2006 adventure of a white wolf in fictionalized Japan, from former Capcom studio Clover. At launch, Kunitsu-Gami featured alternate costumes inspired by Okami. A post-release update added Okami-inspired gameplay elements, including the ability for Soh to create flowers with every footstep.
(Given all that, I did wonder if the developers had considered a toggle to turn some of the in-game animals that saunter through Kunitsu-Gami’s villages into white wolves, but that idea didn’t come up in development, I’m told.)
Hirabayashi: “We both loved [Okami] and thought it would be a great opportunity for a collaboration.”
Kawata did not work on Okami, but Kunitsu-Gami producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi was involved in the HD remake of the game. Both men respect the original Okami. “We both loved it and thought it would be a great opportunity for a collaboration,” Hirabayashi told me over email.
“Okami is a kind of a predecessor [intellectual property] for this project, which was the first inspiration for a unique ‘Japanese-inspired’ setting and a new gaming experience,” Hirabayashi said.
“We didn't intentionally try to incorporate elements from Okami in the creation of this game. However, we chose motifs related to ‘wa’ (harmony).
He added: “Our mindset when going into creating a unique setting and gaming experience was very similar.”
Item 2: In brief…
🎮 Christopher Barrett, a longtime leader at Bungie Studios and former head of the company’s in-development Marathon game, was fired earlier this year after an internal investigation into complaints by women at Bungie. Barrett was accused of inappropriate behavior involving references to female employees’ looks and suggestions he could help advance their careers, per a Bloomberg report.
“I never understood my communications to be unwanted,” Barrett told Bungie, adding that if they made anyone uncomfortable, “I am truly sorry.”
🇯🇵 A weakened yen helps explain the unusual news this week that Sony will increase the price of PlayStation 5 in Japan next month, Niko Partners’ Daniel Ahmad said on social media.
“In 2020, the PS5 launched for what was the equivalent of $480. Today, that would be equal to $345, hence price increases to what is essentially $550,” he writes.
The move may also be intended to “crack down on exports of Japanese consoles to other markets, especially China. Sony is looking to normalize prices globally to avoid selling a high quantity of units under production costs in a single market.”
💰 Nvidia reported revenue of $30 billion for May-July 2023, compared to $13 billion in the same period last year, thanks to continued demand for its chips to power AI servers.
The company’s gaming revenue for the quarter was $2.9 billion, up 16% from a year ago.
The company’s stock dropped anyway though is still up 141% since this date in 2023.
👀 Remedy Entertainment is partnering with movie and games production company Annapurna in a deal that will see the latter pay 50% of development costs for Remedy’s Control 2 and obtain the rights to license Remedy’s Control and Alan Wake franchises for film and TV, the companies announced today.
News of the deal follows word last week that Hector Sanchez, who oversaw Epic Games’ publishing of Alan Wake 2, is now leading interactive and new media at Annapurna.
😲 Ubisoft has told some players of the PS5 version of Star Wars Outlaws that they’ll need to start the game over, following a patch issued this week during the game’s early release period, which users had to pay extra to access.
As a make-good, the company is offering an in-game item and virtual credit, Eurogamer reports.
🤔 GameStop is now marketing some of its stores as retro gaming shops.
📍 Activision is bringing back Verdansk, the first map in its Call of Duty battle royale Warzone, in 2025, the company said during a Call of Duty showcase.
⚔️ The next Witcher game is entering full production “very soon,” CD Projekt Red’s CEO said during the company’s latest earnings report.
🥊 Royalty Free-For-All is a newly announced upcoming Smash Bros.-style fighting game featuring public domain characters such as Mother Goose, Dorothy and Sweeney Todd across environments that include Old MacDonald's, The Center of the Earth, and The Hundred-Acre Wood, per a press release promoting the game’s appearance at this weekend’s PAX West gaming expo.
I really enjoyed the demo of Kunitsu-gami. Like a lot of people have said, it feels like the sort of weird, original IP that doesn’t get made so much anymore outside of the indie world. Even that alone is enough to justify voting with my wallet.
Always wait six months after release for new games to patch and update, is what my rational self tells me, but I never listen. Massive issued the update less than 12 hours after release, and since I only lost an hour or two, no harm done. Had I stayed up all night Monday to play Outlaws, I'd be much less enthused. It's pretty good so far -- easily the most fluid, dynamic creature models I've seen.