Okami

How Art style saved a game

Okami is an absolutely beautiful game that is sadly lost in time with not a lot of people even knowing all that much about the game.

You play as a Sun-God known as Amaterasu who has taken the form of a white wolf to save the world from darkness. The player is given the basic movements of a 3D game such as walking, jumping, dashing, basic attacks, and using weapons, but the game also has a unique concept known as the Celestial Brush which allows the player to make symbols which perform “Miracles” in the game.

This game is a linear story, but has a very similar game-play loop to The Legend of Zelda series with even Hideki Kamiya saying it did influence his design throughout the game. There are also side missions throughout the game that deviate away from the main story which gives the player "Praise" the game's form of currency that allows players to buy upgrades like more health or more ink wells for the Celestial Brush.

The name Okami translates directly to "Wolf" and the Kanji letters following it translates to great deity making the full title great Wolf Deity. However what's super unique is the fact that the characters used in the the title are also the characters used for the honorific title of Amaterasu.

This game was very well received being the eighth highest-rated game in 2006 and second for PS2. This game won several Game of the Show and Most Innovative Design awards during E3.

When the game came out it received Best Character Design in 2007 Game Dev Choice Awards, an Award in Visual Arts in 2009 (an entire 2 years after the game originally came out) CESA Developers Conference.

Okami was a game made in 2006 developed by the team over at Clover Studios. Clover Studios wasn’t a studio that was created from normal circumstances but instead was brought upon to resolve conflict.

A Small History of Clover Studio

This was back in 2002, when the Gamecube had barely been a year out. After Nintendo's roaring success with the Nintendo 64, the Gamecube was a disappointment in comparison. The PS2 was out and was selling gangbusters with it's ability to have higher quality graphics and more data on it's disks than the N64's cartridges, it became THE console to develop for. So much so that the GameCube could barely find any third party companies willing to make games for it.

Enter Capcom. Capcom and Nintendo had a very close relationship since the days of the NES and SNES with Mega Man being one of the most iconic franchises on those systems. Capcom decided to step in and show support for their Japanese brother over at Nintendo by promising an exclusivity deal that came to be known as the Capcom 5. Capcom would enlist the help of Shinji Mikami to make 5 exclusive games for the Gamecube in order to show other companies that Nintendo's new console could be used for their crazy ideas and they were willing to make changes to help out third party developers. Capcom also stated that these 5 games would light the gaming world on fire and push the boundaries of what makes Video Games fun.

The 4 games that were released under this deal can be seen below, with the 5th game "Dead Phoenix" being in development hell then eventually being cancelled.

Now each of these games have their own rich history, we will sadly have to just focus on one game today.

The game we'll be focusing on today is Resident Evil 4 which was the brainchild of the man who created the Horror Genre, Shinji Mikami himself. He touted it to be the scariest and most intense Resident Evil game to ever come out. Shinji Mikami had boasted about its console exclusiveness and had even gone on record to say he would commit Hara-Kiri or cut off his head if it went to another platform.

However, it seemed like Capcom knew what a "smash hit" Resident Evil 4 was going to be and especially after being burned on the poor sales of P.N.03 and Viewtiful Joe they decided to port Resident Evil 4 to the far more successful system, the PS2. The only thing Shinji Mikami could do after that point was apologize to the Gamecube fans.

Now this incident caused a lot of tension between Capcom and Shinji Mikami. Shinji had put his word and his honor on the line promoting this game and Capcom had decided to pull the rug underneath him. Capcom had to do something fast to ensure they don't lose the brilliant mind of Shinji Mikami and caused Capcom to accelerate the formation of the subsidiary company Clover Studios and transferring Mikami there.

Clover Studios was a small studio that had a pool of immense talent that included Shinji Mikami, Keiji Inafune (of Mega Man, Dead Rising, and Lost Planet fame), Yoshiki Okamoto (Final Fight and Street Fighter 2), Atsushi Inaba (Samurai Showdown, Ace Attorney, Steel Battalion, Metal Gear Rising Revegence,Bayonetta), and Hideki Kamiya. It's not a big surprise to see that a company that would be born out of such hardships, would also make a game with just as many if not more.

An Idea is Born

The man, the myth, the legend himself, Hideki Kamiya

Okami wasn't an idea that was just thought up out of the blue by Hideki Kamiya, but it was based on a feeling Hideki Kamiya had started to feel for quite some time now. He was the man who worked on iconic series like Resident Evil and when he was supposed to create the next Resident Evil game ended up making one of the most stylish character action games of all time, Devil May Cry.

However, something happened after Devil May Cry was released. Hideki Kamiya saw the pace at which Tokyo was advancing at this period of time and lush forests had been torn down to make way for buildings and skyscraper. As Hideki saw this, he started to feel homesick for something much simpler and quieter. Hideki wanted to create an experience that made use of this feeling, but never really gave it much thought till he saw the remake of Resident Evil.

Resident Evil: Remake released in the year of 2002 with beautiful graphics that put the original to shame it received rave reviews from critics with some even going as far as saying "it is the prettiest, most atmospheric and all-around scariest game we've ever played ".

When he saw the game running on the console, he was absolutely blown away by the photo realistic graphics and thought that if Capcom had this technology to make this realistic horror game, then he wanted to use it to make a world that was bright and glistening.

A world where there were no skyscrapers or bright neon signs. A world where there was no Gothic churches or demons with absurdly long swords. A world where there are no police stations or really good-looking policemen trying to stop a zombie outbreak, but rather a world where the beauty of nature could be seen and experienced not only by people watching it but also playing it.

Hideki got this chance to make this game inspired by nature in 2004 as Clover Games finally started up and Okami was one of the first projects to be put in development.

However, being inspired by something doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be easy to make a game around it, which is a lesson Clover Studios learned quite quickly working on this project.

Development Nightmare

Everyone on the team loved the idea of focusing on nature and focusing on a world where everything was much simpler, but the problem was no one could really think of game play that could go along with it.

The most they had was this short one minute clip that Hideki Kamiya had made of a wolf running around as flower bloomed behind her. Kamiya had this vision when he started to think of this idea about nature, but neither did he or any of his team know how to take it forward. It took months of brainstorming before they had an initial prototype which Kamiya himself said, “was quite boring to play.”

However, this was not the only issue plaguing the game, but the beautiful and glistening world Hideki Kamiya had envisioned was too advanced for the technology present at that time. The amount of lighting and detail they wanted to put in the game while showing off these fresh new photo realistic graphics was too much for the limited memory of the PS2 and the team was put into another issue.

The team was greatly trying to think of mechanics that could fit with this wolf running around with flowers behind him.

How would they use that to depict nature?

What mechanics could they use?

These were all questions that were haunting the designers for the last few weeks.

A game with impossible visuals and no game play isn't a game after all and the team knew it. They needed to solve these problems fast if they wanted to keep working on this idea.

A Way Out

It was just another one of those days where the developers had been trying to think of how to make this idea work and what they could do to execute it. One designer, however, decided to have some fun as a way to take his mind off things and decided to draw the wolf in Japanese style. Once Hideki Kamiya and Atsushi Inaba saw this, they threw out the realistic style and went all-in with Japanese style especially being heavily inspired by Sumi-e and its gorgeous depictions of nature.

Sumi-e- Ink Wash Painting

Ukiyo-e - Japanese Water Color

Once they had decided on this art style they had solved one problem of having graphics the PS2 could actually run with the amount of detail they wanted, but the game play was still lacking. However, once they saw the brushwork the team had a stroke of genius (yeah, I wanted that one) where they thought,

“Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow get the player involved and participate in this artwork instead of just watching it?"

This is where the concept of ‘The Celestial Brush’ was born from. What this does is pause the game and let the players call up a canvas where they can then draw onto the screen. This lead to one of the most key moments of the whole development cycle. The moment where Inaba and Kamiya saw the Sumi-e paintbrush being controlled in a 3D space. They were convinced they had a great idea.

The game's development was no longer a painful crawl, but raced on ahead. The Celestial Brush became the base of the game and mechanics were added to help support and really bring the brush to the forefront of the game. The Celestial Brush could be used in all major parts of the game play including to but not limited to puzzles, traversing, and combat. Mechanics, the world, and the story soon became very easy to develop while fitting in this message of nature throughout.

The Celestial Brush itself also does a really amazing job at focusing on the central theme of nature as all of the abilities save for Guidance have some relation with nature as they make use of the four natural elements of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire along with occurrences that happen in nature such as Blizzards and Thunderstorms.

Story Beats

The story can be simplified as basically as go defeat demons and bring back life to the forest, it’s one that couldn’t exist without the change in art style. Okami’s story borrows a lot of elements and characters from Shinto Folklore and it’s easy to see why.

When Okami did switch to a more Japanese style art style they had to look at a lot of Japanese Artwork and a very common thing in Sumi-e and Ukiyo-e painting is the depiction of Japanese Folklore along with nature. As they went through these paintings, they got inspired by these stories as not only did they already fit with the aesthetic they were going for, but it brought forth their own heritage. Let's look at just one example below.

The game’s first part of the story is based on the Shinto folklore about Susanoo and the 8 headed demon, Orochi. The original story goes as follows Susanoo was thrown from the heavens after tricking his sister Amaterasu. He wanders the land until he comes across an old couple crying with their daughter near them. When he asks them why they were crying, they responded with, “ "I had originally eight young girls as daughters. But the eight-forked serpent of Koshi has come every year and devoured [one], and it is now its time to come, wherefore we weep.”

One of the many deceptions of Susanoo

Susanoo says that if they give their daughter to him, he can stop the eight-headed creature. When the parents agree Susanoo turns their daughter, Kushi, into a comb and places her in his hair for safekeeping.

He then tells the parents to make a fence with eight platforms on it with a liquid vat holding liquor being placed upon this platform. When the creature comes to attack the village, it goes to this fenced off area and drinks the liquor and goes to sleep allowing Susanoo to behead the creature’s 8 heads along with its tails. However, when he cut the creature’s middle tail, his sword broke. Thinking this to be strange Susanoo cuts upon the flesh to see a sword there which was known Herb-Quelling Great Sword, which is now known by its more popular name Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi.

Susanoo as shown in the game "Okami"

During this boss fight, the player must dodge Orochis attacks and even counter them using powers from the Celestial Brush. When one head of Orochi is tired, the player can control the sake in the stage to force one of the creature’s head to drink the sake rendering that head knocked out.

When all 8 heads are knocked out, that’s when the player can climb upon his body and damage the boss defeating it.

It’s near the end of the game where the player fights the boss again, and this time they can use the sword Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi to cut it’s head off defeating it once and for all.

In the game, however, there was an event that happened 100 years ago where a white wolf and a swordsman fought together to save the swordsman beloved from Orochi. They weren’t able to defeat him, but manage to seal him away.

The swordman’s decedent doesn’t believe in this myth and unknowingly releases Orochi onto the village of Kamiki, but before he does that he recognizes the descendant's blood and captures his beloved. This is when Amaterasu is awoken to save the village. Amaterasu eventually meets up with this descendant who turns out to be Susanoo and he needs your help saving his beloved Kushi.

One of the heads of Orochi drinking the sake and being knocked out

Kushi with her comb shaped hair

As you can see a majority of the characters in the game are exactly the same as their folklore stories with a few liberties taken in a few places. Susanoo isn’t the brother of the sun goddess and Kushi is turned into a comb for safekeeping. However, they have in a way gave given homage to the comb plot point as they made Kushi’s hair in the shape of a comb.

The game is filled with examples like this throughout the entire game and I could talk about the similarities and the brilliant changes they made to these folklore stories to fit the game for weeks, but I'll restrain myself.

Conclusion

Despite all this, it’s super sad to see that Okami didn’t do as well as it should have with it rounding off the end of the list of Top 100 games sold in 2006. However in-spite of all of its development problems, it never affects the quality of the game and it’s a pure joy to play from start to finish.

Photo on the left is a still from the video Kamiya had made, while the right is a still from the final game.

Although it is curious to see how the game would have ended up with the photo realistic graphics and if that would have fared better with consumers, it's sadly questions we will never get the answer to. But maybe that's not such a bad thing because we wouldn't get the gorgeous and beautiful game that is Okami.

It’s been given an HD treatment with even brighter colors and crisper visuals. Just seeing Amaterasu running around in this gorgeous cel-shaded world is a pure treat and I hope a lot more people get to experience it.

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