Cutscenes Minus Cuts
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008I was lucky; I decided to wait for the Wii version of Okami, so I didn’t play it until after Twilight Princess. This is a good thing because I would’ve been more disappointed with TP if I’d done it in the other order. I said while I was playing it that it would be better if you could just be Wolf Link all the time, and Okami proves me right.
If you haven’t played this wolf-hopping adventure yet, you owe yourself a treat. It can be best described as “beautiful,” perhaps. Flowers grow in your wake as you steer the sun goddess Amaterasu across the ground; trees blossom when you paint them with your celestial ink; the history of the land, taken almost verbatim (though with a few welcome liberties) from Shinto mythology, is retold in flowing style. But naturally, it’s the little details that make the game: for example, the handling of the cutscenes. I was caught off guard in an early sequence where a would-be swordsman attempts to slice through a training dummy. It turned out I had to take up the remote and draw a power slash to cut it down for him, since his own combat skills were rather subpar. This convention continues throughout the adventure, as Amaterasu surreptitiously aids villagers and travelers with secret manipulations of the environment. I’m continually reminded of a line from the end of Princess Mononoke: “huh, I didn’t know the forest god made trees grow.”