Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a 2010 action-adventure game developed by Ninja Theory and published by Namco Bandai Games. As a loose adaptation of the Chinese novel Journey to the West, the game is set 150 years in a future post-apocalyptic world following a global war. Only remnants of humanity survive, along with the still active war machines left over from the conflict. The game's story follows Monkey who is forced to escort a girl named Trip home safely after they survive a ship crash. Players play as Monkey, who must combat enemies using his staff from a third-person perspective, engage in different platforming challenges and solve puzzles.
Initially pitched as a CGI film, Enslaveds development began after the teams had halted the development of a sequel to Heavenly Sword. TV series Life After People influenced world settings, while the video game Ico inspired the dynamics between the two protagonists. The team decided to shift away from the wuxia theme of the novel to science fiction as it was a genre many staff on the development team wanted to explore. Alex Garland was invited to write the game's story, eventually becoming involved in the game's design to ensure it was consistent throughout. Andy Serkis and Lindsey Shaw provided performance capture for the game, and Nitin Sawhney composed the soundtrack. The team used the Unreal Engine 3 game engine to power Enslaved.
Announced in 2009 as Enslaved, it was released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in October 2010. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its graphics, world design, Serkis' performance and Garland's script, while the game drew criticisms for its gameplay and technical shortcomings. The game was a commercial failure and sales failed to meet Namco Bandai's expectations. A single-player downloadable content, titled Pigsy's Perfect 10, was released in November 2010. A complete version, featuring all downloadable content, was released for PlayStation 3 and Windows on 25 October 2013. A sequel was planned but cancelled due to the game's financial underperformance.
Gameplay
The player takes the role of "Monkey" in a third-person perspective, using a variety of combat moves and platforming skills to overcome obstacles. In combat, Monkey uses a staff that doubles as a close-combat and long-range projectile weapon. The staff has two types of long-range ammunition: orange power cylinders used for blast damage and blue cylinders for stunning foes. Monkey can also remain stationary and charge his staff to use the same stun attack. In the game, players encounter numerous mechs as enemies. Certain mechs can be used as weapons. Monkey can perform a finishing move on them when they are low on health, such as tearing the gun off a turret or throwing an explosive foe at other combat mechs. Monkey's other abilities include a force shield that can block a certain amount of damage before requiring a recharge, and the "Cloud" device that manifests as a hover board for gliding across water and land at great speeds. When enemies are defeated, they drop tech orbs used to upgrade Monkey's abilities. They allow the player to learn new moves and abilities for combat and devices, increase overall health and shields, and the damage that can be inflicted on enemies. Orbs can be found littered across levels, sometimes hidden out of sight, requiring extra exploration. Another type of collectible players can amass is masks, which are also scattered across different levels.
During the game Tripitaka ("Trip") who must be escorted and protected as they travel, accompanies Monkey. He has a device attached to his head linked to Trip. This device, called a slave headband in the game, requires Monkey to keep Trip alive. Should she die he will as well. In some instances just going too far away from her can result in the same fate. Trip can help Monkey overcome obstacles at times by performing technical skills like hacking into a computer. Players can command Trip to use her different skills like scanning the surrounding area revealing land mines or mechs on standby, and project a temporary hologram as a decoy to draw the enemy's attention. Players can also order Trip to hide behind covers or regroup with Monkey. Having no combat ability of her own, Trip is vulnerable to attacking enemies. Her only defense is an EMP blast, which she can use to temporarily stun enemies threatening her.
Other than combat, the gameplay focuses heavily on platforming where Monkey scales and leaps across the ruins throughout the world. Some areas and platforms will collapse shortly after use, requiring faster scaling before Monkey potentially falls to his death. Trip plays a part in the platforming sections of the gameplay, making them akin to puzzle-styled events. In other instances where Monkey makes jumps/climbs, Trip needs to be thrown to the other side or ride on his back. At times, Monkey and Trip are separated so the player cannot use her abilities.
Plot Enslaved is set 150 years in the future after a global war has ravaged the Earth, destroying most of the human race and leaving the world plagued by robots, known as "mechs", left over from the war. Mechs still follow their programming and seek to eradicate hostiles, now surviving humans.
The game opens with the main character, Monkey (Andy Serkis), awakening in a containment cell aboard a slave ship. He escapes and accidentally causes the vessel to crash. He reaches Trip (Lindsey Shaw) leaving the ship using an escape pod, but she ejects the pod without allowing him to enter. When Monkey regains consciousness after landing, he discovers Trip has placed a slave headband on him, which forces him to follow her orders; a Termination Trigger will kill him if she dies. Trip explains she wants to return to her village, and she needs his help to get there. Monkey is angry but has no other choice. As they travel across New York City, glitches in the headband expose Monkey to visions of what appears to be life before the war. When they reach Trip's village, however, they discover it was attacked and is now overrun with mechs. After clearing the village of them, Monkey and Trip discover Trip's father is dead, along with a large amount of other villagers. Assuming there are no survivors, Trip refuses to remove Monkey's headband, explaining her intent to find and kill the person responsible.
Trip takes Monkey to meet a friend of her father's named Pigsy (Richard Ridings), who she believes can help them. Pigsy explains that a nearby mech base is building a 'Leviathan', an enormous and incredibly powerful giant mech. The three infiltrate the base, commandeer Leviathan, and steer it to the mysterious Pyramid, where the slaves are being held. Along the way, Trip apologises to Monkey for breaking their deal and deactivates the headband, but Monkey tells her to turn it back on, hinting they have developed a romantic relationship.
When the Leviathan reaches Pyramid, they are confronted with several mechs. The Leviathan's main cannon fends them off for a while, but one eventually climbs aboard and tears the cannon off, forcing Monkey to destroy the mech himself. With the Leviathan now defenseless and surrounded, Pigsy announces that the only way for them to destroy the opposing mechs is for him to overload the engines. This would blow up the Leviathan and kill Pigsy in the process. Trip frantically tries to convince him not to, but Pigsy demands that Monkey take her away from the blast radius. Monkey and Trip get away just in time to watch the Leviathan explode, destroying all of Pyramid's mechs with it.
In the epilogue, Monkey and Trip enter Pyramid and discover the slaves are under the control of a single individual. The man introduces himself as Pyramid (Serkis) and explains that he lived before the war, and that he offers the slaves solace from the cruel world by sharing with them his memories of a happier era. He believes he is saving them and pleads with Monkey and Trip not to take away what he has given them. Monkey recognises the memories as the visions he has been seeing with the headband on. Pyramid shows Monkey what he has been giving the slaves through a mask. Monkey becomes enthralled with the images, but Trip violently disconnects and kills Pyramid, shutting down the system and freeing the slaves. The scene ends with Trip asking Monkey if she did the right thing, leaving those in the pyramid and their future unknown.
Pigsy's Perfect 10 Set prior to the events of Enslaved, Pigsy lives a solitary life in the scrap yard with his only companion, a small flying robot named "Truffles" who helps him scout scraps and provides advice in combat. Because of his loneliness, Pigsy decides to build himself a friend. This will require three key components that he and Truffles must find in the scrap yard populated by mechs. While Truffles helps throughout his search, Pigsy seems unappreciative and prioritises his new creation. As Pigsy retrieves the last component, Truffles is damaged and shuts down in the process. With his new friend nearly complete, Pigsy learns what his creation actually needs is a "heart" and inserts Truffles inside. When activated, however, his creation runs amok before being gathered up by a salvaging mech. Pigsy gives chase and fights his way into the main scrap collector. When he finally retrieves Truffles and escapes, Pigsy realises Truffles was his real friend the entire time. Being greatly damaged, however, Truffles shuts down permanently. Pigsy realises too late he took his only friend for granted and vows not to make the same mistake again.
Development In August 2009, Namco Bandai announced they would be collaborating with Ninja Theory on a new video game project. The game, initially titled Enslaved, was announced in September 2010 for release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Their previous project was the PlayStation 3 exclusive game Heavenly Sword. Tameem Antoniades acted as the game's director, actor Andy Serkis provided motion capture for the title, film director and producer Alex Garland served as the game's writer and designer, and Nitin Sawhney composed the game's score. Using only two-thirds of the budget of Heavenly Sword, the game's development was completed on 3 September 2010, and the game's publisher confirmed it had been declared gold, indicating it was being prepared for duplication and release.
Origin
After completing Heavenly Sword, Ninja Theory intended to develop a sequel but contractual terms with Sony Computer Entertainment forced them to halt the game's production. The studio decided to leave the title and all the technologies built for it to Sony and seek external funding from another publisher for their next project. This would eventually become Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, powered by Epic Games' Unreal Engine. Initially, Ninja Theory pitched the game to several Hollywood studios as a CGI film, but they were not interested in backing the project. The company dedicated three months to creating promotional materials to convince publishers to sign the game. A number of publishers were shown a detailed design document and a two-minute CGI trailer and the team received enthusiastic responses from them. Initially, they signed a deal with Green Screen, but the firm dissolved a month later. Namco Bandai Games later agreed to publish the game.