Jason Liebrecht (Abel from Street Fighter IV and V and Mordecai in Borderlands 2 and on) still isn’t an Asian actor, sadly, but his Lo Wang is a huge step up from the original. The music does little to stand out but really makes each fight really have manic impact, and this is all helped by the great voice cast. Cherry blossoms and bamboo forests populate the world, creating a great contrast of the natural and gory supernatural intrusions upon it. The new personality extends to the game’s art style and look, using beautiful comic illustrations for flash backs and settling for a modern urban and old Japanese architecture look spiced up with demonic carnage. There is a questionably sexist element to it all, though compared to what came before, this is still a vast improvement. It is a genuinely emotional tale that would be impossible to imagine in the 3D Realms era. Why Hoji is even in the human world is the core question that even eludes him due to missing memories, and discovering the truth behind that creates a strong tale about individuality and bonds that ends on an unexpected but appreciated sobering note.
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Then, it starts to shift into genuine pathos, even having an entire combat free chapter dedicated to letting the characters breathe and talk. The end result is a game that starts pretty funny, even if they push Wang being a nerd a bit too much, though him using his job to live out his violent fantasies is a solid idea. It’s a good balance of actual likable traits and self-aware joking. It also never quite lets you forget both are kind of terrible people, even highlighted with a short conversation about Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Lo Wang and Hoji’s relationship is the core focus of the game’s narrative, seeing the two come closer together as friends as things move. What’s really notable here is that this new continuity has a heavy focus on world building and character development.
Things go badly, and it’s not long before Wang finds himself with a partner from the shadow realm named Hoji on a chase for the missing sword being taken away by a golem.
Lo Wang has been re-imagined as a comic and film nerd assassin, out to buy an ancient sword, called the Nobitsura Kage, for Zilla while psyching himself up by singing The Touch from Transformers: The Movie.
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This new continuity takes the broad strokes of the original game, like Lo Wang initially working for Zilla and demon shenanigans via the shadow realm, and greatly fleshes it all out, adding new elements that finally give the series a sense of self it didn’t quite have before as Duke Nukem 3D but weeby.
Yet, they succeeded and brought Lo Wang into the modern age. Flying Wild Hog hadn’t really done anything else besides Hard Reset, and a lot of their staff hadn’t really done much before besides some background work for larger projects like The Witcher. So, naturally, they found that by getting a small Polish studio who had only made an arcadey cyberpunk shooter in 2011 ( Hard Reset) to make a reboot to a game where an offensive stereotype makes dick jokes while exploding demon monsters. Croteam seemed to be the corner stone of that original plan, but after Serious Sam 3 came out in such a messy way, it became clear something else would have to be their try at making a big budget tent pole. They’ve always been interested in carving out a sort of personality that sets them apart from other gaming companies, which allows them to better support smaller titles, but they have tried moving into the big boy market as well. It’s hard to get a clear understanding of who actually owns Shadow Warrior these days, but Devolver Digital is handling the publishing duties, so it’s safe to say they have a claim on the franchise in some form now.
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