Fortunately, I wasn’t able to spout rude and sexist comments at her like I could in the game from which she was taken, but I was left wondering why she was here at all. I was also troubled to find one of the “ anime girl” sprites from the original Shadow Warrior hidden behind a waterfall in an early level, bathing in the nude. If Flying Wild Hog were trying to move past the stupid and juvenile tone of that game - and honestly doing a decent job of it, with Lo Wang’s dialogue at least - then why is this here? Why reference the original racist caricature? Standing close to a Shadow Warrior arcade machine lets players hear John William Galt’s Lo Wang spout the same awful lines from that game in his absurd accent. Lo Wang occasionally encounters video arcades full of other games from publisher Devolver Digital, as well as the original Shadow Warrior in cabinet form. Each level is packed with secrets, and some of these lead to faithful recreations of places from the original, with the same blocky architecture and low resolution textures. This striving for a new tone, however, is undercut by constant callbacks to the original game. This does wonders for his character, letting him actually care about the people and events in the story, so he’s not defined solely by his clever (or not so clever) one-liners. Much of the time, Lo Wang is conversing with Hoji as they figure out what to do next, so he has ample opportunity to be serious alongside his mid-battle wisecracks. Lo Wang finds himself unwittingly allied with one of these demons, Hoji, who rides around in his head offering guidance or criticism. Soon, he’s learning about ancient conflicts between immortal demons who are all searching for the powerful Nobitsura Kage, the only weapon that can truly kill one of their kind. This doesn’t go as planned, and Lo Wang finds himself mixed up in a much larger conflict, as demons pour through portals into our world and start killing everyone. Zilla is the head of Zilla Enterprises, a huge and wealthy corporation, and he has tasked Lo Wang with purchasing a sword called the Nobitsura Kage from a collector. Lo Wang is a kind of modern samurai, armed with nothing but a sword as he heads to a potentially dangerous exchange on the orders of his boss, Orochi Zilla. The original Shadow Warrior was almost devoid of story, but there’s a surprisingly involved story here. And this time he spends a lot of time talking about other stuff too. Lo Wang cracks jokes often, but none of those jokes are based around his accent (unlike the original game) and some of them are even pretty funny. The writing is definitely better, if not perfect. Their efforts in this regard don’t go as far as I’d hoped. Given the controversy around the original Shadow Warrior, I was expecting the team to be more mindful of cultural appropriation, being careful to write an adventure that avoids cultural and racial stereotypes. Why was it so important that Lo Wang have an accent? And if it was that important, why not hire a Chinese actor to play him? Although I wouldn’t blame Chinese actors for not wanting to participate in a remake of a game so infamous for racism, made by a team of mostly white men. Everyone else in the game just has an American accent, even though it’s set in Japan. It’s not nearly as egregiously caricatured as John William Galt’s performance as Lo Wang in the original game, but it’s still weird. And he is still affecting a Chinese accent. Lo Wang is still played by a white man, Jason Liebrecht. Shadow Warrior still stars Lo Wang, an enforcer for Zilla Enterprises in Japan. It’s certainly better than Shadow Warrior, but doesn’t escape some of that game’s problems. The positive reception to these newer games was what inspired me to play the original for comparison, and now I’ve also played the 2013 version of Shadow Warrior, by Polish studio Flying Wild Hog. Which is why I was surprised to see it get a remake in 2013, and even more surprised that it earned praise from critics and was successful enough to become a whole new franchise, with a well-liked sequel in 2016 and a third game planned to release this year. I’d heard that it was racist, and it very much is. I recently wrote about Shadow Warrior, the 1997 follow-up to Duke Nukem 3D. As always, you may click on images to view larger versions. This post is part of the Keeping Score series about games and their soundtracks.
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