Enslaved: Odyssey To The West

Revisiting Ninja Theory’s post-apocalyptic epic. 

- Andy Kelly

You forget how many talented people worked on Enslaved. The story was written by screenwriter and novelist Alex Garland, who wrote the films 28 Days Later, The Beach and Ex Machina. It stars Andy ‘Gollum’ Serkis, who also helped develop the story and characters. And the game itself was designed by Ninja Theory, a studio with a knack for storytelling and action that would go on to boldly reboot the Devil May Cry series.

Interestingly, Serkis’ relationship with Ninja Theory was a complete accident. “Tameem Antionades’ brother was a mortgage advisor,” he told the Telegraph in 2010, referring to the game’s creative director. “I was looking for a mortgage and he said his brother was a game developer and had been trying to get in touch with me. It was a total accident.”

When Enslaved was released for consoles in 2010 (the PC version wouldn’t arrive until 2013), Ninja Theory was a largely untested studio. Its previous game, a PlayStation 3 exclusive called Heavenly Sword, had generated a little buzz with its elegant, flowing animation and striking scarlet-haired hero Nariko. But Enslaved was its first big multiplatform game, and an opportunity for the studio to show the world what it was capable of.

The game is a reimagining of Journey to the West, a 16th century Chinese novel attributed to Wu Cheng’en and popularised in English-speaking countries by Arthur Waley’s 1942 translation, Monkey. The story had been adapted many times before but Ninja Theory gave it a unique twist. Enslaved loosely follows the original story, but is set 150 years ahead of our present day in a vivid, colourful post-apocalypse.