This Week In Retro: El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron (Patreon)

April 28, 2011: Give me the best watercolor Bible story you have

by Diamond Feit

In order to discuss this week's latest retro-versary, we're going to have to talk about a controversial topic: Religion. It's the backbone of so many creative projects across all mediums, but the history of religious subject material in video games is spotty at best. For many years, Nintendo had a hard rule against any depictions of religious imagery, so much so that even crosses on gravestones were forbidden. Today, there's no platform-specific ban on sacred topics, and yet we still don't see much beyond fantasy tropes like "what if angels were monsters" or having characters go to Hell to fight demons.

The conspicuous absence of religious video games strikes me as extra odd when you consider how much our collective culture is imbrued with religious concepts. I am not a person who practices any particular faith, but I was raised Jewish, and my experience growing up in a Jewish household had a lasting effect on my worldview. I didn't grow up celebrating Christmas so I still don't, even though I now live in a country which views that holiday as secular (more on that in a moment). Yet I still pepper my speech with references to God, including all the usual exclamations of frustration, because adults and pop culture trained me to speak in such a manner.

One potential issue is the curious nature of "religion" in Japan, a nation that still holds a lot of sway over a wide swath of video games. A majority of Japanese people self-describe as "non-believers," a misleading answer as Japanese culture includes many Buddhist and Shinto concepts baked in. My children don't attend any regular services or pray to any deity, but they still give thanks to an unseen entity before every meal because that's the custom here. So it is fair to say a lot of Japanese people, including those who produce and publish video games, view organized religion as a curious feature of other cultures, and not necessarily a component of their own (although Christians, Muslims, Jews, et al. are present in Japan).

It was here in Japan that Sawaki Takeyasu, formerly of Capcom and Clover Studio, took the lead on a creative project unlike any other: A stylish third-person action game based on an apocryphal Bible story which precedes the Genesis flood that nearly wiped out humanity. El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, released ten years ago this week, took on a life of its own pre-release, only to end up as a forgotten work in an era packed with other hack & slash games. Yet for a small number of people, El Shaddai will never be forgotten.

El Shaddai draws inspiration from the Book of Enoch and casts the eponymous hero as the lead character in the game. Enoch is sent on a mission by archangel Lucifel to hunt down a team of fallen angels who are hiding on Earth. After hundreds of years, he discovers the angels inside a tower of their own design, one that defies all conventional geometry and physics. Enoch fights his way through the tower's many floors to face the angels one at a time.

El Shaddai mirrors famous works from Takeyasu's resume like Devil May Cry and Okami, games with a focus on over-the-top action. Enoch is skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and is limber enough to leap over and flip behind foes when needed. Disarming enemies is a regular feature of combat, allowing Enoch to both weaken his opponents as he strengthens himself. Enoch can wield three distinct weapons in his fight; each weapon is strong against one other but weak to the third in a rock-paper-scissors-esque circle of dominance. Unlike Mega Man, Enoch cannot stockpile and swap between arms, hence the disarm mechanic which lets the player switch weapons as needed.

When players aren't dueling with El Shaddai's menagerie of creatures, they explore the otherworldly environments as a platformer. Whether inside the tower or outside, El Shaddai's levels are laid out as a series of surreal spaces, with no real correlation to earthly locations; expect lots of floating islands, gentle slopes, and bottomless chasms. El Shaddai uses fixed camera angles, with select stages locked into a 2D side-scrolling perspective. Thankfully, the game is forgiving of errant jumps; if Enoch falls into a pit, Lucifel snaps his fingers and Enoch instantly returns to his last stable position.

More so than any gameplay or story element, the selling point of El Shaddai is its gorgeous presentation. The early HD era of video games was marred by grimy shooters set in dingy ruins of brown and grey worlds, but El Shaddai soundly rejects those aesthetics in favor of bright whites and soft watercolor pigments. Contemporary reports compared El Shaddai to the work of Studio Ghibli, but I don't think this game looks like anime or anything else I've seen before. It's a one-of-a-kind concept which makes the most of the available tech at the time, never bothering to approach "realism," helping it hold up better to scrutiny a decade later.

El Shaddai was first announced in 2010—relatively early in the social media era—and no one could have anticipated the online response. Japanese netizens latched onto a trailer where Enoch goes into combat with regular armor, only to be stomped by soldiers. Lucifel rewinds time to give Enoch a second chance and then, with Lucifel's aid, he fares better. In particular, Lucifel's question of "Are you sure that's enough armor?" and Enoch's response of "No problem. Everything's fine" transformed into a meme; the phrases were remixed and recontextualized for months in advance of El Shaddai's actual release.

Unfortunately, like Snakes on a Plane before it, internet buzz did not produce remarkable retail results. Despite landing right before Golden Week, a busy shopping time for Japanese consumers, El Shaddai sold about 50,000 copies for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 before immediately fading; its Western release later that summer fared even worse. Given the costs of HD game development, El Shaddai was an expensive gamble that did not pay off. Publisher UTV Ignition Games already showed signs of struggling, having closed their Florida studio months earlier; by January 2012 the entire company would be gone.

With a defunct publisher and developer, El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron seemed destined to fall into obsolescence, but in 2020 Takeyasu made a surprise announcement: El Shaddai is coming to Steam. As of this writing there's no confirmed release date yet, but a store page is up and Takeyasu continues to actively tweet about the subject. It's not as simple as snapping his fingers, but Takeyasu is giving Enoch another chance.

As stated above, I am not a religious person. I'm also not as experienced when it comes to 3D action games as I could be. When I first got my hands on El Shaddai, I was captivated by its beauty but baffled by its story. I ended up playing the full game in Japanese which did little to clear up my questions about Enoch's quest; lacking proper narrative motivation, the action dragged for me. Given that the forthcoming revival is bilingual and I'm a lot more open to trying new games these days, I'm excited to revisit El Shaddai and give it another look. I had feared this unique creation might never make a comeback, but as it turns out...there's no problem, and everything's fine.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.