

Monkey’s mission requires him to keep Trip alive, which leads to moments in the game where you must be conscious of enemies attacking you but also any threats to Trip. The story is reinforced through gameplay as the player can direct Trip to help Monkey in certain tasks. SonyĪt the heart of Enslaved is the relationship between Monkey and Trip. Horizon Zero Dawn is one of many games that owe a lot to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. A decade before God of War was doing long takes, Enslaved was working to bring a movie feel to how the camera moved, such as how the game smoothly transitions between cutscenes and gameplay. Garland and Serkis worked with Ninja Theory to create a game that felt cinematic in its scope and execution.

Today, Garland is best known as the director and writer of films like Ex Machina and Annihilation. At the time Garland had been a writer for the film 28 Days Later and was looking to get involved with video games. In adapting Journey to the West into a video game, Ninja Theory enlisted the aid of writer Alex Garland. (It’s fitting that Serkis also did mocap for the three Planet of the Apes movies from the 2010s.) For Enslaved, Serkis reunited with the studio to play the role of Monkey. In addition, the performer behind Gollum, Andy Serkis, helped the team with motion capture direction and even played a character in Heavenly Sword. One way the studio accomplished this was by partnering with special effects company Weta Digital, known for its work on the Lord of the Rings movies. The developer had made a name for itself as a studio pushing to bring a cinematic quality to video games with Heavenly Sword. To make the project come to fruition, Ninja Theory began to assemble an A-Team of talent. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West would follow the character Monkey in a future Earth as he guided the woman Trip to her village. The original epic follows a monkey named Sun Wukong on his journey to recover Buddhist texts from across Asia. Thinking back on the epic story Antoniades put forth the idea of making a video game that told a loose adaptation of the story. While researching ideas for Heavenly Sword, Director Tameem Antoniades came across the 16th-century Chinese epic Journey to the West.

20th Century FoxĪfter completing work on their 2007 game Heavenly Sword, Ninja Theory began work on a new project.
