By Gareth Damian Martin
10/25/2016
A man in black, little more than an extension of the flat
shadow of the umbrella he carries, rides across an open desert. On his saddle
sits a naked boy—a wide brimmed hat his only protection against the burning
sun. The pair stop at a post, a marker, and the man places the boy on the sand.
“You are seven today. You are a man now,” he tells his son. “Bury your first
toy and the portrait of your mother.”
This is how Alejandro’s Jodorowsky’s infamous surrealist
western, El Topo (1970) begins. This moment of becoming prefaces a spiritual
journey for both son and father, a journey into a unnerving and dreamlike world
of violence and bizarre religious imagery. El Hijo, a newly announced game from
German developer Honig Studios, takes this beginning as its impetus, but its
journey is something entirely different.
Like the nameless boy of El Topo, the titular son of El
Hijo is forced to bury his first toy in an unforgiving desert. Then, left by
his outlaw father at a remote monastery, he is to be raised by a sect of
ancient monks. But bored by this pious life, he sets out to escape and recover
his lost toy, on a path that will lead him first to the desert, then to the
town beyond, towards a confrontation with his father.
It’s a story that seems set to refocus the spiritual
quest of El Topo on the innocent son, not the murderous father. In doing so, El
Hijo appears to be a Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story that tracks a young
character’s becoming. We might think of the spiritual journey of Herman Hesse’s
Siddhartha (1922), or perhaps the escape from ritual to a wild landscape of
creatures as depicted in Mervyn Peake’s Boy in Darkness (1956).
Taking the form of a stealth adventure, El Hijo will be
split into three chapters, as the son escapes from the monastery, crosses the
desert, and tracks his father to a dust-swept town. And unlike El Topo it will
be entirely non-violent. Instead of takedowns and silent murder, this will be
stealth marked with the naive and romantic mischief of childhood. Distraction,
pranks, and trickery is what will allow the player to distract the monks,
outlaws, and creatures of the desert.
In that sense El Hijo doesn’t just draw for the spiritual
fantasies of Jodorowsky. Set in a mythical American West, it also looks to
carry the romantic atmosphere of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti-westerns. While those
were violent films, they also showed a love of slapstick, grotesque characters,
and a preoccupation with trickery, from juggling hats with bullets, to scenes
entirely played out with pipes, cigarillos, and strange ways of lighting
matches.
Yet, beyond this rich patchwork of influences, it’s the
striking look of the game that has me the most excited about El Hijo. Though
I’ve only seen early art, the play of light and shadow along with the screenprint
texture and limited palettes suggests the influence of Saul Bass and his
influential title sequences. When combined with statues and shadows that bring
to mind The Good the Bad and the Ugly’s (1966) beautifully shot monastery, you
have a game that looks more like a classic bit of cinematic poster design than
a piece of interactive art.
It’s still early days for El Hijo, with a potential
release in summer 2017, but Honig Studios’s awareness of the genre it’s
stepping into and its visual sophistication suggests good things for a
dreamlike spaghetti-western with a long journey ahead of it.
Find out more about El Hijo on its website http://www.honigstudios.com/work/el-hijo/
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