Retronauts - 783: El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Diamond Feit, Chris Sims, Benito Cerino, and Shane Bettenhausen have no problem podcasting about 2011's biblically-adjacent El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron.Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellair direct.com. This week on Retronauts, Enock with the blue jeans, blue jeans, blue jeans, Enoch with the blue jeans on. Ooh, yeah. Enoch with the blue jeans, blue jeans, blue jeans, blue jeans, Enoch with the blue jeans on. I tried to set my fingers.

Didn't work. Hello. Welcome back to Retronauts. Welcome to this very special. divinely inspired retronauts, as we're here to talk about the one, the only Elshadai, ascension of the Metatron, a video game unique into itself, even though there are sequels and spinoffs and a lot to talk about. But first, I'm your host, Diamond Fight, not wearing blue jeans. Sorry, it's too early for blue jeans. And joining me around the world. So many guests today.

Let's start with returning guest and Batman expert. Oh, that's me. Hi, everybody. It's Chris Sims, noted Batman expert and a biblical, extra-canonical dabbler. Good enough. The Elijah to my partner's Enoch. Okay. And your partner being, hey, it's me, Benito.

Benito Serino. I'm a writer and a podcaster, and together with Chris, sometimes we do a podcast called Apocrypal, which is about Bible and tangentially related Bible things, including this game, for example. Yes, I know you covered the same ones on your own podcast. Thank you for joining us for this podcast. And also joining us for this podcast, a man intimately associated with this game and retroence in general because he's been here many times. Shane Bettenhausen. And I'm not wearing my Lucifel jeans. I considered it, but it's a little human here today.

And imagine it's even more hot and humid in Kyoto where you are, Diamond. Osaka, but yes, it's very, it's already warm. Oh, Osaka. But, yeah, they were very tight jeans. And if any of your own those Al-Shadae jeans, they were very form-fitting. Yeah. And yet you can do so many combos in them. Well, and I'm so, I'm so happy you have them on because, like, the whole actual book of Enoch, apocryphal, religious aspects of El-Shadae are the most baffling to me.

So I'm so happy you have real icebergs on. Don't worry. They're very straightforward. They make a lot of sense. they're super linear. Yep. No problem. No problem at all.

But yes, I did work at Ignition during the development of this game and up to its release, and I have very fond memories of it. And I'm happy that it's now considered old enough to be on retro knots. Yeah, I know that people often like respond to like the social medias

and they're like, oh, that game's not retro. And I just can't believe it's been 14,000 years. Well, the last 10 years feel like 14,000 years in America. That's true. That's true, actually. It could have been 360,000 years. Or maybe yesterday.

It could maybe yesterday. Or maybe a snap of your fingers. Or tomorrow? Or tomorrow. What a fun time. And it's fun to revisit this. It does feel a long time ago now. So yeah, I'm happy we're doing this.

And like, you know, and this game is a little bit of a mystery. And I have a few pieces of intel that might shed a little light on it. But like, looking back, it's really interesting and unique. And I'm glad it's still accessible. We'll play it in 2026. So did you work on this game? I was the business development manager. It was already in development by the time I got to Ignition, but it was about a year and a half before it came out, maybe a year before it came out.

I got to work with the team and see it come, you know, see the final stretch of development for it. So I spent a lot of time with, you know, Swaki and Kimura and those guys. I have an important question then. How much is it going to hurt her feelings when Chris Clown? on this game. Yeah. It's not about the gameplay. It's more about the aesthetic of the game.

Hmm. Okay. If you're going to hate on the aesthetic, then we might come to the voice. I, well, we'll see. We'll see what happened. Anything, anything could happen. Well, in direct human years, this game came out in 2011, and we're recording this in 2026. So in direct human years, this game.

is 15 years old, and it is certainly retro. It was, at the time, exclusive to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and it's since been rescued from those platforms. It's now available on multiple platforms in HD Remaster, but we'll talk about that stuff later. Let's start with the background, the basics, ground, ground zero, if you will. This is a game that is based on something called the Book of Enoch, so I think we really do need to establish what is a book of Enoch? And I would say the average Christian doesn't really know what that is.

Like as a kid who grew up in the Christian church, never talked about. Yeah. So there is the book of Enok, but strictly speaking, there's a broader category of Inokic literature, right? So we're actually, so this game is actually pulling from three different books, which are first, second, third, Enick, which are not direct sequels to each other. They're different traditions from different times and history, right? And actually each one is kind of cobbled together from different things in history. The best known book of enic is first inic. And if you hear someone say book of enic, that's the one they mean.

That is a text that would have originally been five different texts that were then redacted or edited together. It existed. It would have been put together sometime during the second temple period, meaning the time after the Babylonian exile for the people of Judah who were, after they were conquered by Babylon, after they were allowed by Cyrus and the Persians to come back and rebuild Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. So we're talking about 5th, 6th century BCE. So starting in that time period and then getting up to first century BCE, CE, the flip over part because of Jesus. Um, the, uh, so during, so during, so during that, you weren't just, you weren't just, uh, like taking an aside about how complicated this is.

That you're actually saying it is because of Jesus of Nazareth. Yeah, right. Yes. Because, because, because of Jesus. That's why the time is different. Uh, why we started counting, uh, backwards. People are probably familiar with that one. Yeah.

People, uh, maybe. Um, but this, but the, the book of Enoch, uh, would have been known. to the authors of the Bible. And in fact, the book of Jude specifically in the Bible quotes it, references it. But it was largely lost. We know it was important to the community at Qumran, the Dead Sea Scrolls people, because we have fragments of it among the Dead Sea Scrolls. But that also means they probably didn't.

The version they had was probably not the same as the one that survives to this day. the one that we have only survives in full in the language a language called Ge'ez, which is an Ethiopian language. It's got a very cool looking alphabet. If you look at it, it's a it's a language that kind of survives only as a kind of sacred or church language, basically, in Ethiopia. And that's where the book is held in the most reverence that it is part of the Ethiopian. Ethiopian Orthodox Tahuahido Church. It also has some currency among the Beta Israel, who are Ethiopian Jews. Yes, yes.

And so that's the one that if people know it, that's the one they, that's the one they're thinking of. But there's also the second book of Enic, which is also called the Slavonic Book of Venic, because it survives in Old Church Slavonic. But it would have originally, the first one was probably originally in Hebrew or Aramaic. or a combination thereof. The second one was either Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, but survives only in Slavonic.

And then the third one is called the Hebrew Enic, because it survives fully in Hebrew. But they, first, second, third, they progress throughout time, although, especially by the time of the third book of Enic, the window for when it could be from is basically a thousand years.

Some people will argue, or maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. You know, some people say like this could have predated Christianity. Maybe it influenced Paul's understanding of cosmology, but some people were like, no, this goes even into the Middle Ages. And again, it's assembled from different parts. And so the answer could be both, right? Parts of it existed.

But it was the final form, the redacted form that we have didn't happen until Babylonian Jews in the 5th, 6th century C.E. put it together. This game is inspired by like one part of like the book of watchers, right? Like one, the book, Enoch one, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the book of watchers, like I said, the first book of Enoch is made up of five different books.

And the book of watchers is the most famous part and the most influential part. The watchers in this case refer to the, the Grigree or the Grigory as they're called in the game. The watchers. Watchers in the sense of being a way. wake, not necessarily in the sense of like looking over or looking at something. So you, if you call them the woke, I guess, if you want. The book of the woke.

They're above the angels, the Greek and Gry, right? Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. So they're in the book of watchers, the idea is that these are, these are essentially the fallen angels. And the names of the angels used in the game pretty much all come from the No Kik literature. Simeyaza is their leader. And then you have other ones.

I'm definitely... Azazzo. Yeah. Azizzo. Samio. Sariel's in the game. Ezekiel. There's like 20 in the book and there's seven, I think, in the game.

Yes. Lucifel is not in the book. But the idea is, well, actually, let me start with who is Enick, right? Yes. I wanted to ask that because we call this in the book of Enoch and we're we're just kind of assuming that Enoch wrote this because obviously we don't know who wrote this and it may not be one person who wrote it all. I mean, he definitely did not. Okay.

A couple of reasons. I had heard of Enoch before I came to El Shida as like a type of Christ like in college or something like as like a prefigure of Christ, right? Yeah. Yes. I feel like it's important for lay people who aren't necessarily steeped in weird apocryphal texts like we are. the part of the book of Enic you have heard of is anytime you've seen something referred to online as biblically accurate, that's actually not from Bible. That's from the book of Enic, which is not in the Bible. Unless you're Ethiopian.

Unless you're Ethiopian. Unless you're Ethiopian church. Yeah. Shout out of Ethiopia. But all the bit, all the angels with all the eyes. That's what people mostly know. Yeah. So Enoch is a real guy in the Bible.

Probably not a real guy in real life. Sorry, probably not. But he's part of the primeval history that is the first 11 chapters of Genesis, which is another book that like Enick is assembled together from disparate traditions. And we're not getting into that. Listen to our podcast Apocopal. You hear us talk about documentary hypothesis and that kind of stuff. But he is the father of Methuselah, who I think most people know as the oldest guy in the Bible. And then he's the great-grandfather of Noah from the flood. Although at the time the part about Enick was written, Noah probably wasn't the flood guy. He was probably just the guy who invented wine. Are you applying the Bible as a retcon? The Bible is extremely retcon. Apocopal's available on many podcast services.

Podcasts related. Somehow the emperor returned to the Bible. Yeah. So, yeah, in the earliest layers of the story, Noah would have just been the guy who invented wine. And then the flood narrative is added later. Wow. And so where we see, where we see Enoch is in Genesis chapter 5. Let's see, verse 21.

When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Enoch were 365. years. Enok walked with God than he was no more because God took him. And that's it. So, uh, what happens is people

extrapolate on that to because, you know, there's something tantalizing, titillating about the idea of like this guy was no more because God took him. Small brain is God took him means he died. Galaxy brain. God took him and gave him jeans.

Yes. He also walked with God. That's interesting verbiage. Oh, walk with God. Yeah. And so what Inokic literature does is interprets that idea as Enick is taken bodily into heaven, which I will note that at this time was not a place where people went when they died. But it was the literal sky where there were big garages full of snow and God live there and the stars skated around. And there were big train tracks that the sun and stuff moved on. I'm going to play that game.

That game sounds good. Well, so, so that stuff is in the phone. Yeah. Diamond, get no more on the phone. Yeah. Heaven was very much seen and understood as a physical place that you could go. If you went up high enough, it was, it was a series of domes, essentially, crystalline domes. And as we see.

And so, so the Anokic literature falls under the broader spectrum of apocalyptic literature, which is very popular in the second temple period, that period between between like 500 BCE until about 70C.E. And so around New Testament times, right? So all of this stuff would be heavily influential on the authors of the New Testament, right? And so apocalyptic literature and arguably Christianity as a whole is just an apocalyptic offshoot of Judaism, right? Because when we talk about apocalyptic literature, we hear the word apocalypse and we think end of the world. what it means is revelatory literature. Apocalypse and revelation are literally mean the same thing. It's just that one's Greek and one's Latin. They both mean an unveiling. And so the idea is

this is cosmic information being revealed to a human who then writes it down. I'm so glad you brought that up because I think I have a theory. One reason that Japanese video games in a particular love to have revelations as a subtitle is because they are drawing upon the translation, which is basically the same. same as Apocalypse. So I think it sounds, when it's translated back in the Japanese, I think it sounds a lot more significant and important, whereas in English speaking, it's like, okay, what is being revealed about this? When I'm, when I play Resident Evil Revelations, what exactly is being revealed to me? And it's really not that much other than that there's a

terrorist organization named after a Greyhound, apparently. Is there a game called Apocalypse, colon, revelations? Oh, God. There should be. There's got, it's got to be like a third person shooter from the Xbox 360 era. It was an apocalypse and there was a revelation. but not an apocalyptic revelations. Man, wow. Something to think about. And so, anyway, within apocalyptic literature, the thing we're looking at is it's basically if cope was a literature. We might, what if we called it a copolyptic literature?

Because the idea is we, Israel and Judah, poor us have been conquered so many times by everyone, including currently. either the Hellenistic Empire or the Romans, whichever time period within the Second Temple period we're looking at. But we're supposed to be the chosen people of a loving and all-powerful God. How do we account for this? And so you have someone who receives a divine revelation that explains, well, here's actually how the world and the universe works, including here's how God's justice is going to play out. And that's why we end up with so many that have to do with the end of the world. Because it's revealing the ways in which God's people will be rewarded. And the enemies of God's people will be cast into the lake of fire or whatever.

Right. It makes so much sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. And so the book of Enoch very much falls within that, at least portions of it. Portions of it have Enoch being toured around creation. And so he explains. Here's what the different levels of heaven are like. He goes down into Shiol, which is the underworld before the concept of hell developed, which was kind of a thing for Christianity.

Like the reason heaven and hell become an afterlife for actual human souls go to them is because originally it wasn't that. We were waiting for either the Messiah, whether he's Jesus or not, to come to usher in a messianic age where we live on an earthly paradise. But the thing is we kept waiting and that kept not happening. And so they were like, well, nobody's getting punished or rewarded in the meantime. And so they go, well, what if we went to the sky or a big fire instead? And that kind of got introduced, which was not originally the idea. The idea was everyone dead goes into a big pit. And then later they're going to be bodily resurrected and either go live in the Garden of Eden or get eaten by a big monster or something.

Right. And so Enick looks and all that. It explains how the weather works. explains how the stars and the constellations work. Then it does a long bit where explains all of history, but everyone is in their fursona. That part's called the animal apocalypse. That's real.

I'm not making that up. I believe you. Yeah. And it's that kind of stuff. There's a little epilogue that's all about how Noah was born and how he was a special baby that was so bright that anyone who looked at him would be blinded. And he looked, basically, Noah looked like a, he was a literal little angel baby.

Oh. And he's like immediately after birth, he like stands up and starts saying like, mom, the world will be destroyed in a flood. I knew that early. He knew they toyed. He didn't get around to building that boat for so long. Terrible twos, am I right? And I didn't even. So I didn't even, the main plot of the book of the watchers is that the angels, they get really, they get really horny for human

women. And so they come down and then they interbreed with humans. They make the Nephilim, right? Yeah. And that's where the Nephilim come from, which in the book of Enic are, are giants. And they're terrible and they're ruining the world. They're eating up all the resources and they start eating the people. They're waring amongst themselves. And so that's why God decides that he's going to flood the world was not because human sin was so great, but because humans had had a lot of sex with angels and, and made giants that were destroying everything. And in fact, the reference in Jude is really him saying, don't have sex with angels. Because he's referred.

When he talks about this, so a lot of people use this. But what if they have like, you know how some people have beautiful eyes. Yeah, I do. Imagine that they had 6,000 of them and every time one blinked, someone died. That's, yeah. Yeah. I mean, so I mean, who could resist? In the game El Shadai, Angel Asario, who is David Bowie, yeah,

Who wouldn't have sex with that angel? Come on. I mean, look, the book of Ena, or the Elshidae, the Ascension of the Metatron does, in fact, posit a world full of sexy boy angels. Yeah, who are all dressed like the cast of a C.W. drama. And the idea of definitely them are just giant people, not giant fallaces like in Elshadai, essentially the Metatron. Yeah. It's weird that God needed to do a flood instead of just inventing the square cube law, which really would have taken those giants. And also, like, the belief in Nephilim, like, you know, for a long time, you know, in history, like, people would find proof of giants. And sometimes they would, like, link that to, oh, this is, this is proof that Neflem existed. Like, you know, like, as an idea. But, yeah, the fallen angels also are the, in this account of things are the, what introduced sin to humanity. It's the angels who bring forbidden knowledge of how to craft weapons and armor and how to, and how to, and also make makeup is one of them because that's supposed to, you know, that leads to sin. Evil, sin. Sin. Sin.

Yeah. And so the different sins are skills and trades introduced to humans by the fallen angels. And so then, yeah, as you go on in the text, the good angels, primarily the archangels, Michael Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, they're dispatched to basically imprison the fallen angels. And then, yeah, you get, and then you get all the other stuff. And that, more or less, that's the first one. The second one, second Enoch adds an important element, which is not only does Enoch remain in heaven, he's actually cleansed with divine fire so that he becomes something more than human. And in both, he essentially becomes the divine scribe, which is how he's portrayed at the beginning of the game. Yes. His job is to record all of existent history.

And that's why in the game he's got the mountains of books behind him. But I assume that's why. But yeah, it's in the second book of Enic where he, where they're like, he becomes something more than human. And by the time of third Enic, they specifically and explicitly call him out as having become the Metatron, which is the highest of the angels. And in fact, he is basically called Yahweh Jr. And he has a little desk next to God's desk. Bowser Jr. Yeah.

And so. The little desk is what got me. The little desk is like one of the funniest things I've ever heard. Yeah. And if you guys, and if the listeners are interested in like angels and demons, third, Enoch is one of,

is probably the most complex angelology from antiquity. And so you'll see lists of all the different kinds of angels and how many there are and the adjectives that apply to them and their jobs and what they do. But, you know, for the sake of this discussion we're having here, You know, the main thing is that this is the point at which Enoch becomes a being full of fire and lightning who has, yeah, 360,000 eyes and his eyelashes are made of lightning and that kind of stuff. It's it's all really explicitly explained.

And yeah, he has a second little throne next to God's big throne. And he essentially, he's a type for Christ. And if people don't know type, you know, in this case means like a prototype for Christ. And so he becomes, he becomes associated. He, Enoch and the Metatron kind of get conflated with elements of Michael the Archangel. And then the angel of the Lord. And essentially it gets to the point where Metatron is so popular that you have rabbinic literature where people are having to make Metatron look bad because there were people who were like, yeah, no problem. There's two gods.

There's God and God, Jr. No problem. And, you know, meanwhile, of course, you have Christians who are. like, yeah, God and God Jr. And that makes, yeah, it totally makes sense. But their God Jr. is named Jesus and not Metatron. But otherwise, it's basically the same thing. Because if you look at, if you look at how Paul understood Jesus, he would have been,

he would have been a human man who was taken up into heaven and purified during his, following his crucifixion, he's purified up in heaven and becomes divine. That's how, that's how in Paul's epistles, um, Jesus is described. And so in that sense, he's very much following the pattern established by Enoch. and then some other characters that figures that we see throughout Second Temple literature that represent kind of the authorized bearer of God's power and that kind of stuff. So that's what the Metatron is. Nobody really knows what the name means.

It might come from, it might be a Greek name that means it might be from Metatronon, which would mean like next to the throne because that's where he sits. He sits next to the throne. Yeah, but nobody really knows what it means. But anyway, you know, if people are interested in hearing me and Chris talk about this for literally hours and hours, we cover all of the Anokic literature on our podcast, Apocryphal's in episodes 39, which is called Rain is Boywater, episode 40 called Devil Got a Hog, episode 61, countless large Gregs, episode 86, God Jr., episode 87, Crisis on 8. 18,000 Earths and episode 105, which is called approximate week five Ravager. That's the one where we talk about this game. But if you, if you want to hear literally like six, seven, eight hours of me and Chris talking

about this weird stuff. Yeah, six seven, yeah. I would recommend checking our episodes. That's an amazing rabbit hole that I did not expect to be able to go down. That's, that's, yeah, I may have to do that. Yeah. Um, thank you. One more Bible.

One more Bible effect. The title. El Shaddai, Ascention of the Metatron, as I believe I said on our episode, there's two things wrong with that title, which is the part before the colon and the part after the colon. So El Shadai, right, is another name for the god of Israel, although probably was originally a discrete Semitic or Canaanite deity. but it later becomes conflated with Yahweh, the big Bible God, and applied to him. And it's often translated as God Almighty. Nobody knows exactly what it means. My preferred theory is that it means the boob god.

No explanation needed. Yeah, no explanation. No, the idea is that there's a mountain on each edge of the earth. And so he's the God who encompasses everything from one mountain to the other. He's truly the god of the cleavage, which is the earth. Okay. So Elshadai the boob god. The other problem is that he doesn't become Metatron.

He does ascend. It is a platformer, so he does go up a lot. So ascension is fine. But it could have been called Enic Ascension of Enic. I think is probably what I would have personally said. Enic, Ascension of Enic, Colon revelation, colon apocalypse. Yeah. My suggested title for it was Boyaneta.

which I don't I don't know if that I don't know if that was going to catch up I believe the original working title was angelic I believe Chris you remember what your suggested title was for it on a podcast I don't want to say it because it's mean oh really you sure you definitely mean and I don't want to I don't want to be mean okay so I definitely we're on video and I'm getting looked at right now so no I don't want to okay okay well it wasn't Chris but somebody might have called it Bayonaut a good game Good time. Okay. Now, you mentioned Jesus, and Jesus is Sir Not appearing in this game, but we do have a guy hanging out most of the time called Lucifel. Now, I should stress, so far, listeners, you've heard many voices here, and all three of our guests are some flavor of Christian. I, I myself am Jewish. I have seen all five of the prophecy movies that originally starred Christopher.

for Walkin, but eventually he stopped showing up. So that's about the limit of my knowledge of angels and such. So when I see her, when I hear in the name Lucifel, is that Lucifer? Is it, is it, are they related? What's, what's happening there? Does anyone know the, the story behind that? Well, my, my thought on that, I mean, it's clearly meant to evoke Lucifer, right? Which, the origins of, the origins of Satan and the devil is, that's a whole other, that could be a very long podcast, but I think that, I think changing the name here from Lucifer to Lucifel is just to make it adhere to the naming convention of most angels, which is ending what we call a theophoric name, name bearing an element of God to the L. So just like Michael, Mikhail, Gabriel, Raphael. So now we have Lucifel,

but I think we're supposed to understand it as like this is the pre-fallen Lucifer when he's still just an angel, even though he's just a hunky boy with a cell phone talking to the, uh, divine counsel. David, I would also to your earlier say, but I would say I was raised Christian. I would not necessarily classify myself as a Christian anymore.

But, and in terms of Lucifal, I think you're completely right that the naming convention was in order to like align with all the other angels and that in Japanese, there's no differentiation between L&R sounds. And this was an original creation from Soaki,

the games director. And like this character was kind of created as a new edition in order to like kind of insert himself into the game of it. I think it's his kind of avatar. He does. They do resemble each other. He's a much more modern character with the, you know, the 100-year-a umbrella and the cell phone.

And like, he's kind of an interloper in the Book of Enoch. Yeah. We mentioned on the show, like the whole premise of Apocrypal's is that Benito and I classify ourselves as non-believers. Both of us raised in the church as adults, not. practicing or believing. And Christian mythology is so interesting. Like it is what, yeah, like the more, the deeper you get like, yeah, like you guys, like, yeah, like, it's, and that's part of what brought me to this game.

It's like, like, the, you know, Evangelion was already a thing I liked. I was like, oh, wait, this is even more insane than Evangelian. Oh, should I? Yeah. So we, we tend to on Apocopal's one of the, I actually had to describe the show to my dentist the other day, uh, because she was asking about what I do. And I was like, yeah, we are two. comics writers who say that we take the Bible exactly as seriously as we take Superman, but you have to understand that we take Superman very seriously.

Yeah. And our other refrain is if you can understand X-Men, you can understand the Bible. Which no one can. Yeah. Well, and again, like part of what drew me to El Shadai to go work at this company was that it was like this thing based on Christian apocrypha. reflected through the lens of this Japanese development team. And then once I got into the company and the deeper end development, I realized actually behind the whole thing,

the actual mastermind behind this game is someone who was raised Hindu, which made it even more interesting to me. That, like, the person pulling the strings, like the CEO of Ignition was an Indian guy who was raised Hindu. And this was, like, really he was the one who, like, put the first spark of idea brought together the team to make this game happen, which kind of like four-dimensional chess, I was like, what does that even mean?

Right? Very interesting. Like this cross-cultural religious insanity. Well, on that note, then, let's start to talk about the people who actually made the game. As you mentioned, this game was developed and published by Ignition. The development studio was Ignition Tokyo. The larger company was Ignition Entertainment,

which existed for quite a while, but then sort of went away all of a sudden. Well, so Ignition Entertainment, I give a little context. It was fully owned by UTV, which was at the time the number one Bollywood Film Studio and Television Broadcasting Network in India, which by the time I was, the time I left Ignition, by the time Ignition went out of business, it was later purchased and became Disney India. Oh.

And the CEO of Ignition and his brother were kind of given carte blanche to like form a game studio and the idea of making three original IPs, one in the U.S., one in UK, and one in Japan, and also pick up and publish other games. Are you telling me that El Shaddai, Inok, El Shadai, of the Metatron's own, Inok, could be in Kingdom Hearts. Yes. No, so actually, shockingly, Disney sold the rights to El Shadai back to Swahawakis. That's why there's tons of cell phone games and manga to this day.

So he actually got the rights back. So no, he couldn't. Sadly, Enok can not. be a Disney princess. Like, no. But there was a window where he could have been. There was a window where he could have been. So, yeah, it's, and like,

you know, and like, the core staff was like ex-Capcom, X Clover. Or did you get into Diamond? Yeah. Yes. So the main figure at the top of this pyramid here is Sawaki Takayasu. He is credited as director and character designer.

And his first credit in games is all the way back at Devil May Cry 2001. He was credited as an artwork. But then he has many credits on Clover Studios. some platinum games titles. And much more recently, like within the last few months, he was recently announced as the new head of Pankle, Japan. Ponkel being the vampire survivors people.

They're opening a new studio here in Japan. So that's a big gig for him. Yeah. That's very cool, yeah. Producer of the game is Masato Kimura. He also joined Capcom back in 1999. He also worked on Mini Clover titles. Like Tehatsu, he worked on Devil May Cry and those such games.

and I also want to highlight Kashi Oda whose credited as head of production and his credits go way back to the 90s and he's often credited in stuff like

motion design and face modeling so he must have been working a lot in the sort of graphics department and probably working with actors and

motion capture people for Sega and Capcom. So he has a lot of credits in those departments running right through up the

90s or early aughts right up until this game sort of came to existence. Yeah, there's a lot

of the same like Capcom Devil May Cry DNA that splits off into platinum in this game, like that hence boynetta. Yeah, in fact, I'm surprised they didn't go with Angel May Cry. Maybe they thought that was too close.

Well, and DMC was definitely like a launching point, but I think part of the concept was to make it a more user-friendly simpler, like stripped down, simple, you're like not as complicated, no inventory, and the idea that would be more accessible, but still

keep it challenging, which is a tough thing to do. Yeah, but I know that Soaki's idea was really like, it's more about the visuals and the experience and a little bit less about the, you know, the scope of the game. It was all, it was from the beginning actually kind of scoped to be kind of a small, it was small to mid-scope game. It was never meant to be this like colossal, like, you know, 20-level thing also, you know. Mm-hmm. So let's get into the cast of characters who are as, are, as are,

largely drawn from the sources we talked about earlier. So the hero of the game, the protagonist is a man named Enoch, and the video version is voiced by Shinitru Miki in Japanese, or Blake Ritson in English. So Shinichumiki, you might know him as the longtime voice of Akira in Virtual Fighter, or he voices Charazard in many forms. So he's out there shouting Pokemon names in the microphone. Good for him. That's a good gig you can get it.

Blake Ritson is British, and the only credit I could find, that of some note to me was he played Griggs of Vinheim in Dark Souls. I think all the voices were recorded in London, I think. That would make sense because Lucipel. For the English dub, yeah. And the Lucille is like a big, you know, Jason Isaacs. Yes, Lucipel, the English voice is Jason Isaacs, who's frankly an actor of, I think he's only more famous today.

I think he was, he's probably grown in stature since then. He's, you know, I think of him personally as the, the ornery doctor from Event Horizon. but he's been in a talking about the mirror universe's own Jason Isaacs yeah Star Trek Discovery is Jason Isaac yeah

the guy who showed Whole Hog on the White Lotus I'll take your word for that I have not seen that program but yes

that Jason Isaacs a Japanese was Ryota Takuchi All the jokes you couldn't make on Apocryphals are coming out now that's right

okay that's right fine because White Lotus Season 3 had not been filmed yet when we did our

episode to use true true and basically And basically, Enoch and Lucifel are a team in that Enoch is running around the world and doing all this stuff. And periodically he runs into Lucifel, who is talking on a cell phone, presumably to God, the God, up in heaven somewhere. And this game takes place over an inconceivable amount of time. They suggest that 100 years have passed since the game starts in like the midpoint of the game.

And at one point Enoch takes a nap and I think it's like 10 years long. but time is very funny here with we made so many jokes about what if it is it today, what is it tomorrow, because Lucifel seems to exist outside of this timeline because Lucifer in particular is wearing very modern clothes. He has a cell phone, not a smartphone, not that futuristic, but he has a cell phone.

Feature phone. Yeah, and he's got a plastic umbrella, and he sees, so we don't really know what time means to these people. They're not really people, I guess, but these characters. We don't know what time means to them, but we know as a character, we are we are journeying forward with enoch on his quest but then you got lucival out here who seemingly

exists outside of that entirely i will say like you know it looks i love this game it has issues and one of the issues i think is that enoch does feel like out of like you know like the fact that that that disconnect between lucynolds amount of knowledge and your amount of knowledge as enoch the protagonist it does make you feel like a little bit of like a simpleton and like like you don't really know what's going on just a pawn like the whole time in the game because of lucifo Yeah, there's no, there's not a lot of explanation and there's not a lot of coherence to what you're doing. No, it's very abstract. Yeah, I feel like that's a barrier.

This is a game that made me say a phrase that does not get used often in the English language, which is that I really wish this third person spectacle fighter action game was more biblically accurate. See, I think part of the appeal of Elshadai is the impressionistic, like, you know, like, kind of like vagueness of it all. But that doesn't make it it holds together as cohesive, but it is very, like, ambitious in its abstraction. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. I think there's a lot of that that works for it and against it in that, like, the plot and the locations are very abstract and stylized and visually. they're memorable

like you can all remember what the first level looks like because it's very weird it's very strange aesthetic but like does it really convey what's happening exactly? Right, they're very disjointed in a way that makes them kind of inherently interesting but it makes it hard for you to be like, where am I am, what am I doing? Yeah, you're not left with much to hang on to but like the ride

was weird and trippy and interesting but like if you're trying to actually make sense of the Book of Enoch it's abstract. So the Nephilim, the Nephlim are here, but yes, they are not giants or really particularly humanoid at all in this game. They're, in fact, adorable abominations. They're very rounded and cute-looking. However, Luciferliel tells us that the Nephilim are indeed very problematic, because they're eating each other, and as they eat each other, they grow stronger

and more angrier. At one point, they eat one of the angels and becomes a boss. So the nephalum are trouble to the world, but when you see them in the game, they're super cute, and really don't interfere with you in any way. If anything, they help you. Anyone who's listening who is familiar with Moomin? Nephlin look exactly like the hat of fatteners from Mooman. They look like tall white hot dogs with hands. See, I think they're more phallic than you're letting on.

I think they're phallic on purpose. I got to say, I worked on this game. I have a plush Nephilim, and I think they're fowlick on purpose. I think it's part of the whole be shown in, like, the secret is it part of these part of the appeal of El Shidae in Japan was like this very, like, Bishonan appeal. If you're going to explain that diamond more. Bishonin is a Japanese term for basically a beautiful boy. So like, shonin is basically collection, you know, boy.

And B. is just pretty. So you got Bishonin and you got B. Shogel is like the next level from that, which is like, you're like a lot of fandom, like boy love. Like, like, yeah, like having really sexy male characters and like masculine energy. And like, I think the Nephilim is like, kind of a partially a joke on that

in a way the way they look somehow way more sexually charged to be walking around in jeans and no shirt than like Kratos

you know like like well technically more clothes like inok like his armor like bursts off of him he has like a sailor moon style like clothes flying off

his body moment in the game while you're looking those those tight jeans the jeans no they're really tight they're half lycra I own a pair.

They're very, very form of it. Wow. I remember we obviously, obviously we talked at length about the genes when we discussed this on our podcast. But I actually, I looked up on eBay to see if there were any available for sale and there were none. Well, they reproduced them like three, like right after COVID, they reproduced the jeans for the 10th anniversary of El Shadadha. Wow. Yeah. My pair is getting a little threadbare and I only have the Lucifal ones.

I don't have the Enoch ones. So I actually consider buying it, but they sold out really fast. this leads me to a question that I wanted to ask, because I didn't ask this on Apocrypal's, and I think it'll be more interesting now that there's all four of us. What religious figure do you think would be funniest to have a pair of jeans other than Enoch? I feel like, I mean, I feel like the obvious answer is like. I can see Buddha in jeans. That's not that weird to me.

I feel like the obvious one is Jesus, like if you walked into a Catholic church and they had the crucifix and Jesus. and Jesus was wearing jeans. Like that would, you would, you would break your hands. I can see like youth group, youth group, Galakritar Jesus and like, he gets down off the cross and starts playing the drum set. Yeah. I think like, you know, Vishnu in jeans or like, you know, Canon in jeans or something. Like Ganesh.

Can we get Ganesh in some large jeans? I think, uh, Joseph, if that was his, if he had jeans of many colors, would also be good. Oh, boy. I want those jeans. Sign me up for that. Do you have anybody? I just said Ganesh. Oh, that's your, that's your pick.

Are you tuning me out? What is this, Apocrypha? No, I just, I didn't know. That was part of a different, that was part of a conversation. I didn't know if you had a separate pick. You're like elephants and jeans. I get it. It's cool.

Yeah. To bring it back. Like Babbar is bad boy cousin. To bring it back to Elshadai, I think, you know, once you get into the first level of the game, it's very action forward. You kind of realize, you kind of realize, It is a little bit of like fight enemies, run forward, you know, fights more enemies, run a little bit, maybe a little exploration, but not too much early on, right? And like I think, you know, when you realize, oh, there's not so much story, there's not like

NPCs to talk to, there's not like non-combat things to do. I think the game would have actually benefited from like them trying to have some storytelling in the levels themselves because there's not much, you know. Yeah, it's a pretty cutscene heavy game. Yeah, there are a lot of cutscenes. The cutscenes are fun, but that's the only place the story is really, like, you know, adult out. Yeah, you encounter – if you look around for them, you can encounter the Freeman who will hand you a little note, and the little note will give you some background about what's happening in the game somewhere, depending on where you find them. A lot of the notes mention Ishtar, which I wanted to ask.

So, you know, as an American who grew up in the 80s, of course, Ishtar, to me, is famously the worst movie ever made, even though I've never seen it, so I don't know if it's good or not. What is Ishtar in this context? Does anyone know? Well, I mean, so I mean, that's not a, you know, that's not a name from the Jewish lore that is primarily being pulled from. But it is, you know, near Eastern deity. I mean, Ishtar is goddess of war and love, maybe both. Okay. So, I mean, I like, why her in particular? I'm not 100% sure unless there's, unless they're trying to.

unless they're trying to intentionally draw a parallel. If you could look at Enoch and Ishtar theoretically both as similar types of, you could draw a parallel with Jesus with both of those. And so maybe that's intentional. I would have to think more about that. But like, I don't know. It's actually, it's a little strange to me. Why Ishtar and not someone else.

Okay. When she does appear in the game, she's like a youth. Like late in the game. As I understand it, there's a character whose name is Nana, a little girl, who at first you see her, she's riding Nephilim. And then when Enoch takes that long nap, I mentioned, she grows up into an adult. And I don't know that she becomes Ishtar so much as she seems to channel Ishtar. Yeah, I think the idea is that Ishtar lost her bodily form and she was, like,

trapped in like a twilight dimension until she's able to, like, possess the child's body, although now an adult. And I don't know if Nana is supposed to be a reference to Innana, which would be another, you know, Mesopotamian goddess who would be fairly similar to Ishtar. I think she is meant to be a reference to Inana. And I do believe, like, you know, thinking back to all this time ago, that there were, you know, Swaki did have plans to continue the story and that, and that Ishtar was going to become a main character in like a second or third game. And I think maybe in some of the cell phone games he's made, like she has reappeared in the manga. I haven't kept up with it all. And definitely the art books was more of her.

But yeah, she was meant to be a larger character later in the narrative. So we have the Angels, the Fallen Angels, A.K.A. the Watchers, A.K. the Grigory. And the names we've all heard before so far are Azazel, Sariel, Ezekiel, Barakal, Armaros, Noel there, Arachiel, and Semiziah. I should not pronounce that. Semiziah? Samizza. I think it's Simiazza. Samyazza.

Okay. Thank you very much. And the angels, these group the seven, they're essentially your quest. Like when the game starts, Lucifer tells Enoch that, hey, you need to go onto the earth and find all these seven fallen angels and take care of them. Because if you don't do this, there's going to be a giant flood and that's going to wipe out the people. So we want you to do sort of, I guess, you're the tip of the arrow, I guess, right? You're going in there ahead of everything else. and you're going to take care of this, and that way we don't have to wipe out all the earth.

But you only encounter some of the angels during the game. Some of them you'll fight many, many times in a row, and the game has an unusual practice where it's like, you'll be in a level and an angel will just appear, and you'll fight them. And win or lose, the game just keeps going. Indeed, the first time you fight an angel, you will probably lose because, A, you don't know what you're doing, and B, you don't even have a weapon yet. So they will probably kick your ass, but it doesn't matter because the game keeps going. Anyway, so only until very late in the game in specific situations do you actually have to fight and defeat the angel.

And in those cases, they will always turn into something else. It's like, oh, you beat my humanoid form. Well, check this out. And then they get all freaky, right? Very freaky. Some good monsters in this game. Also, many of the angels, like the face character angels who you fight, are based on celebrities. Like, some of them are obvious.

Others are not as obvious, but like there was some point while I was working in this game where I found development documents where like literally like a picture of David Bowie was there next to Sariel. And it's like, aha. Like it's not just me who sees this. So yeah, like some of them more obvious than others. But I found that very intriguing and interesting and very and very soaki, very like, you know, pulled from pop culture, this mishmash of influences, nothing to do with actual Book of Enoch at all, you know.

Well, Armoros clearly believes he is Michael Jackson. Oh, Armoros is 1,000% Michael Jackson. Swahki love... I mean, MJ was huge in Japan and like Swaki. Yeah, it's... And he moved on. And only recently deceased at that point as well. I mean, he passed in 2009, so probably during the course of this game at some point,

right. It was very fresh. They lost their hero. And I believe, like, the female one, she's, like, inspired by the Oracle from the Matrix. And the one old guy... Gloria, I forget her last name. Yeah. And then the old guy is like,

flipping Marlon Brando, I think. Oh, so Father of Superman. Okay. Yeah, it's all connected. Yeah, it's all connected. You don't see much of them, but the archangels do come up from time to time. Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Uriel. Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, all introduce your weapons,

which we'll get to in a moment. But Uriel is actually kind of like your backup. Once you get to know Uriel, you can summon him, and he helps out in something called, overboosts, which we'll get into in the gameplay. But Uriel actually does come into the battle and help you if you summon him. And the other three just kind of talk to you sometimes. So, you know, moral support, really. Moral support. So let's talk about what the actual gameplay is like, because as we described so far, there's a lot of backstory, but the actual

game itself is fairly straightforward. And that you have, you know, you've got Enoch, you've got Lucifel, you have your goal, you're told that these seven fall of angels have built themselves a tower And somehow this tower is shielded from God's view. Like, God can't see in there, so God can't do anything in there. But Enoch can get in there. And once you're in there, you're exploring the tower and going higher and higher and higher and fighting these monsters and the angels and eventually you reach the top. But the way this game looks, nothing here looks anything like any earth that I've been to. And I've been to the, I've been on the earth for quite a while now.

I've never seen any part of the earth that looks white like this, which I think, as we've discussed already, it's very arresting and gripping as a visual, but also none of it really has any sort of, it's completely ungrounded. So at some point,

if you're not 100% on board, you're probably going to feel like, okay, now I'm on another, I'm now on another floating platform, running to another floating platform, except it's green this time instead of blue, you know? I can see both opinions in the world.

What's interesting about Alshadai, it's incredibly surreal yet not cohesive at all. Like, every level is weird and strange and memorable, but, like, doesn't look anything like the thing you did before, really? Yeah. Each level of the tower is essentially its own planet, I would say. Well, and I'll say development of this game also presented challenges because it's on a very strange abandoned engine called Gamebrio, which even at the time was not very well supported. You know, this was a while ago before U.E Unreal Engine and Unity had become, like, you know, de rigour. But, like, yeah, it was definitely a weird, a weird engine that presented challenges for the development team.

Yeah, and it's, it's, I mentioned earlier, like, how there's, like, kind of a lack of cohesion. Like, you saying that it's, it's like every level of its own planet, I think is accurate, because sometimes it's like, you're fighting on Rainbow Road or in a nightclub. And then it's like, no, now you're on big mushrooms. Now you're on the, now you're doing the Final Fantasy 7 bike sequence. Yeah, now you're, now you're a motorcycle and now you're in a side scroller. And I think there's a lot of, the one thing I will always give to this game is there's a lot of ambition to be interesting, which I would much rather have than a call of duty. You can be a memorable near-miss slash failure is better than like a, you know, okay Me Too game that's just like everybody else, you know. Yeah, I mean, look, I am a noted Sudagoiji fan, so I love the game that's almost good.

Yeah, I think Elshinae has Grasshopper Energy. Like, you know, it is, it's quirky. And that's part of what you do. It's like, I knew this was never going to be a nine or ten, a nine or a ten out of ten. But I was like, if this could be a really memorable weird 6.5, I'm on board. Well, we'll get to the scores later. For now, let's talk about the actual gameplay, because as we alluded to, it is, it's combat, but it's also very simplified compared to other games like this. Well, it's, it's rock, paper, scissors.

And that was part of the idea of Kimura and, like, oh, let's make it Pokemon. Let's make it and make it rock paper, scissors. Yeah. But from a button standpoint, it is extremely simple in that you have a jump button. You could double jump. There is only one attack button. There's only one attack button. And it's basically you can sort of time it.

You can hold it down and charge an attack. You can combine the attack button with some of the other buttons. But basically, there is one attack button. So you don't have to worry about lights and heavies and such. There's one attack button, really. You've got a block button. Yes, you can parry if you block it just the right time. I cannot do that.

The left L1 or the left bumper is the purify button. The way this game works is that the weapons over time will degrade, and they can be broken if you get your ass kicked. But you can at any time stop and purify your weapon and basically repair it. But this does take a second or two, so you don't want to do this in the middle of combat, or at least not when you're next to somebody because they'll smack you in the face and you'll be interrupted. You can also steal weapons from enemies, which happens a lot. A lot of enemies will attack you. Many times you'll be cornered by multiple enemies.

with different weapons, and that's your opportunity to sort of change. Like, oh, well, I have this one, but if I beat this guy down a little bit, I can take his weapon, and then I'll change that one and use that one around. And sometimes you just find the weapons sitting around, especially during boss battles, they'll just sort of drop the weapons into the arena. It's like, okay, you want to change weapons? Go ahead. Because all the weapons have sort of a hierarchy, and if you're using the wrong one, you can,

it can be very difficult. In fact, late in the game, the wrong weapon will literally do nothing. You will basically bounce off your enemy. It's like, okay, well, you need to change weapons because this one will work anymore. And combat kind of happens in an instance. It's not like it happens just like while you're walking around. It kind of stops and like combat starts. It's almost like an RPG that way.

A little bit, yeah. The enemy sort of pounce, sort of surprise attack you, and you cannot move on until you beat all the enemies who are basically teleporting in usually one at a time. You're very seldom facing more than I would say three enemies at once. Like that's, and that's rare. It's usually one or two. And I'll say combat against three enemies does require a lot of pinpoint, dodging, and careful of consideration.

You can't just button mash. That's one thing about that'll show you. You do kind of have to pay attention. It's not as easy. As much as they wanted it to be accessible, there's a point at which it gets a little hard. You know, yeah. It can get tricky, absolutely.

And you definitely get surrounded and you can get comboed. It can happen. But the game is generous in the fact that there's not a live system, but if you get knocked out, you can mash buttons and get back up. and there's no real indication of how many times you can do that. Indeed, this game has no HUD whatsoever. There's no heads-up display at all when you're playing the game. Which was pretty avant-garde at that point, for an action game.

You're allowed to turn it on if you beat the game. You can basically turn it on after you beat the game to play it like a more traditional title. But when you first play the game, there is no information on screen at all. I think if you pause the game, it will show you your boost level, but that's it. otherwise you have nothing, no, nothing to work with as far as, you know, health or lives. The only real indication of that department is Enoch's armor. As you get beat up, his armor will break off. The blue jeans stay on.

The blue jeans never come off. But he can get beat down to the point where he has no armor on whatsoever. And he's just a shirtless man in jeans. The jeans stay on. Absolutely. So there are basically three weapons. I think he should get stronger when he's only in his jeans. That would be fair.

There are basically three weapons, and I would say they all have a sort of a rock-picked or scissors hierarchy. You've got the main one, which is the arc. It's basically a big blade. It's probably arch, right? A-R-C-H, arch. And... It only occurred to me, like, going back to it for this, that it's an arch, both because of its shape and also because arch angels.

Yeah, yeah, probably. Right? Probably, yeah. I would think so, yes. It took me three years to get that. But it looks like a, it looks like a bow, but you're hitting people with it like a sword. Yeah, it's pretty cool as weapons go. It's definitely just, it's more distinct than the other two, I would say.

It's good for slashing. When you have the arch equipped, you can slowly descend while falling. So it's really good to have during the platform sections. The gale, which is basically a little set of paper airplanes that fly next to you, those are for shooting people. So they're really good at long range attacks and they're really good against. the enemies that try to run away from you, which there are some of those. But it doesn't really hit that hard. I thought they kind of had homie buildings, but they're very weak. Yeah, right.

Like, yeah, like when you're, if you're facing someone and you shoot at them, it will basically head for them. But if they're moving very fast, it will not like pursue them like a, you know, it's not like a heat-seek missile or anything, but you can, you can quickly overwhelm enemies who aren't that fast. Like, in a big boss battle, if you want to play Keepaway, you can hang out over here and pepper the boss with, you know, the little shots. And then there's the veil, which is basically a big, a shield and it is a shield and that if you block it enhances your defense and it's very slow but it also hits very hard and most of the boss battles I would say it's good idea to have the veil

because it does the most damage and the shortest amount of hits and it can help you defend against big attacks so veil is usually the way to go against bosses but not always not always I'll say as a third weapon is a little anti-comactic because it's more defensive you know it's not as like showy really yeah no but really if you think about it it truly is is a rock, paper, scissors, because veil is the rock and arched the scissors, and gale is the paper. Like, they look at the paper airplane, so I think it really is a literal rock, paper, scissors happening. There's also overboost, which you learn pretty late in the game, and that's, again, tied to a meter you cannot see.

But if you trigger the overboost, you go into sort of a frenzy mode, you, your attacks do more damage, you'll refresh your health. You can summon Uriel to do kind of crazy big attacks with you. it's really important for a late boss battle, and I actually had to look it up again because I forgot how it worked. I was stuck on a late boss. Like, all my attacks are not doing any damage here.

What am I supposed to do? And I looked it up. It's like, oh, I have to push these buttons, which I haven't pressed. Okay. But yeah, as a game, it is relatively linear. You're basically running down, whether it's 3D or 2D,

you're generally heading down one single path. There are some branches you can take. There is exploration to be found if you want to maybe meet more Freeman, or there are some weird places where you sort of go into this sort of like void, and then you're in a different place where the darkness is coming up from the bottom, and you need basically very quickly escape the darkness, or if it catches you, you're dead. But in those zones, you can recover the bones of Ishtar. Now, an expert player out there probably found all the bones of Ishtar and knows what that happens. I am not a expert player. Whenever I found myself with those places, I just ran away from the darkness as fast as possibly could

because I didn't want to die. But that's a little thing you can do when you're not pursuing the main story if you're good at looking around because there's a lot of things like that. It's a little bit to lore here and there, more challenges. I don't know if it unlocks something.

I honestly don't know because I couldn't find them. Yeah, I don't remember if I ever did all of those or not. I think the reward isn't that great, if I recall correctly. but yeah there are some little things peppered throughout but you know it's funny thinking back on this game I always thought that the second level was overall

the best like paste and in terms of exploration and combat and visuals like yeah I think as the game goes on like it becomes a little more like you know random in to what you're doing like you know like the bike level the 2D level it be it's like there's not a lot of coherence and consistency through the second half of the game

whereas the first two levels are pretty much like what you would kind of expect from a 3D action platform or combat game. One thing worth mentioning right at the top is that the right stick doesn't really do anything. You cannot move the camera. And while I'm sure this was deliberate from the developers, what this also means is that when you're in certain positions and you have to jump around, you can't move the camera and you might get angry at that because you can't properly picture, you know, you can't probably move the camera so you don't feel like you have the right view of where you're jumping from

where you're jumping two. That definitely pissed me off a couple times. But in general, the game is good as all the saving. And if you fall down, you usually go right back to where you were. It's not a lot, it's not very punishing that respect. It's very much like, oh, you missed, we'll just try it again. But there are a lot of bottledless pits, which you know, you wouldn't necessarily expect in them, not on a modern game, but even a game back then is like, well, there's a lot of bottomless pits. Yeah, things just floating over nowhere and things that will bounce you down and, you know. Again, it's all surreal landscape, so why not, I guess? But there were definitely a couple times where it's like, I cannot, I'm literally jumping

where I cannot see where I'm jumping to. This is, I wish I could, I wish I could see where I'm going. Just let me move the stick here. So, Shane, do you have an idea how long El Shidae was in development? I'm curious. I would say about two years, maybe a little more. Yeah. Because when I came on board, it had already been in development for probably at least a year.

And I think it launched about a year after I came on board. And that, yeah, as I said, like, there were plans initially for it to be longer. And then I was kind of resoped and made, you know, subtractive design. Because, you know, the guys in charge of the company were very big fans of team eco. And, like, the idea of, like, less is more. And, like, let's, let's pare it down and just do what we, you know, just do the core product here. So I think it got kind of pared down from one point. And it was the first title from Ignition to ship, you know, and like, and, and, you know, because of, like,

the pedigree of people involved in Japan. A lot of them had come from other companies. You know, some people on the publishing side, they come from Square Annex and stuff. Like, so like, you know, as it was like getting promoted in Japan, it actually had a lot of,

a lot of excitement. And, you know, like, this was a long time ago, 15 years ago, like, the memetic nature of its marketing is what we get into was like a big deal,

you know? So like, yeah, it definitely like, you know, when I saw it about a year out, I could see the potential in this. Like, like,

I was like, even if the gameplay isn't DMC, Like the aesthetic and like approach to it was interesting and unique. And like, yeah, it felt like kind of a grasshopper way, something that like could be a cool, weird, interesting action title for Japan that had a chance in Japan, maybe less so in the West, just based on how weird it was. But, yeah. Yeah, I would say the really the big moment for El Shaddai was when a trailer, I don't if it was E3 or it was maybe before E3, but definitely early 2010 is when the first trailer got out there. And that took the internet by storm because. basically what happens to the trailer is

you've got Enoch and he's wearing this big suit of armor and he's been to Lucefeld. And they have a quick conversation where Lucefeld says, hey, are you sure you've got enough armor? Which in Japanese is, Sondhobu'll be, what, Dajobu, dao, dajohnabu. And Inek responds like, oh yeah, it's fine, don't worry about me.

Daigua, Mondei. And then he goes down to the earth and it really gets his ass kicked. Just totally beat down, like destroyed. Then the game, the trailer sort of rewinds and you see it again. and the same conversation happens. But this time,

Enoch turns to Lucefeld, and he's like, Ichbanii no, I'll which is like, basically give me the best you got. Give me what you got. Whatever you got, give me the best one you've got.

And that's when he gets the magic white armor, and that's how the game starts. And those three lines, particular, were huge in Japan. They became instant meme fodder. You know, videos,

still images, whatever you want, it was everywhere. I can tell you, here in Osaka, I used to go shopping, at a game store called A2. I think it's since it bought out and it's part of the Segreya chain, but A2 used to be its own shop.

And I remember going to A2 one day. And in the coin tray, if you ever shopping in Japan at a store, you basically put your money in a tray for the staff and they'll put your change in the tray and the receipt. Like, that's how it works. You don't usually hand your money to the staff. Their coin tray was a giant still of Enoch saying, Daiduja, Mondain. Wow. Like this so, this meme escaped the internet containment. It was in the real world.

Yeah. And it was just massive. And they also had, you know, they made tie-ups with, again, like the jeans are with this cool, cool Japanese company called Edwin Jeans that's still around that is like kind of a high-end boutique jeans manufacturer. And, like, you know, those are produced to come out, like, around when the game came out. Or like, and the toys were with Bandai and the soundtrack was on Digi from Squaring. So, like, for any, it was ostensibly an indie game, really. I mean, it had a budget behind it, but not like, it wasn't a known publisher, wasn't a known entity. for a game that came out of nowhere, it kind of did land, like, weirdly fully formed as an IP in Japan.

What was the, like, why genes? Like, at what point? Because that seems, if you're coming to it from, you know, the book of Enoch perspective, that seems like the weirdest thing in the entire game. Because I've already heard of all the Nephilim and angels. Yeah, I think it actually is the weirdest thing in the game. Like, if I think about it, like, it really. Where did the genes come from? I mean, all I can say is that, like, Takasso-Sawaki is a really stylish, quirky, introverted guy in a very, like, Tetsu No Mura kind of way, right?

Like, when you meet him, he, like, strikes a figure and he's dressed really, really interesting, weird, co-tur clothes. And, like, yeah, I think he just has a fashion-forward mindset, and that was a part that he really wanted to put in the game. And I think secretly, it was the secret sauce. Like, if you think about El Shadai in 2026, you probably are thinking about the jeans. I don't know, right? Like, in a way, I think about the genes. Yeah, I think about it. If this game is 15 years ago, the fact that, like, dealt with memes and fashion and, like, things outside the game, you know, are kind of more memorable than the game itself is, yeah, in a way it's forward thinking to the culture we live in now.

Yeah, to me, like, the genes are the biggest thing about the game. Like, it's very much like, oh, yeah, it's, it's kind of inspired by. the book of Enick, but they gave him jeans. Like, I would mention that before anything else about the game. No shirt. No shirt, no shoes. Armor made out of iPods. Jeans.

Well, and the jeans are amazing. Like, in the inside of the jeans, there's, like, stitching of, like, the language. You're like, whatever. There's, like, all kind of weird, like, details in the jeans that are, like, from the game, too. I want the jeans so bad. Yeah, I should have. I wish I wish I had missed them. Now, knowing that, like, the second you said you had a plush nephalim, I was like, that's the new, that's the new thing I need.

The plus deflin is huge. I mean, it's in my closet. I could go get it. Yeah, the flush nephalum is, like, ridiculous, actually. Yeah, that's what you need. Amazing. But, yeah, the jeans were a big part of everything. Indeed, I remember, so at TGIS 2010, Ignition had their own booth, and essentially the entire booth was El Shaddai.

And all the booth attendants were ladies wearing jeans and, I think, little. I think little crop tops, I believe they even had a little temporary tattoo on their... We did have crop tops. I believe my CEO, yeah, he made sure to cast the entire booth. So, yeah. Yeah, as, well, I mean, I say the style of the time, it's still primitive style of TGS. They still do a lot of, you know, quote, unquote, booth babes, but still, they were uniquely sort of unified in that case with that. They all had the same outfit on, and it was very much a call to Enoch's outfit in the game.

Not Lucille. They were definitely dressed as Enoch. Did they have any of the iPod armor? I think if we, I don't know if I have any pictures. Again, it's that's a problem. It's TGS 2010, so you have to, it's hard to find pictures of that because most English-Leges websites have basically stopped existing from that point. And if you find a Japanese website from TGF 2010, any pictures they have are about this big,

listeners, I put my fingers very close together because the Japanese Internet has traditionally been very bad about sharing images because of, I don't know, I guess they're worried about, they're worried about offending someone, I think, or interfering with someone's rights. So, like, most pictures on the internet in Japan are very small or just not even there. Like, look at Japanese Wikipedia. That's my case. And all my evidence. Look at Japanese Wikipedia.

Look at how few pictures are on Japanese Wikipedia. It is ridiculous. I was hoping to search through my old digital camera archives to find the photos I took of the Elshadai Cafe. There was a pop-up cafe around. the launch that I attended. And as an aside, I was excited to go because, you know, I worked on the game.

I loved El Shadi. And, like, I went with some co-workers. And we went in there and we realized as we were enjoying our El Shadi-themed food and drinks, that, like, it was probably 80 or 90% women. This is in Tokyo. It was mostly, it was almost all women in the El Shidae cafe. It was, like, very few men. And I was like, this is interesting.

This is an interesting clientele. This game definitely appeals to, like, fans of Bishonan. And, yeah, I think that that was the core contingency of El Shadi fans in Tokyo. I don't have my fingers on the pulse of the fandom, but I would imagine that when this game came out and when it was presenting these two very beautiful men at the center of things, you know, Enoch Lucefell, are both beautiful in their own way.

I would assume a lot of women, the Fujoshi, if you will, got out their pens and pencils or their keyboards and started writing about how these two men loved to get each other. That's my theory. Now, do I know that happen? I don't say the relationship between the characters does kind of, like, yeah, they have this imbalance of power and, yeah, it's, I think, I think the game kind of like does lead to that fanfare. I mean, in this very first trailer, one man asks the other man to dress him.

I just feel like that implies an intimacy that you don't normally see in action heroes. I think what you're missing is that, and Benito, I know that you can speak to this from experience as well. Ladies love Anukian literature. Oh. They do. Oh, nothing. Women love Apocrypha.

They do. They're like, hmm, give me that sweet murk of a mysticism. I'd explore the chariot throne of God. Maybe if God's little helper was wearing sexy designer jeans. Every time I bring up Enoch and the wheels within wheels, I'm always like,

well, that's Isaiah, but you know what I mean. Every time I bring up Enoch, I'm like, hey, I'm, ladies, I'm married.

I'm a married man. But like Enoch, I'm, So let's talk 2011 and let's talk about when the game actually comes out. So it comes out first in Japan in April of 2011. Famitsu gives it 34 out of 40, which I would say is pretty good. It sells about 80K copies across the PlayStation and Xbox platforms. I have a quote from one Shane Bettenhausen in March who says,

this is a piece of art, really. And I agree with you, Shane. It is a piece of art. Holds up. A piece of art more than a game you want to play. International versions start to arrive in August. I don't know. I found some websites saying July, but I was there in New York in August.

And I remember coming out in August. I believe it was delayed to August. Yes. There was a slight delay due to production issues. Right. And I remember this very well because I was down in Chinatown and I found a copy of the game already on store shelves ahead of this so-called street date. Like, well, I'm buying this, of course. Flying it.

Yeah. And then later that night, Shane, you and I met up with John, John Rick Yardy, who was in New York. for some reason, and Shuiichi Aizawa, I think, and we were all just in a hotel lobby somewhere, having a couple drinks and enjoying the evening and just, you know, we got to have a little impromptu launch party. That did happen, yes. I very much enjoyed. And that's when, I don't know if I think it was you who told me about the, oh my God, the

Halal Guys, the food cart. Yes, the Hall Guys food cart near MoMA in New York City. And I went to the very next day and it's like, oh, boy, this really. is good. Okay, now you're making me sad, Diamond, because the Hala guys expanded across America, and like about two years ago, here in my little town in California, we had Hala guys, and

then about six months ago, it closed. I couldn't believe it. So, yeah, RIP, Hala guys out here. I'm sorry. They're still in New York. I know they're still out there. Yeah. So, what happened when the game came to America, or the English-speaking world, I should say? I would say most critics

responded positively. I have some quotes here. So Jose Otero, for one up, we all know, Jose, Jose gave it a B and said, I enjoyed my adventure from the beginning to end,

but I'm still wondering what really happened at certain parts of the story. The late Andrew Fitch for EGM, he gave it a seven, and he said,

I'd rather play 100 Elshadais than the latest paint-by-number action game formed in a committee. Man of wisdom. Very true.

Very true. Yes. But like, again, so far, I fully agree. Well, and I'll say, just, you know,

full, full cards on the table here leading into the review cycle of El Shaddai, I remember potentially there are companies that publishers pay lots of money to make mock reviews for you and tell you what scores you're going to get for your game. That's the thing that people do. Yes. And say theoretically, hypothetically, that had happened. And I'm like, well, that may be true, but I think we can get 10 points better than that. And we did. And like, you know, having been on both, all the sides of game journalism and publishing,

there is something that can be said about, like, yeah, there are things you can do in marketing and PR to, like, you know, influence the scores a bit. So I do believe the ultradized metascore may be a little bit slightly enhanced. At that point, Shane, because this is relevant to the conversation, I mean, you left one up not that long before this, right?

You left to what, 2008, 2009? 2009, yeah. So I was there from, yeah, I had been at ignition by, a year and a half by the time this came out. So, you know, Jose Otero and Andrew Fitch, like, these are your co-workers and friends, right? Like, this is fair to say. One could say.

Yeah. So I'm not saying you call them with the phone like, hey, Jose, be sure to give this at least a B. But I'm just saying, Jose played that game knowing full well your name was in the credits. Maybe I sent them a copy of the Bible with it. Who knows, right? Like, it's possible. Here's the Lost Testament of the Latter-Day Saints. Here's some crazy shit.

I do wonder if anyone, like, if this brought anyone to any religious conclusions. I wonder if everybody got like, you know, like, yeah, they were converted by El Shidae-Ascentia the Meditron. They're like, I'm going to go get baptized. Maybe. I do want to highlight Keshe McDonald's for Eurogamer. She gave it a 9 out of 10, and she says, El Shaddai Ascention the Metatron is the maddest and most beautiful thing I have played since I don't even know. And she continues, there's no way to describe El-Shed-I-Zenchant-E-E-Sat-E-E-E-Sat-E. visual style without sounding like an amateur poet.

But the screenshots don't lie. She gets it. And we even have a quote, from me, I wrote an import review for Play Magazine, which I don't know if that exists anymore, but you can find the review online. I gave it a 77% out of 100. And the line I wrote, which was then edited into this, says, we went in expecting a feast for the eyes. And in this respect, El Shaddai is nothing less than a royal banquet.

I will say after that review happened I later may have negotiated a exclusive cover story with Play Magazine for Muramasa the Demon Blade after that. Okay. That didn't involve me, but okay.

Because you guys were so kind to El Shadai. Unfortunately, while this was happening in the games coming out, Ignition Tokyo is shutting down. And ignition in general seems to be sort of withdrawing from all, from the games in general, because Edition had multiple studios and multiple locations, and they all shut down between 2010 and 2012. And according to Takayasu in a Fibitsu interview just a couple years ago, he says, this was decided before El Shaddai shipped

and had nothing to do with sales figures. With all the memes and the studio closing after release, rumors that El Shaddai is a bad game started to spread. So as it turns out, El Shadai, such with Metatron is the only game to actually have the Ignition Tokyo name on the box. This is true. And I get a little more transparency. Like when I first went there, it was I knew that they had three games in production and also that they were funding the development of Dragon's Crown with Vanillaware. So between Elshadai and Dragons Crown, those are the two things that I was really excited about.

Because to be honest, the titles being developed in UK, that one was a known quantity he called War Devil, which was made by Toby Gard, a Tomb Raider designer. This game never came out. It was on the cover of Edge, however. And another game being developed in the U.S. by the departed ex-id person, Paul Steed. This game was called Reich. It was a first-person shooter where you were a Nazi. Those two games never came out.

And weren't looking so great. Why? Why? Did something happen? The Nazis get canceled? Those games were going south, and it became like, well, we got to get El Shadi out the door because this game is worth, you know, the world needs to see El Shadi, and we need to make sure Dragon's Crown has a home. So, like, towards the end, it was like a get El Shadi out.

We were proud of this. But unfortunately, the studio, yeah, I think at this point also, like, the idea of Disney buying our parent company was already a thing. So, yeah, it was kind of like winding up quickly. Well, again, in that same interview with Famitsu, Takazu talked about the production problems and how it impacted the thinking of the game and the storytelling because he said, like, during production,

he found out there were basically only two options at the table. They could cancel the game, or they could release it in whatever state it was in. And the quote from him is, a game has zero value unless it's actually released. So they felt the best strategy was, get it out the door, even if that means compromises some of the story ideas, which in his opinion, he describes the story as half-finished or ending, like ending abruptly, which I can see.

Because if you beat the game, it does kind of come to a quick end and you're like, well, what about all this stuff? So I get it. And I get, you know, while you're making that game, you know, facing those two choices, I would say, yeah, just get it out there. You don't want to cancel it after all this. Yeah, that's accurate. He definitely had design documents for a lot more stuff that didn't make it into the

game. And I agree. Like, this game exists. We're talking about 15 years later. Whereas, like, and I'll say this, you know, working on the other side of, you know, publishing and development. And like, seeing not just those two games I mentioned, but several other games be in development that never got announced, that got canceled. And, you know, in the many years since then, me working in the gaming industry, like, the number of projects that, like, get halfway done or completely finished and get thrown in the garbage can. And it happens in film too. Remember like the Batgirl movie? Like, these things like, like, tons of people will spend years of the life and tens of millions

of dollars and like you have nothing to show for and don't will ever know about it. It's very sad. So at least Elshadai and all of it's fucked up in this like, hey, at least we can still talk about it all these years later. And play it. And play it. Yeah, I, I experienced that myself this very year. Oh, I'm sorry. He sure did. That sucks. So post-edition closure, as we talked about earlier, so I can talk about it. Takasu did indeed acquire the rights to El Shaddai, so he still has them today, and he forms a new

company called Crim, CRIM, and whenever you see anything El Shadi these days, it's usually the company that's attached to it. I have this line from an interview. I don't know if he was kidding, because it's in text, but according to Suwataataataata Asu, I received a heavenly decree. God says, continue making El Shadai. Wow. Okay. he's been touched he said that it's on the record i mean you know that's that's that's that's the latest in a long line of an oaken literature for which that was the inspiration i mean you know in japan many japanese people like they don't consider you know monotheism they don't consider like oh only one i can only adhere to one religion they might check six boxes on a on a survey like oh i'm in

all this stuff that's true that's true in the in the original japanese he just says kami but as you know, Japanese does not really deal in plural. So we don't know what kami that was. Could have been any Kami. Could have been the Kami at the shrine next door, you know? Could have been Dende. Yeah. As good a Kami as any. But yeah, there are, if you look for it, there are tons of El Shaddai books and manga and all sorts of materials, mostly entirely in Japanese. So unless you read Japanese, it's not going to do much for you, but it's all out there. And there have been periodic other games, although most of them were very small and some of them don't exist anymore. For example, El Shaddai Social Battle, a 2012 Gre release, if you know Gre, the Japanese mobile gaming company. That was a free play

game, but it shut down within a few months, so just gone. You've got El Shaddai coin and Epic, a 2013 game for smartphones. I think this still exists, but it is just a virtual coin pusher. So I guess you just push the coins on the screen and Enoch and Lucefeld talk to you. That's probably all there is. Give your money to Jesus. Digital tithing. Prototype, Jesus. We also have the Shinwa Koso RPG, The Lost Child, 2017,

multiple platform, PS4, Vita, and Switch. Enoch as a guest character. Yep. Enoch and Lusselaer are in the game, even though it's a dungeon crawler, so it's a very different game than El Shadd, but it is of that world. It has since been digitally delisted because of some sort of publishing issue, but as I said, it's on those three

platforms, all of which shipped a physical cartridge. So if you still want to play those games, I guess go to eBay and you'll find a cartridge. Of course, the big move, 2021, the 10th anniversary, they have the Elshadai, Setson Metatron remaster, HD remaster. It is multi-platform. It is on Steam. I think it's on Switch now. I don't know.

Is it on the PlayStation's Shane Bedousin? Not yet. No. Okay. But Steam and Switch, that's pretty good. Pretty good, pretty accessible. And I was really happy to see that Steam version come out because back in the day, we had a PC version that never came out. That was the best version.

That was the best version. That's a bummer. Yeah. But certainly the Steam version, I bought it. I replayed it for recording this podcast. It runs beautifully. I had a couple crashes, but it really was not a big deal. Very pleased by my experience revisiting El Shaddai.

But, yeah, I'm glad it's on consoles, at least in Switch version. I hopefully it comes to more consoles or Switch 2 or whatever. Do you think we could get Enok and Smash? Ash. Maybe as an assist, but I wouldn't think that's a playable character. At the very least, I'd love to see some Enoch and Lucifel gear for the M's. You know, that'd be good. Little Mee outfits?

Sure. See, I feel like they would make more sense in, like, Final Fantasy world. Like, I always feel like both Lucifer and Enok could make it into something Numeria did. Like, if he redesigned them, I'd be very into that, personally. Even more recently than that, though, we have last year's mythical concept Star-Naut, that Takasso describes as the 3D vampire survivors, and he literally says, the moment I saw vampire survivors, I thought, I want to make this in 3D. So I can only assume that somehow played a role in him getting the job at Ponkel, because obviously he met the Italian man who runs Ponkel. I forget his name, but they're clearly working together now.

So good for him. And even this year, this very, very year, 2026, there is El Shaddai 09 Reverse, which is a, you know, reverse. the Othello game for smartphones with, I guess, Enoch and Luce Fell is white and black. I didn't play it. I'm sorry. I'm just happy with Othello is still a thing, like, you know, 40, 50 years later. Amazing. Hey, you know, it's like the box says, you know, takes a moment to learn, but a lifetime to master.

But 14,000 years to master. Or maybe tomorrow. Yeah, Enoch Othello, that's what the world needs. But yes, let's talk future or the past, or or whatever. We don't know what time goes this way. So obviously, Sawatatatakuasu really believes in and is committed at this point to the world of Al-Shadai.

He told the interview, he said, I have actually written many proposals for a sequel to El Shaddai, but no one has given him the green light for that. And he laughed, which I'm assuming was one of those painful laughs. So obviously, if someone gives him money, I think

he would clearly make another game as many games as he could possibly make, given some funds. The interviewer acted at the end, they asked him, like, what's your message to fans who are interested in El Shidae? And he just said the line. He said, don't know. It's the best-eikata of Tarnomu, which is like, basically, you know, it's fine, no problem. Buy it the best way you can.

So he knows his audience. He's on brand, yeah. And, like, I'm happy because I will say, like, the core of El Shadi really, to me, is his art. Like his, like, I think he's a spectacular artist. Like, I was looking at my art books earlier. The art's beautiful. It's, you know, it's very memorable and unique. And, like, yeah, if it wasn't for his hand-drawn art, I think you either wouldn't be El Shaddai.

I have El Shaddai line stamps. So that's all his art and quotes like that stuff. So I know my wife and my children have no idea why I said them, you know, these people saying, Dai Jobudamu da Mondei Nai so much, but I know. And that's what's important. There's, there's a lot. left in the books of enoch to be explored it's in a physical literal sense where's the warehouses full of snow there's so many types of jeans that could be in the game what if the second

when he had jinkos oh when he could like they could like that's how he does slow fall yeah no no fall damage when he's wearing the holy jinkos yeah like you know if i was if i was a if i was a billionaire, I would go to Swaki and be like, hey, let's do more else should I, but like, let's make a different genre, like an RPG or something. Because I think, I think, you know, like if it was more of like a turn-based RPG or something, I think you would have a greater appeal.

I think you're right. Like, I think the, maybe because you, you know, you mentioned that aesthetically, it seems to fit in with a modern Final Fantasy. And so I feel like maybe that's why I instantly think like, oh, that's the move. Like that's so right

Or even like a person Like a Shinemagame Tense You know the whole like You're like You know The way that that that series has like Mixed together demonology of all these different pantheons like But yeah like

Christian apocrypha weird abstract turn based Sexy RPG I think there could be something there I mean I will say Persona 5 is my favorite game In which Enoch appears Yeah I was going to say you've You've opened a whole can of Chris worms By saying Perciano 5

Could we have Enok from Percipro 5 Could we ship him with Enoch from El Shadai. That's the question. Please see our video episode where I make Benito guess. We already did this. I made Benito guess what biblical figures were represented

by their designs from Persona. I love it. I got to see this now. Please, send me those links. I'll put them in the show notes. Yeah, we're here. It's 2026. What are our El Shadi opinions? I feel like I've been pretty transparent. I'm excited about this game. I just played it again. I had a thrilling time with it. I don't think I would host this episode if I didn't

have a passion for this game. It caught with my surprise before it even came out. I played it upon release. I've since played it again. I am a big fan. But Chris, Benito, you have obviously a lot of other opinions about this. What would you say about El Shidae? Go ahead. It's okay. Let it out. I mean, I think the thing is, I think we would all agree about the details. Yes. It's just for me, those shortcomings outweigh what's fun about it. But is it a full, is it a full like the critic, it stinks or is it like, oh, there's

things that are memorable and good about this, but overall, it's not a fun time. I certainly do not regret playing it. And I think it is, again, at the very least, it's interesting. And I will always pop for like a video game that can be interesting and weird. and memorable. An ambitious failure. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll be thinking about it until the day I die. You know, I'll be thinking about Enoch running around in those jeans. Like, yeah. Like, I've read all four books of Enoch and discussed them at length on the show. And in my head, that dude's wearing jeans. Oh, see, that's a victory. Yeah. So, like, I certainly don't, I don't think it's a, you know, bottom of the barrel, you know,

absolutely irredeable experience. I just, it's not what. I'm looking for in my video game diet for four for reasons that I think we all agree on like you know the the sort of lack of cohesion the obscured storytelling I I do think it is weird to play a game and be like but where's all the Bible stuff because that stuff I think is actually weirder and more interesting than a lot of what makes it in the game yeah I I mean look I'm in favor of there being more I'd love to see I'd love to see what happens next. And especially if there were, you know, there weren't restrictions. Like, where does, where does this go when the, when the leash is off? I'd be very interested. I won't play it because I don't play video games. But someone would, Chris, I would make Chris do it. But I'm very interested in it existing in the world. You can just watch video games now. Yeah, going to, I do. I do. That's how I know about this game.

I watch some other person play it for six hours on YouTube. It took me thinking about it today to be like, why didn't? Because I wasn't familiar with this game at all until after we started doing the podcast. I'm like, how did I completely miss this when it came out? And I'd never had a PS3. Like I was on the Xbox that generation. So I was just simply not paying attention. Well, and all these years later, my thoughts haven't changed too much.

I was always a fan. But I always knew what it was. And, like, I always thought it had the potential to be a cult classic, which I think is what it's kind of become, you know, cult classic question mark. Like, there are people who love it, the people who don't know about it. But, like, you know, I think much like deadly premonition, and, you know, a pickup title we signed, it's like, like, I knew these games weren't great, but they were quirky and fun. And, like, kind of like, their flaws made them interesting, too. And they were uniquely, uniquely, unique takes of Western culture through a Japanese lens, which I find. find very interesting as a Japanophile.

So, yeah, I'm really proud to have worked on it. And, like, I also, looking back, like, on all the merchandise and, like, today listening to the soundtrack, like, a lot of the things that, like, were outside of the game were really high quality, actually. I think, I think, like, the jeans, like, if you're ever good lucky enough to get a pair of the jeans,

the jeans are, like, really nice, you know? Like, the genes are almost better than the game. But I'm still proud of the game. And I think that, like, you know, anybody who's listening to this should definitely check the game out, at least watch it on YouTube, or Steam is pretty cheap on Steam, I think, actually. Or on Switch, you can get it.

Like, yeah, it's, like, it's fun and weird, and there's nothing else quite like it out there. Yeah, I would, I, you know, mentioning the, uh, seeing a piece of Western culture, like, through the Japanese lens, like, that's something, again, that I'm always super interested in. Partly because, like, I've read a lot of comics about ninjas and samurai by white dudes from America. So I feel like it's only fair. Right. Yeah, there's some of these designer jeans and cell phones when Japan does, you know, Western religion. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, actually, Shane, what you just said was really important to me because I want to know, is there anything we can recommend that is anything like El Shadai? I don't know if there is. It's tough because there's games that have combat that is slightly reminiscent of the combat in El Shadai. But there's nothing that quite like, looks or feels or imparts a story in the abstract way. Like, it's pretty singular, actually.

Right? Like, because one thing, like, what first comes to mind is that when you talk about this stuff with the angels and so on, I think back to Evangelion, which has sort of a very different view of, of angels and earth and a lot of stuff, but Evangelian games are just so dry. You know, it's very straightforward, usually.

I do think, aesthetically, there is something between Elshadai and Immigalian, that's what drew me to it as well. Right. Yeah, there's something there, but If there was ever even an action platform, or maybe it would be kind of like El Shidae, but that never happened. But yeah, they're not really, yeah. Those games are usually not like that, unfortunately. So, I mean, I do think that Bayonetta, which does do a lot of the weird, you know, angelology stuff.

That's true. That's true. And you're right. And the way you progress to the levels. Yeah, Bainetta is kind of a better El Shadai in that way. You're right. It's like a much more tight, complicated, aesthetically, you know, detailed. cohesive, sexy.

Yeah, that's probably the closest analog. Listen, I am the Bayonetta Liker. Also, I was recently reminded that Bayonetta is in Ready Player 1. And the fact that Steven Spielberg has Bayoneta in a movie is like, anathema to me, like, can we take that out of the Bible? Like, come on. There's a lot of stuff that's in Ready Player 1, but that does make me feel like if I ever meet Steven Spielberg,

I can, you know, we've got one thing in common. You're like, you both like a sexy library. in. Who's eight feet tall. With giant heels. Guns on her feet, so she can kick you in the face and shoot you in the face at the same time. But does Nintendo, does Nintendo own Bayonetta now? This is just a question.

Nintendo has published Bayonetta 2 and 3, I think. Wasn't she in Smash Brothers to bring it back? She is in Smash. Baynettta allowed in Edoc, not so much. I don't know the rights issues, because, I mean, obviously, it's a Platinum game originally, but Platinum first, the Bainetta 1 was entirely Sega, and then these later games published by Nintendo, I don't know where that fits in the Platinum Sega

Nintendo hierarchy. I know Platinum and Sega have a very rocky relationship, so yeah, I don't know. I don't know what happens there. My next question is, has anybody shipped Enoch and Baynetta? My answer probably yes, I would think. I got to hit up 803 to find out.

I mean, you would assume at some point, point someone offered Bannetta a pair of jeans because that way she could just, she could attack more. Like, she's holding back her power. Yeah. She's holding back her power to cover those areas, you know? Clothing is made of her hair, correct? Exactly. Yes.

So if someone gave her the blue jeans, she could go all out and at least she'd know for sure that her ass was well taken care of. Bainetta 5, it will start, well, guest start Enoch as a playable character. We heard it here first. We can only hope. I'm ready for it. I'm here for that. I'd buy that. Absolutely, I'd buy that. But for now, we're buying the end of this podcast because we've been here for a while, and this is a good chat as any. So thank you very much for joining us here at Retronauts. If you paid money, or did not pay money for, rather, if you did not pay money for this episode, thank you very much to listening. You should know, though, ever, that Retronauts is a fan-supported program. So please go to patreon.com slash Retronauts for $3 a month. You get all our episodes one week early. For $5 a month, you get, like,

Lots of bonus stuff, extra episodes, extra columns from me, and I read you the columns, a monthly community podcast only for our listeners, Discord access, all these things at $5. And even higher levels where you can tell us what you want to be on the show or you can be on the show. It's all there, patreon.com social retronauts. Let's go around to my guests. Let's start with Shane. Shane, what do you want the internet to know about you, if anything? Well, that being a retronauts, Patriot supporter is awesome, and your columns are fantastic. Thank you.

do it. And you can follow me on the blue sky. Search for my name. I don't know my blue sky. It was Shane Benhousen. Spel just like a sound. How about you, Chris? You can find me and everything that I do at t-h-e-isb.com. As alluded to earlier, I don't currently have a job. So if you'd like someone to write something for you, then by all means, get in touch. I can provide excellent references. and I know a lot about things, not necessarily in Bible. Thank you. Benito. All right.

Yeah, if you want to hear me and Chris talk about stuff, there's something like an archive of 120-ish episodes of Apocopalus. You can check those out. I also co-host the horror movie podcast, Friends Till the End, with some other people who are not currently on this podcast. I'm on Blue Sky, Benito Serino. B-sky. dot social.

I'm on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Benito Serino where you can see things like my completely made-up conspiracy theory that I thought of while I was in line

at Raisin Cains the other day about how the current sitting president is technically still vulnerable to the curse of Tacumsa. If you know what that means, go to my Patreon. It's free. But also,

you can find me monthly in comic book stores. I'm the writer on the book's Blood and Thunder and Capes. both out from Image Comics and Skybound Entertainment. And those, yeah, those come out every month. So look for me there.

That's capes, not cakes. Capes, yeah. C-A-P-E-S. It's an invincible tie-in. Okay. It's like what superheroes wear, not what supervillains steal. I've heard it's really good, actually. I'll have to check that out.

Yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah, it's my second issue just came out last week. So, but I'll be on it for the foreseeable future. Robert Kirkman has made a public promise of at least 25 issues of the book. Oh, good for him and good for you. Thank you. As for me, Diamond Fight, you can find me over the internet by looking for Fight Club, F-E-I-T.

That's my last name. C-L-U-B, that's an English word, you know, put them together. Look on social media, obviously Blue Sky, Letterbox, Patreon, Kofi, anything you want there. Look for Fight Club. It's usually me, usually, except for occasional squads. squatters. And yeah, on that note, I'm going to attempt to snap my fingers and end the podcast. Let's see if it works. Hmm, maybe, maybe Greg, you can help me out here. Good night.