This Week in Retro: Killer 7 [2005]

June 9, 2005: Master! We're in a Tight Spot! Our Game is 15 Years Old!

by Diamond Feit

Did you see the "future of gaming" presentation regarding the forthcoming PlayStation 5 this past week? I was awake at 5 a.m. on Friday for no reason at all, so I sat through the entire stream, listening to an array of game developers excitedly tell me how this new machine will free them from all technological restraints and finally—FINALLY—allow them to tell the "stories" they've always wanted to tell but simply couldn't without the correct number of polygons or shaders at their disposal.

In a sheer coincidence, last week was also the 15th anniversary of the release of Killer 7 on Nintendo GameCube, a device which pales in comparison to current-generation consoles, let alone the mythical stats of the not-yet-released PlayStation 5. Yet it was on this small, lunchbox-esque machine that writer/designer/director Goichi Suda (aka "Suda51") managed to deliver a wholly unique story in a game that felt like no other before or since, despite running on hardware that currently is 19 years old. How could such a thing be possible?

Before we can discuss Killer 7's unusual themes and story, it is imperative that we establish what made its very existence unusual. To quickly set the stage: In 2005, the Nintendo GameCube's fate was already sealed as Sony's PlayStation 2 was the runaway console champion worldwide and Microsoft's Xbox had made an impressive debut (with the Xbox 360 coming later that year). This left Nintendo in third place, seemingly adrift, as the Gamecube sold fewer systems than its predecessor (which had in turn undersold its own predecessor as well). When Killer 7 arrived, it was supposed to be the fifth of the "Capcom Five" games created exclusively for the Gamecube, a plan that had been announced in 2002 to much surprise (given that Capcom had largely skipped making games for the Nintendo 64). But by 2005, only one of the Five had been exclusively released on Gamecube, with the rest becoming multi-platform or cancelled outright.

Killer 7 launched on both the Gamecube and PlayStation 2, but it was clearly conceived and developed with Nintendo's hardware in mind. Unlike the PlayStation DualShock controller with its twin-analog-stick design and four identical face buttons, the Gamecube controller has a primary "control stick" with a smaller "c-stick". One button, the A button, is larger and overshadows all its neighbors. Killer 7 as a game is mostly controlled by these two dominant apparatuses: The Control Stick aims while A button not only attacks, it is also the only way to move! In a most unusual configuration, Killer 7 is a self-scrolling rail-shooter where the player can move forward or backward along a fixed path, stopping to switch into a first-person view in order to shoot. There are alternate paths to select, and pressing B will cause you to turn around; but otherwise, the game does not allow truly free movement.

According to interviews printed in the 2005 book Hand in Killer 7, Suda decided on this input method early in development. Main programmer Satoshi Kawakami said that when the project began, Suda told him, "We're pressing A to move… and we're never changing that." When Kawakami asked how that would work, Suda told him, "It's a racing game. Think of the A button as the accelerator and the B button as the brake!" While this was (and remains to this day) a radical departure from how most 3D games worked, it's worth noting that the "best" way to control characters in 3D environments had not yet been codified in 2005. Today we just expect games to use the left stick to move and the right stick to look/aim, but Resident Evil 4, another of the Capcom Five games which launched at the start of that same year, used the Gamecube's Control Stick for both movement and aiming, and few people found that unusual at the time.

The single-button-to-run control method was a choice rooted in finding an audience for Killer 7, even if that meant alienating a portion of enthusiast fans. "I myself was aiming for 'a game that everyone could play,'” Suda said in Hand in Killer 7, adding, "There were naturally opinions that we should choose a control system that involved free movement." Suda felt that limiting the movement of players might not appeal to established action-game players, but it would open up Killer 7 to players who don't normally indulge in shooting games.

The action in Killer 7 is slow but tense, seldom overwhelming players with too many enemies at once. Very few foes shoot back at you, instead marching toward the camera at a steady pace. The enemies are known as Heaven Smile and they are, by default, nearly invisible, but they always laugh when they are near. To combat them, players must stop, enter first-person mode, scan the area, and then shoot. When killed, they explode as they laugh even louder (in canon, the body of every Heaven Smile is full of explosives).

As unconventional as it is, the action is not the main ingredient of Killer 7, nor is it what most players will take away from the experience. First and foremost, the game has incredible art direction which shirks realism for bold colors, simple textures, and exaggerated features. Killer 7 doesn't look like a cartoon or a comic book, but rather like a mad hybrid of the low-polygon games of the early 1990s with the technical resources of the late 1990s. Really, Killer 7 looks like Killer 7, and I mean that as a sincere compliment.

More than the look or feel of Killer 7, it is the story that players will no doubt remember most. The back of the box sells it as the tale of "a mysterious assassin who can harness the unique powers of his seven personalities", but that’s an understatement. The seven personalities also have seven different bodies which vary in age, race, and gender—/but they are all named Smith. While some personality changes are scripted, for most of the game players are free to swap them as they see fit, as each uses a unique weapon and many of the personas have a unique ability to unlock clues or open new pathways.

Few of the Smiths have much to say beyond a few catchphrases, but Killer 7 has no shortage of dialogue. Throughout the game, the Smiths will encounter spirits of the dead who will impart lore, clues, hints, and just plain odd messages in a garbled, breathy voice (their dialogue is always subtitled). There's also a cadre of oddball villains to face during the story, all with their own selfish goals to pursue; as the Smiths kill them, several will return as spirits to haunt or help you.

[Spoilers follow... I think]

It is this aspect of Killer 7 that commands the most attention, because it is clear from the first mission that not everything the player sees on-screen is actually happening. Between the conversations with the dead, the messages retrieved via carrier pigeon, the frequent visits to "Harman's Room", and the impossible geometry of multiple in-game locations, Killer 7 turns the Smiths into a collective, unreliable narrator of sorts. Video games frequently tell uncanny tales, but there is so much internally inconsistent in Killer 7 that it forces players to question the fictional reality that is presented to them, which makes the final mission all the more exciting. 

The cynic in me might say that absolutely none of Killer 7 makes sense, but that would be unfair. It's an ambitious tale that might not always be straightforward, but for all its internal twists there's still a definite conclusion; it cannot be dismissed as weird for weird's sake. Indeed, one of the many subplots is a political tale concerning the relationship between Japan and the United States, a real-life story more complicated than anything a video game could ever tell. In a recent interview with USGamer, Suda said he "poured the soul of Japan into the character" named Matsuken, a wicked politician. Even though he is a villain, he still has purpose and states his opinions clearly, two qualities rarely seen in actual Japanese leaders. "I wished [that] maybe Japanese politicians or leaders would be a little bit more forthcoming with things, a little bit more strong," said Suda.

This is not a review of Killer 7, so a dissection of the plot or mechanics or how I think the game "feels" is irrelevant. What is relevant is that it is a 15-year-old video game that stands apart from both its peers, its predecessors, and its descendants. Killer 7 has a strong authorial voice and a unique aesthetic, but it's not all text or all cutscenes either. It's the kind of game that we rarely get to see from mainstream publishers, and that's so very disappointing; the game earned praise from critics but was a commercial failure. There's a silver lining, though: Killer 7 was ported to Windows in 2018, and thanks to its distinct appearance and presentation, it looks fantastic in full HD. Freed from consoles, it's both more affordable ($20 on Steam) and easier to play, as a mouse presents a much better tool for aiming at and shooting Heaven Smile than an analog stick ever was.

I invite you to take a chance on Killer 7 in 2020. I cannot guarantee you will enjoy it, but I can promise you will remember it. And with all due respect to the people working very hard on making PlayStation 5 games, I do not believe that ray-tracing or teraflops will enable you to tell new stories, because risk is what fuels creativity, not new technology. Killer 7 is risky; yes, it contains sex and gore and checks all the "mature" boxes, but what I mean is it is thematically risky. It is mechanically risky. It was, by the creators' own words, not made for everyone but rather, made so anyone could play it—and that is why I recommend it.