Killer 7
Webpages concerning "Killer 7"
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Wikipedia-Article "Killer 7"
| Killer 7 | |
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| Developer(s) | Grasshopper Manufacture |
| Publisher(s) | Capcom |
| Designer(s) | Shinji Mikami (story, executive producer) Goichi Suda (story, writer, director, producer) |
| Engine | |
| Latest version | {{{version}}} |
| Release date(s) | July 7, 2005 |
| Genre | Action, Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB:  Mature (M)CERO: 18 PEGI: 18+ BBFC:  18 |
| Platform(s) | GameCube, PlayStation 2 |
| Media | |
| System requirements | |
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Killer7 is a video game jointly developed and published by Grasshopper Manufacture and Capcom for the Nintendo GameCube and the Sony PlayStation 2. It was released on July 7, 2005 in the United States, July 15, 2005 in Europe and was a highly anticipated title for its mysterious plot, stylish cel-shaded graphics, and un-orthodox gameplay.
The game was written and directed by Suda 51, AKA Goichi Suda, and produced by Shinji Mikami. Mikami is well known for being the creative force behind a string of stylish, original titles including Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe.
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Concept
The title revolves around Harman Smith, a 60-year-old assassin in a wheelchair. He is capable of manifesting seven personalities each with their own deadly abilities, and the whole group is collectively known as the Killer7. The leading personality is revealed to be Garcian Smith, who has the ability, once activated by security cameras or television sets, to call upon the 6 other members of Killer7 almost anywhere at any time. Unlike most artistic presentations of multiple personalities, Harman does not just think he is someone else; rather, the personae actually take on their unique physical form and abilities when called upon.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Killer7 is unconventional by normal standards. The game takes place on rails, and the player, using the A and B buttons (or for the PS2, the Triangle and X buttons), "tells" the character on screen to move forward or reverse direction, respectively. The most freedom the player has comes when the player reaches intersections, at which point the player must choose which path to continue on.
When the player encounters one of the enemies, known as Heaven Smiles, it announces its presence by laughing maniacally. The player then must go to first-person mode and scan their surroundings in order to see it. Destroying any limbs of the Smile or hitting their weak "critical spot" consisting of a glowing spot on their body gives the player Blood, which is then used to upgrade one of Garcian's six personalities at save points called "Harman Rooms", which sometimes don't have the ability to save, but exist only for Blood upgrades.
Story
Shinji Mikami has been quoted saying, "Me and Goichi Suda [the writer] are fond of plotlines that are "Open Ended", and what I mean by that is, when you first play the game you will think, 'What-Just happened?' and it's not until you watch it all again that you say, 'Oh, he was talking about this thing or event here, or he was referring to THAT person' and it's not until then that the plot starts to make sense. These are very complex, very involving stories that you don't usually see in video games these days." This holds true for Killer 7.
The storyline centers around Harman Smith, an assassin who employs (some would say even "owns") the Killer 7, a team of assassins that are multiple personalities of Garcian Smith, the team leader, each with their own specialities. The only one that can communicate with any of the others, including Harman himself, is Garcian Smith, an African-American man. He is also the only one that can revive other personalities if they happen to be killed, which has given him the nickname, "The Cleaner" as he often cleans the scene of the personalities' dead bodies.
The Killer 7 are hired to assassinate Kun Lan, a man who actually regularly plays chess with Harman Smith. Kun Lan possesses the God Hand, and he is the leader of the terrorist group called Heaven's Smile. The members of this group are called Heaven Smiles, people who have been touched by Kun Lan's God Hand. They are living proximity mines, walking bombs with permanent grins etched into their mouths. They are the main enemies in the game. The goal of the Killer 7 is to stop Kun Lan and eradicate the Heaven Smiles.
In the game the player discovers that Garcian is actually a "reincarnation" of sorts of Emir Parkreiner, once a teenage assassin trained by the Japanese Traditionalist Yakumo Party at their underground training facility at Coburn High School. The goal of the Yakumo Party is control of the government and spreading of Japanese Traditionalist ideals such as Bushido. They aim to do this by training teenagers as assassins and politicians at Coburn High School. Emir/Garcian was a star student at the school and was mentored by then principal, Harman Smith. Emir was asked at one point in his teenage life by someone to kill Harman Smith and his team of assassins, staying currently at the Union Hotel in Philadelphia. Emir kills all of the Smith assassins and after killing Harman Smith, Emir, who believes he killed his mentor, shoots himself on the roof on the hotel, but instead of dying, he is "born again" as Garcian Smith who has the power to control the once dead Smith assassins. Since that event, the people he killed that night, and people he kills in future missions "haunt" him and appear as ghostly apparitions often supplying hints or plot information while the player advances through the game.
Garcian becomes aware of his true identity after reliving his past events when a mission leads him back to the Coburn High School and the Union Hotel. At Coburn High School, Garcian comes in contact with cassette tapes that elaborate on the identity of Emir Parkreiner. When the Killer 7 reach the auditorium, the Smith personas all die at the hands of seemingly invincible Heaven Smiles. After all the personalities die, Garcian appears and takes possession of his old weapon, the Golden Gun (perhaps a reference or an homage to James Bond) and kills the Heaven Smiles and proceeds to the Union Hotel, seeking answers.
At the Union Hotel, a "ghost" of a young Harman Smith reveals Garcian's true identity on the top floor of the Union Hotel. At first, Garcian is in denial, but he later realizes that he really is Emir. 3 years later, he arrives at Battleship Island in Japan to resolve the issue of Heaven Smile and the escalating diplomatic tension between Japan and the United States. There, he meets Kenjiro Matsuoka, a member of the Yakumo/UN Party. He warns Emir that if he doesn't kill him right now, the UN will rally under him and plan a massive assault on the United States. But if Emir kills him, then Japan will be destroyed by the US to hide Japan's knowledge of the fact that the elections in the United States are rigged by the Education Ministry (a sort of fictional Department of Education). So the player (as Emir), must decide whether to save Japan or the United States. This choice affects a part of the ending. The game concludes with an almost exact copy of the final scene from the Angel mission where Harman tries to shoot Kun Lan's God Hand, only he catches the bullet in his hand. The differences are that this scene takes place in Shanghai 100 years after Battleship Island. The gaps of information will have to be answered in a possible sequel or are possibly left for open interpretation by the player. Many of the finer and more symbolic and open-ended parts of the plot are best answered and/or interpreted in a plot analysis guide on GameFAQs.
Voice Actors
- Dwight Schultz — Harman Smith
- Greg Eagles — Garcian Smith
- Michael Gough — Dan Smith
- Tara Strong — Kaede Smith
- Jun Hee Lee — Con Smith
- Miguel Caballero — Mask de Smith
- Benito Martinez — Coyote Smith
- Heidi Anderson — Samantha Smith
- Bart Flynn — Christopher Mills
- Jim Ward — Toru Fukushima
- James Horan — Jean DePaul
- Robin Atkin Downes — Hiro Kasai
- Cam Clarke — Andrei Ulmeyda
- Chris Cox — Gabriel Clemence
- Alastair Duncan — Curtis Blackburn
- Masayo Hosono — Ayame Blackburn
- Debi Derryberry — Love Wilcox
- Jennifer Hale — Linda Vermillion
- Kris Zimmerman — Punk Kid C
- Jack Angel — Narrator
- Steven Jay Blum — Kenjiro Matsuoka
- Joe Lala — Kun Lan
Staff
Controversy
- Excerpt from Jack Thompson:
On August 5, 2005, Thompson sent an e-mail to Patricia Vance, president of the ESRB, this time accusing them of being too lenient on the game Killer 7. He cited as evidence a review on IGN [1], which he referred to only as "this pro-violent video games site", which had this to say:
"...profanity, sex and bloodshed are commonplace… We can't stress it enough: kids should not play Killer 7. Not just because there’s an M on the box, but because for once that M really means something. There’s much more than blood and guts in the game. Everything from the design of puzzles to the subject matter is designed for older players and it's really that simple...And there are cinematics that feature full-blown sex sequences...Killer 7's adult themes, which encapsulate extremely violent, profane and sexual situations, as well as a wide range of issues from terrorism to the sale of children, make the M on the box really mean something [2]."
The only "full blown sex sequence" in the whole of Killer 7, however, featured two fully clothed characters and some implicit moaning. Some have suggested that this content, if present in a movie, would likely have received no greater than a PG-13 rating. Thompson continued urging Vance to contact retailers, to pull the game from shelves. He stated that unlike the Hot Coffee case, "full-blown sex sequences are patently present in the game," and yet the ESRB "chose to put an 'M' rather than an 'AO' rating on it."
In other games
- The Killer7 is a Magnum gun in Capcom's Resident Evil 4, an obvious tie-in to Killer7. It is actually the same handgun used by Kaede Smith.
- The TV channel Garcian watches at the beginning of the Cloudman and Alter-Ego episodes, Zaka TV, is the same channel the player works for in Michigan (one of Grasshopper Manufacture's previous titles).
- The bellhop who greets Garcian Smith in the Union Hotel during the Smile episode is Edo MacAlister, the hotel manager of Flower, Sun and Rain (another of Grasshopper's previous games).
Trivia
- It should be noted that "Killer7" is actually quite homophonous to "Killer's Heaven". Given the violent nature of this game this pun does not seem to be unintentional.
- The character "Kevin Smith" is not named after the director Kevin Smith. Suda 51 had never heard of this director nor seen his movies.
- There were actually two versions of the Killer7 story - one being the original story from Suda 51, which would cost too much time and money to make into a game, and the other being the shortened version Suda 51 made for the game. The original story was detailed in a Japanese-only supplemental book entitled Hand In Killer7: Kill The Past, Jump Over The Age.
- Harman and his band of personalities all share the same last name, Smith, making them "the Smiths", as in the 1980s pop group. Killer7's creators acknowledged and furthered the reference by scrawling "How Soon Is Now!" (the title of one of the band's most popular songs) on a wall in the first mission as well as titling in-game memos after the band's songs.
Reviews
The reviews for the game have been very mixed. The review scores have ranged from low 5's from sources like Electronic Gaming Monthly and GamePro, or a 1.5 out of 5 in GamePro's case, to high 8's from sources like GameSpot, IGN, and Nintendo Power. Some of the reviews from reviewers like IGN and Gamespot have stated that the Nintendo GameCube version is graphically superior, far faster loading times, and has better controlling than the PlayStation 2 version, meaning that these sources recommend the Nintendo GameCube version over the PlayStation 2 version. (On a side note, the Nintendo GameCube version has indeed outsold the PlayStation 2 version - the only other notable occasion this has happened is for Soul Calibur II.)
- IGN: 8.1/10 (GCN), 7.9/10 (PS2)
- GamePro: 1.5/5 (PS2)
- GameSpot: 8.3/10 (GCN) 8/10 (PS2)
- NTSC-uk review of Killer 7
References
- ^ IGN:ESRB Adversary and Lawyer Targets Killer 7 by Matt Casamassina, accessed August 5, 2005.