The Cultural Identity of Binary Domain

The Yakuza series may not be million-sellers outside of their home country, but they have a strong and distinctive sense of cultural identity that makes them unique and fascinating both inside and outside of Japan. They depict an exaggerated, fictionalised Tokyo that's absolutely accurate in its tiniest details, from the vending machines advertising real-life brands to the umbrella stands and parked bikes outside convenience stores. The Yakuza games excel in their characterisation and sense of place.

It's understandable, then, that any fan of this SEGA studio might be rather put out by Binary Domain on first impressions. It's a third-person shooter starring a machine-gun-toting American Caucasian in which you shoot robots' limbs off. The game's early reveal trailer - which outlined a world in which robots are starting to feel human themselves, Blade Runner-style, and rebel against the human establishment – hinted at something a bit more interesting than a semi-military cover shooter.

Under the surface, there's more going on – or so I'm told by one of the studio heads, Masayoshi Kikuchi. "We want to provoke thought in people, make them think about the boundary between man and machine," he claims. "Where do you draw the line? Should the distinction be blurred? Should they be separate? I'm sure different people already have opinions on this, or maybe they are apathetic to the whole thing, but that's the kind of thought we want to encourage."

It's a claim that's borne out by the setting: Binary Domain is set against a pretty interesting backdrop, a dystopian vision of Japan that's isolated itself from the world with a giant steel wall in a science-fiction recreation of the sakoku period. Main character Dan Marshall and his partner Big Bo first have to break into the country, then work their way up a version of Tokyo that's been built upon time after time. At the bottom, it looks and feels like a dilapidated modern-day urban environment, but things get more futuristic as you make your way into the higher, richer areas. It's sort of a commentary on the stratification of Japanese society, how the rich are separated from the poor – and the humans from the machines.

But if this is the story that the developer is trying to tell – a meditation on the distinction between man and machine, and on how people can change – then why choose the third-person shooter genre? It's not one that's exactly known for its thought-provoking nature. But that, says Kikuchi, is exactly the point. For him, it's not so much about competing within this genre as about contributing to it.

"As a team you think 'How can we put our stamp on this genre?'" he says. "There's a lot of tough, high budget, triple-A competition out there that controls third-person shooters at the moment. We looked at those games for reference points, not only to identify what they did well, but what they lacked – and what in turn the Yakuza team could contribute to the genre.

"In any of the Yakuza games you expect to experience a storyline where a lot of characters are built up as human beings, where you can see and experience a lot of human emotions. Binary Domain is the same – that's how we keep our identity. The setting and the genre might be totally different from the Yakuza series, but the underlying thoughts and feelings that you get to experience are the shared similarities between Yakuza and Binary Domain. That's how the studio can keep its identity whilst also trying something new."

I'm not convinced about this yet, partly because Binary Domain's two main characters are pretty hateful, at least at first – all ex-military bravado and meat-headedness. Big Bo, Dan Marshall's partner, spends a lot of time ogling the curves of the female Chinese agent who becomes the game's third squad member in the second chapter, making sleazy pronouncements to which you are expected to respond in kind with voice commands. But it's these characters' initially basic nature, argues Kikuchi, that makes them ideal vehicles for this story. They change at time goes on.


"Other squad members have different ways of thinking, but these guys, they come into the story as grunts, thinking that machines are just machines, they shouldn't have life," he explains. "But as you go through the story and things happen to Dan Marshall and the people around him, one of the appealing things is how his way of thinking and his feelings change from scene to scene, as the story unfolds. At the end of it he may not be thinking the same way. That's the kind of difference, the journey that we want to take people through."

There's another, more obvious reason, of course – the third-person shooter is a globally popular genre that gives Binary Domain a shot at a wider audience than the Yakuza games ever managed. "The same team has been developing the Yakuza series over the past years, but that's been developed purely domestically with the Japanese audience in mind," Kikuchi says. "This time we wanted the game to appeal to a much bigger audience worldwide, and when you think about what the most appealing entry point is for a lot of gamers out there, you end up looking at the shooter genre."

There's no doubt that Binary Domain faces stiff competition in this genre, and from the opening 45 minutes or so of play, it's clear that its third-person shooting mechanics aren't exceptional in themselves. What's going to make this game stand out, then, is the very thing that could have been in danger of being compromised: its distinctive identity. Here's hoping that the Yakuza developers' talent for characterisation and detailed, engrossing settings shines through in the end.

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