Sifu, like many other games in love with Asian cinema before it, is a stylish kung-fu brawler centred around the rapid-fire fisticuffs of Chinese martial art films. Its trailers thus far tease a carefully choreographed dance of furious punches and roundhouse kicks, all cooly executed by a young kung-fu practitioner hell-bent on revenge, as he tries to take down the mob bosses behind the killing of his family. These are familiar scenes inspired by the fight sequences of Chinese action cinema; the countless movies and remakes of Chinese folk hero Wong Fei Hung, Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon, as well as the entire library of Jackie Chan martial arts moviesThis cinematic influence is something that Sloclap, the studio behind Sifu, has openly drawn from. In a brief statement to , executive producer Pierre Tamo said that “the fantasy we want is that sort of Jackie Chan movie fantasy where it's one versus many, whereas Absolver was very much 1-v-1”, referencing the studio’s previous brawler.Indeed, Sifu looks set to be a game that’s very much in the style of the fighting game Absolver, where you c🦋an develop and customise your owཧn fighting stance, picking and choosing specific melee attacks against encroaching enemies. Sloclap even quoted Bruce Lee on Twitter:
But like Ghost of Tsushima before it, a game that’s set in pre-modern Japan, Sifu was made entirely by a team of white developers; even its consultant, Ben Colussi—a martial artist they hired to choreograph the fist fights in Sifu, and who also doubled up as Sifu’s cultural consultant of sorts—is a white martial artist who’s well-versed in Pak Mei, one of the more aggressive forms of Chinese martial arts. According to a behind-the-scenes video, Colussi also shared that he had travelled to China and picked up the martial art style himself, while the studio also a꧅sked Colussi to make sure if the game’s “wuguan”—the training halls of martial artists—is authentic.
Sloclap’s attention to details is admirable in an industry that does only the bare minimum for diversity and representation, and a small part of me is glad to see some positive representation of Chinese martial arts, without the game resorting to racist cliches, like moustache-twirling villains with Fu Manchu facial hair. And to be fair, there isn’t anything particularly egregious about Sifu so far—I’ve seen the trailers, watched several gameplay videos, and discovered, to my huge relief, that there has been no misspelt Chinese words, and zero philosophising of the concept of “honor”, be it by the protagonist himself o෴r the game makers. But it is still a pity that none of the studio leads—even the consultant they hired—are Chinese or Asian, particularly for a game that features a Chinese protagonist, along with an entirely Chinese cast of characters and punchable mobsters. This incongruence still says volumes about a predominantly white industry that is in love with non-white cultures, but is largely reluctant to challenge the structural racism endemic to the industry. You can see this already, in the responses—sometimes vitriol—in the games made by or backed by Chinese developers and studios. The frequency of these responses become even more pronounced, of course, when it comes to anything revolving around Tencent and Mihoyo.
That said, I’m still looking forward to the release of Sifu. All the fisticuffs in the🎐 game look genuinely exhilarating, and the game’s intentional ageing of the protagonist every time he suffers a defeat sounds like it will strike a good balance between your haphazard brutalising of mobsters and a more measured approach to combat. More than that, I’m curious to see the reception that Sifu will garner among gamer🌃s—and how the game’s Chinese martial arts influences will translate to the screen. Tarno should consider changing his display picture to someone else other than Kim Jung Un, though.