Exclusive: Meet Showa American Story’s New Boss Character, Texan Samurai-Cowboy Gokou

ign.com:

When Showa American Story was first announced in 2022, its reveal trailer depicting a parallel 1991 in which the United States had become a colony of Japan went viral, with nearly half a million views on IGN’s YouTube channel alone. It has been a year since the last update via an interview with IGN Japan. Chinese developer Nekcom has since pushed back the game’s release, switched development from Unreal Engine 4 to 5, and devoted additional time and resources in order to meet gamers’ intense expectations.

Now, in a fresh interview with Creative Director XY.Luo, IGN can exclusively reveal a brand new boss character and several new screenshots that show how work is progressing on this fascinating new game.

Gokou is the impressive new boss that players will face at some point in their adventure. This American politician has blonde hair and a muscular chest covered in beastly hair, and harbours a treacherous past.

“Gokou is a character who is a mix of an American cowboy and a Japanese samurai,” explains Luo. “Although he is American, he is deeply knowledgeable about Japanese culture, and when you fight him, you will notice he pulls from both Eastern and Western cultures in his combat style.”

Luo continues, “While I cannot go into detail yet about the techniques Gokou uses in battle, he is closely connected with the background story of the game. He’s not the final boss or the overarching villain, but in our alternate history, Gokou is the Governor of Texas, and it was him who sold the land of Texas to Japan.”

While Gokou’s character model appears almost photorealistic, and development has included some photogrammetry, Luo explains that Gukou and most of the other main characters were initially hand-drawn, before being converted to 3D and added to the game. “Gokou’s design was inspired by a certain famous 1980s American rock star,” hints Luo. “Whether each character is created by hand or based on a 3D facial model, we take care to make sure they express realism. Since our