Sifu’s Kungfu Brawling Is Made By A Studio Full Of White Developers
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 movies
This cinematic influence is something that Sloclap, the studio behind Sifu, has openly drawn from. In a brief statement to PC Gamer, 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.
Related: Sifu Is Getting A Physical Release In Spring 2022
Indeed, Sifu looks set to be a game that’s very much in the style of the fighting game Absolver, where you can develop and customise your own 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
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