Hayao Miyazaki's first directed feature, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, was one of the few films in the great animator's body of work that I hadn't seen. I remedied that last weekend and, as it turns out, it's pretty great. Like other Miyazaki work, it feels like an inspiration to modern gaming.
Other movies in his oeuvre have had a major impact on the interactive medium. Castle in the Sky feels like a direct influence on JRPGs in general and Final Fantasy specifically. The gorgeous natural world and easygoing plot of My Neighbor Totoro have definitely influenced "cozy games." Ghibli-esque is a term that gets trotted out fairly often to describe painterly games, but the anime cutscenes in the JRPG Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch were actually produced by Studio Ghibli.
Miyazaki's totemic career has had a significant impact on video games. And, though none of his films have been directly adapted into games, Castle of Cagliostro seems like the movie that would fare the best in the adaptation process.
It has great characters and the movie is made up of two separate, but related heists. Each finds Lupin attempting to infiltrate Count Cagliostro's sprawling castle to uncover a hidden counterfeiting operation. In the process, Lupin discovers the Count has imprisoned a young woman, Princess Clarisse, in the castle's tower to force her into marriage. Across both heists, Lupin is attempting to expose the secret money printing machines and help Clarisse escape before her wedding.
To do that, Lupin sneaks into the castle via aqueduct, avoids motion-detecting lasers, escapes guards, wears disguises, and gets into sword fights. Some elements of the film would fit naturally into a Hitman game. Lupin has more personality than Agent 47, but he and the hairless hammer have a similar bag of tricks. Agent 47 likewise needs to avoid detection, change into costumes, and evade security.
But Lupin's adventure moves at a faster pace than Agent 47's espionage typically can. 47 moves slowly, but surely. His ideal mission ends without anyone knowing he was there. Lupin, though, makes himself known. In Castle of Cagliostro, he leaves his calling card, so that the Count and Interpol will know that he's planning to strike before he makes his move. Lupin is showier, more devil may care. In fact, he's a lot like Nathan Drake.
It's fitting then that one of Uncharted 4's big set-pieces feels like it could have been directly influenced by Castle of Cagliostro. The level in question finds Nate and Sully seeking out a clock tower in Kings Bay, Madagascar. Nate climbs the tower, but when he pulls a lever, the clock tower's inner workings begin to fall apart around him, forcing Nate to jump from gear to gear as it topples. Castle of Cagliostro has a similarly memorable clocktower scene. The film's climactic confrontation between Lupin and the Count takes place inside one. The pair sword fight on the gears, before moving out to the horizontal hands on the clock's massive face. It's a great scene, and one that (as evidenced by Uncharted's riff) feels like it was tailor-made for a video game adaptation.
James Bond and Indiana Jones are the western world's closest analogues to Lupin. Given that games based on both franchises are currently in development, I may get my wish sooner rather than later.
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