Tales Of Kenzera: Zau – new game inspired by House Of The Dragon actor's grief over the loss of his father | Ents & Arts News

Growing up, Abubakar Salim never felt destined to become a movie star.

The Jamestown and Raised By Wolves actor, who joins the cast of HBO and Sky's this year Dragon Housedidn't much care for the worlds of television and film where he has since made a name for himself.

“When I was a kid, I didn’t really like television,” he recalls. “The cartoons were pretty cool, but it was at a set time, so we couldn’t watch them all the time!”

Due to his dyslexia, reading also did not come naturally to him. For a young Salim, whose name is Abu, it was Games it proved an escape.

“It was the only thing I had a passion for – and my dad saw it.

“Without games, I wouldn't be an actor. They sparked my love for storytelling. And my father saw that they were the only gateway for me.”

“He knew I was fascinated”

Ali, Abu's father, Kenyanborn software engineer and lover of technology, he raised it in Hertfordshire with his mother.

The father-son relationship was often driven by a passion for gaming, with the shared adventures in Sonic The Hedgehog and The Legend Of Zelda strengthening their bond.

“He knew I was fascinated,” says the actor.

Recalling a moment from a Zelda game that “always terrified me” (it involved zombies, we've all been there), Abu fondly remembers how his father would sit next to him while 'he was crossing it.

“And I always felt like, 'Okay, he's with me, I feel ready.'

A story of mourning

But Ali never got to see his son, now 31, in his revolutionary roles.

The 66-year-old man died with cancer in 2013, years before Abu made a name for himself as BAFTA-nominated actor.

More than a decade later, that loss inspires his ultimate passion project: a new action-adventure game of the type they so loved playing together, shaped by his experience of grief.

Tales Of Kenzera: Zau, which will be released on April 23 on PlayStation, XboxPC and Nintendo Switch is the first title from UK-based Surgent Studios, which Abu founded in 2019.

Players take on the role of Zau, a powerful but grieving warrior determined to bring his father back from the dead.

It draws inspiration not only from Abu's grief, but also from the myths and legends of the Bantus, a mix of hundreds of ethnic groups from countries across central and southern Africa, including Kenya.

A place of passion

In a medium that, while increasingly diverse, is still dominated by familiar franchises and white protagonists, Zau's inspirations evoke a striking aesthetic, though also influenced by a love of comic books and bearing Afrofuturist motifs on his sleeve.

“It comes from a place of passion,” says Abu, who serves as creative director and also the voice of Zau, although the entire game can also be played in Swahili.

He previously played the title character in 2017's Assassin's Creed Origins, his first gaming role and which – given the broad scope of that title – made him the narrator of much of my free time this that year.

It was this part that inspired Abu to discover what it took to make his own games and put together a team to create the world of Kenzera and “tell stories in a different light.”

The team is made up of just 30 people working remotely, dwarfed by the hundreds, if not thousands, who make the Assassin's Creed games, but it brings together a diverse range of British talent, some of whom share Abu's unorthodox background in creating games.

A cohesive team

Composer Nainita Desai, born to Indian parents, learned violin and piano at school, joined the choir and founded her own pop group, but she put her musical ambitions on hold to study mathematics at college. university.

“I didn’t realize that composing was a career you could do,” she admits.

“I thought it was something for old white guys!”

Her career has since spanned from film to television to video games, but few have evoked the same passion as Zau, which saw her work with a diverse orchestra at London's Abbey Road, combining the “old sounds of African Cultures” with modern synths to create a score that has already been hailed as a likely awards contender.

Desai also enlisted the help of Voquality, the same choir that performed on Marvel's Black Panther films.

Highlighting Africa's rich Bantu mythology, she says, was one of the things that made the “beautiful and rich” Kenzera an extremely compelling project.

For artist Ackeem Durrant, it's an opportunity to bring his story to a wider audience, the way games like God Of War and films like Thor did for Norse and Greek mythologies.

“When you see these things in the media, you're going to Google them, right? You're checking these things out,” he says.

“That’s what we really want to inspire by tackling Bantu culture in this game: it’s a huge rabbit hole to go down.”

Surgent took inspiration from the Bantu pantheon to inspire everything from the environments players explore, to the enemies they fight and the abilities they learn throughout the game.

This is the so-called “Metroidvania” genre, named after the influential 2D Metroid and Castlevania franchises, known for their addictive combination of combat, puzzles and exploration.

Enemy inspirations include the water spirit Tikoloshe and the fire spirit Kalunga, while the levels – from the Kakaramban highlands to the Kivulian forests – take inspiration from the continent's varied landscapes.

Lead designer Zi Peters describes it as a world in which players will “feel a little lost” at first.

'You're not alone'

But despite this burrow of Bantu mythology that the developers were able to uncover, they never lost sight of the game's overarching inspiration: grief.

“We hope this game will be an experience that shows people they're not alone,” says Peters, who also lost his father to cancer when he was 20.

“It’s one of those things, especially when it comes earlier than expected, that you can’t plan for it.

“You have to allow yourself to feel it, not force yourself, but also not let yourself be completely overwhelmed.”

Each level of Zau's journey and the abilities he gains “serve as an analogy for the journey of grief”, ensuring that the story and the way players actually interact with the game “sit in harmony”.

Evolve and change

For Abu, this is what makes games such a powerful vehicle for storytelling, inspiring people to “think differently”.

“If I had known that you could actually make a career in games when I was a kid, I probably would have gone straight into games,” he admits.

While a movie or series can only “put you like a fly on the wall”, a game puts you “in the shoes of a character, you travel with them through a journey of what they experience, and you are I will evolve and change with them.”

Abu has already done a lot of “evolve and change” stuff, with his father's death forcing him to “accept a new version of me and be cool with it.”

Whether it's the death of a loved one or friend, a breakup, or even the loss of a job, “it will never leave you,” he says.

“You get comfortable with it – you have to accept it and keep going, keep persevering.”

Read more: The Science of Grief

“I think he would have loved that.”

Early buzz around Zau has only been positive – having been announced at last year's Game Awardsmaybe this year's show will end up being something of a full circle.

Regardless of the reception, Abu has probably already made the people who matter most proud.

“I showed the trailer to my mother after the announcement and it really moved her,” he says, smiling.

“She said to me, 'I've never seen anything like this before!' My mom is 70, so it's cool to have that effect and surprise someone who feels like they've probably seen it all.”

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And dad? What would he have done with it?

“He would have said, 'You could have done like Sonic The Hedgehog! That's really deep, man!'”

“No,” Abu smiled. “I think he would have loved it.”