El Shaddai will be 'divisive' in America, says Ignition
by Jordan Mallory 
on Jul 9th 2011 3:00PM
During last weekend's Anime Expo 2011,
Ignition Entertainment showed off the PSN/XBLA demo of
El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron to an anime-hungry crowd of convention-goers and cosplayers. Shane Bettenhausen, Ignition's Director of Business and Marketing, told
Gamer Gaia that Ignition "always knew [
El Shaddai] was going to be divisive, because the graphics are so abstract." He went on to say that Anime Expo's reaction was more receptive than the mixed bag of emotions he encountered at this year's E3, claiming that anime fans are "more willing to take more of a chance on things that are a little different and refreshing."
Bettenhausen doesn't think, however, that the title's
Judeo-Christian origins will cause similar problems: "We actually wanted to take this text and treat it in a new way, to give it to a team in Japan that doesn't have any connection to that. They're not religious in that way, so they could treat it as just mythology and create a new graphical style and a new gameplay style." He hopes
El Shaddai will avoid the negative connotation usually given to other biblically themed games, which he feels were created "just to try and sell" religion.
