Suda51 is a studio famous for their zany artistic visions, and while I didn’t personally try to delve into their free-to-play offering in ‘Let It Die’, I certainly spent a lot of time appreciating what they did its art direction. ‘Let It Die’ is also the name of the song which introduces a trio of characters known as the ‘Jackals’. Functionally, they’re the one-hit-kill monsters that discourage you from lingering on one floor of a dungeon for too long. Aesthetically? They’re some of the coolest and most self-indulgent things I’ve seen in gaming.
Each of them have a neat character design on their own, but the three of them posing so discordantly together really just compliments their differences, along with their common ground. Who are they even posing for? Nobody, considering they execute their audience first. They do it for the vibes, for themselves, for each other – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. They are not very involved in the game’s story, but the short intro cutscene they get, combined with the intro of this song, was all it took to make me adore them. There’s even little notes that touch on who the Jackals were before they became the dungeon cleanup crew, and concept art that spoils what they look like under the masks. Considering it some more, I think I just really like the idea of discordant trios as a whole. A number of Sega titles come to mind, not to mention countless RPGs, which really capitalized on this with their characters back in the day.
As it turns out, ‘Let It Die’ is also the name of every single other song on the game’s soundtrack. Online comments tell me that ‘Let It Die’s producers got in touch with a hundred bands and told them simply to make a song with that title. There’s all kinds of varied j-pop, rock and electronic music in there as a result, and the surreal aesthetic of the game manages to bundle it all together in a way that somehow doesn’t feel out of place. ‘Survive Said The Prophet’s take on the theme is one of my favorites even without the Jackals context, with the full song being even better than the snippet used in the cutscene.
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