There will not be a game like Killer7 again. In the complainers and reviewers era, if this was released as a new game, it would be bashed as pretentious and tryhard. People would demand it to be more "self-awared" and "light-hearted". People don't value pure surreal experiences and full weirdness as they did in the mid-2000s, when everyone was shamelessly "trying hard" and going all out with their artistic expression and creative liberties. That makes me grumpy and bitter.

Killer 7 is a masterpiece in my eyes. So underrated and misunderstood as a game.

I knew Suda made a wrestling game, but I had NO IDEA it was about a wrestler staving off suicide.

The Russian Roulette scene is one of my favorite cutscenes in all of video games.

Killer7 is...a dream. A very long dream. One both terrible and beautiful in many capacities. Ultimately, the end of the game breaks everything down. The plot is a little muddy at points because much of the original plot was deleted from the game for some reason. Much is open-ended, and it gets to the point where you have to wonder just how much of this was real. So, that's why I refer to it as a dream. Because when you finally "wake up" from it...well, maybe that's why they call it "bittersweet." This game is not to be fully understood, but it's to be fully observed. It's an incomprehensible classic, and I refuse to see it otherwise. A wild and confusing dream I want everyone to see at one point.

This was a fantastic video, and it actually helped me realize a few things I missed about its atmosphere and set pieces. Nice work!

Also the ending of this game is the best ever! It's crazy and the biggest twist ever. This game leaves you in a sense of dread.

You my friend, have the rare gift of reaching whole nother levels of analysis without becoming bullshit. Not just by knowing that sweetspot of what to focus on, but by truly taking a look at things that are undefined as terms in not just vidyagames, but art in general.

I was just thinking that most of the stronger horror moments I've experienced over the years come not from deliberately crafted horror titles, but from strong sequences in other non-deliberately horror games. Maybe it's a case of horror only working in small doses at a time? Or maybe it's a Paul Veerhoven style thing, where the best violent, bloody movies are made by people who are using them incidentally to illustrate a point, rather than for the sake of simply creating a violent movie for its own inherent merit - like that, but with horror. When a developer focuses specifically on creating FEAR itself, and putting the player into a specific state through whatever means necessary, they naturally arrive at a horror setup - but ironically often when people set out to SPECIFICALLY make a horror GAME, it winds up being tropey / derivative and falls short. To paraphrase one of your lines in this video, horror definitely seems to me to hinge on an element of the unknown or unknowable, something abstract or just plain wrong.

its a crime this game isn't more widely known and thay your analysis doesn't have more views. I definitely enjoyed this analysis and it's only furthered my increasing interest in this odd gem of a game. I definitely want to play it.

This game is mostly about the USA-Japan self defense treaty from WW2. This was alway suggested but was later confirmed in 2016 by SUDA himself during an interview for the upcoming rerelease of The Silver Case.

I feel like killer7 is a game that changed my life somehow. Like a tiny part of its insatnity got into me and never left. A truly beutiful, yet unsettling experience.

Absolutely agree with your view of K7 being indirect horror. It’s in that way like a David Lynch film, where it’s not straight up horror, but manages to sync into your mind on a more deeper, disturbing level. Another Japanese director who did this style was Yoko Taro with Drakengard, as the game appears as a fantasy dynasty warriors meets ace combat game, but is truly a horror game when you play it more. Even Hidetaka Miyazaki’s Dark Souls is another great example which sinks into your mind, as it starts off generic, but begins to turn into a fantasy nightmare. I also think Killer7 is a good example of a game with the mature rating, as the violence, sexual themes, and especially subject matter are all done in a not so generic way and is way more twisted due to its surrealism.

I never expected Killer7 would almost make soil my pants at several points. A masterpiece game!

One of my all time favorite games. It's story is like unnerving inherent truth wrapped in a veil of madness. From story to gameplay to execution and presentation, there's nothing like it. Suda's best that he still hasn't topped. May the Lord smile and the Devil have mercy.

Another KZfaqr, supergreatfriend, did a great deep dive series for Killer7, cross-referencing it w/ its original outline (a book by the game dev entitled "Hand In Killer7") & its secondary docs (the comics, the game manual--which actually adds to and sometimes contradicts the narrative of the game itself).

Interesting that i was unsettled by soooo many things in killer 7, the weird atmospheres and visuals it produced, all the things that made it seem like a dream sequence at times, the insanely creepy enemies

Killer7 is what I wish to make one day in a game. Something that is so great it can make someone who is detached from this world feel something real. This shit is on steam man. It is a good version. Get it.

I'd definetly say this game is scary mostly due to how unfamiliar and uncanny it is. First time i played it i was amazed pretty much the entire time, knowning there was more than meets the eye due to reviews and lps, i was contantly analyzing every minor detail of the game, trying to piece everything together, yet at the same time dreading what the awnser might turn out to be. The first time i beat Killer7, despite already knowing the ending, was the first time in my life i've ever cried while playing a video game. It was all right there, every death, every conflict, every idea, all ends finally tied up. Garcian's final lines are so oversaturated nowadays: "It wasn't me." You hear it all the time in movies and such, and even then, it has SO MUCH IMPACT. You can really feel the melancholy, the sheer helplesness of the character in the way he says it. It's such a fucking beautiful game, and yet it's so hard to really pinpoint why that is.

Killer 7 is available on Steam!!!