Having now seen the credits roll, I believe these red flags were a case of smoke where there is no fire. Luckily for Kena, none of these critical concerns were warranted in the end. Thus, in the days before Kena’s release, I was one of the people who worried that the developers were hiding something - perhaps a broken, unfinished game. An impending embargo lifting this late is a strange and unusual practice that, as time has shown with botched releases of games like Cyberpunk 2077, have conditioned critics to see it as a scummy anti-consumer practice. To make matters worse, Kena’s embargo lifted right when the game went live and was available for purchase. (Epilogue, for instance, did not receive a code.) Was it possible, some wondered, that this playable Pixar movie was too good to be true? The final red flag emerged in response to the strangely last-minute review embargo not only were review outlets late to receive advance press copies, but very few outlets actually received a review code at all. The marketing cycle was so quiet leading up to Kena’s release that fans and critics alike started to question Kena’s quality, leading to another red flag. Kena’s first red flag was its delay from summer into September - which, to be fair, happened during COVID’s delay season - suggesting that the game had either overscoped itself or ran into significant snags during development. Leading up to release, the marketing around Kena was eerily muted, especially for a studio ostensibly partnering with Sony for a console exclusive.
Though the pathway up to Kena’s release was fraught and caused many people, including myself, to doubt whether this game would live up to the hype, my experience with Kena: Bridge of Spirits was punctuated by moments of beauty, mirth, and tension that surpassed those lofty hopes - even as the game is occasionally a mixed bag. I simply had never seen another game that tried to look as alive as Kena, and I was ready to dive into its charming presentation.
From the moment that Kena: Bridge of Spirits was announced, I was smitten by its inspired aesthetic, marrying traditional film animation techniques with contemporary game design to produce something that looked utterly original and unique.
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