Over time, fans have noticed that underneath all those bright colours and cheery attitude, Splatoon can be a pretty creepy game. Surely Nintendo has an explanation for that, right? Well…
Some background, in case you’re not caught up with it: earlier this year, YouTuber Siertes found that certain Splatoon boss levels play disturbing sounds that would be more at home in a hellscape than in a Nintendo game:
People came up with lore-specific reasons as to why these sounds exist — notably, fans decided that the sounds must be evidence of a civilisation that is falling apart at your hands. This of course is just a fan theory. The only people who can refute or confirm the idea is Nintendo itself.
So, Eurogamer asked Splatoon’s director, Tsubasa Sakaguchi what is going on with the mysterious boss sounds. Except he has no clue, either.
“It’s the first time I’ve heard this!” Sakaguchi claimed. “I was the one who was in charge of the mechanics and the effects for the final boss. Towards the end, though, I was running out of time so I was asking the staff around me to do things for me — like the staff credits and many other things.
Sakaguchi does think there are a couple of possibilities here, though.
“Maybe it’s a curse from those other staff. The final boss was one of the last things that we were working on. We were all high on adrenaline. Maybe there’s some element of that in there, of that energy in there. Once I go back to Japan, I’ll play it and have a look.”
Ha. It would be amazing if the creepy sounds are the work of a rogue designer who sneaked the audio in without anyone else’s knowledge. Whatever it is, I encourage you to read the rest of the Eurogamer article on Splatoon here — it’s full of curious tidbits, like the fact that around 80 per cent of players use the motion controls.
Comments
10 responses to “Even Nintendo Doesn’t Know What’s Up With Splatoon’s Odd Sounds”
Camp triggerfish is really great, especially in splat zones.
I really wish I could play online. God damn Belkin router.
I’ve hardly touched online. I played through single player, female squid, kraken and nearly finished the male squid. So far I like the offline more than online but like I said I haven’t leveled up much online.
If you haven’t got the amiibo I highly recommend it. Especially if you’re Internet sucks.
I picked up the amiibo before I bought my wii u. I’d jsut like to be able to buy things in the store and participate in the splatfests
They made a mistake by saying it’s just the final boss…. all bosses have the sound in it in one way or another. Not just the final boss.
May be the ghosts of the octoling genocide from the previous war?
This, for all the bright colours of the ink, the game is still a post apocalyptic dystopian shooter.
Splatoon surprised me by how much I love it. I wasn’t particularly excited leading up to it’s release but for me its my personal game of the year.
It reminds me of old games in it’s atmosphere and level design and boss fights butbfeels so fresh and new, I suppose that’s thanks to the new blood at Nintendo.
The gyro aiming is the best console aiming I’ve encountered and I played another first person shooted and my muscle memory made my hands flick to aim as I was used to Splatoon and felt somehow irritated realising I had to rely on the twin sticks.
It’s a shame WiiU doesn’t have a large audience because Splatoon deserves more attention. You can tell the developers are very passionate and proud of their work. If this is the future of Nintendo I’m all aboard.
I purchased a PS4 for the sole purpose of playing arkham knight as ive adored the previous games. I’ve had it for a few weeks now but simply can’t bring myself to stop playing splatoon. I also have alien isolation, walking dead season 2, lego jurassic world and yoshi’s woolly world – all of which i haven’t even opened yet because splatoon has trapped me and it won’t let go.
This. Kirby, Yoshi and Codename STEAM all sit by the wayside looking forlorn as I continue to play nothing but more and more Splatoon.
The grip of the tentacle is strong.
Me Too!