Kowloon Walled City lives on in Stray
The Warren had long been abandoned by the authorities. It was controlled now by the mafias and cartels who offered a veneer of stability in exchange for the vast profits yielded from the usual flavors of human misery. A lawless citadel of unregulated commerce, overstuffed living quarters, and decay of every sort.
Despite its eventual replacement with a memorial park, complete with tiny bronze model of itself, Kowloon Walled City forever lurks in popular culture, silently informing our idea of what a dank undercity looks like. It’s no coincidence that these places always have Cantonese street signs and slurpy noodle bars, no matter how far out into the galaxy they’re imagined, or by whom. Hong Kong is the archetypal cramped metropolis, and the Walled City is its nadir.
In its day, it was the most densely populated construction on earth. For some, it lives on in memory as a warning from history about the importance of building regs. For others, it represents a culture sadly lost; an enclave of Chinese resilience, unmolested by de facto British rule. A place that many happily called home, exasperatingly misunderstood. Romantic, even, despite the squalor.
It’s not the first time that KWC has been depicted in a game; famously, Shenmue 2’s middle act takes place there, and every pseud’s favorite Max Payne, Stranglehold, features a level set within – although no sense of it as a residential complex exists in this version, as it’s reduced to a mere dispenser of angry Triads for Chow Yun-fat to gun down.
Yet in Stray, the sense of place is palpable. Its interpretation, fictional though it is, appears unusually well-researched from a visual standpoint. Though much of the real Walled City’s interior is lost to time, some film footage of it exists.
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