Boss Rush: Fighting Grief in Tales of Kenzera: Zau

Frequently, at the end of a videogame level, there’s a big dude who really wants to kill you. Boss Rush is a column about the most memorable examples of these, whether they challenged us with tough-as-nails attack patterns, introduced visually unforgettable sequences, or because they delivered monologues that left a mark. Sometimes, we’ll even discuss more abstract examples, like a rhetorical throwdown or a tricky final puzzle or all those damn guitar solos in “Green Grass and High Tides.” This week we look at Tales of Kenzera: Zau.

Liyana is a scamp. When you first meet her in Tales of Kenzera: Zau, the young girl is standing on a bridge, singing into the sky. She rushes away when she notices you, seemingly scared; as you follow her throughout Ikakaramba, up to the Great Cliffs, and through a dangerous gauntlet of enemies on an incredibly slow elevator ride, you might start to notice she seems a little too playful for somebody running for their life. And sure enough, when you finally catch up to her, she reveals she was just playing with you, leading you in a long, perilous game of tag that conveniently also works as an ongoing tutorial through your burgeoning set of skills and abilities. 

That roguish playfulness disappears when Liyana tells you why she was singing on that bridge. As the last Ikakaramban, Liyana had a special relationship with Impundulu—the Great Spirit of this region, one of three Great Spirits you have to face off against as Kenzera’s bosses. Before the collapse of Kenzera, Liyana and Impundulu would sing back and forth to each other, Liyana from the bridge, and the Great Spirit from her perch high atop a mountain in the distance. The Spirit is missing, though, and Liyana is sad and worried. She asks you, playing as the shaman and unsure hero Zau, to find out what happened to Impundulu. Unfortunately, you discover they’re a giant, vicious bird monster that you’re inevitably going to have to kill. That’s what happens to bosses in games, after all: they always go down.

Tales of Kenzera: Zau is defined by grief. Its framing device is about a young man, Zuberi, struggling with the loss of his father. He reads a story written by his father, in which Zau—a shaman in a mythical version of Africa inspired by Bantu culture—is also grieving his father; Zau takes action, though, tracking down Kalunga, the God of Death, as he embarks on a journey to bring his dad back from the afterlife. (That’s the game.) Unwilling to accept his father’s death, Zau risks his own life on an adventure through Kenzera, meeting a handful of allies who are all dealing with grief and loss in their own way.

The first boss battle, against the legendary lightning bird Impundulu, is a type of encounter that’s been a gaming staple for decades: the absurdly huge bad guy with a few specific weak points you have to hit when they try to attack you. This is one big bird, with a wingspan at least a hundred feet wide; it towers above you as it clings to the edge of the cliff that fills the screen, swiping at you with talons or trying to peck you with its helmeted beak as it leaves openings to hack away at its health bar. Occasionally she’ll fly away and spit lightning down at you; dodge, roll, and try to stay alive until she gets close again. The pattern is so instantly recognizable that it’s hard to envision anybody who’s been playing games for at least a few years to struggle with it. If you’ve played any platformer before, or any Metroid-style game (as Kenzera is), you’ll know the score as soon as Impundulu starts to swipe at you. 

Kenzera’s strength isn’t in its actual play, though. It’s in the way it depicts and explores how people grieve. The battle with Impundulu is given emotional depth by something you learn on the way to the fight: Impundulu wasn’t just Liyana’s playmate in happier times. She’s the girl’s mother, who, in her now-corrupted state, has abandoned her daughter. In a sorrowful reflection of Zau’s own grief, he now has to bring a physical end to the mother who Liyana has already lost spiritually, both to try and bring his own parent back from the dead, but also to bring all of Kenzera back to life by freeing the Great Spirits.

Upon Impundulu’s defeat, Kalunga consoles an emotionally conflicted Zau by summing up one of the main themes of Tales of Kenzera. After Liyana reconnects with her mother’s true form for one last fleeting moment, watching it dissipate as her spiritual energy passes on to the afterlife, Kalunga appears and tells Zau that “every parent knows that one day they must step aside for their child.” Zau freed Impundulu from the twisted shadow she had turned into, but at the cost of her life; the Great Spirit that Zau actually freed was Liyana herself, who will now ascend to her mother’s role. Liyana had one final chance to say goodbye to her beloved parent before accepting their responsibilities; Zau, older but definitely not wiser, still can’t say goodbye to his own.

The battle with Impundulu firmly establishes Kenzera’s major themes. Grieve your parents when they pass, but don’t let that grief consume and debilitate you. Liyana represents a healthy approach to grief: she might be in denial at first, but with the help of others she learns to accept what has happened and grows as a person in the process. Impundulu’s wisdom and inspiration will guide Liyana throughout the rest of her life, and through Liyana her mother’s spirit and legacy will still be felt in the living world. Zau, meanwhile, can’t let go; he’s desperate to rectify what can’t be undone, letting his grief turn into rage, and not letting his father’s spirit rest. He helps others, like Liyana, but only as a way to help himself. 

Zau meets other characters throughout Tales of Kenzera, each managing their own grief, and each showing Zau a healthier, more responsible way to deal with his own. And this all echoes back to the framing device, with Zuberi sad and angry at the loss of his own father, turning to stories his departed dad wrote in hopes of reconnecting with him on some level. Zuberi’s father wrote the Tales of Kenzera, guiding his own son from beyond the grave just as Kalunga serves as Zau’s guide within his story and within the game itself. 

Tales of Kenzera: Zau is a thoughtful, sensitive, emotionally perceptive exploration of the unique and universal grief of losing a parent, wrapped up inside of a game inspired by Metroid and other ‘80s and ‘90s classics. It’s rare to play a game as empathetic as this one, or one that can resonate with people struggling with actual grief and loss in their lives. And its first boss battle serves as a microcosm of its themes as a whole, themes further developed and expounded upon as you gradually free the other Great Spirits in the land of Kenzera.

And then, at the end, you have to beat up your dad.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, comedy, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and more. He’s on Twitter @grmartin.