It would appear New Mecca had waged an open war of extermination on the nameless people they dubbed cromags. So, what kind of agenda drives a state government to declare a rival nation as “inhuman”, and slaughter their young? How does that serve the usual objectives of war: resources and territory? It does not. Seeing foreigners as less than human appears to be something indoctrinated top-down throughout New Mecca, starting with the government. This indicates that racist attitudes are not isolated to war vets and other unfortunates languishing in New Mecca’s poor districts. Remarkably, all characters in Katana Zero, regardless of their social echelon, only have the slur cromag to describe their rival nation. This happens in V’s limo and in Zero’s psychologist’s office, respectively.

Zero finds himself both on the giving and receiving end of the word. This aligns it with another odd pejorative – subhuman – which we hear from people associated with the New Mecca government and military. As a slur, it is comparable to calling someone a troglodyte: a lesser, un-evolved version of ourselves. “Cromag” is most likely derived from Cro-Magnon, a defunct term used to describe one of our more recent evolutionary ancestors. Otherwise, it’s hard to explain why they would unleash their augmented super soldiers on the general population. However, it would appear that in the Cromag War, killing off the civilian population was one of New Mecca’s main objectives. Targeting civilian is, in the worst possible scenario, a shock tactic to force an enemy into submission. The NULL soldier Fifteen was a member of such a squad, as was most likely Zero himself. Later on we learn that during the Cromag War, New Mecca deployed “death squads” tasked with wiping out entire villages of civilians. He then talks about killing cromag children – as do the war veterans we commiserate with at the bar. The homeless veteran we encounter early in the game attacks us by saying “You look like a f*cking cromag. Based on how the people of New Mecca use it, it appears to be a racial slur. Outside of the phrase “Cromag War”, cromag is spelled in lowercase. To start off, the word cromag is not the designation of a people or a state. And yet, its darkest and ugliest truth is left unsaid. It is clear that, much like its real life counterpart, the Cromag War was fraught with atrocities.

Their shared memories of the Cromag War paint it as Katana Zero‘s analogy of the Vietnam War. Many of the game’s main characters – including the protagonist Zero – are walking embodiments of these sins. Askiisoft’s savage hit Katana Zero tells a grim story, largely revolving around the sins of war.

Katana zero endings