Go to this marker, kill all spawned enemies, discover more maps, go to one of the new markers that just popped up, talk to the NPC, go to the next waypoint, fight more enemies, go back to the quest giver, get your reward . Rinse and repeat.break down Ghost Line: Tokyo It’s basic game fundamentals and you have an open world game as they come.
However, when instead of clearing towers, you uncover more maps by clearing broken torii gates, these activities take on a new meaning. Their locations aren’t just random either – they’re usually at the entrance to a shrine, and on rare occasions they’ll be a real gateway to another dimension. Just outside the shrine, you can also find stalls where you can buy amulets or snacks, although some of them look better considering the supernatural fog sweeping the city.
Likewise, these primary quests are even more meaningful when they invite you to discover the many yokai in Japanese mythology that are intertwined with Japanese society. In Ghostwire: Tokyo, they play different roles – from threat collectibles, merchants to quest givers. And then there’s the look: a beautiful rendition of a new generation of Tokyo that will make Yakuza’s RGG Studio sweat. All of which brings Ghostwire’s world to life — ironic for a game where everyone is sneaking around.
It’s also a cultural idiosyncratic that can only come from a Japanese developer like Tango Gameworks, a studio that’s crazy about Japanese identity and all its nuances — a welcome departure from trying to cater to the desire for more Shinji’s Western audience Mikami survival horror.
The richness of Ghostwire’s setting is just a superficial representation of Ghost of Tsushima, Shifu, and the like; the game is set in Asia but made in the West, mostly by white people. Whatever their intentions, what we get is superficial cultural tourism (at best), and a game of “pre-existing stereotypes and clichés” (at worst, according to Uppercut).
Let’s consider Sucker Punch’s samurai game, which boldly names one of its modes after legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa…because it happens to be in black and white, and it has Japanese audio (self-lipsync is dubbed for English). maded). At least having a real language option as an option is an improvement over Sloclap’s martial arts game Sifu, which only added Chinese audio after launch. Subscriptions and dubbing may ultimately come down to personal preference, but it still shows that Ghostwire is sticking to its marketing for the most part with Japanese audio as the default.
Suker Punch and Sloclap appear to be considering representing Movie First, not the actual culture itself. Sifu is not so much a game set in China as it is a buffet that blends different aspects of Asian cinema, with the first level paying homage to The Raid and Oldboy. But even the comparisons to the Hong Kong martial arts movies are at odds with the game’s serious revenge plot and hardcore mechanics – no Jackie Chan slapstick or anything as crazy as you can imagine in the genre (if Sloclap did Concerned about representing Hong Kong films, maybe it should prioritize Cantonese dubbing over Mandarin…).
Why on earth are these statements so horrific and beyond recognition? Sucker Punch conveniently ignores Akira Kurosawa’s film, which has a lot of humor in addition to including later color films. Indeed, you can find this balance of accents and lightness more clearly in Ghostwire, where you can help quell the cursed rage of one tragic spirit and then help another spirit’s unfinished “work” in the toilet.
What’s more, the intent and use of cultural elements in Ghostwire is more considered – rooted in Japanese society and beliefs, and logical (if you think about it). Soul of Tsushima collectibles often feel like a mix of Japanese culture: level up your skills at the shrine! Increase your maximum health in the spa! Created centuries before haiku was invented!
Granted, Ghostwire has a lot of seemingly accidental collectibles—Dharma dolls and Hwajaka to name a few—but they also come with detailed descriptions explaining their cultural significance. Their location even has a purpose, like when you find a Japanese sword on an abandoned construction site – it seems random until you know it’s also the site of an old samurai manor.
These collectibles and descriptions extend even to the seemingly mundane; descriptions might explain the popularity of a certain supercar, why some magazines include fashion handbags as bonus items, or introduce you to you as you gobble up and recover Favorite Japanese snack. Perhaps one of the game’s most ironic observations is the widespread use of plastic bags in Japan, even when carrying only one item.
The same thoughtfulness that Tango Gameworks put into its project tet can be seen in the mechanics. Use your hand to make a gesture (Kuji-kiri) to seal corrupt souls, which is consistent with the gestures found in Shugendō today. And Shingon Mikkyō, there’s even the logic behind having a bow as your only conventional weapon, since archery is indeed associated with Shinto rituals in Peach Blossom.
My favorite aspect comes from the way you use Katashiro to save all the souls floating around Shibuya. In Japanese tradition, these paper dolls act as self-purifying human substitutes, so you can see the logic of using it to absorb human souls who have lost their bodies. But that’s just the first step, then you take these Katashiro to a specially wired phone booth that transports souls out of the fog-invaded capital.
I don’t doubt that Sucker Punch and Sloclap love the culture they want to represent and do the proper research, but when your team lacks people with that life experience and tradition, there are limits to how you can faithfully represent something — — not to mention taking that knowledge and giving it a unique flair like Tango Gameworks.
I hope Ghostwire gets the audience it deserves, but I fear it will end up being marginalized as a niche, just like Yakuza — another franchise that has always embraced its true representation of Japanese culture — in its Most of the time. However, despite some criticism that its open world design is rote, I don’t recall the exact same consensus on the explosion average open world template (taken from Assassin’s Creed 2) of Ghost of Tsushima.
Instead, Sucker Punch has not only won awards, it has even won over Japanese audiences, including Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi, who describes it as “the kind of work that non-Japanese make that makes you think they’re more Japanese than us. (I think he meant “people with more budgets and resources than us”, but hey, I’m not a translator).
If you’re fascinated by Japanese culture and want to see the Japanese team faithfully present it and execute it beautifully, then you should play Ghostwire: Tokyo for yourself. Ghost of Tsushima may have scratched the surface of the country’s rich heritage, but in terms of authenticity and spirit, nothing beats a team that knows it well.