Ghost of Tsushima’s collectibles often feel like a Japanese cultural pick-n-mix: upgrade your skills at Shinto shrines! Increase your max health at a hotspring! Compose haiku a few centuries before it was even invented! More importantly, the intent and usage of cultural elements in Ghostwire is more considered – rooted in Japanese society and beliefs, and logical (if you think about it). Indeed, that balance of heavy and light tones is something you find more obviously in Ghostwire, where you can be helping quell the cursed rage of a tragic spirit one moment, then help another spirit’s unfinished “business” in the loo the next. Just why are these representations so awfully dour and po-faced anyway? Sucker Punch conveniently ignores how Kurosawa’s films, besides including the later ones made in colour, also had plenty of humour. But even comparisons with Hong Kong martial arts flick are at odds with the game’s serious revenge plot and hardcore mechanics – there’s none of the slapstick of Jackie Chan or anything quite as imaginatively bonkers as what you'd get in the genre (and if Sloclap did care about representing Hong Kong cinema, perhaps it should have prioritised a Cantonese dub over a Mandarin one.). Sifu is not so much a game set in China so much as it’s a fusion buffet comprising different aspects of Asian cinema, with the first level paying homage to both The Raid and Oldboy. Sucker Punch and Sloclap seem to be thinking of representing cinema first, rather than the actual culture itself. Subs and dubs may be ultimately down to personal preference, but it’s still telling that Ghostwire has the Japanese audio as the default, which it also largely stuck to for its marketing. At least having authentic language options as an option is an improvement over Sloclap’s martial arts game, Sifu, which only added Chinese audio post-launch. because it happens to be in black and white, and it has Japanese audio (which was botched in the original release since the lip-sync was made for the English dub). Let’s consider Sucker Punch’s samurai game, which has the audacity of naming one of its modes after legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Regardless of their intentions, what we get is superficial cultural tourism (at best), and games that play into "pre-existing stereotypes and cliches" (at worst, per Uppercut). The richness of Ghostwire’s setting only shows up the shallow representation of the likes of Ghost of Tsushima and Sifu games set in Asia but made in the West, primarily by white folks. It’s also a kind of cultural specificity that could have only come from a Japanese developer like Tango Gameworks, a studio that runs wild revelling in its Japanese identity and all of its nuances – a welcome departure from trying to play towards Western audiences hungry for more Shinji Mikami survival horror. All of these things make Ghostwire’s world come alive – ironic for a game where everyone has been spirited away. Then there’s just how it all looks as well: a beautiful recreation of a new-gen Tokyo that would make Yakuza’s RGG Studio sweat. In Ghostwire: Tokyo, they take on different roles – from threats to collectibles, merchants to quest-givers. Likewise, those rudimentary fetch quests take on more significance when they draw you into discovering the many yokai of Japanese mythology that have interwoven themselves into Japanese society. Just outside the shrines, you’ll also find stalls where you can buy charms or snacks, though given the supernatural fog that’s swept the city, some of these have looked in better shape. Their locations aren’t just random, either – they’re often located at the entrance of a Shinto shrine, and in rare instances they become literal gateways to another dimension. Break down Ghostwire: Tokyo to its basic gameplay fundamentals and you have an open world game as formulaic as they come.īut the activities take on a new meaning when, instead of clearing towers, you’re uncovering more of the map by cleansing corrupted Torii gates. Head to this marker, kill all the enemies that spawn, uncover more of the map, head to one of the new markers that just popped up, talk to an NPC, go to the next waypoint, fight some more enemies, go back to the quest giver, get your reward.
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