Ghost of Tsushima is an incredible achievement. It is a perfectly engineered game, optimized to an almost unparalleled degree, that deeply respects the player and their time. I thoroughly enjoyed a good majority of my time playing Ghost of Tsushima. For someone who plays their fair share of open world games, I have to admit that this game repeatedly took my breath away, visually, atmospherically and mechanically. The world of Tsushima is a very full one, complete with secrets, collectables, enemy camps and side quests. Yet as full as it is it never feels overwhelming nor bloated.
Ghost of Tsushima’s map similarly never feels crowded or overrun with icons or information. Instead, Ghost of Tsushima employs organic systems that help gently guide the player to various locations and collectables, systems built upon simple UX elements like the direction of the wind, or gear that signals you are close to something worth picking up. These simple systems are both unobtrusive enough that they never become annoying and conversely direct enough that I was able to ignore unlocking skills that rendered collectables even easier to find. No matter where I explored I constantly found myself able to collect and tap into the various upgrades and tools that enhanced my play without ever having to scrutinize my map or dig into a guide online.
Ghost of Tsushima’s combat is similarly intuitive and satisfying. Four simple stances allow you to quickly adjust to the exploit the weaknesses of disparate enemies. Diverse armour sets allow you to play in almost any way that suits you. While I certainly did love stealth aspects of the game, it was also enjoyable to tackle a group of enemies head on. Ghost of Tsushima does a wonderful job providing you with a vast array of tools and explaining when and why those tools are useful. It also provides enough variation in gameplay scenarios that you never feel that one approach is heads-and-shoulders superior to another. The game justifies all of it’s combat options, be they stealth, face-to-face or ranged. I never once felt one approach was hamstrung where others were artificially bolstered. I have a lot of respect for a company that can make me feel like I want to try each approach or tactic equally. There is a lot of thought and consideration that must drive that kind of effective game design.
Ghost of Thushima’s world is one of intricate details, beautiful hidden nooks and crannies and fairly vibrant village and city spaced. It feels simultaneously like a lived in space and one that is constantly under the pressure of war. Its zones encompass several different seasons and provide what is at once both deep verisimilitude and an almost myth like fantasy space. It feels both real and expertly crafted, like a perfect vision of Japan through the eyes or an artisan. Of course much of this comes from an attempt to translate the visual fabric of films but Akira Kurusawa. And while I don’t think Ghost of Tsushima is particularly successful at emulating the full nuances of a director like Kurosawa, I will admit that the game has a hauntingly cinematic aesthetic that is easy to get lost within.
But not all is perfect within the game. As expertly designed and respectful it is of the player’s time, Ghost of Tsushima failed to fully capture me from start to finish. To a large degree the last third to half of the game feels a bit disappointing from a mechanical standpoint. I found that by the end of the game, the skills and tools that you are provided render you far too powerful. I found the sweet spot of the game to be around the first third to middle, when several skills are undeveloped and more effort is required in combat. By the end of the game, when you have a full compliment of skills and charms, it very hard to lose to your opponents unless you cease fighting back. Jin’s skills are so thorough, the charms and armour so powerful that you are able to tear through enemies without a second thought. There is never a moment when you can find yourself on the back foot against an opponent. Not that I advocate that games lie Ghost of Tsushima strive to be Souls-like in any way, but I do enjoy when even the lowliest enemy in a Soulsborne game can push you to your limit if you’re not always on your game. I think I would have enjoyed a bit more challenge in the late game than I find Ghost of Tsushima had to offer.
I also found levelling to be uneven toward the end of the game. It’s very easy to to pick all of the very best skills up front and turn yourself into a combat powerhouse before you hit the last third of the game. By the time I was almost done the second area of the island, I had filled out most of the skill trees available. Aside from leaving me feeling overpowered, as I mention above, I felt it left me with less enjoyment. By the time I had reached the final section of the island, I will almost maxed out in skills and had an overabundance of supplies in my inventory with nothing to spend them on. This was partially due to the charms that let me double the supplies I collected and also another that increased the supplies dropped by enemies. In hindsight I would probably chose not to equip those charms for a second play through because I grew too rich, too fast. It would have been nice to have additional items during the final chapters to spend my supplies on, even if they were cosmetic.
Lastly, and this is something I’ve touched on in other posts about the game, I struggled with the story and themes of the game. Ghost of Tsushima feels like a game that was made by a western studio that idealizes mythical qualities of an almost mystical Japan. A game made by people who can’t quite delineate between reverence for and fetishization of a culture and a people. I don’t believe it is malicious, but I do think it is a game that leans too often on stereotypes about historical Japan and Samurai. I know counter arguments will cite that the Japanese reception of the game was very positive or that they pulled ideas directly from Kurosawa to construct this game. While both true, there is more nuance to both of those that needs to be considered. More on that subject in a moment.
From the start I was bothered by the dialogue and V.O. choices available. I wrote another post early on in my Ghost of Tsushima adventure:
I find all of Sucker Punch’s dialogue and voice acting choices deeply off putting. The game gives you a choice of Japanese or English dialogue. I chose Japanese and quickly learned that Sucker Punch did nothing to match the voice acted dialogue to the facial animations. It turns out only English matches up. This seems like a significant oversight, one that relegates Japanese spoken dialogue to a secondary, less important position in the game.
Nonetheless, I switched to English and then quickly learned that Sucker Punch’s direction to its Japanese voice cast mirrors that of a lot of western representations of Japanese speech. The choice feels less driven by a desire for Japanese representation than it is rooted in western orientalism. It’s an unsettling and unfortunate first impression that colours my feelings about the game, and my desire to want to continue playing.
It’s also telling that when setting the game up at the start, the English language mode is called “Standard” and Japanese is “Japanese Cinema”, rather than the far more simple English and Japanese. The game positions its questionable English voice direction as the standard way to play the game.
It feels as though, for a studio who made a game that supposedly reveres Japanese culture, they did little to actually reflect that reverence when it comes to the dialogue and voice over direction.
This is an aspect of the game I had to learn to live with despite my reservations, and that soured my overall enjoyment of the game a tiny bit. I chose to play with Japanese V.O. and decided to ignore the mismatched visuals. It something I wish Sucker Punk had attended to with the same level of care and thoughtfulness they put into other mechanical aspects of the game.
Once deeper into the game I was bothered by another aspect of Sucker Punch’s choices, the decision to focus on a profoundly stereotypical depiction of Samurai honour and the Bushido code. I constantly felt at odds with a narrative that rigidly pitted notions of honour against a critical and thoughtful approach to serving one’s people. The game also repeatedly reinforced the notion of the Samurai as honourable warriors that protect the people, rather than the powerful arm of Japanese lords and landowners employed to maintain dominant power structures in historical Japan.
While the game introduces characters and actions that attempt to portray alternative perspectives, the game repeatedly reduces the discourse to a binary between honourable and dishonourable practices. That even when abandoning rigid and dated ideals seems like the thoughtful and intelligent, even progressive, thing to do, the game constantly reminds us that while the honourable path might seem antiquated, in the long run it is the right choice. One of the most significant examples is Jin’s choice to use poison on the Mongolians. It is the dishonourable and deceptive choice that Jin determines necessary because it saves lives compared to his uncle’s frontal assault. But the game illustrates soon after that this dishonourable choice leads to the mass poisoning of whole sections of Tsushima’s population. Jin’s choice, albeit made to save lives, ends up costing far more lives. Such is the price of dishonour.
Similarly, the end of the game sets up another dichotomy between honour and dishonour providing Jin with an opportunity to follow one path or another in his final dealings with his uncle. The game frames the honourable choice, killing his uncle, as the right and ultimately righteous decision. There is an attempt to illustrate that despite all of Jin’s difficult decisions that led to what his uncle frames as dishonour, there is still an honourable way to resolve the final conflict. And that is by realigning himself with the ideology of his uncle. The game tasks you to take up the honourable path by accepting the uncle’s code. And by doing so you undermine any of the criticism the game lightly aimed at its depiction of the Samurai.
Ironically, for a game made by self described Kurosawa fans, Ghost of Tsushima misses or misinterprets a lot of the critical discourse that Kurosawa embedded in his films about historical Japan and the Samurai. In his piece Ghost of Tsushima, Kurosawa, and the political myth of the samurai for Polygon, Kasuma Hashimoto writes
[I]n embracing “Kurosawa” as an eponymous style for samurai adventures, the creatives behind Ghost of Tsushima enter into an arena of identity and cultural understanding that they never grapple with. The conversation surrounding samurai did not begin or end with Kurosawa’s films, as Japan’s current political forces continue to reinterpret history for their own benefit.
Hashimoto goes on to discuss the murky ways Ghost of Tsushima attempts to navigate its depiction of Samurai, a depiction that often draws from modern nationalistic conceptions of Japan’s past rather than it does its actual past. That ultimately casts a shadow over many of the excellent things that Ghost of Tsuhima does. By not approaching these themes critically, and by failing to see that very criticism within Kurosawa’s own films, Sucker Punch failed to deliver on a story that is more than a Samurai power fantasy. This is best put by Hashimoto who goes on to write:
In an interview with The Verge, Fox said that “our game is inspired by history, but we’re not strictly historically accurate.” That’s keenly felt throughout the story and in its portrayal of the samurai. The imagery and iconography of the samurai carry a burden that Sucker Punch perhaps did not reckon with during the creation of Ghost of Tsushima. While the game doesn’t have to remain true to the events that transpired in Tsushima, the symbol of the samurai propagates a nationalist message by presenting a glossed-over retelling of that same history. Were, at any point, Ghost of Tsushima to wrestle with the internal conflict between the various class systems that existed in Japan at the time, it might have been truer to the films that it draws deep inspiration from. However, Ghost of Tsushima is what it set out to be: a “cool” period piece that doesn’t dwell on the reasonings or intricacies of the existing period pieces it references.
A game that so heavily carries itself on the laurels of one of the most prolific Japanese filmmakers should investigate and reflect on his work in the same way that the audience engages with other pieces of media like film and literature. What is the intent of the creator versus the work’s broader meaning in relation to current events, or the history of the culture that is ultimately serving as a backdrop to yet another open-world romp? And how do these things intertwine and create something that can flirt on an edge of misunderstanding? Ghost of Tsushima is a surface-level reflection of these questions and quandaries, sporting a lens through which to experience Kurosawa, but not to understand his work. It ultimately doesn’t deal with the politics of the country it uses as a backdrop. For the makers of the game, recreating Kurosawa is just black and white.
Ghost of Tsuhima is a deeply contradictory game. It strives for a meticulous approach to game design that it essentially achieves on every front, but it rests on a system of simplistic and stereotypical depictions of a historical period and people for it story, employing none of the thoughtfulness is story that can be found in the mechanical aspects of the game. Sucker Punch wants to deliver an homage to a favourite director through their game, but they overlook and exclude the very critical elements that make his films as important as they are. On the one hand I absolutely adored playing this game for most of its run time. On the other, I was constantly butting heads with its ideological discourse.
Ghost of Tsushima is the perfect example of why we should be critical of the media we consume, but also how it's possible to be critical and still enjoy that media. I regret nothing about my time playing Ghost of Tsushima but I will always have lament its potential as something that could have been, but ultimately failed to be, a true homage to Japanese history and culture and to the stories and images of Akira Kurosawa.
