Jason Connell and Nate Fox, the creative directors behind the upcomingGhost of Tsushimadelve into how they found themselves working with the estate of Akira Kurosawa for approval on the black-and-white cinematic mode, called Kurosawa Mode.
“We have this great game that transports people back to feudal Japan and Akira Kurosawa was one of our reference guides, especially early on about how we wanted it to feel,” Connell explains. “As we got closer and closer to making that a reality, we were like, ‘What do we call this special mode that we created, this black-and-white throwback?’ We threw out a bunch of different words and we thought, ‘What would be awesome would be if we could call it Kurosawa Mode.’ In order to do that, we felt that we needed to reach out to the estate and see if that’s something they’d be interested in. We sent a short video showing what it generally looks like, what it feels like.”
It turned out to be an involved and difficult process, as it proved difficult to translate that directly into the game with current film-mapping technology. Connell took various black-and-white samurai films and analyzed scenes from various times of day and weather conditions to track the depth and brightness of the blacks and whites. Then the team added a film grain to make the mode appear as though it had just emerged from the age of Kurosawa, as well as an increased wind function.
Lastly the developers played around with the sound design to match the visuals. The audio team has an internal tool that “mimicked sounds of old TV and, specifically, megaphones, radios, TVs back to the ’50s.”
Recently a brand newJapanese gameplay trailerwas released, which shows off some of the techniques detailed above:
As the launch of the game approaches, it would be prudent of players to free up some space on their PS4’s hard drive.Ghost of Tsushimawill require players to have aminimum of 50GBavailable space to start playing. There’s also the fact that it could need even more space on launch day if there’s a day one patch. you may startpreloading the gamenow ahead of its launch.
In an interview with IGN, Game Director Nate Fox talked aboutthe game’s difficultyand stated that “We are trying to make a grounded game in that sense, so a couple blows from the enemy will kill you,” Fox said. “We watched samurai movies and people go down with one or two strikes, and that is embedded inside of the combat. Beating the Mongols in battle will be hard, but it’s that challenge that makes it feel alive and the victory rewarding. you may’t just run into a camp and fight 5 people at the same time, you will get overwhelmed and die.” Although later, we also found out that you can change these settings to suit your own playstyle better so if you don’t enjoy getting your ass kicked hard, you can do something about it.
You can also check outChris Hawtinwho has put together an incredibleGhost of Tsushimamotion poster that director Akira Kurosawa would be proud of, as well as this incredibleGhost of Tsushimainspired PlayStation 4by XboxPope. Famed Japanese artist Takashi Okazaki, the creator of theAfro Samuraimanga,recently collaboratedwithGhost of Tsushimato produce some gorgeous manga-style posters.
Ghost of Tsushimais slated to launch on July 17th, 2020, and will be a PS4 exclusive. If you want to pre-order the game throughAmazon, you can do so here. You can also prepare for the launch by checking out this editorial onthe five Samurai moviesto watch before it releases.
