Sucker Punch creative director Nate Fox gave some insight in an exclusive interview about the upcoming and most anticipated video game Ghost of Tsushima.
Ghost of Tsushima creative director interview details
The interview was held at the VIEW Conference 2018 in Turin. Fox stated that he finds something romantic about feudal Japan, and he believes it to be a setting that a lot of western developers have not used much.
We were certainly very excited to make a game set in feudal Japan, because it brings up a lot of romantic images in our mind. Part of the fantasy around feudal Japan is being a samurai – that’s an exciting job to have in feudal Japan. I do think it’s under-utilized. I don’t know why more games aren’t set there, it’s so appealing.
Fox said that the development team tried really hard to make the game as accurate and authentic as possibly it could be. He reaffirmed that they are working with experts from Japan like with Kenjutsu and even consulted with developers from Sony’s Japanese studios to get a better idea of the culture. He believes that the experts kept them from going astray. They allowed the team to learn a lot of new things and become familiar with the time period and setting.
We rely on all these people to let us know where we’re going astray. Sucker Punch is good at making gameplay, but we are not cultural experts in Kamakura-era Japan. We recognise this, and we’re grateful to have the help.
It’s been interesting working on this game because in past titles we’ve been able to make it up, frankly. For a superhero game set in Seattle, we knew what we were doing, but in this game we are constantly learning about Japanese culture or the norms of samurai. And it’s exciting because it changes the way you work to learning in the same way that players get to learn about these things, and in fascinating detail.
Things were surprising us all the time. But that’s part of the joy of the discovery of making the game. Hopefully it’s something that will translate into the game as a player, that you will discover a lot of the beauty of feudal Japan.
The creative director acknowledged that the game has a lot of room for expansion even though other games have done that already.
Games are moving around. Feudal Japan just happened to be a place that, as a developer, I know I was eager to spend a lot of time trying to recreate. And as a gamer, I really wanted to play an open-world samurai game. And that’s just one excellent place in history – there are so many more.
So yeah, I do think that there’s a lot more spaces to play in and I wish the industry would get a little bit wider. That said, I think the industry does a pretty good job at going to places that are unexpected.
Ghost of Tsushima still has no release date. It is still in development for the PlayStation 4.
Source: GameIndustry.biz