ghost of tsushima

[portico]

 

there's a fantastic used game and tech shop in my city, and a little while ago i went with the goal of finding ps5 games to play that i wouldn't have to spent $70 on (because that's what a new ps5 game costs. seventy dollars. yeah it's beautiful but at what cost?? seventy dollars i guess). i lucked out on a used copy of the director's cut of ghost of tsushima, a game i had seen images of and of which i'd heard generally positive reviews but otherwise knew nothing. as far as i could tell, the director's cut is the base game + some digital exclusives (an especially beautiful horse is one) + the DLC (which is a whole other storyline on a whole other island). i was given the option to play the game in "kurosawa mode," which is black and white and appears as if on film, which is fun. i went with the basic mode, and i'm glad. this is a beautiful game with wonderfully saturated colors.



ghost of tsushima is set in 1274 on the japanese island of tsushima, where the mongols landed after conquering korea. in real history, this invasion took place over about 2 weeks and wiped out all of the islands samurai. in the game, our hero jin sakai miraculously survives the massacre, as does his uncle, lord shimura, who is the island's leader. shimura is imprisoned by khotun khan (the game's fictional stand-in for kublai, who actually carried out the invasion), and jin's first goal of the game is to free him.



the person who saves jin's life is yuna, a thief. she has a specific goal in mind for jin, which is to enlist his help in rescuing her brother, a blacksmith who was captured by the mongols. to that end, she encourages him to fight like a thief--quietly. this is the main moral conflict in the game, which portrays the "way of the samurai" as interpreted by lord shimura: unyielding and obsessed with honor (which, in this case is not stabbing opponents in the back). jin, only one man up against a literal army, increasingly adopts more subtle methods of taking out his enemies, and the game tut-tuts at you about this all the while instructing you in more elaborate methods of assassination. as i observed to a friend, it's the only game i've ever played that punishes me for being good at stealth (i am not, historically, good at stealth).

more informed people than i have written about the game's warped version of samurai honor. i don't typically expect strict historical accuracy from my video games, so i'm not bothered by its lack here. it's enough for me that it provides jin with a compelling arc. i recently attended an exhibition of samurai armor, however, and was surprised and delighted by how many helmets i saw irl which had sat on jin sakai's digital head. i'm sure the developers collapsed the timeline in terms of when those helmets were actually used but, again: i don't care.



i enjoyed the exploration parts of the game a great deal--i love a sidequest, me. there are some missions which felt very uncharted, and i liked that too! jumping, climbing, crawling, etc. i am generally not a completionist in games, but i enjoyed wandering so much that i found nearly everything there was to be found on both tsushima and iki, the island in the dlc. i especially enjoyed the way the game had of directing me: the guiding wind. additionally, if you were close to something extra (a hot springs or a spot to compose a haiku, perhaps), a golden bird would appear to lead you there.

two observations of things that negatively impacted my gameplaying experience (on purpose). one: the game is gory. not like, innards flying everywhere gory, but killing is a bloody business and it doesn't shy away from that. everywhere you go on both islands there are corpses. the game, for all is beautiful landscape, does not let you forget that jin's home is actively being conquered. the other: it's kind of a bummer! jin is turning his back on everything he was raised to value, and it's weighing on him. i'd play for a few hours and then realize i was sad. i wouldn't say it's oppressive, but it is definitely effective. one final warning, rot13'd for spoiler and animal death reasons: wva'f ubefr vf xvyyrq ng gur raq bs npg gjb. vg'f abg oybbql, ohg vg vf fnq. v pevrq.

overall, i loved this game and i loved playing it. i'm going to miss escaping into it for a couple hours every afternoon. i'm especially going to miss the hot springs.

Comments

[blotthis]

oh, this looks gorgeous, especially that first still. fascinating, too. how does the arc take jin?

[portico]

he becomes a folk hero! the ghost of tsushima. hitting the mongols before they even know he’s there. 10 feet tall, made of smoke, etc. it costs him everything, but saves his home.

[blotthis]

oh.... poor guy

[skygiants]

jin, only one man up against a literal army, increasingly adopts more subtle methods of taking out his enemies, and the game tut-tuts at you about this all the while instructing you in more elaborate methods of assassination oh wow this is SUCH an interesting way to problematize mechanics in gameplay!

[portico]

it IS! jin gets literal flashbacks after a certain number of assassinations, it's wild

[genarti]

I'd heard of Ghost of Tsushima but only the title; I didn't even know what medium it was in, let alone what kind of story it was. I don't know that I have the gaming attention span to play, but it looks SO cool, and I love your thoughts about the tension within the story and the tension between story and game mechanics!

[portico]

💕