As Open Culture notes, video game developers have often taken cue and inspiration from movies, even in their early development. Now, they can “pay practically direct homage to their aesthetic sources.”
One such game is definitely Ghost of Tsushima by Sucker Punch Productions. The game was just released for the Playstation 4 platform and it features selectable audiovisual mode “inspired by the movies of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.”
The game is an “ambitious production set on the titular Japanese island during a 13th-century Mongol invasion.” Kurosawa Mode presents the game’s hypnotically lavish visuals in a “grainy black-and-white,” and its dialogue in English-subtitled Japanese and pays homage to classic Kurosawa pictures like Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and Yojimbo.
Japanese pop-culture site Akiba Souken calls the main character not “the typical samurai of foreign creation, but rather, a real Japanese 侍 (samurai),” using “both the English ‘samurai’ and the word’s kanji to highlight this distinction.”
On the other hand, gaming magazine Weekly Famitsu does note the game’s lack of “pauses in conversation that are typical of period pieces. That pause and that silence are key; in Japan, what isn’t said is just as important as what is.”
