Supernatural action title Ghostwire: Tokyo is the latest Next-gen game to soon come out for PS5 and PC. Set in a vivid, staggeringly beautiful but utterly frightening version of the Japanese capital the player will need to explore the haunted metropolis and find out what has happened to everyone and rid the city of hostile spirits.
The spectral presence of Ghostwire: Tokyo looming over us and the release date of 25 March drawing ever nearer, like a terrifying Kuchisake spirit in the dimly lit street.
We were lucky enough to get to talk to Director Kenji Kimura and Producer Masato Kimura and ask them some questions but the exciting release and how they made the game as well as the inspiration for the game's iconic location.
What is a Ghost Wire, what does the title of the game mean?
So, Ghost Wire is the wire that you unleash and reach out to enemies to pull out their core. It's also used when you are traversing the map, if you want to go up, you can grapple up to the top of the building, using this wire.
Also if you look at the logo it's got like a line between them and we're also calling that the Ghost Wire it's kind of separates the normal world from the other world.
What makes Ghostwire: Tokyo different, from your previous titles and other supernatural action games like Death Stranding, Dying Light, Silent Hill?
It's very different as it's set in modern-day Japan, with older traditional Japanese cultural elements that aren't modernized, but there are things like very old Japanese stories legends, modernized and mixed in.
So we use older things and kind of modernize them but it's also mixed in with a lot of paranormal and spooky elements. And that's what makes it so different from all the other paranormal games.
We also created was this very authentic what we feel is the essence of Tokyo, and of all the different parts of Tokyo, are squeezed together into the map and so you can actually visit Tokyo get the sense of being able to sightsee Tokyo in a very economical fashion just by booting up the game.
Why set Ghostwire: Tokyo in the real-world location of Tokyo, and a very realistic interpretation of Tokyo, instead of a made-up place or something hyper-stylised?
Yeah, a big part of that was because well, we live here, the development team live here so there's a lot of reference material everywhere.
When we look at the city, there are a lot of cool things about it, for example, there's a lot of traditional old things that are sitting right next to very new and modern cutting edge buildings.
Tokyo is unique in that way, and we thought if we could make a game that lets you experience that, then it would end up being really cool.
We set off to create this spooky sensation. We wanted to create this concept of having the unordinary lurking within the normal setting which is considered to be very spooky and the city allowed for that.
As we were developing, we noticed and rediscovered some of the cool and fascinating things about this city, and that also strengthened our desire to use Tokyo while giving us the confidence that this would be a great location.
The city itself was the biggest inspiration because there were so many things that we wanted to create.
It wasn't just me listing locations, through conversations with other team members, everybody had their own ideas on what's cool about the city and were able to bring that to the table and be able to discuss which got integrated into the game.
I always try to have as many casual conversations with team members but due to the pandemic, it was kind of hard to do that water cooler type of conversations with them. We also weren't able to kind of all group together to go to one location in Tokyo and take pictures together.
Each individual would kind of go through the city and, come back with the things they found and what stood out to them that they were able to bring and discuss.
Not just billboards but objects that you see on the ground, all that all those little things, became the props were taken from ideas from the team.
We ended up creating Shibuya Station, which is pretty authentic which is constantly under construction. But the outside of that area from Shibuya is not really true to life, as the team brought together their own ideas that they thought were cool, so there are different parts of Tokyo that are kind of stitched closer together so that it's easier to get around and to maximise that full taste of Tokyo.
Also, it wasn't just tourist places that got chosen. Some of us thought, hey, this government rent apartment complex looks really cool or this underground shopping mall is really cool all those things kind of got thrown together and condensed into the map.
Have you ever had any Paranormal experience, dreams? or anything in your life that has helped inspire any part of Ghost Wire?
Not really any paranormal experience in the physical sense, but I do get a feeling when I'm walking around at night and I see like a dark alley, I might think that hey, there might be Yokai in the dark.
That sense of "wouldn't it be cool if we were able to see that" and create a game that allows you to see them. That's kind of the extent of my paranormal experiences.
So similar to what Kimura was talking about earlier, the city itself is very appealing in that if you walk around and you turn a corner, but you may have been walking through a very modernized section of the city and then you are suddenly surrounded by these very old houses and traditional buildings.
You might walk into a shrine area without knowing it and you feel this sense of like really clean air and it could be because it's sacred, it could be because of some holy holiness of that location
Those might be a light paranormal sensation so the combination of having those kinds of things all the time might be one answer to that question. Because we are probably feeling it without noticing it and those words while making the game we have kind of rediscovered this, we wanted to kind of put them together and let them create a game so that others can experience it.
You created a unique form of combat with no guns, could you explain how it works?
In this unordinary world that we've created, people have vanished and evil spirits emerged, so they're not really physical beings. So it didn't make sense for us to think of using a gun or a hammer to hit them.
It made sense, since they are supernatural, for us to use more natural elements that would be able to combat those supernatural beings.
There was also the sense of when we are looking at for things for different kinds of things for inspiration, we were noticing a lot of hand movements that kind of inspired us and we thought there'd be some cool things that we could do with that which have become the root of the combat for the game.
Horror/supernatural games are usually about stripping back and disempowering the player, but Ghostwire: Tokyo seems to empower in its combat, can you explain why you went in this direction?
We wanted to make a game where a weird/supernatural thing has happened but walking around in that world is going to be fun.
So it's like the sensation of sightseeing in a new city was a focus for this game. Combat was made to be secondary, so we feel it can feel more casual in that regard.
It's something that's easy to understand, that isn't so complex that you have to get your head wrapped around and doesn't take time to memorize anything.
There was a lot of conversations about removing stress from the player. In regards to "we know where the fun is, we want to make sure the player gets to that fun without feeling stressed out or having to you know, memorize all these things aren't needed."
But we wanted to leave all the joy of the combat that we had so that you are not being stripped out of powers but you're gaining more powers making it feel more fun to progress.
The spiritual approach to things that we have here in Japan might be deeply rooted, you know, psychologically about respecting the dead, the thinking is that you know this if the enemies are from the other world, and they are powerful, then being able to rise to that level of power would be respectful, if you're going to fight them.
And so it was natural to instead of making you stripped of powers, you made it more sense to give you more over time.
For a game about the Paranormal and death how do you balance the game and stop it from becoming too heavy, dark or depressing?
Loss is definitely a big theme in this in the story and setting of this game, people have vanished and they both kind of lost something in that process.
We were thinking when we created the game, that may become too heavy, maybe too dark, if we keep going in that direction.
So in order to balance that out and make it so that the game still feels positive we created another character, there's a KK, the spirit that comes in as a kind of like a mentor at the beginning but also, a man to respect.
That sense of having somebody else also naturally brings in some kind of light humour into some of the conversations which was very helpful in offsetting some of that darkness and helping us to make it a fun and enjoyable experience.
We made sure that the things that you see are not all evil. There are spirits that are helpful that can also be kind of light-hearted and also actually become you know, part of your journey.
Could there be follow-ups set in other historically and spiritually rich locations like for example Ghostwire: London?
Certainly, certainly, with places like Stonehenge and yeah the architecture over there is awesome, there's a lot of things we could do there.
Which of “the visitors” scare you two the most and why?
The Visitors called a Teru Teru is a doll that is made out of like a white piece of cloth and you can make one really quickly and you kind of like hang it up outside to bring good luck and to ward off rain.
It looks like a cute little thing but from afar it kind of does look like a person that is hanging by the neck. That might depend on your current emotional state, depending on you know what you're actually seeing that you're actually just looking at a doll.
All of these scare me. I wouldn't want to meet any of these at night. They would all make me probably quite frightened.
But if I was to choose one would be is the white bride, Shiromuku. Shiromuku is basically a kimono that a bride wears for their wedding.
The thing is that it's white and so it's symbolically it's supposed to represent purity, newness, kindness and softness however, it also kind of looks like something that you wear when you're dead. You know, it's very scary and there's really two sides to it, that's probably what frightens me the most.
Ghostwire: Tokyo will be released March 25, 2022, for PC and PS5 with an Xbox release coming much later.
