How Ghostwire: Tokyo Fuses Japanese Folklore and Modern Intrigue

Feb 04, 2022 | News On Japan

Feb 04, 2022 (wired) - Tango Gameworks' latest title is a crash course in traditional Japanese culture alongside the complexities of everyday modern Japanese society.

GHOSTWIRE: TOKYO, the upcoming game from Japanese developer Tango Gameworks, leverages the technologically advanced environment of Tokyo while incorporating traditional Japanese landmarks like shrines, temples, and torii gates. This mix of the here and now and the traditional is a departure from the company’s previous games, and Ghostwire: Tokyo is not a horror title like the Evil Within series.

Director Kenji Kimura, producer Masato Kimura, and concept artist Kenta Muramatsu spoke with WIRED about how they incorporated modern and traditional aspects of Japanese culture in the game, which is arriving March 25.

Kimura says he was inspired by books like Valis by Philip K. Dick; Passage by Connie Willis; The Blossoming Flower Dies, Reality in a Dream by Chohei Kanbayashi; and The World, the Flesh & the Devil: An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul by JD Bernal.

“The way these books utilize the understandings of things such as the spirit, the soul, the mind, the conscious and unconscious, and death are close to what I myself have felt,” Kimura explains. He was also influenced by Tool's “Pneuma.” The lyrics of the song left a strong impression on him, and it’s one of the songs he listens to most often when he goes on walks.

He says, “When I listen to it, the thinking about life and death in my mind just naturally gets linked to the thoughts that I tried to embody in Ghostwire: Tokyo.”

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