Ghost of Tsushima (by Sucker Punch)

The usage of Wind as a compass is so creative.

The games open world isn't that unique, but its executed in a way that feels so authentic and natural I don't care, its awesome.

I agree. I really like the wind guide. What is the whole gestures thing about though?

The "honour" meme is fundamentally a modern misinterpretation of how feudal armies fought. These folks weren't in a modern professional army, with standardised training and chains of command. They were grouped in a retinue-of-retinues structure: a lord would command a number of minor nobles, who would in turn command their personal crew of junior/landless samurai, non-noble men-at-arms, mercenaries and support staff, alongside levied commoners if the campaign called for it. So you'd see a bewildering array of unit sizes, command structures, training levels and equipment on the battlefield, and the lords commanding each retinue would be loathe to share command of their men with anyone else.

If you told a professional army to, say, advance in echelons, everyone would have a pretty good idea of which unit goes where, which officers would be giving commands, what kinds of signals to use. A feudal army wouldn't necessarily be able to do that. Sometimes it's better to keep things simple with a frontal charge, rather than come up with an overly-complex battle plan that your forces couldn't realistically execute.

Another effect is that these armies had a limited ability to discipline their samurai when they broke ranks to fight out of formation or collect battlefield trophies. The thing to keep in mind is that warfare isn't just a physical activity, but also a social one. You're not just there to beat the enemy; you're also trying to earn rewards, prove yourself in front of your peers and superiors, and hopefully improve your social status in the aftermath. What looks like Honor Before Reason to us actually made a certain amount of sense in their long-term material calculus. And to its credit, the game mainly shows the "honour" fixation in the contexts where it makes sense: vengeance and upholding the protection racket social contract between the samurai and the commoners whose backs they lived off.

This is actually what I love the most about it so far: it sells itself as a cookie-cutter Batman story, but then the plot starts to unravel into a fairly nuanced class warfare story about the lies of "honour" and "chivalry" that martial aristocracies were founded on. The whole "honour" display is mainly about convincing the peasants that they need Sir-Better-Than-You to defend them; Jin's story is about seeing through that lie and using his his shameful display Ghost techniques to inspire the common folks to stand up on their own.

European feudal armies had to deal with the same problems, as the Russians, Hungarians and Poles found out the hard way while dealing with the Mongols. And well-led Japanese armies were quite capable of Combat Pragmatism at scale: The Tale of the Heike, set a century before the game's timeframe, recounts how the Minamoto clan fought their way to power by using battlefield deceptions left and right and cutting down trapped and retreating foes whenever they could.

Ok, so as I said, nothing much grabbed me about the game at first. It seemed good, but not great.

But I will say, I just did my first Mythic Tale, The Heavenly Strike, and it is pretty damn cool. Definitely the highlight of my playthrough so far. Fingers crossed all the other Mythics are half as cool.

I've played three Mythic tales so far and i've liked them so far.

My favorite so far is the one about the cursed bow.

My headcanon made out the entire Tsushima samurai "honour" as their house code, which in context would make sense as they developed during the Kamakura period as a response to their new social position after the Genpei War.

All the Edo period clothing, weapons and armour bother me though.

I did Squee a bit when I saw the Mongols wearing this◊ armour. My opinion is that if the devs did their homework on the non-obvious stuff, you can probably trust them to know what they're doing with the creative liberties they do take (and they did state in an interview that the anachronistic samurai armour was deliberate, IIRC).

Oh yeah, it's basically a Kurosawa movie (as the mode shows), even with some of the cinematography.

Not saying it's bad, just that it sticks out.

I love the Mongol armor. It looks great.

One of the best done title sequences in a Game ever.

Last time I had Goosebumps from one was from Asura's Wrath.

Yeah, the impression I got is that the samurai on Tsushima take the whole "honor and upfront battles" thing especially seriously due their history (having taken the island back from its brutal bandit warlords many years ago without, and viewing bushido's disciplined, upfront nature as what separates them from those criminal despots).

I got a similar impression about the Adachi clan's women; that this historical anomaly is viewed as an anomaly in-universe as well. I noticed that the mooks in Masako's missions don't say that she's been with another samurai, they say she's with a samurai, showing that they don't consider the women of the clan equal to the men. That and the fact that the Adachis seem to be particularly hated (that said, I haven't gotten very far in the story, so no spoilers) suggests that "the Adachi women are warriors too" is meant to be seen as something most of the islanders see as unusual and distasteful.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Jul 19th 2020 at 12:45:25 PM

And it all comes down to power in the end.

That's the premise of martial aristocracies: any mongrel with a sharp stick can shank someone in the back, but only we are strong and skilled enough to stand on the field of battle with honour. And that's why you, peasant, should fork over your taxes and put up with our bullshit for the rest of the time.

The intro to Act 2 spells it out quite clearly. The samurai of Tsushima cheat, abuse their subjects, ruin each other over petty grievances and keep underworld allies of their own. The fact that they do it through a bunch of ritual pageantries doesn't make it any more honourable. Battlefield honour is really all they have. It's what puts them above people like Yuna, who can't be real warriors deserving of the same respect, no matter how brave and skilled they are. If they ever accepted that "dishonourable" tactics were a valid way to defend their home... well, then people would start asking whether they actually deserved that respect, wouldn't they?

This was all fine enough for dealing with bandits and little regional squabbles. But it all fell apart when they had to face an actually competent foreign army that didn't play by their rules. And the Mongols didn't stop at taking advantage of their "honourable" battlefield conduct — they also exploited the samurai's dishonourable behaviour outside of battle by looking for the people they'd thrown under the bus and recruiting them to their side.

That's why Lord Shimura keeps boneheadedly insisting on fighting them the "samurai" way. It's not enough for the samurai to beat the Mongols; they also need to remind the peasants who's in charge, lest they get uppity after the fighting's over. Jin throws the whole plan out of whack by showing the commoners that they themselves could win over a superior foe through "dishonourable" ways of fighting. And if they started to believe that they could stand up for themselves, then well, what do they need the samurai for?

Having just finished the Curse of Uchitsune, its definitely tied for my favorite Mythic Tale (though I've only done the first three) with the Heavenly Strike.

At first, I was mildly underwhelmed as it plays out somewhat similar to the first two (follow the maps-which are a nice touch in terms of artwork, and explore an area that has unique colorful plants), but then the end of it plays out like something from one of the Arkham Games and that definitely made up for it.

Keep an eye out for placards with gesture symbols on them. So far I've found a frog statue and an honor pillar that summoned a ton of animals when bowed to (frogs from the statue and dragonflies from the pillar).

I know I'd noticed a couple before but didn't connect the icon with the gesture. Couple other col things I've noticed with gestures; NPCs return bows and make a comment, bowing to your father's grave kicks up a gust of wind that creates a vortex of leaves around you, and bowing over the body of an duel opponent prompts a line from Jin.

Edited by Jaustin89* on Jul 19th 2020 at 9:56:36 AM

Can I just say that the photo mode is absolutely extra in the best way possible?

I'm really enjoying Masako's questline.

I saw a review that claimed the side quests manage the rare feat of feeling completely relevant to the narrative, with each one showcasing Jin's slow but steady character development over the course of the story. I would love to say that I agree, but I can't in good conscience because I still haven't finished Act 1 because this game is so rad and I love doing all the side stuff and exploring. Haven't had this much fun ignoring the main quest in a long time.

Same here. Its been a long time since a game has captivated me this much, and the main leitmotif of the game, "Way of the Ghost", is truly great. Just humming it moves me to tears.

And the games environment is easily the most stunning of this generation without a doubt. Even similar games on High End PC's don't reach this level of beauty.

Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on Jul 21st 2020 at 10:27:27 AM

Alright my copy finally came, I can play this now.

Out of here, the only things I've heard about this game are that it's a fairly pretty Assassin's Creed-esque game that emphasises its historical accuracy, but has gone full Hollywood: the visuals are all centuries too modern (not just the armour, the swords are entirely wrong), the whole honour portrayal is taken from the formalisation of bushido in the Edo period, composing haiku is another thing that didn't come along for centuries etc. Also that it's not a Kurosawa film because there is far far too much fighting going on.

So... what is it actually selling itself on aside from Hollywood History historical accuracy? Seriously, I've seen multiple people say that once you get past the youkai and supernatural aspects, Nioh is more accurate because all the events happened more or less in the order they happen and both the armour and people tend to be representative (obviously Nobunaga is off being weird as ever, because Koei has a thing there).

It’s kind of hard to talk about without spoiling some of the thematic twists, but the game’s “selling point” I guess is that it’s essentially a deconstruction of the romanticization of Samurai and feudal aristocracies in general, exploring how chivalric honor and all that jazz are ultimately just myths perpetuated by the ruling class to keep the peasants under their boot.

The “twist” from what I understand is that the story diverges from your usual “honorable warrior loses his honor and becomes a grim antihero” story and instead has Jin realize that “Samurai honor” has always been kind of a load of hypocritical bullshit, and he winds up being far more of a moral paragon than his peers despite abandoning their traditional sense of honor.

I should also emphasize that they don’t do this in an accusatory or spiteful way; they clearly have a lot of respect for the history and culture of medieval Japan. I know that they’ve addressed at least some of those inaccuracies you mentioned by outright saying that they did do the research and they know it’s inaccurate, but their goal was more to create the feeling of an Akira Kurosawa movie than to give a hyper-realistic portrayal of feudal Japan.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Jul 21st 2020 at 1:37:39 AM

So its selling point is deconstructing something several hundred years out of place from when it became a formalised, major thing, and intentionally getting historical accuracy wrong to try and create the feeling of a certain director's films, whilst also completely missing the feel of said person's films because those movies don't have lots of action.

That's just... confusing.

Like when you put it all together, it sounds like "we did our research, then ignored it because we wanted the costume porn and themes of later period dramas, but we can't even do that right because it's a generic action game too". The Akira Kurosawa statement just seems baffling because that feels like the worst thing to bring up when your game is an Assassin's Creed stealth-action murderfest.

Edited by RainehDaze on Jul 21st 2020 at 9:57:44 AM

The Kurosawa Estate approved of the game, and the Black and White mode is literally called Kurosawa mode.

Honestly, you should just play the game instead of trying to judge it without having done so, no offence.

Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on Jul 21st 2020 at 5:08:57 AM

And the point is...? I'm trying to work out what part here is supposed to be "like an Akira Kurosawa film". That they've inexplicably transplanted the Edo period into the Muromachi and added a black and white filter?

What I'm trying to do is work out if it's something that's even worth the time. See, that means trying to work out if the game has a selling point that appeals to me. It might be a good game. It could be an awful game. That's not even what I'm judging, it's the claims made about it and what makes it worth the time and cost. I don't think I need to play an entire game to wonder "in what way is this like someone's films" or "what is with this weird portrayal of honour that everyone is talking about in excessive detail anyway".

It's obviously not the storyline, because that's just setting up a strawman on the concept of honour or the reason feudal systems both arose multiple times and were comparatively stable across large regions.

It's not historical accuracy, because they've intentionally used all the aesthetics of the Edo period with a fictional set of characters. Again, they've kneecapped the historical depiction to fit the narrative about honour they're using. It's kind of sad, because an actual historical depiction of the Muromachi period and mongol invasions would have been cool.

Is it the comparison to film? I can only see visual style, since Kurosawa films are pretty slow paced and not all focused on the action.

Visuals in general? Don't have a PS 4 pro, so I couldn't really appreciate the full extent of it.

There'd have to be something in the gameplay, but haven't heard anything more than "Assassin's Creed IN JAPAN".

Edited by RainehDaze on Jul 21st 2020 at 10:22:39 AM

It isn't anyone's job here to convince you. That's...arrogant presumption.

Watch a Let's Play or a Twitch streamer, or talk to a friend who has tried the game. This isn't an ad thread for the game.

No one here can tell you what is worth your time or money, cause no one here knows what you do with your time, or how much money you have.

Different things appeal to different people, obviously, so what might not be a legitimate selling point to you, could very well be to many other people, and vice-versa.