The upcoming Ghost of Tsushima takes place hundreds of years before the Sengoku period of classic films like Seven Samurai, but that isn’t stopping developer Sucker Punch from injecting a tribute to famed director Akira Kurosawa into the game. As an interview with Entertainment Weekly reveals, the game’s “Kurosawa Mode” is a bit more than just a black-and-white visual filter.
According to co-creative director Nate Fox, the team behind the game studied Kurosawa’s work to determine the correct color-grading to approximate the style of the filmmaker’s most iconic works. (“How deep were the blacks? How bright were the whites?” Fox said.) Sucker Punch also exaggerated the game’s wind effects and toyed with the audio to get a more cinematic feel.
Ghost of Tsushima releases on July 17. The reviews for the game go live on July 14 at 7 AM PT 10 AM ET / 3 PM BST, so keep an eye out for GameSpot’s Ghost of Tsushima review to go live then. In the meantime, you can read up on some new details on the game’s katana combat, including the game’s use of stances. That interview also revealed that Ghost of Tsushima’s defense system works very similarly to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, with well-timed blocks turning into parries that disable opponents momentarily, opening them up for a deadly counterattack.
GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.