Turns out GhostWire: Tokyo – that game with the creepy reveal trailer from the PS5 event – ain’t really supposed to be a horror game after all.
Turns out GhostWire: Tokyo – that game whose gameplay reveal trailer from the PS5 event a few weeks back is probably still fresh in your mind, and that looked a little like a horror game – ain’t really supposed to be a horror game after all.
This is kinda weird news, because its trailers thus far have depicted suitably creepy things like headless Japanese schoolgirls and some sort of black spidery-haired apparition. “Godfather of horror” Shinji Mikami – founder of the game’s development studio Tango Gameworks – also occupies an executive producer role for the game.
This of course planted more seeds of expectation in us horror fans who thought GhostWire: Tokyo would join the ranks of survival horrors like The Evil Within or Resident Evil – which Mikami himself worked on.
According to a recent IGN interview with the game’s creative director Kenji Kimura, however, GhostWire: Tokyo is officially being shipped as more of an action-adventure game than anything else. Kimura had the following to say on the matter:
GhostWire: Tokyo is an action-adventure game. There are elements of survival, but not elements that one would expect in the horror genre.
But horror hopefuls – all is not completely lost, because in the next breath he adds:
However, because we are using Japan as the setting, we hope to deliver an experience packed with mysterious and spooky elements based on Japanese Yokai folklore, fables, urban legends and famous scary stories.
So while there are clearly some creepy undertones, the focus here is shifted off the whole horror vibe and towards the action-adventure genre. And with this new input from Kimura, that gameplay reveal trailer does sensibly seem to support that claim after all. Perhaps we’re just more sensitive towards things that scare us, which could have biased our perception of the whole thing.
What we do know, however, is that it looks like a dang cool game regardless, and that we’ll be leaping at the opportunity to try it out upon its release next year.
Source: GameRant
Neuroscience student and massive nerd, currently based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Research interests include how neuroscience and user experience in video games interact with each other. News and feature writer for TheGamer.com. Other interests include anime and everything Japanese, fitness, and cats.