![]() ![]() And the way we try to do our best is by having experts, whether it’s reviewing the scripts or it’s down at the motion capture shoot, helping with mannerisms, helping with the way that people would space themselves, you know, to show the appropriate amounts of respect. Well, I mean, I don’t think we’d ever say that we’ve succeeded in becoming authentic, because of course, we’re doing our best. We speak about authenticity, of bringing not only culture but mannerisms of characters to life. If we’re careful, and if we, as part of our journey, embrace the learning of the history ourselves - if we just say, “Hey, you know, one of the great pleasures of the last five years has been learning a ton.” And I think we feel like we’ll succeed if we are really respectful. There’s not this really crisp sense of “this absolutely happened this way.” Everything has an interpretive quality to it. You can go read the most authoritative historical documents and discussions, and even those don’t always line up. You’re trying to be honest, you’re trying to be careful with the material, and at the same time, even the written histories of the 13th century are really quite spotty. ![]() So a large part of our process was: We’re fortunate enough that we all work at Sony, at a Japanese company, and they were able to bring all of their personal experience to the project. They would immediately bring us along and help make sure we saw this all correctly. Whether it was different construction techniques or the types of bounds you would use at a Shinto shrine versus a Buddhist shrine - all these things that, you know, to our Western eyes, we would not see those mistakes. And they were very able to point out the things that we thought, that were in error, or things we didn’t realize were mistakes. The most frequent team of people who worked with us, of course, were our partners over in and Sony Japan. Then you have just a panel of people that we’ve met over the past five or six years. Image: Sucker Punch/Sony Interactive Entertainment Every year still - this is 700-odd years after the invasion - every year they have a festival, and they commemorate the great battle that took place on Komoda Beach. And the reason we went in November is, of course, this is the anniversary of the invasion. We actually sent one trip, uh, I think it was in the summer and then another one in November. Some of them more modern, some of them traditional, and all of that is the fuel for the fire of then inventing a story and characters and creating a game. And then we began to locate experts in the religion of the time - the collision between Shintoism and Buddhism that’s going on - and people who are experts in the martial arts. The historians took tons of reference photos, and also visited other historical sites from that period in Japanese history as well, on the mainland, and just began the process of learning. They all went out to Tsushima, stood on the beach where the invasion happened, met with the local artisans. They were accompanied by the personnel from Sony Japan as well. But it really began with research, and so the creative directors each led a trip. We had a bunch of work to do, to create the stories and the characters that lived in that world. Mari Takahashi: What sort of research went into creating the game’s settings, its characters, and just bringing life to history?īrian Fleming: Well, there’s a couple of different tracks there, right? Because the game is set in a historical context, but the characters are original works of fiction. ![]() ![]() Mari Takahashi, a correspondent on our Quibi show Speedrun, recently sat down with Sucker Punch Productions studio head Brian Fleming to ask him about the process of researching and creating a game that retells Japanese history. The island, once under Japanese control, has become a strategic battleground. Ghost of Tsushima is set on Tsushima Island, during the 13th-century Mongol invasion of Japan. Ghost of Tsushima is one of the last PlayStation 4 exclusives, and it’s an unexpected offering from a studio that is largely known for modern superheroics and Sly Cooper. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |