All in the Game: An Interactive Homage to the Samurai Genre

Nate: There are some aspects of making a game that are similar to movies. We’re often looking at films for an emotional touchstone as a way to communicate a top-level idea, because cinema is a language that all of us share. And working on a game, you’re going to cast actors, write scripts, block out scenes, and of course there’s cinematography and scoring. A lot of that is mostly relevant to the noninteractive cut scenes in the game, but, frankly, those are not the reason we’re making games.

We’re making games so that you get to be very present in the action. In this way, they are totally different from movies; the feeling of discovery when you crest a hill and see a sunset—all that is dynamically occurring. And you know that it’s your own experience. Nobody set that up for you; you just happened upon it. That’s entirely part of the interactive medium. And with many games, you’re making a new thing as you go. The technology is always changing, the controls are evolving. You need some reference points to get the team all aligned behind one vision, because the game that you intend to make is unlike anything that has ever been made before.

Jason: Some of the most exciting stuff in the game was found along the way. Interaction is something you have to try and feel out. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. In the game, we have these standoffs, but they didn’t exist on day one. There’s also a thematic gameplay feature for navigating the island of Tsushima by following the wind, which we iterated toward as a way to interact with the game world.

Nate: Interestingly enough, the two things that you just called out are pretty firmly rooted in the cinema that has inspired us. Kurosawa films are famous for showing the natural world in motion around stock-still samurai. And the standoffs in our game are a very direct representation of the standoff at the end of Sanjuro. We look for a lot of inspiration to translate into interactivity from source material that we think represents the heart of the experience most directly.

Jason: The wind mechanic was also inspired by Yojimbo. There’s a moment in that film where Toshiro Mifune picks a stick up and throws it into the air, and it lands on the ground. He’s just charting his own destiny, letting the world tell him what to do next, just trusting that it’ll lead to something interesting.

Nate: At the beginning of working on a game, many conversations start with “Wouldn’t it be cool if . . . ?” Having a black-and-white mode that made you feel like you were playing one of these classic films is something we wanted. After E3 2018 [the Electronic Entertainment Expo, one of the largest industry trade events], I can’t tell you the number of people from the press who expressed interest in wanting to play the game in that kind of visualization. Jason and I were interested in it, but that’s because we’re deep fans. But it turned out it was a much broader interest than we ever thought.

Jason: When it came time to name the mode, we tossed around a bunch of ideas, but eventually one of our producers mentioned the possibility of “Kurosawa mode.” He reached out to the Kurosawa estate, and they wanted to see a video. Of course I was like, “Wow, this can’t just be pretty good. It has to be perfect.” I spent weeks on that video; it was only forty-five seconds, but you want every single frame to look good. Because our game has so many weather and lighting conditions, we had to look at a variety of films that had interiors and exteriors and daytime and nighttime and try to get the black-and-white levels right. Finally, we sent the video to the Kurosawa estate; they liked it and we reached an agreement. Also, our audio director added a filter to make it feel like the sound was going through an older TV or older-style speakers. All those pieces working together makes playing the game feel like you’re watching a movie.