Sucker Punch is not a Japanese dev team, and still, they are working on a game with a setting and a cultural root set in the Asian country. Nate Fox, Sucker Punch’ creative director, talked about this subject at VIEW Conference 2018 in Turin with GamesIndustry.

„We were certainly very excited to make a game set in feudal Japan because it brings up a lot of romantic images in our mind. Part of the fantasy around feudal Japan is being a samurai – that’s an exciting job to have in feudal Japan. I do think it’s under-utilised. I don’t know why more games aren’t set there; it’s so appealing,” Fox said.

Fox also said that there were Japanese experts to keep them „on the road” during development: „We rely on all these people to let us know where we’re going astray. Sucker Punch is good at making gameplay, but we are not cultural experts in Kamakura-era Japan. We recognise this, and we’re grateful to have the help. It’s been interesting working on Ghost of Tsushima because in past titles we’ve been able to make it up, frankly. For a superhero game set in Seattle, we knew what we were doing, but in this game, we are constantly learning about Japanese culture or the norms of the samurai. And it’s exciting because it changes the way you work to learning in the same way that players get to learn about these things, and in fascinating detail. Things were surprising us all the time. But that’s part of the joy of the discovery of making the game. Hopefully, it’s something that will translate into the game as a player, that you will discover a lot of the beauty of feudal Japan.”

Fox also admitted that AAA games still have a lot of headroom to find new locations/settings: „Games are moving around. Feudal Japan just happened to be a place that, as a developer, I know I was eager to spend a lot of time trying to recreate. And as a gamer, I wanted to play an open-world samurai game. And that’s just one excellent place in history – there are so many more. So yeah, I do think that there are a lot more spaces to play in and I wish the industry would get a little bit wider. That said, I think the industry does a pretty good job at going to places that are unexpected.”

Ghost of Tsushima has no release date, but it’s a PlayStation 4-exclusive. It could be one of the last major PS4-only games when it hits the shelves.

Source: DualShockers