Akira Kurosawa’s legacy will be felt in Sucker Punch’s PlayStation 4-exclusive.

Akira Kurosawa has been in the film industry for almost six decades, and he made more than two dozen films throughout his career. Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo, just to name a few examples. They have withstood the test of time – Kurosawa’s work is still memorable, and they have become timeless classic movies.

His style influenced some series (Tenchu, Sekiro), but Ghost of Tsushima has a game mode that is openly inspired by his work. The Kurosawa Mode was first seen in May during the State of Play broadcast. Jason Connell, the creative director of Ghost of Tsushima, has discussed this mode with Entertainment Weekly. Although Kurosawa has passed away in 1998, Sucker Punch thought that they should still honour him directly, which led to contacting the Kurosawa estate. Although there was no direct collaboration between the two, Sucker Punch pitched the mode to them. They approved of it, which led to using his name on the mode that is recapped in this video:

„We have this great game that transports people back to feudal Japan and Akira Kurosawa was one of our reference guides, especially early on about how we wanted it to feel. As we got closer and closer to making that a reality, we were like, ‘What do we call this special mode that we created, this black-and-white throwback?’ We threw out a bunch of different words and we thought, ‘What would be awesome would be if we could call it Kurosawa Mode.’”, Connell says.

However, the mode is more than a filter. Connell and Nate Fox said they analysed Kurosawa’s work to notice how the director used varying curves and extremes of black and white to show depth, shade, times of day, and more. Also, the wind, which guides Jin to his next destination, has been „cranked up” in Kurosawa Mode according to Connell. The team also worked on the audio for it: „We toyed with the audio a little it. Our audio team have an internal tool that mimicked sounds of old TV and, specifically, megaphones, radios, TVs back to the ’50s,” Connell added. If that is not enough, add the film grain, and if you need to go further, how about using English subtitles with Japanese dub?

Ghost of Tsushima launches on July 17, exclusively on PlayStation 4.

Source: PSL