Okay... what just happened? (Ghostwire Tokyo in review)

     At Bethesda's E3 presentation back in 2019, the world got a glimpse of what looked like a cool, but creepy, horror game created by Tango Gameworks, the same group behind The Evil Within games. A big thing about those games was the feeling of most survival horror games, where the player is constantly on edge. This game didn't really look like that, it seemed more in the vein of an action game that focused less on the scare factor, but the exploration of a vast, empty city, and in understanding exactly what had happened to it. The game was called Ghostwire Tokyo and, as Ikumi Nakamura said when she was presenting the game for the first time, "It's spooky!" The game finally came out a few weeks ago (on the same day that Kirby and the Forgotten Land released) and I've now had a chance to play through it. I'll try my best to capture my thoughts and ideas in this week's post, though there's a lot to cover and a lot of mixed feelings about it in general, so let's get started!

Talk about a vanishing act!

    This game begins in the city of Tokyo, Japan, as you might expect from the title, Ghostwire Tokyo, and there's a young man named Akito lying unconscious on the street for some reason (I don't think it's ever fully explained what happened to him before the game started). Pretty soon, a ghost going by the name of K.K. flies into his body and wakes him up, and then, as you've probably expected, there's a thick fog and suddenly everyone in the city disappears, leaving only their clothes behind, their souls captured by powerful Yo-Kai (Japanese spirits) that have begun to wage war on the living, led by a mysterious masked man. Akito needs to find his sister and make sure that she's safe, as she was in the hospital when this occurance first started. He gets to the hospital and finds out that the evil masked man needs his sister's spirit to be able to open a portal to the Underworld... for some reason... and he quickly defeats the hero and takes off with his sister. K.K. and Akito begin to work together thanks to this encounter, and the real adventure begins. It's up to the two of them to defeat this otherworldly threat and thanks to the mystical abilities of K.K., Akito is able to cast magic on the different spirits and entities that face him on this journey, based on the elements of wind, fire, and water. These abilities basically feel like normal guns in a FPS style game. Think of wind as a pistol, water as a shotgun since it's able to hit more enemies at once, and fire more like a railgun or some other really powerful gun. The cool features of his hand movements are really the coolest part of this game I think, showing all of the different poses he has to adopt to use these different spiritual powers, and the first person perspective is really perfect for that concept. In addition to these different spiritual powers, you get an enchanted bow that can also attack enemies from a longer range, which I didn't find to be extremely handy for the most part, save for some extreme situations which I'll touch on in a bit. There are also talismans here for you to use, four different types, ones that stun and keep enemies in place, ones that expose their cores, ones that make a cover of sorts for you to hide in, and a type that creates a decoy of your character that enemies will chase after. I have to admit, I got through the entire game using maybe three or four talismans, and I really just didn't ever think to use them. The main reason that I used the ones that I did was because it was part of a tutorial telling how to use them. The easiest way to defeat enemies in this world is by exposing their core and removing it by using your "ghostwire" (I don't think it was actually called that, but maybe that's where that part of the title came from) which will cause the spirit to fade away. There are many different ways that you can take the core of a spirit, from just blasting them with your attacks to reveal it, sneaking up behind them to execute a quick purge, or just grabbing the core with your hands once you get that ability. I have to say that the enemy designs and abilities are really cool. There are some enemies that pull K.K. out of Akito, which removes his ability to use his elemental magic, only leaving the arrows, talismans, and quick purging abilities until K.K. is reabsorbed. Those moments made certain enemies infinitely more dangerous than others, and really made the threat stand out more as a whole.

A literal fight for the souls of Tokyo!

    One of your main objectives is to save the souls of the people who had their bodies stolen in the opening moments of the game, and the best way to do that is just to look everywhere. This is a pretty cool open world in this game, very densely populated with different challenges and side quests which hide some of the coolest visuals in the game. I was always really excited when going inside a house or something, because there would often be weird little creepy graphical things going on inside, which reminded me a bit of how Control operated in some of its coolest sections. I don't want to say too much about it, because this is one of the legitimately coolest parts of the game and it's one that I certainly don't want to spoil. There are tons of collectibles around Tokyo between Jizo Shrines that you pray to in order to get a greater max ammo on your different spiritual abilities, prayer beads which will raise different stats based on which ones you wear, and Tanuki to find, which will be hidden in different disguises around the city, just to name a few. Of course, on top of all of these are the aforementioned souls of the citizens of Tokyo which are just floating around. You absorb these into these mystical pieces of paper, called Katashiro. Once you have a lot of souls, you can send them to K.K.'s partner, Ed, who will somehow send them back to their bodies I guess? This action gives you more money and experience, which you can use in the different shops in the game run by ghost cats (which are just as adorable as you would expect) and to upgrade and unlock new abilities respectively. There are also different knick knacks that you can find around the city and give them to certain ghost cats for more money, and some of them also sell some of K.K.'s case notes which give you more skill points, as well as cosmetic items. The cosmetic items really don't matter at all because you only see your character in cutscenes, with it being an entirely first person experience. Tokyo is genuinely a fun time to explore, though it does get tedious after a while, as you're mostly doing the same sort of things over and over in this game, which is a common complaint in most open world games of this type, but at least things are pretty tightly compacted and not too spread out when compared to some other Bethesda released titles (though I'm not pointing any fingers here). 

Gameplay isn't bad... but the story...

    Okay, I'm not going to just say that the story is bad, but I truly had no idea how far along I was at any point of the game. When the game opened and I completed the first chapter within an hour or so, I just assumed that this was going to be one of those types of games that had like 20 chapters at least and each mission would be its own little chunk of the game, but that was completely deconfirmed by the long period of time that it took me to complete the Second, Third, and Fourth chapters of the game. Each of those three chapters probably took at least five hours each (which was partially made up of sidequests and just roaming around the open world to find more stuff), and the main storyline was wildly inconsistant. This was potentially good because I never knew when I was going to be faced off with a pretty cool boss fight, and when I was going to just have to cleanse a certain number of Torii gates before I was able to progress through the foggy city without being hurt. I didn't mind these too much, because there were cool things sprinkled around these areas, but the Torii gates are essentially the vantage points from Assassin's Creed, though instead of just making the map become uncovered, I couldn't get through the next area of the map because there would be ghostly fog that hurt me if I tried to pass through it. It was kind of an annoyance, but it was satisfying to cleanse the gates and get more prayer beads from whatever shrine awaited me. It's a mechanic of a lot of flash, but very little substance unfortunately. I hit a point at the end of the fourth chapter that said "Are you sure you want to continue? You'll be able to come back here with fast travel, but you'll lose out on these three side quests!" I went back and did the side quests, but I really didn't understand the implications, and these were the worst trailing missions I did in the entire game I think, so I went back to the area where I was and ended Chapter 4, assuming that I had a lot of the game left to go. Chapters 5 and 6 ended up not being that way at all, as I was able to beat them in about an hour or slightly longer because they were comprised of essentially two boss fights back to back, then a long walking segment of what was supposed to be interesting character building for the protagonist, then the final boss fight. 

    The character building was completely nonsensical, I'm sorry to say, because I love sequences like this one, but I could never tell when I was supposed to pay attention to something or when I was supposed to walk past it. Basically the plot that is revealed is that Akito and his sister were orphaned at a fairly young age and didn't have the best relationship. I don't know why this wasn't shared until the very end of the game, but I felt like it really cheapened the character by not revealing it in little bits as the story went along. Earlier in the game it's actually implied that Akito is responsible for his sister being locked in her room in a fire, which is why she's in the hospital at the beginning of the game, but in the end, the sister reveals that she went back to save their parents' wedding rings, it wasn't his fault, but we do see the scene, and it still looked like he had locked her door for some reason. I really didn't get what they were trying to say about that whole thing. While we're on the topic of character building that doesn't work, I got very little out of the development of K.K.'s gang that helped him to defeat and capture ghosts before the game started. Rinko seemed like she could have been an interesting character, but I didn't understand if she was dead or if she had somehow resisted the fog, also she just was able to talk through pay phones sometimes for some reason. Ed also didn't really seem to play into the story at all aside from setting up the spirit transfer system on all of the payphones in the city, but I assume that may have changed if I got all of the souls in the game. There were a few interesting revelations about the villain and his main crew of other masked people, but once the shock factor let up on some of the masked people's identities, it just felt kind of soulless. We were supposed to feel bad about defeating these possessed people I think, but it almost just felt kind of mean-spirited for some reason. I don't want to get too far into that whole situation, but they did make for some pretty interesting and varied boss fights at least. 

    Ghostwire Tokyo has to be one of the most conflicting games that I've played in a long time. I really like the concept of it, and the gameplay for the most part is pretty fun, though filled with some obvious padding that plagues a lot of open world games. The story is really nonsensical for the most part, though it really just serves as a way to explain why you're fighting ghosts in the streets of Tokyo, which is fine with me. I'm very confused with the pacing, in such a way that makes me feel like this could be looked at more as a proof of concept of a more interesting open world game. There are lots of cool things and flashy mechanics in here, but it feels like it could have gone so much farther, and for the sake of Tango Gameworks, I hope to see more like this in the future. It is a very original experience, and a cool way to experience the streets of Japan even if you've never been (which is the position I'm in). I'm sure it's not super accurate, but it gives a taste of it, at least. This is not the end all be all PS5 experience that some may have hoped for, but I would say it is a pretty cool time, and also, you can pet dogs and cats in this game, so that's a selling point for a lot of people even by itself!

    Thanks so much for reading this little review, friends! I really wasn't sure what the outcome was going to be on this game, but I've followed it since it was announced and I thought it looked really cool, so I wanted to try it! If you've checked it out, I hope you'll let me know what you thought about it! There are cool moments in here, but they're typically made up of lots of flash and very little substance. I hope you have a great week, and until next time, I'm Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Ghost Hunter. I'll talk to you again soon!