That old new smell
It’s been almost 3 years since a nice Japanese creative named Ikumi Nakamura appeared in the middle of the stage at E3 2019 to show us a preview of the new Tango Gameworks post-The Evil Within 2 project. Just a few seconds of gameplay video and some text announcing that the game would be called Ghostwire: Tokyo was enough to generate high expectations (not neglecting, of course, the more than funny number Ikumi put on with his poor knowledge of Shakespeare’s language).
After quite a bit of development and even Microsoft’s acquisition of Tango (along with the rest of Bethesda), we’re almost ready to enjoy this first-person adventure game set in the city of Tokyo. We’ve managed to enjoy the first two chapters of the game’s story, and we’re going to share our first impressions with you ahead of the fuller analysis you’ll be doing soon.
Novice Sorcerer Supreme
Not to mention a lot of what we’ll find once we launch the game, if we can tell you that storytelling will be a very important vehicle for everything that happens in Ghostwire: Tokyo. From the very beginning, we will be in a situation where we do not have much information, and this will force us to explore the environment in order to look for clues to what is happening.
The story of Ghostwire:
Tokyo begins with a car accident that our protagonist gets into, with tragic consequences… Until something happens that puts us on the front line of fire in Shibuya, full of ghosts, forcing us to fight for our lives. life. survival and survival of a very dear person to us. We will have no choice but to team up with an unknown character whose intentions are not entirely clear in order to try to survive in the heart of Tokyo after the disappearance of 99% of its inhabitants. We soon learn that behind all this nonsense is a mysterious figure wearing a Hannya mask, whose goal is to take over all the souls of the inhabitants of Tokyo for a currently unknown purpose.
The first thing that will grab our attention is the detailing of the streets of Tokyo full of neon lights, reflections in puddles, smoke from the sewers… The whole visual part of the title is thought out to the smallest detail, and we should go deeper into the story. These first two chapters of the story that we were able to try out are a kind of tutorial that during the first 3-4 hours of the game will teach us the basic concepts that will allow us to survive the first stages of our adventure. Very soon we will learn that we are not alone in this ghostly Tokyo and that the best way to protect ourselves is through a series of spells that our character will learn as the story progresses. This will not be the only thing we will have at our disposal, since we will be able to develop our abilities so that it will be much easier to finish off all these menacing ghosts that will not hesitate to attack us.
Our first task will be to try to contact our sister, who is hospitalized as a result of the fire. Along the way, we will begin to realize that the city has changed, and although we will not find people around, the city exudes an unsettling and unsettling halo. While not strictly a horror game, we’ll run into quite a few suspenseful and unsettling situations (Shinji Mikami’s studio’s love for the survival horror genre is quite noticeable here).
Although the protagonists of this game’s gameplay are without a doubt the spells and lighting effects that are released when you destroy the ghost cores. In the purest style of Doctor Strange, our protagonist moves his hands to create magical threads that entangle ghosts, ending their existence. It is clear that Tango Gameworks wanted to create something different, which, while not revolutionizing the first-person adventure genre, would surprise the player in terms of gameplay without neglecting the story at all.
Conclusion
This first contact with Ghostwire: Tokyo left us with a very good feeling and is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s in store for us in a few days when it goes on sale. Breathtaking light effects while battling ghosts, a perfectly recreated Tokyo, and a story that gradually unfolds, are encouraging to be included among the best games of the year.
