Video games are not movies. It’s astonishing that I find myself writing that sentence in some shape or form almost every single day, but nobody seems to be reading it - or, at the very least, properly parsing it. Games and cinema are both types of screen media, sure - they make use of actors, visual effects, and sensory storytelling. Beyond that, they’re fundamentally different forms, which is why it’s so weird to see games striving for legitimacy by quite literally delegitimizing themselves in comparison to an older, more established, and universally accepted medium.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how Death Stranding: Director’s Cut is the first game aside from Deathloop to convince me I need a PS5. With that in mind, it might seem as if I’m being a great big hypocrite here by criticizing Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut based on the same premise. The thing is, right, Death Stranding is a game, but it also basically has a film within it. On top of that, the majority of the game is heavily scripted and consciously directed - it’s not a game borrowing from cinema as much as it is a game redefining how games can be presented. I always feel like such a prick when I write about Death Stranding, because I know it probably reads as loosey goosey, detached from reality and away with the fairies, a needlessly ethereal and experiential rhetoric that makes people go, “Here, what the shit are you on about?” It’s difficult to write about it without indulging in that admittedly wanky tone, though. It’s just a very different, very special game.
Ghost of Tsushima wants to be cinematic, which is evident from the second you boot it up. In some ways, this is to its benefit. It’s a very pretty game, and loads of its scenes are bookended by some extremely stylish and tasteful framing devices. It’s all a bit much, though. Like, what’s up with Kurosawa mode? You could have just called it “black and white” mode, which would have made more sense given that Kurosawa directed in colour, too. I get it - ideas like this come with a kind of innate prestige, capturing a legacy crafted in a more readily respected form. It just reads as immature, though, like a kid nicking his older brother’s Nikes so he can show off in front of his mates. They might reckon he’s the bee’s knees, but everyone else is just like, “Poor lad, he’s after taking the ones that belong in the bin.”
I don’t actively dislike Ghost of Tsushima. I saw it through to the end, which says a lot - as a games journalist, I have to play a lot of games, so if I’m really not enjoying something it’s usually best to ditch it and move on to something else. The combat is brilliant, the performances are great, and, as I said earlier, it’s exceptionally pretty to look at. I’ve already forgotten the story, though. Kublai Khan was the bad guy (I know he wasn’t, shhh), Jin went against his uncle’s wishes, and there was something about recruiting allies to take down the Mongols. I remember Yuna, Masako, and Ishikawa, but aside from that I couldn’t think of a single other character without Googling them. For what it’s worth, I’m actually good with faces and names - earlier on someone on the team asked me to identify a load of Witcher monsters and it was easy breezy. Ghost of Tsushima just isn’t very memorable, and despite how lovely the world looks, it’s deceptively hollow - a boring checklist disguised as a forest of cherry blossoms.
“Director’s Cut” is taken from film, obviously. If you’re not familiar with the term, it basically refers to a no-holds-barred version of a movie designed to assume authority and definitiveness over the theatrical cut. Think of The Lord of the Rings extended editions - they’re the same movies, telling the same story, but they’ve got loads of extra scenes in them. Return of the King is over four hours long, for God’s sake.
With Death Stranding, this makes sense. I’m not a big Koji fanboy, by the way - I’ve played a few Metal Gear games and enjoyed them well enough, but Death Stranding is the first game of his that caused my jaw to wallop the floor. I reckon there were loads of things he wanted to do but couldn’t - scenes, story beats, mechanics, ideas. I would pay full price for a new edition of Death Stranding two years after the original launch if I knew for a fact it was going to include things Kojima Productions feels are essential to it. This is a game that had something to say, and I’m more than happy to hear more.
Tsushima did some relatively intriguing things, too. The guiding wind mechanic caught my attention early on, but it gradually became a pain in the arse the more I played. It’s a gimmicky answer to the issue of non-overbearing clairvoyance - I played the Sable demo last month and it, an indie game, has a much more nuanced view on how to articulate directions without shouting them. I also liked Tsushima’s one-on-one duels, mostly because of how stunningly dynamic they looked - these were clearly shot as if they were films as well, given the emphasis on swords being drawn and the characters being positioned opposite one another. Aside from that I’m coming up empty. Death Stranding, on the other hand… Just look at it. All of it. It’s absurd. It should be a great big mess, but it’s not. It’s brilliant.
Apart from everything discussed above, the entire premise of calling this version of Tsushima a “director’s cut” is off base in the first place. Directors don’t add in entire post-credit sections set on completely different islands when they’re working on the film that best represents their original, untruncated vision. And although you can apparently access the new island part way through the campaign, what Tsushima is essentially doing is relaunching the game with DLC and a few extra features, some of which absolutely should have been there from the beginning. I mean, it’s introducing Japanese lipsync an entire year after launch. This is a game made by a Western studio that purportedly wants to respect Japanese culture - it didn’t have Japanese lipsync! Do you know what’s worse? This feature is paywalled behind the Director’s Cut, which can be purchased as a full price game or bought as an upgrade for existing owners. If you’re appropriating a culture you aren’t part of for a commercial product engineered to earn millions of dollars, the very least you can do is make sure the language is properly supported, right? Right.
Ghost of Tsushima was at its absolute worst every time it pretended to be a movie. This is because - get this! - it is not, in fact, a movie. It is a video game. If Tsushima leaned into its combat, world, and characters more, it would have been a significantly better game - it could have even been great. Instead, it’s peppered with cringey cinematics and too many instances of the word “honour,” which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about how authentic (not) the experience is.
This is not a director’s cut in terms of what that actually means. It’s a PS5 upgrade with DLC, as well as a way to attract new players. Anyone who has ever seen a movie should be able to recognize that. At the very least, let’s hope it doesn’t add any more PS2-era insta-fail stealth sections - slowly walking behind Man 1 as Man 2 for ten minutes and then having to do the whole thing all over again because you moved one step too far is a bit shit, actually.