Ghost of Tsushima opens with a grand wide shot of samurai, adorned with impressively detailed suits of armor, sitting atop their horses. There we find Jin, the protagonist, ruminating on how he will die for his country. As he traverses Tsushima, our hero fights back the invading Mongolian army to protect his people, and wrestles with the tenets of the Bushido code. Standoffs take advantage of perspective and a wide field of view to frame both the samurai and his opponent in something that, more often than not, feels truly cinematic. The artists behind the game have an equally impeccable reference point for the visuals: the works of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.
“We really wanted to pay respect to the fact that this game is so totally inspired by the work of this master,” director Nate Fox said in a recent interview with IndieWire. At Entertainment Weekly, Fox explained how his team at Sucker Punch Productions suggested that the influence ran broadly, including the playable black-and-white “Kurosawa Mode” and even in picking a title. More specifically, he noted that Seven Samurai, one of Kurosawa’s most well-known works, defined Fox’s “concept of what a samurai is.” All of this work went toward the hope that players would “experience the game in a way as close to the source material as possible.”
But in embracing “Kurosawa” as an eponymous style for samurai adventures, the creatives behind Ghost of Tsushima enter into an arena of identity and cultural understanding that they never grapple with. The conversation surrounding samurai did not begin or end with Kurosawa’s films, as Japan’s current political forces continue to reinterpret history for their own benefit.
Kurosawa earned a reputation for samurai films as he worked steadily from 1943 to 1993. Opinions of the director in Japan are largely mixed; criticism ranges from the discussion of his family background coming from generations of samurai to accusations of pandering to Western audiences. Whether intentional or not, Kurosawa became the face of Japanese film in the critical circles of the 1950s. But he wasn’t just a samurai stylist: Many of the director’s films frame themselves around a central conflict of personal ideology in the face of violence that often goes without answer — and not always through the lives of samurai. In works like Drunken Angel, The Quiet Duel, or his 1944 propaganda film The Most Beautiful, Kurosawa tackles the interpersonal struggles of characters dealing with sickness, alcoholism, and other challenges.
His films endure today, and not just through critical preservation; since breaking through to the West, his visual ideas and themes have become fodder for reinterpretation. You can see this keenly in Western cinema through films like The Magnificent Seven, whose narrative was largely inspired by Seven Samurai. Or even A Fistful of Dollars, a Western epic that cleaved so closely to Kurosawa’s Yojimbo that director Sergio Leone ended up in a lawsuit with Toho Productions over rights issues. George Lucas turned to Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress in preparation for Star Wars; he’d eventually repay Kurosawa by helping to produce his surreal drama Dreams.
Ghost of Tsushima is part of that lineage, packing in action and drama to echo Kurosawa’s legacy. “We will face death and defend our home,” Shimura, the Lord of Tsushima, says within the first few minutes of the game. “Tradition. Courage. Honor. These are what make us.” He rallies his men with this reminder of what comprises the belief of the samurai: They will die for their country, they will die for their people, but doing so will bring them honor. And honor, tradition, and courage, above all else, are what make the samurai.
Except that wasn’t always the belief, it wasn’t what Kurosawa bought whole cloth, and none of the message can be untangled from how center- and alt-right politicians in modern Japan talk about “the code” today.
The “modern” Bushido code — or rather, the interpretation of the Bushido code coined in the 1900s by Inazō Nitobe — was utilized in, and thus deeply ingrained into, Japanese military culture. An easy example of how the code influenced Imperial Japan’s military would be the kamikaze pilots, officially known as the Tokubetsu Kōgekitai. While these extremes (loyalty and honor until death, or capture) aren’t as present in the myth of the samurai that has ingrained itself into modern ultranationalist circles, they manifest in different yet still insidious ways.
In 2019, to celebrate the ushering in of the Reiwa Era, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party commissioned Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano to depict Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as a samurai. Though described as being center-right, various members of the LDP have engaged in or have been in full support of historical revisionism, including the editing of textbooks to either soften or completely omit the language surrounding war crimes committed by Imperial Japan. Abe himself has been linked to supporting xenophobic curriculums, with his wife donating $9,000 to set up an ultranationalist school that pushed anti-Korean and anti-Chinese rhetoric. The prime minister is also a member of Japan’s ultraconservative Nippon Kaigi, which a U.S. congressional report on Japan-U.S. relations cited as one of several organizations that believe that “Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia from Western colonial powers, that the 1946-1948 Tokyo War Crimes tribunals were illegitimate, and that the killings by Imperial Japanese troops during the 1937 ‘Nanjing massacre’ were exaggerated or fabricated.” The Nippon Kaigi, like Abe, have also pushed for the revision of Japan’s constitution — specifically, Article 9 — to allow Japan to reinstate its standing military.
This has been a major goal for Abe as his time as prime minister comes to a definite close in 2021. And from 2013 onward, the politician has made yearly trips to the Yasukuni shrine to honor the memory of war criminals, a status of which his own grandfather was accused, that died with the ethos of the modern Bushido code. Abe’s exoneration of these ideals has continued to spark reactionary nationalist sentiment, as illustrated with the Nippon Kaigi and their ultranationalist ideology. These traditionalist values have encouraged xenophobic sentiment in Japan, which was seen in the 2020 Tokyo elections with 178,784 votes going to Makoto Sakurai, leader of the Japan First Party, another ultranationalist group. Sakurai has participated in numerous hate speech demonstrations in Tokyo, often targeting Korean diaspora groups.
The preservation of the Bushido code that was highly popularized and utilized by Imperial Japan lives on through promotion by history revisionists, who elevate samurai to a status similar to that of the chivalric knight seen in Western media. They are portrayed as an honor-bound and noble group of people that cared deeply for the peasantry, when that was often not the case.
The samurai as a concept, versus who the samurai actually were, has become so deeply intertwined with Japanese imperialist beliefs that it has become difficult to separate the two. This is where cultural and historical understanding are important when approaching the mythology of the samurai as replicated in the West. Kurosawa’s later body of work — like the color-saturated Ran, which was a Japanese adaptation of King Lear, and Kagemusha, the story of a lower-class criminal impersonating a feudal lord — deeply criticized the samurai and the class system they enforced. While some films were inspired by Western plays, specifically Shakespeare, these works were critical of the samurai and their role in the Sengoku Period. They dismantled the notion of samurai by showing that they were a group of people capable of the same failings as the lower class, and were not bound to arbitrary notions of honor and chivalry.
Unlike Kurosawa’s blockbusters, his late-career critical message didn’t cross over with as much ease. In Western films like 2003’s The Last Samurai, the audience is presented with the picture of a venerable and noble samurai lord who cares only for his people and wants to preserve traditionalist values and ways of living. The portrait was, again, a highly romanticized and incorrect image of who these people were in feudal Japanese society. Other such works inspired by Kurosawa’s samurai in modern pop culture include Adult Swim’s animated production Samurai Jack and reinterpretations of his work like Seven Samurai 20XX developed by Dimps and Polygon Magic, which had also received the Kurosawa Estate’s blessing but resulted in a massive failure. The narratives of the lone ronin and the sharpshooter in American Westerns, for example, almost run in parallel.
Then there’s Ghost of Tsushima. Kurosawa’s work is littered with close-ups focused on capturing the emotionality of every individual actor’s performance, and panoramic shots showcasing sprawling environments or small feudal villages. Fox and his team recreate that. But after playing through the story of Jin, Ghost of Tsushima is as much of an homage to an Akira Kurosawa film as any general black-and-white film could be. The Kurosawa Mode in the game doesn’t necessarily reflect the director’s signatures, as the narrative hook and tropes found in Kurosawa’s work — and through much of the samurai film genre — are equally as important as the framing of specific shots.
“I don’t think a lot of white Western academics have the context to talk about Japanese national identity,” Tori Huynh, a Vietnamese woman and art director in Los Angeles, said about the Western discussion of Kurosawa’s aesthetic. “Their context for Japanese nationalism will be very different from Japanese and other Asian people. My experience with Orientalism in film itself is, that there is a really weird fascination with Japanese suffering and guilt, which is focused on in academic circles … I don’t think there is anything wrong with referencing his aesthetic. But that’s a very different conversation when referencing his ideology.”
Ghost of Tsushima features beautifully framed shots before duels that illustrate the tension between Jin and whomever he’s about to face off against, usually in areas populated by floating lanterns or vibrant and colorful flowers. The shots clearly draw inspiration from Kurosawa films, but these moments are usually preceded by a misunderstanding on Jin’s part — stumbling into a situation he’d otherwise have no business participating in if it weren’t for laid-out side quests to get mythical sword techniques or armor. Issues like this undermine the visual flair; the duels are repeated over and over in tedium as more of a set-piece than something that should have a component of storytelling and add tension to the narrative.
Fox and Sucker Punch’s game lacks a script that can see the samurai as Japanese society’s violent landlords. Instead of examining the samurai’s role, Ghost of Tsushima lionizes their existence as the true protectors of feudal Japan. Jin must protect and reclaim Tsushima from the foreign invaders. He must defend the peasantry from errant bandits taking advantage of the turmoil currently engulfing the island. Even if that means that the samurai in question must discard his sense of honor, or moral righteousness, to stoop to the level of the invading forces he must defeat.
Jin’s honor and the cost of the lives he must protect are in constant battle, until this struggle no longer becomes important to the story, and his tale whittles down to an inevitable and morally murky end. To what lengths will he go to preserve his own honor, as well as that of those around him? Ghost of Tsushima asks these questions without a truly introspective look at what that entails in relation to the very concept of the samurai and their Bushido code. This manifests in flashbacks to Jin’s uncle, Shimura, reprimanding him for taking the coward’s path when doing his first assassination outside of forced stealth segments. Or in story beats where the Khan of the opposing Mongol force informs Shimura that Jin has been stabbing enemies in the back. Even if you could avoid participating in these systems, the narrative is fixated on Jin’s struggle with maintaining his honor while ultimately trying to serve his people.
I do not believe Ghost of Tsushima was designed to empower a nationalist fantasy. At a glance, and through my time playing the game, however, it feels like it was made by outsiders looking into an otherwise complex culture through the flattening lens of an old black-and-white film. The gameplay is slick and the hero moments are grand, but the game lacks the nuance and understanding of what it ultimately tries to reference. As it stands, being a cool pseudo-historical drama is, indeed, what Ghost of Tsushima’s creators seemingly aimed to accomplish. In an interview with Famitsu, Chris Zimmerman of Sucker Punch said that “if Japanese players think the game is cool, or like a historical drama, then that’s a compliment.” And if there is one thing Ghost of Tsushima did succeed in, it was creating a “cool” aesthetic — encompassed by one-on-one showdowns with a lot of cinematic framing.
In an interview with The Verge, Fox said that “our game is inspired by history, but we’re not strictly historically accurate.” That’s keenly felt throughout the story and in its portrayal of the samurai. The imagery and iconography of the samurai carry a burden that Sucker Punch perhaps did not reckon with during the creation of Ghost of Tsushima. While the game doesn’t have to remain true to the events that transpired in Tsushima, the symbol of the samurai propagates a nationalist message by presenting a glossed-over retelling of that same history. Were, at any point, Ghost of Tsushima to wrestle with the internal conflict between the various class systems that existed in Japan at the time, it might have been truer to the films that it draws deep inspiration from. However, Ghost of Tsushima is what it set out to be: a “cool” period piece that doesn’t dwell on the reasonings or intricacies of the existing period pieces it references.
A game that so heavily carries itself on the laurels of one of the most prolific Japanese filmmakers should investigate and reflect on his work in the same way that the audience engages with other pieces of media like film and literature. What is the intent of the creator versus the work’s broader meaning in relation to current events, or the history of the culture that is ultimately serving as a backdrop to yet another open-world romp? And how do these things intertwine and create something that can flirt on an edge of misunderstanding? Ghost of Tsushima is a surface-level reflection of these questions and quandaries, sporting a lens through which to experience Kurosawa, but not to understand his work. It ultimately doesn’t deal with the politics of the country it uses as a backdrop. For the makers of the game, recreating Kurosawa is just black and white.
Much like the "chivalrous" knights of medieval Europe, it’s a bunch of bullshit romanticized during peaceful periods by people that weren’t there at the time.
There was a large military aristocracy that had little to do in a relatively peaceful era. They practiced their martial skills while pinning for a reason to use them. Without a war to fight, they largely began to administer the state. Seeing the Western colonizers force their way into the region with ease, they quickly knew they had to adapt or submit. Massive reforms in industry, culture/religion, and education began in earnest. The Empire of Japan had formed and unleashed centuries of built up emotions.
But hey, GoT is a pretty good game… Just maybe read a book instead of using this game to inform you of anything.
Your last sentence us what this whole situation boils down to in my opinion and is now everyone should treat similar ones.
Don’t let a video game be your only source for learning. Use it as a stepping off point to explore the world around you as it pertains to whatever the game has portrayed.
If you think samurai are cool because of how then use that enthusiasm to truly broaden your knowledge on the subject. You can enjoy media like this and know the truth at the same time. Nobody will fault you for that (or rather, they shouldn’t).
I’ll freely admit my love of Total War Shogun 2 led me into a deep rabbit hole of learning the overall history of Japan and the general East Asia region.
Koei SNES games lead me down the deep rabbit hole
Especially since this game is a huge homage to Kurosawa. It’s not meant to teach you real history.
But it is not even a good homage to Kurosawa. Just his visual style, which does his films a disservice.
Really enjoyed the article.
I will co-sign reading a book. I will not co-sign other commenters’ insinuation that because it’s a silly fun video game, it doesn’t matter if it has a bad or facile take on its subject matter.
this is exactly it. If one is interested in a culture, one should do more than surface level engagement with that culture. Read actual history, not just assume based off of pop art (games, movies, etc).
While I totally agree… a book doesn’t have links, takes too long for most people to build a story, requires thought, introspection, and you can only swipe left…
Where’s the fun in that for most people’s brains nowadays? Haha
Well said sir
100%. This conversation is so pointless if you consider GoT as entertainment, which is very obviously is.
It’s not pointless because we’ve got a varying degree of media literacy in every mass media society.
I’m not sure what your point is. If you’re saying that because some people find video games more accessible and easier to digest than books that every game should therefore be historically accurate and ignore the modern mythology of samurai, knights, cowboys, etc you’re going to be fighting an incredibly uphill battle. I like to think that the average person knows that samurai and knights have been romanticized by decades of fictional stories. Anyone truly interested in those subjects can research the subject in books, articles, and possibly documentaries, etc.
I misunderstood your comment, please correct me.
I reject your premise that once a work is classified as "entertainment," it’s no longer valid to consider how it relates to other works and our understanding of history.
The thing is most people aren’t looking for a lecture about the intricacies of pre-modern Japanese society casually. It’s easy to say "yeah but you just have to inform yourself" when people are just playing a game.
Whether you want it or not, entertainment can just serve warped depictions of history right up to your face, and without really realising it, it becomes part of your imaginary. Most people will take away what the game tells them at face value, and there should be no illusions otherwise.
Yeah….I keep reading these takes on games….do people not have any understanding of games? They are games. You are running around killing people. The presentation levels are getting to be better than movies….but story telling is still very far behind. Even in TLOU2….the characters kill hundreds of people, normally pretty closely. You want to play as an actual samurai? See that bandits steal because they are starving. See that a peasant not bowing to you means you kill them and dont look back? Knights were assholes. Vikings were pillagers. Games are a product at the AAA level. They can say something, but there is an inherent problem with how games are structured that stops them. UC, TLOU all touch on it. YOu are essentially a mass murderer…any way you cut it.
So because AAA games seem to follow a pattern of violent action we should stop talking about text and context altogether? No.
The follow up game should be made on all of Zatoichis films… the blind samurai. Those are my favorite samurai movies and series…
Zatoichi was never a samurai, he was a traveling masseuse, it’s an important distinction to make because being a samurai was a class that you had to be born into, and while it was legal for samurai to kill people it wasn’t legal for a character like Zatoichi to take violent action to protect people. Essential he was taking a bigger risk than a samurai ever would when he pulled out his sword (also why his sword was disguised as a walking cane).
It wasn’t even legal for a non-samurai to own a sword, never mind use it. The merchant classes would carry essentially large knives for defence, while peasants were completely unarmed. (Though agricultural tools could be converted to polearms during peasant revolts.)
But, yeah, that’s why Zatoichi has to conceal his sword, and it’s also why he became so skilled in iaijutsu as a way to avoid displaying his sword until the last possible moment.
One of the games I remember most fondly from my childhood :c
This is an excellent article.
For anyone interested, The Samurai, by Shusaku Endo – which I read this year in quarantine – is a stunning piece of work.
Samurai have always confused me and when I researched their history it became clear why. The terms has not always been used consistently over the past 1,000 years, nor has their role in japanese society been consistent.
This is true of european nobles as well by the way and Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy – among other works – is a fascinating exploration of that as well.
Kazuma, this is such wonderful work. Thank you.
Great article, especially in keeping tabs on Western fascination of Japanese culture. Western popular culture seems to have made an idealized, alternate narrative of samurai and I don’t think it helps that in mid-20th century films, the samurai and cowboy were seen as interchangeable. It’s far more complicated than that and it what makes The Magnificent Seven a lot less successful than Seven Samurai beyond not being a Kurosawa film.
Although I know Kurosawa was influenced by John Ford films, who cemented a certain romanticized depiction of the cowboy, I think Kurosawa was smarter than just interchanging one for the other, which is why his films are more than just the ‘cool’ you speak about for this game. In a way, this game reminds me of Isle of Dogs, where Wes Anderson wanted to make an homage to Kurosawa and Japanese cinema, but it felt so Western-oriented even though the story was set in Japan and the conflict set in Japan, it felt awkward to me, personally.
I think I’m just tired of creatives thinking that their work means more when they put Kurosawa in the mix as if they ascend to this nonexistent realm of artistry and acceptance.
Anywho, a great ‘anti-samurai’ film that I think could sober people’s imaginations is Harakiri by Masaki Kobayashi. Oh, and while I am at it, a great non-samurai film by Kurosawa (one of many) is High and Low.
High and Low is fantastic. One of Kurosawa’s best, but it gets little attention because it’s not about samurai.
As much as I love Kurosawa’s samurai films, I agree. While I wouldn’t question anyone’s decision to put Seven Samurai at the top of a ranked list, High and Low and Ikiru have become two of my favorites.
It’s also important to remember that the titular Seven Samurai aren’t even samurai at all! They’re ronin. Real samurai were brutal sword cops who enforced the rule of local lords. The subtext of the film is that the village is so far outside the sphere of proper samurai’s protection racket that they needed to hire mercenaries to defend themselves.
Excellent article, this is so much better than anything I’ve read about this game.
I always preferred the films of Yasujirō Ozu for an appreciation of Japanese culture. I always wondered what Ozu’s take on a samurai story would be like. Also Floating Weeds is one of the greatest films of all time for anyone who suddenly finds themselves craving Japanese culture and tradition after playing this game.
A good read. It’s hard to find (think it may be on YouTube), but I highly recommend the Samurai movie The Christian Revolt by Nagisa Oshima. Most of his body of work is untangling the complexity of post-war Japan and the effects of American imperialism as well as lasting effects of Japan’s own. Christian Revolt is the only period piece he made as far as I know.
Whilst I think it is a bit odd to draw out contemporary conservative national Japanese politics into the conversation surrounding a video game developed by Westerners about playing a romanticised version of the samurai, I get your point. The game cannot help but exist within a larger contemporary cultural context that it is both apart from (as Western made) yet related to that same context. Still, bringing in the laundry list of Abe’s misdemeanours into any video game analysis is a considerable stretch! I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that modern Japan is an ultra-conservative, politically cliquey, barely democratic country with a problematic historical memory, but I really don’t see what any of that has to with a video game about playing samurai! Sure, the samurai ethos has certainly rubbed off on these right-wing leading elements of Japan in many ways, and suffused popular culture equally so, but you could say the same about any countries national myth-making of which their art and entertainment reflect in various ways, though do not always comment upon directly, and Tsushima is one such of the latter example, albeit an outsiders take (though it is published by Sony…).
I haven’t finished the games story yet, but am probably about half-way through, and nothing I’ve seen so far indicates the designers or writers at Sucker Punch where interested in tackling the more morally and socially complex issues surrounding medieval samurai (though there is some wry commentary here and there). This is still after all a power fantasy first and foremost, like so many video games (and a bloody damn fun and visually splendid one at that) but I agree it is a shame the writers didn’t tap into this meatier subject material in a way Kurosawa, great visionary filmmaker that he was, did so well. Expecting people to match Kurosawa however is expecting a lot! Putting a black and white, film grainy filter mode in your game does not mean you reflect any of the depth of a Kurosawa film after all. Still, I don’t hold it against the game of course – it’s not setting out to break down the romantic image of the samurai, but instead fulfill that image with some caveats. Indeed, using the ‘bushido code’ as a basis for a depiction of 13th century samurai is itself historically inaccurate for, as you point out, the code wasn’t developed till the 19th century, though honour and shame where certainly still key factors even so.
Like so many games though, Tsushima doesn’t aspire to be much deeper than a piece of entertainment. I mean seriously, I love video games, mostly for the interactive spaces they create, but I can probably count on one hand, maybe two, the number of games that actually tackled some seriously in-depth humanistic stuff in a genuinely thought-provoking manner through their storytelling, and Ghost of Tsushima is not one of them. It is however a brilliantly good time on its own merits. Still, video games in general are a long way off some of the best examples in other storytelling mediums, and I think this has a lot to do with the more diasporic, more collectively developed nature of games in comparison to those of other mediums – though that is a discussion for another day.
Still, I can’t agree with this – "A game that so heavily carries itself on the laurels of one of the most prolific Japanese filmmakers should investigate and reflect on his work in the same way". Such an argument is classic naturalistic fallacy: you cannot derive an ought from an is. ‘Ghost of Tsushima is a piece of fairly light entertainment about romanticised samurai – therefore it ought to address the more underlying class issues surrounding the samurai.’ Who says it does?! Would it be a more thought-provoking, perhaps a ‘better’ work of art if it did? Very possibly, but ought it to? One does not automatically follow from the other. Criticise it by all means for being relatively shallow, but do not expect it to be anything more than what it is.
Just because the dev failed to do the research to realise that nationalistic Japanese politicians love noble samurai imagery doesn’t mean they didn’t end up making a game that appeals to and plays into the sentiments of nationalistic Japanese politicians. Just because no harm was meant doesn’t mean no harm was done.
If games are to be perceived as art, which a lot of developers seem to be desperate for, it is only fair they get criticised as such.
And given how self serious the game is and the utter gravity it carries itself with, along with all the big talk Sucker Punch made about having been super inspired by Kurosawa and how it was their guide throughout development along with boasts of thorough research, is it really wrong to hold them to a serious standard? You can let Sengoku Basara slide for not being accurate because it never pretends to be, it refuses to take itself seriously, that game’s director never went out and said "This is a game that is entirely grounded in reality. We’re trying hard to transport people to 1274 Japan", so maybe we can forgive that in that game Date Masamune wields six swords and rides a horse with exhaust pipes into battle. Also it’s made by Japanese people.
You also can’t criticize artists for doing something they didn’t intend to do. This game was clearly never meant to be a hard-hitting analysis of the way samurai treated their people. It’s about one samurai struggling to protect his island and reconcile his code.
As for "harm being done…" what harm? Also, Japanese critics love the game:
https://www.kotaku.co.uk/2020/07/15/ghost-of-tsushima-is-being-praised-by-japanese-critics#:~:text=Often%20when%20foreigners%20bring%20Japan,that%20even%20the%20Japanese%20praise.
The point of bringing up resurgent nationalism in Japan is precisely to provide the necessary context for interpreting the fact that Japanese critics are praising the game.
Also, the Japanese aren’t a monolith, a few cherry picked reviews by Kotaku aren’t proof that Ghost of Tsushima is universally loved. For example even 2ch, the Japanese anonymous image board that inspired 4ch, is dragging the game over its historical inaccuracies and pointing out that at the time the samurai were even more brutal than the Mongolians.
The marketing of Samurai largely came from themselves. They were little more than mercenaries. The word bushido didn’t even appear until the late 1800’s. https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bushido/
Ever seen a samurai armor in person? These guys were barely five feet tall. I get a good laugh every time I see them portrayed as these huge warriors
They were tough, but they were also very compact! Poor nutrition and handsome genes lol
Depending on area and era, people were much smaller in general. Go look at knight armors from Europe, medieval; they look almost creepy.
I always strongly encourage anyone obsessed with feudal japan to read Lone Wolf and Cub start to finish. Such a brilliant series that valorises individual discipline to what a samurai should be while never shying away from how corrupt and compromised the entire concept of the samurai class was.
It’s weird that Polygon has one article shaming Ghost of Tsushima for doing this and another praising Cursed for doing the same thing. I can’t imagine what makes one acceptable and another unacceptable.