IN fresh entry On the official PlayStation Sony blog, the co -created director Sucker Punchs Productions, Nate Fox, shared a greater insight into the research journey, which the spirit of the Yotei team took to Japan. According to his previous contribution to the PlayStation blog (more on this topic Here), Fox once again emphasized the team’s commitment in the performance of feudal Japan with respect, this time focusing on the efforts they made to represent Ain’s culture.
Ain is a native people from northern Japan, especially the north of Hokkaido north north in Japan, which provides the spirit of Yotei. Their language, culture, beliefs and traditions are clearly different from Yamato (also known as Wajin), the main ethnic group, which today is the overwhelming majority of Japan’s population.
Ghost of Yotei is embedded in a key point in history – 1603 was the year in which Tokugawa Shogunate was created by Tokugawa Ieyasu, one of the great uniform Japan, relying in decades of the civil war. Edo (currently Tokyo) has become the center of power in Japan, introducing a peaceful Edo period in which Japanese culture and society will flourish. However, at that time, Hokkaido was still a wild, poorly populated house island for Ain, its powerful winter snow and raw landscape, which makes it a complex place to live.
“By establishing a game in Hokkaido, we knew that the key element was to try to represent Ain’s culture with respect,” Nate Fox explained. “Fortunately, we joined with Ain’s cultural advisor before we set off on our journey to collect reference.” Not only that, but they were invited by an advisor to meet her family, which led to when the ghosts of Yotei started feeding on vegetables in the mountains. “It was a wonderful way to establish new friends and start our journey in the science of Ain’s culture. That night we decided to put in our new game, we wanted players to share (our) experience.”
According to Fox, the syndrome of spirit Yotei spent part of his journey on collecting research on the Oshima Peninsula, the southern part of Hokkaido, which is closest to the main island of Honshu in Japan. In 1600 it was the domain of the Matsumae clan, which would receive the exclusive rights of the Tokugawa government to trade from Ain living north. Fox noticed that today there are signs how the Japanese rarely lived north of Oshima at that time. There is a “spread of cherry trees on the peninsula, brought there from Honshu, but rarely in the rest of the island. This really told the story of how poorly Hokkaido was settled in 1603 by Wajin people,” he noted.
“We tried to imitate this quality in the game, leaning into the areas of wild nature between the houses.” This raw desert is the background for the mission of the hero of Atsu to revenge on those who killed her family.
Fox and the band also went to the Nibutani Ain Museum with Ain cultural advisor. Traditional Ain houses (called Cise) They differ from classic Japanese homes. The museum trip “really helped us understand how we saw in the game and the way they were used.”
We can take a look at the interior of the Ain house, with its immense middle hearth, in the official trailer date date of yotei (about a 2-minute sign). A woman’s heroine talks in this scene, she seems to be Ain because she has a tattoo on her lips. This symbol of the beauty of Ain would later be broken by the Japanese government at the end of the 19th century, after Hokkaido fully arranged (Source: Japanese Embassy in Great Britain). Until then, the means of forcing Ain to abandon language and culture and integrate with Japanese society were in full bloom.
(By the way, JK GOODRICHA 1888 account From Ain’s houses, he paints a picture of first -hand contrast and complicated relations between Ain and Japanese at that time.)
Fox also touched the time when the spirit of the Yotei team spent his teaching about Edo Period Japan, who took them to Nikko Toshog, one of the temples in Japan dedicated to the uniting Shogun Tokugawa Ieyas, which began the Edo period. “We received a blessing for the game from a saved deity, Tokugawa Ieyasu,” Fox explained, adding that they proudly show EMA (wooden board) and Omamori (protective charm), which they received from Nikko Toshog in Studio as Reminders of their travel.
Thinking about the research journey, Fox explained that “while our Hokkaido version is fictitious, a sense of authenticity that we strive for creation, has roots in these real experiences.” It will be intriguing to see how Ghost of Yotei presents the contrast between the culture of Wajin/Edo and Ain.
Verity Towsend is a Japanese independent writer who previously served as an editor, collaborator and translator on the Automaton West website. She also wrote about Japanese culture and films for various publications.
