thinking about ghost of tsushima and how it's such a beautiful depiction of japan, and then thinking about how much more beautiful it could have been if it were made by actual japanese people

like tsushima is beautiful and magical and such a wonderful world to explore but like

imagine how much more genuine that depiction could have been, how much more detail could have been included, if it were made by people who have actually lived in japan

I'm listening to an interview with the leads rn and like, they're talking about all the time they spent picking the flowers and all this stuff & it just makes me think how much detail they probably missed.

like yeah, maybe you know what flowers grow in this region from Google. but do you know how they grow? have you actually sat there, admiring the wildflowers yourself, noticing which plants they cluster with, and which ones they don't? no. you haven't.

it's a very small detail, but it's the small details that make a world feel real, and it's the small details that you miss when you're depicting a place you have no personal connection to.

like okay bird songs. sucker punch sent ppl to japan to record the bird songs.

but did they note the order in which the birds rise? the birds around my home all wake in a certain order. one song, then another, then another as the sun rises, until all the birds are singing.

do you NEED to get the bird song order right? no. but someone who lives/lived around those birds probably would have gotten it right. or like, sometimes ill see drawings/renderings of pnw style forests, and the fern growth pattern is all wrong.

and it's like, it doesn't matter, and people who didn't grow up here probably don't even notice, but for me as someone who spent their whole childhood wandering these forests, it makes the depiction feel so much more artificial. it's kind of like an uncanny valley effect.

and none of this even gets into the CULTURAL aspect of telling a story like this as a foreigner. sucker punch said they considered using historical figures but opted against it out of concerns they'd mess it up. i'm glad they made that decision, but it's soooo telling.

tsushima is based on kurosawa films, and it's clear everyone involved was a huge fan of kurosawa. that's great, i'm here for it. but y'know what would have been even better? if the game was made by people who were fans of not only kurosawa, but the media that inspired kurosawa.

or people who understand the context kurosawa made his films from. people who understand the history kurosawa was drawing from. people who understand the culture kurosawa tried to depict. all of that context is missing when american kurosawa fans make a kurosawa game.

tsushima is by all accounts a great game, but i can't help but feel it could have been better if it wasn't made by a bunch of Americans who really liked seven samurai.