How Kurasawa Mode Allowed Me To Speak on Accessibility within Games: A Rant

Recently, I finished Ghost of Tsushima on Realistic and Kurasawa mode. And it was an amazing time! The story was fantastic, it was the right amount of challenge for me, and oh god the music.
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100% GOTY for me, hands down.
A lot of my friends had picked up the game as well! They enjoyed it, but not on Kurasawa mode. It varied from Easy to Realistic (when the difficulty came out.)
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And sadly, I couldn't only dedicate Saturdays to playing it, and not every Saturday, so I fell behind in the story.
Not a bad thing, just how it happened. Yet, because everything was in black and white, it made speaking about the game a little difficult.
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Three conversations come to mind:
First, when speaking about the different charms, you have Major Charms and Minor Charms. That's how it was presented to me. You get major charms from praying to the different Shinto shrines around Tsushima.
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Minor charms are quest rewards, and not as powerful, but you get more of them. My friend kept talking about "A golden charm that allows you to heal" Or "A silver charm that allows you to throw more kunai." I kept getting confused. Silver Charm? Golden Charm?
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ou mean Minor and Major charms? And that's what started opening the door for me.
With that conversation, it dawned on me that we were having different play experiences. Mine was essentially voluntary colorblindness.
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It's something I've put a bit of thought on in the past, but this way I could experience it firsthand.
With this, I started opening up more conversations with friends.
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The second conversation that hit home for me was talking about the Mythic Quests. (Spoiler alert for those quests, btw) In two of the Mythic Quests, you have to find a particular colored flower/tree. Find the White Tree and meet the teacher there.
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Well, in Kurasawa mode, most trees are grey or white. There wasn't much difference so it took me a while (In hindsight, it was actually fairly easy, but I was overwhelmed with the lack of color and direction).
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The other mythic quest was to find a trail of blue flowers. In grayscale, this was near impossible. Finally, I got close to some and Jin said "These are the flowers to follow" and that alerted me to the shape of the flower I needed to find.
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Again, a bit more difficult than anticipated (or designed I assume). My friend mentioned those were super easy quests and I shouldn't have had to spend over an hour on each looking for something. I agreed and reminded him that I can't see colors when playing.
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The third is also a Mythic Quest. For me, I love the romanticized version of samurai, especially The Duel. So, Duels in this game were absolutely where I was at. I died in almost every one, but I learned and came back into it. It was amazing fun. Until I reached Kojiro.
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The Blades of Kojiro were a series of duels. And it was great The final fight took me against Kojiro himself, and it's one of the hardest duels in the game. IT was close to a breaking point for me. I spent over an hour on the duel before I had to step away for the evening
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(Meaning I had a week until I could play again). Speaking with a friend over this fight, I mentioned that some moves were counterable, some were parryable, and some were unblockable and I couldn't figure out which was which.
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There was some silence over the discord call until he said "Just block the blue ones and dodge the red ones."
My response: What is red, and what is blue to Kurosawa mode? There was no easy response to that.
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Because as gamers, we're trained to look for colors. Blue is positive in some manners, red is dangerous in some ways. But when everything is grey, how can you tell? (I did beat Kojiro the following week after 10 minutes)
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Ghost of Tsushima is a fantastic and wonderful game. And I've been exposed to something that some gamers have issues with. It's always been a thing. But, I have an example to take with me.
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And a wonderful example it is because a beautiful game can be experienced in black and white. We should make sure that ALL players can experience the game and story.
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If you're interested more in Game Accessibility, I highly recommend checking out @TisserandDavid and @cherryrae.
They are fantastic ambassadors for Game Accessibility and I'm proud to work with them for this.
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Additionally, a big shoutout to @SuckerPunchProd for a superb story in a wonderful gameplay package. And their Accessibility options are quite fantastic too! More studios should be looking towards Accessibility options and we grow as an industry.
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Thanks for coming to my TwitterTalk. :P
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