While this premise and story are much different than anything Sucker Punch has worked on before, Nate Fox finds something romantic about feudal Japan and believes it to be a setting underused by western developers:
“We were certainly very excited to make a game set in feudal Japan, because it brings up a lot of romantic images in our mind. Part of the fantasy around feudal Japan is being a samurai – thats an exciting job to have in feudal Japan. I do think its under-utilized. I dont know why more games arent set there, its so appealing.”
When it comes to accuracy and authenticity, he also claims that the development team
“absolutely tried our damnedest.” Nate Fox reaffirmed the fact that Sucker Punch is working with
experts from Japan things like Kenjutsu, and even
consulted developers from Sonys Japanese studios to get a better idea of cultural norms. He also believes working with the experts kept the development team from “going astray” and also allowed the team to learn a lot of new things and become intimately familiar with the time period and setting:
“We rely on all these people to let us know where were going astray. Sucker Punch is good at making gameplay, but we are not cultural experts in Kamakura-era Japan. We recognise this, and were grateful to have the help.
Its been interesting working on this game because in past titles weve been able to make it up, frankly. For a superhero game set in Seattle, we knew what we were doing, but in this game we are constantly learning about Japanese culture or the norms of samurai. And its exciting because it changes the way you work to learning in the same way that players get to learn about these things, and in fascinating detail.
Things were surprising us all the time. But thats part of the joy of the discovery of making the game. Hopefully its something that will translate into the game as a player, that you will discover a lot of the beauty of feudal Japan.”
The conversation then moved to a wider discussion about how AAA games should be more creative and unique when choosing new settings. While Nate Fox thinks recent Sony first-party releases like
Horizon: Zero Dawn and
God of War did a good job at bringing players someplace new, he acknowledges the fact that theres a lot of room for expansion:
“Games are moving around. Feudal Japan just happened to be a place that, as a developer, I know I was eager to spend a lot of time trying to recreate. And as a gamer, I really wanted to play an open-world samurai game. And thats just one excellent place in history – there are so many more.
So yeah, I do think that theres a lot more spaces to play in and I wish the industry would get a little bit wider. That said, I think the industry does a pretty good job at going to places that are unexpected.”
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