Ghostwire Tokyo Combat Involves Kuji-kiri Inspired Hand Gestures to Fight Spirits

During the June 2020 PlayStation 5 event, people got a look at Ghostwire Tokyo gameplay for the first time. Essentially, we saw how folks will be able to deal with the otherworldly spirits known as Visitors when they slip into Tokyo. Now, Bethesda and Tango Gameworks have circled back to provide more details about how combat will work, especially on the PlayStation 5 with its DualSense controller’s adaptive and haptic elements. Essentially, people will perform magic with attacks “inspired by traditional Kuji-kiri hand gestures.” Your different abilities will have traits that could exploit enemies’ weaknesses.

When going over how different hand movements will result in different attacks and combos during Ghostwire Tokyo’s gameplay on Bethesda’s site, Combat Director Shinichiro Hara described the goal behind its implementation.

We want the player to feel like a badass, spell-casting, high-tech ninja exorcist defeating countless evil spirits.

In order to achieve this, we chose intricate, deliberate hand gestures as the primary weapons, instead of simple guns. Unlike guns, our gestures allow us to put a lot more movement and personality into the player action as the player’s hands are organic extensions of the character. This system is unique to Ghostwire. It’s karate meets magic. Often, magic casters have this image of not being physically strong. That isn’t the case with Ghostwire. In Ghostwire, you’re casting magic with martial arts movements.

While these attacks will lead to normal kinds of combos during Ghostwire Tokyo’s gameplay, another sort of attack was confirmed. “Contextual takedowns,” special sorts of attacks that can be performed at any range, will be available to rip “cores” out of Visitors to defeat them. Hara noted these can also be used in a combo to “chain-kill multiple enemies.”

Ghostwire Tokyo will come to the PlayStation 5 and PC in 2021.