Despite having been some considerable time ago now, Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks’ Ghostwire: Tokyo has remained a bit of a hard one to pin down, with previous gameplay trailers leaving more questions than answers. Now, however, with the game finally sporting a 25th March release date on PlayStation 5 and PC, Sony has offered an extended look at its action in a new livestream showcase.
Tango Gameworks is calling Ghostwire: Tokyo a “supernatural action-adventure thriller”, and its story unfolds in an eerie, haunted version of Tokyo after nearly all the city’s population has mysteriously vanished. Players take on the role of Akito, a young man who awakens in a deserted Tokyo street to discover that strange elemental powers are coursing through his veins – soon revealed to be the work of a spirit known as KK who has possessed Akito’s body.
Based on Sony’s latest showcase, what transpires after that in gameplay terms is a combination of “non-linear” exploration and first-person combat as players deploy their arsenal of supernatural abilities to bring down some wonderfully designed spirits that put a modern spin on the traditional yokai of Japanese folklore – include putty faced men in suits (somewhere between Slenderman and Doctor Who’s Silence), headless school girls, malevolent children wearing yellow raincoats, even a fashionable woman with an outlandishly sized pair of scissors.
When players encounter these creatures (known as Visitors) during their travels through Ghostwire’s vibrant, lavishly rendered version of rain-slicked Tokyo, they’ll need to bring them down using a process known as Ethereal Weaving. There are still plenty of questions around how this works in practice, but we’re given a glimpse of the interplay between Akito’s various abilities during one scene where – having stealthed through an area of the city to rescue KK, armed only with a bow and arrow – his supernatural powers are finally restored, just in time to deal with a marauding wave of enemies.