Ghost of Tsushima
Sucker Punch honors feudal Japan with a heartfelt, colorful celebration of the epic deeds of samurai warriors and stealth assassins
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Taking shots of Ghost of Tsushima means coping with a whole mythical era. In Sucker Punch's artsy recreation of feudal Japan there's so much to capture you always feel like you're missing something important. Finally, I realized I had to go for the game's highlights: epic duels, majestic samurai armors, bamboo cutting, haiku moments, merciless kills, the rise of the Ghost, themes like honor, bloodthirst and family bonds, straying at night, seas of flowers and curtains of colorful leaves. Like the game story is about Jin's adventurous transformation from disciplined Samurai into outlawed Ghost, this gallery starts basking on relaxing imagery, but it gets faster, darker and bloodier as it progresses. Ghost of Tsushima's visual style has two souls: pictorial and cinematic. I explored both, adjusting colors and lens effects in the Photo Mode to emphasize either photorealism or pictoricism according to the image potential. I chose to take only a couple of shots from the multiplayer expansion Legends: ONIMUSHA and MOONSTALKER. Ghost of Tsushima is quite an historically accurate game, so I preferred to stick with the exquisite art direction of the Single Player rather than abusing of the hallucinated albeit effective fantasy tones of Legends. All pictures were captured on PS4 Pro.
Ghost of Tsushima has a rich and innovative Photo Mode, allowing background animated pictures, incredible zoom, time and climate control, wind intensity and direction. Surprisingly though, contrast regulation came only with 1.1 Update and common features like vignetting and saturation adjustment are not present. So, glitch fixes aside, some minor post production occurred to add vignette and add some points in contrast or saturation. GHOST IN THE SHELL is the only shot that underwent significant editing, as a samurai/ghost double portrait necessarily required to combine 2 symmetrical shots. I also chose to horizontally flip the image in order to keep the wielding arm on the right to balance the samurai helm shape that I wanted on the left
No Post-Production (ingame Photo Mode only): SLEEPER HIT, MARSH ATTACK, MAN OF STEEL, SWORDSLINGERS, CUT SCENE, DEATH FROM ABOVE, STROKE ON THE WATER, RUNNING RONIN, PINK IN JAPAN, LEFT BEHIND, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, ONE MUST FALL, FIELD LULLABY, JOURNEY TO THE EAST, TANGLED, NATURE IS TEMPLE, BAMBOO CURTAIN, TRESPASSER AWAY, SILVER LININGS, NIGHT TEARER, STAIRWAY FROM HEAVEN, ROOTLESS , WORKSHEATH, ONIMUSHA, MOONSTALKER
Minor Post-Production: NOCTURNALS (vignette), KILLSTREAK (saturation adjustment), LEAVES DEAD (shadow glitch fix), VAGRANT, (grass blade removal), PETAL GEAR (vignette)
Full Post-production: GHOST IN THE SHELL (two shots, horizontal flip)