Summary
PlayStation’s most recent State of Play was full of things I’m keen for, which isn’t a feeling I’ve had from a video game showcase in a good long while. Digimon Story: Time Stranger continues to be a solid 90 percent of all I can think about, and Hirogami, Tides of Tomorrows, Sword of the Sea, and Sea of Remnants all look fantastic, too.
But there’s one trend I’m slowly becoming burnt out on that State of Play went all-in on. Can we please take a break from the endless stream of games set in Feudal Japan?
Trends Come And Go
Even outside of games chasing the hot new genre or way to sell microtransactions, the industry loves a trend. Take archery, for example. At the start of the 2010s, you were practically tripping over bows and arrows, thanks in part to the success of both Skyrim in 2011 and The Avengers movie in 2012 throwing them into the collective consciousness.
In just a few short years we had Thief, Crysis 3, The Last Of Us, and Tomb Raider all heavily featuring bows and arrows as a result, and even later games like Horizon: Zero Dawn and Far Cry Primal kept the trend alive.
Fast forward, and archery was replaced by Norse mythology. Obviously Skyrim sowed some of the seeds for this, but it was 2018’s God of War and the Vikings TV series that really blew the horn. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Valheim, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla quickly followed, and even games not strictly set in the era, like Destiny 2, became heavily influenced by all things Viking.
We’ve had plenty of micro-trends, too. The pandemic gave us a glut of time loop games like Deathloop and The Forgotten City, which were quickly followed by celebrating our post-lockdown freedom with SSD-driven multiversal hopping in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and Crash Bandicoot 4.
It’s been a while since we had a good Viking game. Instead, we’re now in the midst of the Feudal Japan craze, with battle-axes and jarls swapped for katanas and daimyos.
Rise Of The Ronins (And Samurai, And Ninjas)
State of Play had two games that fit the bill. Nioh 3 looks to do to Elden Ring what the original Nioh did to Dark Souls (which Sekiro would also do not long after), giving us a Japanese-flavoured open world to explore with rock-hard combat. Meanwhile, Ghost of Yotei carries on the historical Japanese romp of the original Ghost of Tsushima, albeit a few hundred years later – awkwardly setting it only a few decades afterAssassin’s Creed Shadows. And I am so tired.
The problem with the setting is twofold. The first is simply a case of saturation, because games take so long to develop now, a trend identified years ago is still being pushed today, with projects started in the wake of Ghost of Tsushima, like Assassin’s Creed Shadows, only just starting to see the light of day.
Game development has become a slow, lumbering behemoth, meaning by the time we’ve hit the peak of a trend, we’ve still got years left of it becoming gradually more tiring before it finally dies down.
The second problem is that it’s hard for any single game in the setting to feel unique. Despite taking place centuries apart, due to Japanese isolationism, Shadows andGhost of Tsushimafeel very similar in their world and culture. The closest thing we’ve seen as an exception to this isRise of the Ronin, which is set in the 1800s and tackles the growing foreign influence on the country, with new technologies and cultures starting to work their way through society. And even then, most of the armour, weaponry, and architecture feel like something you’d find in any other game.
There’s So Much More Japanese History To Explore
This isn’t to say games about Japan’s history shouldn’t be made, just that most of these games seem to be taking the same approach. Japan has far more history than just the feudal era - for instance, Yakuza 0 very successfully critiques the economic boom Japan enjoyed in the 1980s, while Paranormasight explores the less extravagant corners of the decade. The upcoming Project Century looks to go in-depth into a longer period, potentially spanning the entire 20th century from its starting point of 1915.
Then again, even Yakuza got in on the trend with Ishin.
And I’m hardly an expert – just a weeb with a 1,370-day Duolingo streak. But I’m sure with the right care and attention, which frantically chasing trends does not allow for, there could be unique angles for the feudal era, too.
Japan itself isn’t the problem. It’s pressing Japanese history through the lens of modern audiences that is. Just how many of these games have a Kurosawa mode? Or a seppuku scene? When one game attempts to represent an era, it’s exciting. When a whole industry spends half a decade exploring the same era over and over again, usually apeing Samurai movies more than anything else, no matter how cool and heavily requested it has been before, it becomes tedious.
Feudal Japan is a beautiful, brutal period of history, but I think I’ve had my fill of it for a while.
