is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. The Ghost games aim to make you feel like you’re playing a classic samurai movie. To make the connection more obvious, Ghost of Tsushima added a black-and-white mode made in collaboration with the estate of Seven Samurai director Akira Kurosawa. The sequel Ghost of Yōtei builds on that by bringing back the Kurosawa mode and adding two more “cinematic modes” made in collaboration with famous filmmakers: one inspired by 13 Assassins director Takashi Miike with a tighter camera during fights, and one inspired by Samurai Champloo director Shinichirō Watanabe that adds lo-fi beats. With Yōtei, “we’re standing on the shoulders of a previously made game,” Jason Connell, co-creative director at developer Sucker Punch, tells The Verge. This time, the “quest” was to celebrate two other artists. Kurosawa mode. Image: Sony Kurosawa mode is the most striking mode. In addition to switching Yōtei’s colorful, saturated aesthetic into black and white, the audio is a bit more muffled, like it is in classic films — voices in particular sound tinny, which I think is a cool old-school touch — and there’s additional wind to add more motion to what you see on screen. “As soon as you take color out of the picture, it really changes your perspective and what you’re looking at,” Connell says, adding that depth has “different meaning” in black and white. Miike mode. Miike mode is more subtle: during fights, the camera is much closer to Yōtei’s protagonist, Atsu, and you’ll see more blood and mud. The development team has “always wanted” a camera mode that is more pushed in so that “you can get a more visceral experience,” Connell says, and paying homage to Takashi Miike gave them a way to do it. The mode means that fights can be more difficult; Yōtei usually has a zoomed-back camera during battles that gives you a wide view of your opponents. But it also makes the already aggressive and violent fights feel more intense. Image: Sony Watanabe mode, on the other hand, is much more chill, switching out the game’s usual soundtrack for a selection of lo-fi songs created under the direction of Watanabe that you’ll hear during exploration and some fights. I’ve loved turning on Watanabe mode when I don’t have a specific goal in mind, as the lo-fi music helps me settle into wandering instead of being laser-focused on the next objective. (You won’t hear the Watanabe beats in story missions because the game has specific orchestrations set up for those events, Connell says.) Connell says that Tsushima players were already punching into the action in their photo mode shots or playing the game with lo-fi music. To me, they’re good for specific moments, but it’s often weird to play the game with them on for extended sessions. For example, Kurosawa mode makes many of the story cutscenes feel much more cinematic, but during an elaborate infiltration mission, the black-and-white visuals made seeing enemies and finding places to hide particularly tricky, so I turned it off. Connell acknowledges that sometimes the modes and what you’re doing in the game can be anachronistic. But he says that since players have to opt in to the modes, “we feel it’s an okay area for people to customize the game to their own liking.”