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This Polygon piece is interesting, and historically pretty well-informed, but I also think it's a pretty shallow reading of Ghost of Tsushima that doesn't seem to extend beyond the first act. https://www.polygon.com/2020/7/23/21333631/ghost-of-tsushima-kurosawa-films-samurai-japan-abe-politics
I just finished Act 2, and if your critique is the game is a one-dimensional lionization of Samurai and Bushido 'honor' systems...well, I don't think you've played very far? The game absolutely takes cues from Kurosawa and others in critiquing the Samurai system.
Is it as deeply historically/culturally engaged with those issues as Kurosawa's movies are? No, but it goes further than I'd expect it to. The entire game is predicated on a divide between what Jin has been taught and what 'protecting the people' actually entails.
I will agree the game doesn't engage with class as much as Seven Samurai or other films. But the entire wedge b/w Lord Shimura and Jin is that Shimura is happy to sacrifice soldiers and peasants, while Jin would rather sacrifice the 'honor' of the Samurai code to save the people.
To say it's not engaged in these ideas is demonstrably false. The entire arc of the game is Jin transforming from a man of a high station w/a set of theoretical beliefs into a man who sacrifices that station and those beliefs when reality presses him to examine what is important.
I haven't quite finished the game but I spoiled myself on the ending, and (spoilers, I guess) the entire point is he's not a Samurai by the end. He explicitly sheds class, status, and 'honor' to preserve the life and safety of his people. It's explicitly not Samurai hero worship.
You also have an entire quest line with Ishikawa Sensei that also explicitly calls out the myriad hypocrisies of the Samurai system and its code of honor. Ishikawa starts as this cool, admirable teacher and as we peel the layers it's clear he's a dick who hides behind 'honor.'
Honestly, the Polygon piece is so entirely divorced from the actual *text* of the game it's critiquing that I find it hard to take seriously. It explains, for instance, how the nationalistic view of Japanese history is dangerous and has seeped into the right-wing politics...
...and it positions the game as aligned with those views. But it isn't. It's a story where the power structures those modern-day right-wingers valorize are revealed as hypocritical and insufficient and in need of reform. It becomes a major focus of the game.
I don't know how you can play Ghost of Tsushima and think all it got from Kurosawa and other filmmakers was 'damn, Samurai are cool!' It's much more thoughtful than that. And it's absolutely informed by the post-war nationalist critiques that suffuse films of that vintage.
I think the game maybe does a disservice focusing so much on Kurosawa in its marketing/UI, when I think it's equally informed by Masaki Kobayashi and films like Hara-kiri, Samurai Rebellion, or even Kenji Mizoguchi's late works like Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff.
We talked about this on this week's podcast - linked below - but Jin Sakai is much less a Toshiro Mifune figure than he is a Tatsuya Nakadai one. I think he's much more analogous to the protagonist of Harakiri than he is Yojimbo. https://weeklystuffpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/the-weekly-stuff-342-xbox-games-showcase-halo-infinite-and-ghost-of-tsushima-review
Look, is Ghost of Tsushima *as* thoughtful or culturally/historically informed as any of the films mentioned here? No. It's a AAA video game made by Americans in 2020. And by simple virtue of having playable combat, it's going to be more of a power fantasy than those films are.
But if you meet the game where it's at, and give the story a chance, and think about how its main character transforms and how some its playable systems work into that, it's clearly more engaged in the same conversation Kurosawa et al were than the Polygon piece gives credit for.
I'd also note, as @SeanTheChapman did on this week's podcast, that the game's Japanese localization is more linguistically nuanced and naturally feels like it's confronting these issues more authentically than the English script. It should be taken into consideration too.
