Game developer Sucker Punch is currently hard at work on its next game: a vivid and visceral action-adventure title called Ghost of Tsushima. The game puts players in the role of a lone 13th Century Samurai who must explore the Japanese island of Tsushima and fight back against an invading Mongol force using stealth and swordplay. While Ghost of Tsushima is based on the real-life 13th Century Mongol invasion of Japan, Sucker Punch has said in the past it’s not trying to create a hyper-realistic portrayal of early-era Japan. However, that didn’t stop the studio from bringing in a pair of real-life modern day swordsmen to help give the game’s combat a little historic authenticity.
Sucker Punch recently revealed via Twitter that it had brought in two masters of Japanese sword-based martial arts to help with Ghost of Tsushima’s motion capture. The two masters in question are Masakumo Kuwami, a 10th Grandmaster of the Tenshinryu Hyohou martial arts school, and Ryusetsu Ide, a Tenshinryu Hyohou Daihan (basically an assistant instructor).
Based in Tokyo, Japan, Tenshinryu Hyohou is a martial arts school with a longstanding lineage, having been initially founded in the early 17th Century. Along with teaching two separate sword arts, Kenjutsu (traditional swordsmanship and combat) and Battojutsu (a specialized art which focuses on quickly drawing your sword and striking), Tenshinryu Hyohou students can also train in other traditional weaponry as well as unarmed combat.
If you visit the official Twitter accounts for either Masakumo Kuwami or Ryusetsu Ide, you can see video clips of them showing off their impressive swordsmanship techniques, techniques which will undoubtedly appear in Ghost of Tsushima as well.
Ghost of Tsushima doesn’t yet have a set release date, but like past Sucker Punch games it will be a PlayStation 4 exclusive. The initial unveiling for Ghost of Tsushima took place during last year’s Game Awards show, the same show which featured the unveiling of the upcoming co-op shooter GTFO. Fans of Ghost of Tsushima’s historic roots might also want to check out the more recently unveiled This Land is My Land which is set during America’s Wild West era.