Ghostwire: Tokyo feels like a game defined by its perspective

polygon.com:

For decades, there’s been a stereotype that Japanese game developers and players dislike first-person games. As with any claim of that sort, it’s filled with a long list of asterisks and exceptions. But Ghostwire: Tokyo director Kenji Kimura and producer Masato Kimura think there’s some truth to it, theorizing that it has to do with stylish character design being especially important to Japanese players, as well as general concerns about motion sickness.

Yet Masato says he thinks the sentiment is fading away, noting that he doesn’t hear about it as much as he used to — which turns out to be fairly convenient, since Ghostwire: Tokyo is not only a rare first-person action game from a Japanese studio, but in many ways feels defined by the perspective.

Kenji refers to Ghostwire: Tokyo as Tango Gameworks’ first first-person game, which isn’t technically true (The Evil Within 2 got a post-release first-person mode), but it’s the company’s first game built around the perspective. And he says that during the game’s development, that led to a lot of experimentation.

“It was definitely a challenge for us,” Kenji says.

“Starting from scratch, just getting the sense of walking correctly was hard, because you want the head to bob a little, but if you make the head bob too much while you’re walking forward, it makes you feel dizzy,” he adds. “And not having any bob makes it feel like you’re just sliding across the map, so that also feels weird. Doing everything from scratch was definitely a very big challenge.”

The benefit of this experimentation, Kenji says, is that it led the team to rethink things that others might take for granted, like how Ghostwire: Tokyo’s gameplay is centered around mid-range combat rather than anything