The cinematic inspiration behind Trek to Yomi

blog.playstation.com:

Hello to everyone in the PlayStation community, and thanks for your amazing response to Trek to Yomi so far! With the game now complete and ready to be experienced by gamers around the world, I wanted to take a moment to talk about how our distinct cinematic visuals came to be, and the iconic films that inspired them.

Being originally from Italy, I experienced Sergio Leone’s westerns before I had any idea about Akira Kurosawa’s movies. Of course once I knew that those westerns were heavily influenced by Japanese samurai cinema from the 50s and 60s, I had to experience them for myself. That’s how I fell in love with Kurosawa – probably through Seven Samurai, specifically – during my first year at college. The realism and direct, raw, representation of how life used to be, the care for composition, and performances that connect on a human level rather than being culturally-dependent, were all fascinating to me. Of course, after watching Hidden Fortress it was also very clear to me where George Lucas and Steven Spielberg got a lot of inspiration from, and for good reason.

So, how did this discovery end up inspiring a video game all these years later? Initially, the gameplay I had in mind was the main reason I wanted to make Trek to Yomi, but with that aspect eventually taken care of by Flying Wild Hog, my attention turned to the atmosphere and overall visual direction, as well as ensuring that the game was as authentic as possible not only to the cinematic references we were using, but also to the Edo period and Japanese Samurai culture.

Some aspects where detail was key were the rain, the fire, the look that everything had when you see it in black and white. Some of the movies that inspired me to do this were actually not