All you need to know about Akito is this: He’s never alone. That’s because he isn’t the sole inhabitant of his own body. At the very beginning of "Ghostwire: Tokyo," the newest title from Bethesda, Akito gets up from the ground in Tokyo’s Shibuya Scramble Crossing, with a voice (and spirit) in his head, somebody who soon calls himself KK. And for the rest of the game, KK and Akito explore a desolate, creepy Shibuya, searching for answers.
You play as Akito in "Ghostwire," one of the most unique games from Bethesda Softworks. The company behind the "Fallout" franchise, "Skyrim," and "Dishonored" ventures into a new space with its latest title, heading to an empty Tokyo that’s been overrun with spirits.
It all gets off to a mysterious start, and your job is to explore the city to figure out what’s happened. At the outset, a fog settles on Tokyo and every citizen except Akito disappears. What’s left is a vast but sterile city, a strange enemy, and a host of umbrella-carrying ghost “Visitors.”
Often, you’re exploring this city alone, except you’re never completely alone because of KK. Like a somewhat muted Venom and Eddie Brock, KK chides Akito to move when you stand still, advises him on areas to explore, and sometimes, the pair just banters back and forth. The conversation helps offset the solitude of the setting: For most of the game, Akito is the only human in Shibuya.
"Ghostwire" insures that the city isn’t silent, though, thanks to the Visitors, and thanks to music that emanates from many streetfront stores. At the same time, Shibuya is a unique illusion of an open-world city. At first glance, it feels as overwhelming as many open-world titles you’ve played. But most of those streetfront stores actually aren’t explorable. You’ll mostly walk into convenience stores, where you’ll purchase recovery foods and other things from floating cats.
Instead, you roam the streets, searching for clues and insights into what’s happened in Tokyo. KK, a detective before his death, acts as your guide, occasionally dropping clues about his own mysterious back story. And in between it all, there are the Visitors to deal with. The Visitors, thin, ghostly creatures dressed in suits and carrying umbrella, move and recognize you slowly but then attack with furor, essentially disappearing and reappearing right in front of you, "Blair Witch"-style.
Akito doesn’t react by firing a gun at the Visitors, though. When he and KK first bonded, he earned a series of magic abilities, called Ethereal Weaving, which emanate from his fingertips. At first, he can only fire these slowly, leading to sluggish combat and encouraging you to use the stealth skills you’ll eventually need to thrive in this game. But as the action wears on and you upgrade Akito’s abilities, he gains new elements, adding Fire and Water to the Wind he starts with and increasingly becoming a more dangerous adversary. The action and combat soon grow interesting and captivating, as you combine stealth with Weaving to shoot holes in your enemies, exposing their cores, then “yanking” those cores from their bodies using other abilities.
If there’s a shortcoming to "Ghostwire" amid all this fun, it comes in the story — or lack thereof. Aside from KK and Akito’s relationship, only limited pieces of the tale are truly explored and three-dimensional, and that prevents the ending from feeling as impactful as it could have.
But in the end, that may not even matter to you. From KK to the uniquely twisted Shibuya to those Visitors, you’ll have plenty of fun with "Ghostwire: Tokyo."
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'GHOSTWIRE: TOKYO'
4 out of 5 stars
Reviewed on Sony PlayStation 5
Available on PlayStation 5 and PC
