From the moment you take control of Akito, they’re everywhere. On the crosswalks and the pavements. In the hospital and the subway stations. Small, forlorn piles of clothing that once kept someone warm and dry. But now they lie in the same position they fell, sitting in untidy little clumps across the streets and buildings of Shibuya, kind of together but also kind of separate, like uneasy strangers at a dinner party.
Ghostwire: Tokyo review
- Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
- Developer: Tango Gameworks
- Platform: Played on PS5
- Availability: Out 25th March on PC and PS5
For all the sights and sounds of Ghostwire: Tokyo – and trust me, there’s a lot of ’em – it’s these sets of clothes that touched me most. Despite a mainline story that does its utmost best to pull at your heartstrings and connect you in some way – any way – to Akito and his psychic roommate, for all its cloying sentiment, nothing in that story made me feel as sad as the sight of all those empty outfits.
It’s to my considerable frustration, then, that Tango Gameworks kicks off Ghostwire: Tokyo with such a dazzling conceit but goes on to do so very little with it. Much like the neon and the puddles, the pray sites and the Jizo statues, most of what you encounter on the empty streets of Shibuya are just props. Window dressing. Though occasionally you’ll find a note or a phone or some small keepsake to identify the hospital scrubs or the business suit or the school uniform beside them, most of the time you won’t. Most of the time, the people of Shibuya don’t seem to matter.