Ghostwire: Tokyo – developed by The Evil Within maker Tango Gameworks – is not necessarily what we expected. The first-person shooter ditches guns in favour of Kuji-kiri hand gestures, and its combo-based combat system has been designed by Shinichiro Hara, who dreamed up the Glory Kill system for DOOM.

“We want the player to feel like a badass, spell-casting, high-tech ninja exorcist defeating countless evil spirits,” he said as part of a Bethesda blog post. “In order to achieve this, we chose intricate, deliberate hand gestures as the primary weapons, instead of simple guns. Unlike guns, our gestures allow us to put a lot more movement and personality into the player action as the player’s hands are organic extensions of the character.”

The developer wants you to “feel” the action, and it’s using the PlayStation 5’s new DualSense controller to achieve that. According to the publisher, features like haptic feedback and adaptive triggers will enable “each encounter to feel as unique as it looks”. Obviously, it’s something we’ll need to experience ourselves in order to understand better.

As for the plot, well, it takes place in an empty Tokyo. The blurb explains: “A cataclysmic event has struck the city, causing the disappearance of 99 per cent of its population. In the wake of this inexplicable vanishing, a shadowy and nefarious group has set up shop within its boundaries and spirits wander the now-quiet streets with unknown intent. Armed with mysterious but powerful supernatural abilities, it falls to you to purge the spirits, solve the mystery behind the disappearances, and save Tokyo.”

[source bethesda.net]