Ghostwire: Tokyo feels like a next-gen Amnesia–Hexen mashup

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  Spooky stuff abounds in Ghostwire: Tokyo. [credit: Bethesda ]

Since its announcement at E3 2019, Ghostwire: Tokyo has loomed as one of Bethesda’s weirder and more inscrutable upcoming games. Years have passed without a clear look at how the game will play, and that lack of clarity wasn’t improved when the company announced in 2021 that its creative director at developer Tango Gameworks was leaving to start a new company and that Ghostwire would be delayed to sometime in “early 2022.”

This week, Bethesda confirmed that the PC- and PlayStation 5-exclusive game finally has a release date of March 25, though that news arrived Thursday alongside a flashy, camera-cutting trailer that still left some questions unanswered. Thankfully, Bethesda hosted members of the press for a behind-closed-doors reveal of raw, uninterrupted gameplay late last month, and the results, which we’re now allowed to talk about, were intriguing and impressive.

Instead of feeling like a direct successor to Tango Gameworks’ Evil Within series, Ghostwire takes a fresh step into horror gaming by combining complex visual effects, memorable art direction, the creeping dread of Amnesia, and the fantastical, magic-infused exploration and combat of classic PC series Heretic and Hexen.