While Ghost of Tsushima is an enticing open-world samurai title in itself, one of the game’s more impressive selling points is the game’s optional black-and-white setting called Kurosawa Mode, which alters the game in such a way that it feels like you’re watching an Akira Kurosawa film. The Sucker Punch devs behind the game recently revealed how much work went into Kurosawa Mode, and why the Kurosawa estate saw fit to entrust the name to Ghost of Tsushima.

In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Ghost of Tsushima creative directors Nate Fox and Jason Connell referred to Akira Kurosawa’s films as major influences for their upcoming game, with Ghost of Tsushima’s standoff system being particularly influenced by the film Sanjuro. “We have this great game that transports people back to feudal Japan and Akira Kurosawa was one of our reference guides, especially early on about how we wanted it to feel,” Jason Connell explained. “As we got closer and closer to making that a reality, we were like, ‘What do we call this special mode that we created, this black-and-white throwback?’ We threw out a bunch of different words and we thought, ‘What would be awesome would be if we could call it Kurosawa Mode.'”

In order to do that, we felt that we needed to reach out to the estate and see if that’s something they’d be interested in. We sent a short video showing what it generally looks like, what it feels like.”

The estate seemed to agree with the developer’s sentiments, as we now have a Kurosawa Mode versus a less exciting name, like black-and-white mode. It wasn’t a simple act of making some color changes, though, with Jason Connell revealing that he examined scenes from samurai films in order to determine just how dark the coloring was depending on time-of-day and differing weather conditions. Kurosawa Mode also adds a film grain effect along with an audio filter that makes the game sound like it’s been recorded through older technology. Last but not least, the wind is also stronger in Kurosawa Mode, because reasons.

Ghost of Tsushima is slated to release on July 17th exclusively for the PlayStation 4.

So, thoughts on the upcoming title? Plan on doing your first run through using Kurosawa Mode? Let us know in the comments section below, and as always, stay tuned to Don’t Feed the Gamers for all the latest gaming and entertainment news! Don’t forget to follow DFTG on Twitter for our 24/7 news feed!