Ghostwire: Tokyo: Shibuya Behind the Fog

Ghostwire: Tokyo opens at the scramble crossing, the crowd-free heart of its map. Tango Gameworks kept the junction's real appearance. In reality the crossing was inaugurated in 1973 and has been described as the world's busiest pedestrian crossing, with as many as 3,000 people crossing on a single green light. In the game there is no crowd at all, only the occasional Marebito to bump into as you walk across.

Visitor guidance: The crossing is a public junction outside Shibuya Station; cross with the lights.

The game's Shibuya Station stands empty, its concourses stripped of the roughly 3 million people who pass through in a day. The official landmark guide teases that riding a train here feels wrong, perhaps because it is the urban-legend train to nothing. In reality the station is the second-busiest railway station in the world, and the Shibuya River runs directly under it, east of and parallel to the JR tracks.

Visitor guidance: A working station; the platforms are open to ticket holders.

Walk across the crossing and the game sends you into Center Gai, the narrow shopping street running through Udagawachō. Tango Gameworks filled it with parody signs instead of licensed shopfronts, so the signs look familiar without naming the real chains; the designers treated signs and shop exteriors as a playground. The real Center Gai is about 350 metres long, from QFRONT by the crossing to near the old Tokyu department store, and it was built over the culverted Udagawa River.

Visitor guidance: A public shopping street; walk it from the crossing toward the old Tokyu department store.

Dōgenzaka is the uphill street from Shibuya Station's Hachikō exit toward Meguro. The game nearly flattened it: slopes raised the cost sharply, so Dōgenzaka started out flat. The team changed it back because the street is too iconic to lose. In reality the foot of the slope is lined with Shibuya 109, Tokyu department stores, restaurants and small office buildings.

Visitor guidance: A public street climbing from the Hachikō exit.

SHIBUYA429 is the game's stand-in for Shibuya 109, the department store at the foot of Dōgenzaka. The name changes, the role does not: the building is a landmark you can climb, and the team wanted players to reach its roof and look back across Shibuya Station. The real 109 opened in April 1979 just across the street from the station, its name a pun on Tōkyū and the old 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. opening hours.

Location precision: SHIBUYA429 is invented; the pin marks Shibuya 109, the store it parodies.

Visitor guidance: Shibuya 109 stands just across from the station and is open as a department store.

KK sends Akito to the Kagerie Observation Tower to scan the emptied town for clues. Kagerie is not a copy of Shibuya Hikarie: the designers also drew on COREDO Muromachi, a Nihonbashi complex. Hikarie itself opened in April 2012, stands 183 metres tall beside the station, and is linked to it by a second-floor skywalk and an underground walkway. The pin marks Hikarie, one of its real models.

Location precision: Kagerie is a fictional composite; the pin marks Shibuya Hikarie, one of its models.

Visitor guidance: Shibuya Hikarie is beside the station, reached by a second-floor skywalk and an underground walkway.

North of the game's Shibuya Station the streets change character: the designers modelled this quarter on Yanaka Ginza, the old shopping street in Taitō Ward, and folded it into the condensed map. It is the clearest borrowed district in the game, a piece of shitamachi dropped into a map otherwise built around the scramble crossing. Real Yanaka keeps the old Tokyo atmosphere and about 70 small privately owned shops. The pin marks the real Yanaka Ginza, not a spot inside the game.

Location precision: The in-game quarter is unnamed and modelled on Yanaka Ginza; the pin marks the real street.

Visitor guidance: Yanaka Ginza is a public shopping street in Taitō Ward.

The final confrontation begins at Tokyo Tower. Akito and KK ride a custom motorcycle through the fog to reach it, confront the mother puppet, and climb while Hannya takes Mari to the top and jumps into the giant spirit monster's mouth. The game places the tower close to Shibuya, though the real one stands in Minato. Completed in 1958 at 332.9 metres, it was Japan's tallest tower until Tokyo Skytree in 2012; its white and international-orange lattice has a Main Deck at 150 metres and a Top Deck at 249.6 metres.

Visitor guidance: Tokyo Tower has two observation decks and stands in Minato, south of Shibuya.