Sucker Punch's latest game, Ghost of Tsushima, has been praised for its amazing gameplay and story, which follows the adventures of samurai Jin Sakai as he repels Mongol invaders from his homeland. Despite spending dozens of hours as Jin, players may not recognize his actor, who has actually played roles in a few other major titles over the years.
Jin's voice actor/face model, Daisuke Tsuji, has been a professional actor for most of his life. While he has gained plenty of new exposure thanks to his role in Ghost of Tsushima, the bulk of Tsuji's work is actually in theater and TV/film. His earliest recorded work dates back to 2006 where he played a small role in the Clint Eastwood-directed film Letters From Iwo Jima. Over the next decade he appeared in a variety of roles both in front of the camera and on stage, including an episode of the Netflix show Love, Death, & Robots. In 2018, he won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award For Outstanding Featured Performance in the play Cambodian Rock Band. It was a year before, in 2017, that he appeared in his first video game.
According to IMDB, Tsuji's did not appear in any video game roles until 2017, starting with Arkane Studios' Prey. Tsuji played a variety of extra roles in the spiritual successor to System Shock, and is credited simply as "additional voices." Tsuji would later appear in the game's DLC expansion, Prey: Mooncrash. This is his first time named appearance in gaming, where he is credited as three separate roles as researchers on the game's moonbase setting: Li Phang, Ken Mizuki, and Chao Wei.
Other Video Games With Ghost Of Tsushima's Jin Sakai
Tsuji's next appearance in a video game is a much higher profile role in the Call of Duty series. In 2018, Tsuji appeared as the character, Specialist Katsumi "Recon" Kimura in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's multiplayer. This marks Tsuji's only playable appearance in a video game before he starred in Ghost of Tushima. However, it is not the last video game role he played before Sucker Punch's historically-inspired samurai title.
The final game Tsuji appeared in prior to his role in Ghost of Tsushima was Hideo Kojima's first new intellectual property following his departure from Konami, Death Stranding. He played one of the preppers in charge of a delivery station by Port Knot City, the Musician. Unlike some of Tsuji's other roles, he does not provide the face model for the Musician, and instead only provides the character's voice.
Tsuji is still relatively new to the world of video game performances. However, he bears an impressive pedigree in the world of acting, especially when it comes to theater. Despite appearing in only a few roles in games, Tsuji has a variety of roles in esteemed series. From the well-received, classic-inspired FPS Prey, the iconic Call of Duty series, and Hideo Kojima's esoteric "strand-type" game, it is unlikely that any gamer who keeps up with modern titles has not encountered Tsuji's presence somewhere. This rings even truer now that Tsuji has starred in Ghost of Tsushima, which quickly became one of the PS4's fastest selling games.