In the opening hours of my Ghostwire: Tokyo playthrough, I had plenty of thoughts filling my mind. Am I seeing things running through my head? Who am I gonna call? Am I the Ghostbuster? I ain’t afraid of no ghost. After about an hour, most of the tension dissipated as the game unraveled its open world. And damn, this is a dazzling recreation of Tokyo that flexes the PlayStation 5’s power.
Ghostwire: Tokyo isn’t very scary — rather, it’s more whimsical, especially as you uncover more mysteries across Tokyo. And when you’re not fighting off ghostly salarymen and schoolgirls, you can take in the sights and expl—oh, is that fluffy Shiba Inu?! Aw, you want pets?! Aw man, are those meowy cats?! Little baby tigers loafing around?! ^_^
You can pet the dogs and cats in Ghostwire: Tokyo.
So far, it seems the only dogs you’ll only encounter are Shiba Inu. That’s fine with me because they’re my favorite and so very cute. You’ll find them scattered around the open world, barking when you’re in range. When you go in for a pet, you get a cool little animation where Akito (the protagonist) gives the shib a lil scratchy scratch and head rubs. It’s cute.
You should have dog food on hand, which you pick up in the world or buy from convenience stores. When you use Akito’s spectral vision scanning ability, you’ll also read the thoughts of these fluffy puppies. These thoughts are usually about food or pets. After this, you can give them dog food if you have any in your inventory. You’ll watch them munch munch munch from your hand and be grateful.
Doing so is actually to your benefit in Ghostwire: Tokyo. Any dog you feed will briefly wander in a random direction and dig up money from the ground for you. (Even on concrete and pavement, wow! Such powerful paws!)
shibs just run thru bikes and dig right thru concrete to get me money!! the hell did i feed em?! pic.twitter.com/6bHctwtCDr
— Asian 47 (@michaelphigham) March 14, 2022
All convenience stores are run by Nekomata, mystical cats floating at the cash register and peddling wares like daifuku, instant ramen, and arrows for your bow — typical items you’ll find in konbini across Japan. Despite the ghost-filled streets, I’d like to live in a world where the bodega cats organized to take over the bodegas for themselves.
There are a bunch of cats hanging out in the streets, too. However, some are a bit stingy when it comes to pets. You can pet some of them, though — ya know, just lil chin scratches here and there. I don’t think there’s cat food in this game. If there is, I haven’t found any. It’s unfortunate we can’t feed them since they’re often thinking about food whenever you read their thoughts using spectral vision.
My absolute love for cats is on record, but I will admit that Ghostwire: Tokyo‘s in-game cat models don’t really match the cuteness of real-life baby tigers (click the link to see Robo, the cutest cat in the whole wide world! ;_;). At least the shibs are on point!
There’s a lot more to the game than giving pets, though — there’s a whole damn city to save. For more, be sure to check out our full Ghostwire: Tokyo preview, where author Fūnk-é Joseph explores the contrast between horror and action in the first two chapters.
