Sucker Punch wants you to be a wandering samurai.
While there will still be third party titles coming to the PS4 for several years, it seems like on the first party story front, Ghost of Tsushima is looking to be Sony’s intended swansong for the console. Developer Sucker Punch is promising that they are going to bring the system to its limit, and what we’ve seen so far backs that up. The game seems to have a lush environment, and a huge open world. And Sucker Punch wants you to explore the world they’ve built.
While it’s been said earlier that the game’s world will have many hidden secrets and side activities, it seems there’s potentially important stuff also to seek out and find. Nate Fox talked to Press Start about the game, and when questioned about things like getting weapons and abilities, he actually said those won’t be just on the main story path. When asked if that explicitly meant that some important things like weapons would require you to explore, he said, “Absolutely.” To get the full experience of Jin’s transformation from samurai to ghost, you’ll need to find as many nooks and crannies as possible.
“Yeah this is not a game about loot drops. It is a game about story and exploration. So if you go on Jin’s journey from Samurai to Ghost, you’ll get access to some abilities and some weapons but if you really want the full diversity of possibilities, you have to explore, you have to meet side characters, you have to go places that you know you’re not really even told exist. That’s why the world is rewarding right. We want to make sure that if you take the time you get something from it, that allows you to modify the play style. To get more diversity, and how you go after solving problems.
“One of the big challenges of making a game like this, where we’re looking to capture that wandering Samurai experience is being okay with the fact that not all of the things that we make whether it be missions or abilities are going to be seen by every player. That is the nature of giving people freedom.”
While an open world format is pretty common to most big games nowadays, it is rather uncommon that major things such as weapons and abilities are locked away in side paths you may never see. Of course, the extent of which this will be true may be exaggerated to some degree, as one would expect the essentials to be given via the narrative. But I guess we won’t really know until the game hits stores July 17th, and we can find out for ourselves.
