So, ever since Ghost of Tsushima's release in 2020 I've been wanting to get that game, but the overall feedback I would see online about it has sort of prevented me from purchasing it full price. I kept hearing how the game is not only repetitive, but doesn't have any original ideas besides the wind, the mechanics are standard, the story is okish, the design principles are outdated etc. So despite the game being generally well-received and well-sold, I was waiting for a lower price because I didn't know if I'd be willing to buy full price a game that I knew would be fun for some time but wasn't sure I'd enjoy greatly and finish.
My wife had other plans though, knowing how I keep pushing my purchase of Ghost of Tsushima to an unknown future, she got it to me as a Christmas gift. And honestly, I will be forever thankful to her.
Because this is one of the freaking best open-world action-adventure games I have ever played in my lifetime. I love it so much that I've spent hours and hours to create a YouTube 1.5h long analysis of all the awesome (and not awesome because this game definitely has flaws) things that the game is doing.
Mod Edit: Media link removed.
Now, I will of course write the short version here, just posting the link in case you want to see absolutely everything I have to say because... well... there's a lot.
But in short, (and written in a less structured way) Ghost of Tsushima is just an incredibly holistic experience the likes of which there are few in this genre. Everything revolves around a single fantasy - that of a Samurai becoming a Ghost. And that fantasy is at the root of literally every mechanic that the game has.
But what's more, this transformation is not just something that happens through story, it happens through gameplay. We as a player start out as a person who can fight only out in the open, but eventually we get new tools that we ARE NOT forced to use. There's 0 enemies that are like, 'we can be defeated only if you strike us by Kunai first', 'we can be defeated only with a strike on the back'. You can, if you want, keep only fighting like a Samurai (a romanticized version of a Samurai, to be exact) would. But the game so consistently puts us against a big amount of enemies, that these new dishonorable tools we get... well... they're efficient. And become even more so as you progress. So you can either take a lot of risks and spend quite some time defeating 12 soldiers in open combats, or throw a smoke bomb, do a chain assassination of three people, throw kunai, kill the stunned person, throw a bomb that sets people on stun so you could finish them off while they're at it and finish up the last person in open fight, and now you've dealt with these 12 people in a quarter of a time than it would take to do with just the sword. And you do that because it's freaking effective. The player goes through a similar gameplay arc in parallel to Jin's character arc. They are very synched.
The narrative might feel standard because it sets up a very straightforward premise to send us on this path - but that is important because that's the way by which it can combine those two facets - the player and the character, together, by making their motivation and feelings one. There are some amazing moments in the game where Ghost of Tsushima takes advantage of this connection. Plus, even though the PLOT is something you would've seen before, the underlying themes and character relationships are absolutely fantastic, there's so much depth there.
And speaking of depth, - this game has the best melee combat mechanics and stealth mechanics that I have seen in open-world games so far. Everything unlocks layer by layer, as the game progresses the player is presented with an ever-evolving web of choices. And they're all done at a very high quality where even seemingly straightforward mechanics eventually unravel themselves. For example Stances are much more than just 'beat an enemy with a corresponding stance' - you can actually be much more effective if you use different stance moves against enemies that don't match your current stance - again with mastery mimicing the 'ghost' progression, you start by learning the 'samurai' basics - the rules, and then get better and more efficient by breaking them. But I decided to find out if there's a guide that writes about any of this, and out of all I read only a single one does. The rest just goes with the basic 'choose this stance against these enemies' approach.
The game does falter in its open world design and there are some issues with quests, but they're really not big. The thing is, the foundation for all these elements are strong, it's just that there are choices that sort of contradict this foundation (an example would be how the activities in the game are designed to be one-minute detours you do on your way to main objectives, but because the game decided to add question marks they don't really work as a mark you go to uncover....). That is also weird considering how you can see the game being focused on HUD-less open-world design. But maybe some focus group results forced the developers to add some particular mechanics, I don't know.
Now, what is true about all the Ghost of Tsushima reviews is that the game is not novel. It doesn't have any new additions to the genre with the exception of wind, really. But, I also think that... well.... the gaming discourse focuses too much on novelty and not enough on craft. There are games which add novelty but have deep foundational, structural and mechanical issues and they're better received than Ghost of Tsushima, which doesn't have novelty but does most of the things it does impeccably. Like, it's so good at connecting everything together from design, narrative, directorial and technical stand-points, it's really insane what the developers have managed to achieve.
Even though they do different things and are not comparable games, in terms of recognition I believe Ghost of Tsushima deserves as much as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild did for reimagining a lot of open world principles. Because in the end, even though Ghost of Tsushima doesn't reimagine anything, I can hardly think of a considerable list of open-world games that does all the things GoT does as well as GoT does. It's very holistic, polished, and with tons of layers.
TL:DR - I got into Ghost of Tsushima expecting a fun but standard (and probably forgettable in the long-run) open-world action-adventure, and what I experienced was one of the best open-world action-adventure games I have played in my ~25 years of consciously playing video games and ~10 years of working in the video game industry. I love it and it will certainly be a huge inspiration to me as a developer.
My wife had other plans though, knowing how I keep pushing my purchase of Ghost of Tsushima to an unknown future, she got it to me as a Christmas gift. And honestly, I will be forever thankful to her.
Because this is one of the freaking best open-world action-adventure games I have ever played in my lifetime. I love it so much that I've spent hours and hours to create a YouTube 1.5h long analysis of all the awesome (and not awesome because this game definitely has flaws) things that the game is doing.
Mod Edit: Media link removed.
Now, I will of course write the short version here, just posting the link in case you want to see absolutely everything I have to say because... well... there's a lot.
But in short, (and written in a less structured way) Ghost of Tsushima is just an incredibly holistic experience the likes of which there are few in this genre. Everything revolves around a single fantasy - that of a Samurai becoming a Ghost. And that fantasy is at the root of literally every mechanic that the game has.
But what's more, this transformation is not just something that happens through story, it happens through gameplay. We as a player start out as a person who can fight only out in the open, but eventually we get new tools that we ARE NOT forced to use. There's 0 enemies that are like, 'we can be defeated only if you strike us by Kunai first', 'we can be defeated only with a strike on the back'. You can, if you want, keep only fighting like a Samurai (a romanticized version of a Samurai, to be exact) would. But the game so consistently puts us against a big amount of enemies, that these new dishonorable tools we get... well... they're efficient. And become even more so as you progress. So you can either take a lot of risks and spend quite some time defeating 12 soldiers in open combats, or throw a smoke bomb, do a chain assassination of three people, throw kunai, kill the stunned person, throw a bomb that sets people on stun so you could finish them off while they're at it and finish up the last person in open fight, and now you've dealt with these 12 people in a quarter of a time than it would take to do with just the sword. And you do that because it's freaking effective. The player goes through a similar gameplay arc in parallel to Jin's character arc. They are very synched.
The narrative might feel standard because it sets up a very straightforward premise to send us on this path - but that is important because that's the way by which it can combine those two facets - the player and the character, together, by making their motivation and feelings one. There are some amazing moments in the game where Ghost of Tsushima takes advantage of this connection. Plus, even though the PLOT is something you would've seen before, the underlying themes and character relationships are absolutely fantastic, there's so much depth there.
And speaking of depth, - this game has the best melee combat mechanics and stealth mechanics that I have seen in open-world games so far. Everything unlocks layer by layer, as the game progresses the player is presented with an ever-evolving web of choices. And they're all done at a very high quality where even seemingly straightforward mechanics eventually unravel themselves. For example Stances are much more than just 'beat an enemy with a corresponding stance' - you can actually be much more effective if you use different stance moves against enemies that don't match your current stance - again with mastery mimicing the 'ghost' progression, you start by learning the 'samurai' basics - the rules, and then get better and more efficient by breaking them. But I decided to find out if there's a guide that writes about any of this, and out of all I read only a single one does. The rest just goes with the basic 'choose this stance against these enemies' approach.
The game does falter in its open world design and there are some issues with quests, but they're really not big. The thing is, the foundation for all these elements are strong, it's just that there are choices that sort of contradict this foundation (an example would be how the activities in the game are designed to be one-minute detours you do on your way to main objectives, but because the game decided to add question marks they don't really work as a mark you go to uncover....). That is also weird considering how you can see the game being focused on HUD-less open-world design. But maybe some focus group results forced the developers to add some particular mechanics, I don't know.
Now, what is true about all the Ghost of Tsushima reviews is that the game is not novel. It doesn't have any new additions to the genre with the exception of wind, really. But, I also think that... well.... the gaming discourse focuses too much on novelty and not enough on craft. There are games which add novelty but have deep foundational, structural and mechanical issues and they're better received than Ghost of Tsushima, which doesn't have novelty but does most of the things it does impeccably. Like, it's so good at connecting everything together from design, narrative, directorial and technical stand-points, it's really insane what the developers have managed to achieve.
Even though they do different things and are not comparable games, in terms of recognition I believe Ghost of Tsushima deserves as much as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild did for reimagining a lot of open world principles. Because in the end, even though Ghost of Tsushima doesn't reimagine anything, I can hardly think of a considerable list of open-world games that does all the things GoT does as well as GoT does. It's very holistic, polished, and with tons of layers.
TL:DR - I got into Ghost of Tsushima expecting a fun but standard (and probably forgettable in the long-run) open-world action-adventure, and what I experienced was one of the best open-world action-adventure games I have played in my ~25 years of consciously playing video games and ~10 years of working in the video game industry. I love it and it will certainly be a huge inspiration to me as a developer.
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