Ghost of Tsushima

To sneak or not to sneak? That is the question.

Ghost of Tsushima released exclusively on Playstation on July 17th, Sucker Punch’s first release since Infamous: First Light in 2014. A lot has changed since then, both in terms of the quality gamers expect and the tools with which games are created. At the time of First Light’s release, the PS4 was less than a year old. Now in it’s 7th year and preparing to be eclipsed by its successor, have Sucker Punch delivered a title that fully utilises this current generations capabilities and more importantly, will this be a swan song long remembered, as the The Last of Us was for the PS3?

Ghost of Tsushima is set in the very real location of… well Tsushima (an island of the Japanese archipelago), during the very real invasion and subsequent 7 year campaign of the Mongol army, lead by the fearsome descendant of Ghengis, Kublai Khan.

It’s a fantastic backdrop for a game, ancient Japanese history serves as a veritable fountain of opportunity for modern adaptation. Anyone who has read James Clavell’s epic Shogun will already have a more nuanced understanding of the Samurai culture, the ego and arrogance that sometimes comes with the privilege of being born in to a noble house and the political machinations to claim the Shogunate. It’s a wonderful surprise to see Sucker Punch attempt to bring this level of grey to an otherwise idolised people, adding an element of maturity to their story telling. Similarly the Mongol culture and history is rich and colourful, red being the primary colour and they make a great antagonist. Again anyone who has read Conn Iggulden’s Conqueror series will have an enriched appreciation for the Khan Dynasty’s relentless pursuit to establish an immortal legacy, to be etched into the annals of eternity. This is a facet of Mongol culture that is somewhat explored throughout GoT’s story, but not to any real level of significance.

GoT wastes no time in setting the scene, dropping you in the midst of a full scale battle along Komoda beach, as our protagonist Jin vies to repel the Mongol hordes swarming the shore line. Needless to say the Samurai forces suffer a devastating defeat at the hands of Khotun Khan (the fictional replacement of Kublai Khan), only a handful surviving to fight another day.

Right from this battle Sucker Punch introduces us to their main theme, honor, or the lack of it.

Honor holds a pivotal place in Japanese society, more so than ever during the feudal “Samurai” Era (perhaps a more modern interpretation would be respect or dignity), Samurai lived and more often than not, died, by a very strict code. It made them incredibly fierce warriors, unafraid of death and completely willing to give their life for a cause. However, in GoT the Mongols don’t share the same ideology and use this to their advantage, using trickery, deception and terror as powerful agents in their bid to claim the island.

Recognising this, Jin must choose whether to die along with his people by this ancient code, or employ brutal tactics to spread fear amongst the Mongol ranks and live to see his island reclaimed.

Here in lies GoT’s greatest flaw, stealth. Right from the offset you are given a choice. You can engage in all out combat, or you can sneak your way around camps and forts, stabbing, poisoning and shooting your enemy full of arrows, in theory what’s not to like, in practice, everything. Stealth just doesn’t feel solid, at times it feels like an after thought. Animations for stealth executions are clunky and more often than not a little glitchy, apparently stabbing someone’s straw hat was lethal in ancient Japan, perhaps seeing their newly thatched headpiece torn to shreds was a mortal wound to their pride. The Mongols and rouge Japanese you encounter, have an eerie ability to spot you from the most unlikely angles, an impressive feat for a people not famed for their peripheral vision.

You can scurry across rooftops to remain unseen, but the traversal mechanics are cumbersome. Trying to jump down from a ledge requires a mixture of luck and persistence as the game has an overwhelmingly strong safety net, all but preventing you from doing so unless you really try and push yourself over the precipice. Often the resolution is jumping instead, in the absence of a “drop down” button, usually resulting in you jumping much farther than you wanted, a la “Crouching Tiger” and alerting a camp full of angry, airag (fermented milk) soaked Mongols, or taking significant damage because you overshot the relatively safe ledge you were aiming for and hit the cold hard ground 15 feet below. This issue actually transcends stealth, multiple times in the middle of a huge battle, I found myself accidentally walking up a ledge, not even a foot high, as I circled my enemy, only to find myself implausibly unable to simply step back down.

During the latter half of the game stealth does become more bearable and dare I say at times enjoyable, which is convenient because as the game progresses the main plot offers up more missions that actively require stealth as a win condition (i.e raise an alarm and get a game over screen), the levels in which these missions are contained seem purpose built for stealth, offering more obvious routes providing cover and less erratic patrols and guard placement to circumnavigate. Also as you upgrade your abilities in stealth, you gain access to a stronger set of tools and skills to help you with this. This skill tree will most likely remain untouched until the latter half of the game, as you’ll be having much more fun being a bad ass Samurai till this point.

For a game that pivots on the axis of duality, this is a pretty serious shortcoming, however, it’s not only the actual mechanics of stealth that let down an otherwise phenomenal concept. The cut scenes punctuating the gameplay do a wonderful job of progressing Jin’s descent into dishonor, in to his embodiment of The Ghost. Watching his inner turmoil boil over at times as he sacrifices family and traditions, takes an emotional toll. But this development exists solely in cut scenes, you the player, have little to no control over the speed of said descent, or even the ultimate outcome. It’s baffling to look back and recall the amount of games that have employed an honor system (light and dark, good and bad, Karma, whatever you want to call it) to varied results. Just off the cuff we have Red Dead, Infamous, Fable, Dishonored and Dragon Age, the list continues. Some of these systems had a real impact on the way you played, the weapons and tools available to you, even the missions you get and ultimately the ending. Why then is there no morality system present in a game that is literally about morality? It needn’t even be as obvious as giving +1 honor for fighting someone head on, -1 honor for throwing firecrackers at them, but throughout the game there was no obvious reward or punishment for behaving one way or the other. Your arsenal remains the same, your choice of armor remains the same, the way NPC’s treat you… remains the same, it was a real shame to see this duality not exploited in the game itself.

These criticisms shouldn’t detract from the irrefutable fact that GoT has a great story, the main plot line is an emotional roller coaster, with a crescendo like none other. The final 5 minutes of GoT will have players staring blankly at their screen, unblinking, as their minds try and compute the overwhelming tragedy and beauty in equal parts.

One need not look solely to the main missions and their subsequent cutscenes for emotive story telling, as there are several characters central to the plot that have their own story branches (called Tales in GoT) which all deliver their own unique punch, be it rage, revenge or regret.

Much of this is driven by a largely excellent cast of voice actors. Daisuke Tsuji (best known for his role in The Man in The High Castle) gives an applause worthy performance, bringing life and plausibility to our protagonist Jin. Jin is a member of a noble house, with the Samurai ethos deeply entrenched in him, he is taught from a young age to control his emotions and as such, much of Jin’s dialogue is muted and calm. On the seldom few occasions Jin does overflow with fury or despair, it’s deeply impactful. Patrick Gallagher, gives a fearsome performance as Khotun Khan, a nemesis that genuinely inspires fear and is frankly not seen enough, appearing only 3 or 4 times throughout the campaign to punctuate “Acts” and to remind you that there is indeed a big bad boss to fight at the end. What I love about the writing of this character, is the creeping suspicion you sometimes get that maybe he isn’t a complete and utter bastard, before being promptly reminded that he is.

The trophy for best actor, however, belongs firmly in the hands of Eric Steinberg, as Lord Shimura, Jin’s uncle cum surrogate father. Eric manages to somehow be everything we expect from a warring lord of a noble house without ever sounding like a cliche. Shimura’s character is so nuanced, greyer than an English summer and the icing on top of an already moreish cake.

As previously mentioned stealth is largely optional, certainly for the first half if not two thirds of the game, which is a blessing as the combat is awesome. Sword fighting is simple but satisfying. On normal difficulty one could argue that for the most part it’s a little easy (some later duels do provide a healthy challenge) but you can increase the challenge yourself by aiming for a more stylised, methodical approach of fighting. Let me give some context to this statement, the foundation of sword fighting in GoT is parrying, dodging and breaking guard, it’s not done quite as well as say Sekiro, but then the amount of finesse required in Sekiro wouldn’t lend itself well to the full scale battles you’ll often find yourself in.

To help you break the guard of your foes, you have 4 stances, each adapted slightly for a specific type of enemy, be it an enemy wielding a sword, shield, spear or enormous two handed axe. Successive heavy attacks in the correct stance will quickly stagger a Mongol combatant, leaving them temporarily defenceless. The beauty of this simple but rewarding system comes when you are surrounded by dozens of enemies, each wielding different weapons. Parrying blows from all directions, while seamlessly switching stances to return fire in the respite is a smooth and down right fun experience. There is no lock on button in GoT, which I have to admit concerned me greatly to begin with, but it works. Attacks are directional favouring the opponent in the direction you are pointing the left stick at. I can’t think of many occasions where I attacked an enemy I didn’t want to.

So to go back to my original statement, it can be a little easy to just pick the right stance and spam heavy attacks at the relevant enemy until their guard breaks, occasionally dodging, blocking and repositioning. But if you want to feel like a hardcore Hatimoto or a kick-ass Kachi, upgrade a couple of skills in your Samurai skill tree that allow you to perfect dodge and perfect parry. These two skills take a hefty dose of practice to pull off consistently, but once you can the results are gratifying to say the least. Pulling off a perfect parry will result in a visually pleasing clash of blades, sparks flying as your opponent is left reeling momentarily, you can quickly follow up with a blow that more often than not proves to be fatal. Upgrade your skill tree further and these parries will terrify nearby enemies, turning their legs to jelly and reducing them to trembling cowards, ripe for the slaughter. There is something so so satisfying, about standing dead still in the centre of a ring of Mongols, perfectly parrying each blow before swiftly returning with a summary execution.

When you perform a counter strike after a perfect parry, your opponent will stagger momentarily, dead on their feet, their brain not yet computing that the body has perished, if you are quick enough, you can swipe the touch pad to flick the blood off your katana and sheath it and flick again to perform a curt bow, before your asinine assailant has even hit the ground. I challenge you to try this and tell me you don’t feel like a Samurai, I found myself quoting the great Team America many a time in these moments; “Keeeyaaah, you lose”.

SuckerPunch seem aware of players’ penchants for general bad assery and are all too happy to oblige, giving you the option to start encounters by challenging enemies to a “Stand Off”, Jin cries out something along the lines of “FACE ME, COWARDS”. What results is a showdown, where the aim is to outdraw your opponent, resulting in a fatal blow, upgrade this ability and you can chain multiple one hit kills as enraged enemies surge forward to avenge their ally.

There are also a multitude of “Ghost” tactics you can employ in the midst of combat, such as throwing kunais (think Shurikens), sticky bombs, black powder bombs, smoke bombs, the list goes on, but it never really felt natural to do so mid fight and I only ever used these to buy myself a little breathing room in some of the later, more challenging encounters.

Part of the issue here is the mapping of the controls (which would always be a struggle given the sheer number of tools available to you), holding L2 let’s you choose between a LongBow, Short Bow, Blow Gun etc, each with a further selection for ammo type, whilst holding R2 let’s you choose between your various quick fire weapons, it doesn’t feel fluid at all.

It’s a good thing that the combat is so enjoyable, as you will spend about 80% of your play through locking swords with marauding Mongols, even then it can get a little repetitive and this is largely lead by extremely linear mission design. Bar a few exceptions in the main missions (of which there are a rather meagre 24) which involve the bigger set pieces, every mission follows a fairly tried and tested blueprint, follow this guy without being seen, track these footprints or quite simply kill these guys. There really isn’t much originality which is a real shame and does detract somewhat from the overall experience.

One of the highlights of the game for me were the duels, especially with the ronin “Straw Hats” (the Mongols are a little generic and always have the exact same attack pattern), these fights are purist Samurai action, no throwing daggers and sticky bombs, none of that nonsense, just mano y mano, steel on steel. Each fight starts with a tense stand off and more often than not a few choice words, with Jin casually thumbing his blade out of its scabbard to signify he is ready for mortal combat. However, keeping true to another strong theme of GoT’s, these too become repetitive and quickly lose their awe inspiring shine, if not remaining somewhat entertaining throughout.

There are also an innumerate amount of micro grievances I have with some of the choices Sucker Punch have made. For example, many missions will see you have to follow an ally from A to B, a perfectly reasonable thing to have to do, but for some reason despite being the “follower” you set the pace. Your ally will only start moving when you do and even then only a mere foot or two infront of you, making it a bit awkward at times to know where you are going. Especially when you start infront of them after mounting your horse, you have to take a punt on a direction to see if they catch up and move infront or stay put looking at you like an idiot for going the wrong way.

Another is the seeming laziness of the animation team, many, many times in the game you will be required to; add powder to an incense burner, meditate with someone, set something on fire or paddle out in a row boat to an anchored ship. For some reason a decision has been made (be it based on time or budget I do not know) to black out the screen in these moments and simply include the audio of what that action might sound like. Why? It is the most jarring, anti immersive thing to happen mid mission.

I’m not done, here’s another one for you. When you need to speak to an NPC, they often have a very specific place you need to stand to engage them in conversation, sometimes it’s in front, sometimes it’s behind and of course sometimes it’s to the side, what it always is, is hard to tell. Why?

There’s a risk here of coming across as nitpicking because in isolation these don’t merit mentioning, but in unison they accumulate to a frustrating level, happening regularly enough to prompt more than one eye roll. Every time you experience one of these “micro grievances”, you are drawn out of what is otherwise an utterly immersive experience. The game itself is stunning, drop dead gorgeous, breath taking, there aren’t enough adjectives or synonyms to properly convey how beautiful GoT actually is. Perhaps the devs at Sucker Punch were aware of this and akin to smelling salts, included little irritating aspects to the game just to bring you out of ancient Japan and back on to your cream “Vilasund” IKEA sofa bed.

It would be a great injustice to mention the unprecedented beauty of GoT in passing, this alone deserves it’s own paragraph. Every 5 minutes riding your trusty steed through Tsushima, you will gasp for air, perhaps you’ll witness a sun setting over a blushing field of crimson red spider lilies, dancing in the off shore wind. You might find yourself weeping as you fight to the death with an honorable Samurai, ruefully duelling you because duty demands it, an autumnal tree shedding its leaves around you, before being kicked up again by your frantic movements. The game is worth playing alone for these moments. Let me repeat that, because if nothing irks me more it’s a very pretty, but very empty game trying to sell itself on looks alone (which to be clear, this is not). This game, is worth playing alone, for these moments. As a disclaimer, if any of you have hay fever, I would recommend keeping antihistamine nearby, as the air around you is teeming with spores, waltzing through god rays as you gallop over flower ridden pastures, so real looking it will make your eyes water and your nose runny.

Like a beautiful girl swaggering through a bar with an enviable nonchalance, Sucker Punch knows GoT is pretty and in this knowledge have added perhaps one of the most comprehensive photo modes ever seen in a game. The list of customisation options is exhaustive. To name merely a few; you have tracking shots, focal length, depth of field, focus distance, exposure bias, particles, wind speed, weather, Jin’s facial expression and even music!

In another clever addition, Sucker Punch have also given us the option to play in black and white “Kurosawa” mode, in deference to the godfather of Samurai movies, Akira Kurosawa, director of the legendary Seven Samurai. This mode is a tribute to the man who’s work inspired this very game. Kurosawa Mode adds a film grain effect to the display, and it even alters the audio so it sounds more like an old recording using '50s technology. I love that the wind is stronger in Kurosawa Mode, because Kurosawa was known for using wind to emphasise the nature of turbulunce and chaos! Whilst this is a very cool feature, I found myself using it sparingly, for a couple of duels at best. The games colour palette is so intense that it felt a crying shame to keep it on for longer.

Tsushima Island is an open world, which depending on your preference will either delight you or concern you, certainly there are many benefits to open world design and more often than not these days with AAA titles, they are the standard. However, if not done well they can really detract from the overall tightness, pacing and experience of a game. GoT finds itself somewhere on the fence in this respect. As before mentioned, it is jaw droppingly gorgeous and each of it’s 3 sections, South, Midlands and North (which you gain access to across the 3 acts) have a unique aesthetic.

What I do love, in GoT, that is a wholly novel feature, is the use of wind to guide you to your destination. Once you have selected a destination, swiping up on your touch pad will summon strong winds, blowing in the direction you need to travel. It’s a subtle touch, in keeping with your surroundings that futher serves to keep you immersed.

Visuals alone, however, do not make a real “lived in” open world and GoT seems to have rested on it’s visual laurels. The world you traverse is largely empty, you will come across bandit and Mongol camps, patrols of the aforementioned enemies and a couple of small “distractions” from the meat of the side quests and main quest itself, but only a few hours in, you’ll find yourself reluctant to dismount and explore.

The “distractions” I refer to are fox dens, natural hot springs, bamboo strikes, Shinto Shrines and Haiku locations. These last two are worth distinguishing from the rest as they prove to be a little more noteworthy. Shinto Shrines offer major buffs that have a tangible effect on the way you either assassinate or fight upfront with your enemies. They are quite fun to get to, as they require you to scramble up mountain sides, swing precariously from tree branches and shuffle across highwires, the shrines are usually situated on the precipice of a gorgeous landscape and the view is always worth the climb.

And now a sentence I thought I would never say, writing poetry might be the best thing I have done in an open world game. Dotted around Tsushima, are designated Haiku “locations”, sit by one and you will be treated to a sensory delight. First you are presented an initial landscape, be it a rushing waterfall or a sun drenched Japanese Maple tree, you can then choose between 3 opening lines for your Haiku before being drawn closer in to the scenery and given further options to complete your poem, the whole while being transported by this ethereal yet somewhat gutteral monk like chanting. It’s an experience that genuinely imbued a deep sense of serenity in me and I can’t recall another time a game did that.

In fact the music throughout GoT is exemplary. The soundtrack, composed by Shigeru Umebayashi and Ilan Eshkeri features an orchestra of traditional Japanese instruments, such as the shakuhachi (flute), biwa (short-necked fretted lute) and koto (stringed musical instrument), which I think is a genius touch and incredibly effective in furthering your immersion in to the history, culture and mindset of a unique people.

GoT captures the heart of ancient Japan, it deals with emotive and difficult topics with maturity and intelligence, nothing is simple, no sword is single edged. Its story is timeless, set in a fascinating era that has been painstakingly recreated. But it still falls short of being something truly special. If this were a film, Kurosawa himself would have been proud, but the game play just doesn’t live up to the story and often the two elements feel disjointed, with little impact deriving from the players actions. In a game where stealth and brutality are key to the narrative, employing these tactics just isn’t fun. GoT is a game that deserves applause, more over it deserves your time playing it, but by the end of your play through, you may find yourself lamenting over what could have been.

7.6