Lot of Concepts Explored Before Landing on Feudal Japan
Ghost of Tsushima was in the oven for years. Before that, during the concept stage, was it even a game about Samurai? Yes, but just barely. It seems like several other concepts were jockeying for the same position. For example, Tsushima could have been a pirate game? A recent PlayStation blog post from Brian Fleming goes into greater detail regarding Tsushima’s origins:
Early on, we concluded that we wanted to build a large, open world experience — and one that featured melee combat. But beyond that we were uncertain. Pirates? Rob Roy? The Three Musketeers? All these were considered — but we kept coming back to feudal Japan and telling the story of a samurai warrior. Then one fateful fall afternoon we found a historical account of the Mongol invasion of Tsushima in 1274, and the entire vision clicked into place.
I love the game a lot, but a little part of me does wonder about that Three Musketeers business. Honestly, we don’t have enough games featuring rapier-based combat. Sucker Punch really dodged a bullet slipping past that pirates idea, though. It’s quite possible that we reached peak pirate saturation a few years ago. Ghost of Tsushima is available right now on PS4. You can check out our review of the game here!