Ghost of Tsushima won’t hold back your desire to be a bastard ninja, with a morality meter

By it’s very nature, Ghost of Tsushima is a game about honour. It is a sandbox experience built on the ideas of legacy, pride and facing your opponents in fair combat. Testicles to that, because I’m going to play this game with a Ric Flair rulebook as I utilise every single dirty trick in my arsenal to achieve victory.

Ghost of Tsushima has such an option fortunately, because why face danger head-on when you can safely stab it in the back instead? Developer Sucker Punch showed off those various approaches to getting the job done in last week’s state of play, detailing how players can switch between samurai and ghost styles, getting a leg up on the opposition in a manner that suits your style of play.

But how will this impact on Jin’s story throughout the game? Won’t treading down the path of the Shinobi lead to more a dishonourable status quo for Jin, ala the InFAMOUS games in which Sucker Punch made a name for themselves? Not exactly. “There’s definitely important story moments that are more reflective of this change than others,” Ghost of Tsushima creative director Jason Connell said to IGN via VG247.

But the reality is that even as you have gotten to some story moments, you can still play the game as this Samurai, you may just be more potent or more powerful. We don’t make you choose between [samurai and ghost]. We thought about [a morality meter] because we had the karma system in [Infamous: Second Son], but we realized it was more important to us that we wanted to tell a human story of someone who is this way and has to evolve into something else, versus transform completely into something else.

He doesn’t flip flop back and forth, it muddied it up for us. We really wanted the story to reflect his transformation

Which totally makes sense, as a narrative reason for why Jin can switch between styles like a ronin skateboarder going from regular to goofy. They see me ronin, they hatin’. In case you missed it, here’s the video from last week which painted a goreous landscape for Ghost of Tsushima, full of showdowns, snazzy UI ideas and game filters that makes the entire experience look like an Akira Kurosawa samurai film.

Last Updated: May 19, 2020