What did y'all make of this? Personally, I was left a little cold. Aside from the setting, this looks almost indistinguishable from the last couple of Assassin’s Creed games. I loved Origins and Odyssey so that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I was hoping Ghost of Tsushima would do something a little different. If the only thing setting this apart from the Assassin’s Creed strain of open world design is the location I’ll be really disappointed.

Yup. Looked like the more recent AC games combined with some of the exploration mechanics in BotW. Overall, might be something I'd pick up if it reviews well.

Some odd things stood out, like being able to collect Bamboo while simultaneously riding a horse and being able to play the game as a Samurai or a Ghost (ninja pretty much). I'm fine with having different play styles, but the title of the game is Ghost of Tsushima... not Samurai of Tsushima.

@yyninja: The main character was trained as a Samurai. The basic premises of the game is the Mongolians have shown that the Samurai style of fighting doesn't work anymore and overpowered and wiped them out. So Jin is one of the last of them and he can either continue to try fight as a Samurai or adapt in order to get revenge.

I thought it looked like a by the numbers Sony first party, thirst person over the shoulder, open world game. It has yellow ledges to show where you can jump and climb up. It has horses. It has a map and a menu that looks like you could be playing Horizon Zero Dawn. It has stealth and not-stealth combat. It has a photomode. Not that I'm complaining. I've liked all the other Sony versions of these and I've never played a Suckerpunch game I didn't like, but it's definitely another one of those.

The black and white cinema mode looked great though. I wonder how much some of their artists actually hate it though.

My reaction coming out of this is that the game is extremely pretty but looks a little mundane otherwise. Assassin's Creed comparisons seem on point. Not sure if they just didn't do a great job of explaining the combat, or the combat is really basic. The main thing keeping my interest at this point really is just wanting to be in that setting.

Also the japanese voice track not being lip synced at all is still bugging the hell out of me. If they were really committed to the setting, I feel like it would have worked better starting from japanese performances or at least doing some lip sync work.

That said, Assassin's Creed without all the baggage that series brings with it might be a good time, and two more months into quarantine it might be the right kind of game to just chill out with. It just doesn't look revolutionary, I'll have to see or hear more before I'm completely sold on it.

Am I the only one who thinks his animations look a bit stiff? Something about the way he moves and the way combat flows is really bugging me.

I like it looks like a fun open world games. Certainly the very 'painterly graphics are nice to look at. The setting and theme certainly seem more interesting than the average "Japaneses setting" sword games we have gotten lately. Nioh was not my pace of game, didn't really did the 'souls games' vibe, so this looks a bit more manageable for a player like me.

What I liked seeing was that you could customize your samurai in armor, clothing, and the color of clothing and accessories. Too few games give players choice these days, so it nice when you have some control over how you handle the look of the character you have to watch from over the shoulder for all those hours.

I like what little I saw of interacting with teh animals as directions finders, I'm sure there is some sort of "Shinto gods" (kami) aspect to it all. I'm a sucker for a game where you can pet a cat, dog, fox or wolf! ;-)

@abysswalker said:

I actually really liked it. It looked fluid and easy to parse. A hell of a lot better than the latest AC-style games.

I think the reason they started with the cool "follow the wind" GPS is because that's the only notable thing Ghost of Tsushima's got going for it. Not to bash too hard based on one video, but something tells me if it wasn't for the cool setting we'd be calling this another Days Gone.

Kind of curious, did they ever give the impression that they were making some revolutionary game here? Because people seem awfully bummed that they're making a game that combines cool elements from recent games. When you start saying stuff like it looks like breath of the wild, the witcher, or Horizon Zero Dawn that just sounds exciting to me. You can sign me up for a game that combines these mechanics with breath of the wild exploration in this setting. Plus, Suckerpunch is still a name that gets my attention to see what they're doing, so I'm interested to see what kind of story and overall game they present.

Maybe it doesn't phase me as much because I don't try to play every open world game that comes out, so I guess I don't really feel the burnout for this?

To me this always seemed like it would be an end of generation game that caps off (or brings together) a lot of what was done well this gen, and provided this is actually good it looks to do that to me.

Seems like another open world game. Combat seems interesting and very timing based, but I guess we need to see someone normal playing to know for sure. Didn't seem much like assassins creed to me though, more like tenchu meets the witcher 3.

Starting the video with the exploration part of the game is a poor decision as potential customers could have gotten bored of it and moved on for something else.

Thankfully, i kept watching which have raised my interest in the game but not by much... It's kind of like the same feeling i had with death stranding.

I'm really disappointed by what's happening to Sony as of late. Death Stranding, Last of Us 2 and now this. They started this gen with full force thanks to Microsoft and Nintendo boost but i doubt they will give them a second chance next gen. Microsoft specially are cooking for a great comeback.

I was impressed by the game, but only because I think the style suits me specifically. Love me some samurai movies and exploring feudal Japan.

But I'll echo some of ya'll's sentiments and say I'm really tired of this open-world design.

There have been so many games exactly like this one and I'm hoping once the next generation finally launches we won't be treated to even bigger and more expansive versions of Skyrim and Ghosts.

Its looks great. Such great use of colours, and it seems to have different filters to highlight different colours.

Combat looks interesting. I like that enemies aren't damage sponges. 1-3 hit kills is what I want out of a sword game.

Suckerpunch hasn't missed yet, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I’m definitely going to play it because I’m a total sucker for the setting, but it looks like a by the numbers open world game to me.

Did the combat look flat to you all? It seemed like enemies could be killed with a single move... it didn’t look engaging at all. I just played Nioh 2, though, so that might be clouding my perception.

As much as I've wanted to fall in love with a Kurosawa-inspired game set in a grounded feudal Japan setting, I remain underwhelmed by most of what I've seen. Kinda hard to get excited by the samurai film inspirations when the combat looks stilted and mostly dull. Granted it hard to say exactly how it feels and or how hard it is to pull off these moves (although the parry/deflection windows seemed pretty generous). I do like the idea to short, lethal combat encounters, but that only really works if enemies are virtually as capable and dangerous to you as you are to them, and... that doesn't really seem to be the case?? The stealth demonstration looked better but also pretty bog standard "throw rock to lure out lone enemy" (seriously I can't believe how often that's still used in demonstrations).

Was hoping for something more evolved instead of just Assassin's Creed: Japan, which admittedly I would have been excited for... in 2011. Sure that will be fine for a lot of people, personally I'm not getting good vibes.

Looks pretty good to me. If the combat feels fun when I get my hands on the controller, I am very much into it.

No one has ever gave the full on samurai game this much of a try in the modern age. I'm excited. Not sure if I get the doom and gloom or AC comparisons so much.

I love it because it nails the look of samurai movies that I love and makes lethal weapons look lethal.

I loved Nioh, one of the best combat systems, but it didn't look like samurai movies. Usually I'd be happy with just about any melee combat game copying Nioh but I like what this is going for.

The whole thing looked good mainly because of the contrast with how poorly Microsoft presented their slate of next-gen games recently. This PS4 game had a better presentation and overall look and feel than anything Microsoft had to show for the future of gaming and thats a pretty bad look for Microsoft.

As for the game itself it looked pretty sharp but as others have said, the open world fatigue is starting to set in a little. I'm also not excited for another parry-based samurai game after Sekiro, but maybe there are different stances that allow for a more aggressive approach to combat.

Generally apart from the great aesthetic it felt very by the numbers in an often depressing way. The little fox guides you to a shrine, and thats neat, only so we can watch a canned animation and a 1/3 completion circle pop up which was the most deflating part of the demo for me. Thinking about how I'll be riding around this lush world only to clap my hands together dozens of times and fill up bars isn't exactly filling me with excitement for exploration.

InFamous Second Son was a great launch game that showed off everything great about the PS4 at the time. It had a much higher framerate than we were used to and great graphics full of fancy new particle effects. I think it would have been pretty poetic for Sucker Punch to kick off this generation with an InFamous game and then close it out for Sony with another. There seems to be so much more room for originality in that franchise than a samurai game, but I also am happy they are trying something new I guess. This seems like something fun to get when the PS5 comes out and it gets an upscale and performance boost.

Saying GoT is an AC clone is a little disingenuous considering the same could be equally be said for the Witcher 3. GoT looks exactly like a Kurosawa film even with its own filter, the unique setting with fast lethal combat hopefully a good story, it should be great.

its especially funny because AC: Origins was openly saying they were inspired by Witcher 3 (not that they even nailed it).

Anyways I hope we can please not say any third person open world game is like AC.

The big difference for me with AC and Witcher as open world games was that AC feels like all the bullshit that's on the map is there for the sake of padding. While Witcher had things on the map that you could go to and find quests that you could argue have better stories than the main one, and not in a bad way.

If GoT is like Witcher then I'm all for it. I'm leaning towards that way of thinking solely on Sucker Punch's track record but who knows until it actually comes out.

I agree with most of you that this looks like another by the numbers AC style game with a bit more polish since it's Sucker Punch and Sony and not Ubisoft but i've wanted a feudal japan AC for awhile so i'll probably get it at some point.

One thing that I fucking hate with a passion is the question marks scattered all over the map. I love exploration in games, stumbling across something cool in the middle of nowhere is great. So when you have everything already marked what you're basically telling me is theres nothing elsewhere so dont bother exploring. In Ubisoft games I dont really give a damn because it's just the same series of side quests and stongholds. But if it were put in a game like Breath of the Wild for example it would have ruined it. It's one of the reasons I wasnt the biggest fan of The Witcher 3 despite thinking the story and characters were great.

Anyway, Ghost of Tsushima looks fine.

Things I Love In Video Games:
- NOT first-person camera (it makes me a bit ill)
- Dumb checklists and collectables
- Option for piss-easy combat (ain't got time to get good or retry a boss fight more than 3 times)
- Asian stuff (I am ethnically Chinese, grew up around Chinese media, and understand some Cantonese/Mandarin/Japanese)
- Ability to play as a lady
- Cute animals you can interact with
- Good traversal mechanics that make it fun to run around and explore

I'm pretty sure Ghost of Tsushima was made for me.. aside from playing as a lady, but I'll allow it.
The stealth stuff that is so reminiscent of Assassin's Creed is a bonus point. I absolutely love AC. I was able to complete the largest forts in Odyssey without being spotted, so if I can do that in GoT, I'm gonna be real happy. The only thing I'm not sure about is if I want to buy it day one for PS4 or wait for PS5.

By the way, that god damn music. I cannot believe they got Shigeru Umebayashi to compose.

Honestly, the map they showed had very few question marks on it, especially in comparison to Witcher 3 or AC. And the devs made a point of saying that you would have to look out for stuff like smokestacks/weird trees/certain animals to guide you to hidden stuff. Sounded like those will not be automatically marked on the map.

Nothing in this particularly blew my mind (yet), but as a whole it looked enjoyable and the setting's neat. I also haven't really played an open world game since Days Gone (or does Rage 2 count? Not that it matters even if it does), so I think I'm ready to tackle another during my summer vacation.

Looks as expected, the cinematic B&W mode looks real nice so that was a surprise. I can't wait to play it personally. I don't mind if it's iterative, an open world samurai game is something I'm keen for and this looks solid.

Some of the color saturation and the hat tip to environmental storytelling has me excited that this game will have a lot of the self-contained exploration rewards that made Red Dead Redemption's 2nd and 3rd chapters so addictive. It looks like a place I want to wander around in and I'm excited for all the ways it seems they've tried to combat invasive HUD elements. I've never been anti-HUD or GTA mini-map, but if somebody can find clever solutions that aren't just painting a line on the ground I'm all for it.

Combat...didn't strike me as incredible or anything, but this is Sucker Punch we're talking about, and inFamous: Second Son is still one of the most purely fun memories I have of this console generation, let alone the previous entries in the series from previous generations. I have a hard time imagining they spent six years developing a game and didn't figure out how to make it fun.

Seeing a lot of Assassin's Creed comparisons in here, which really don't bother me since I haven't seriously played one of those since the very first game. I've picked up several, specifically Freedom Cry when it was a PS+ game, and they control like hell. As long as this moves smoothly and fluidly, another hallmark of Sucker Punch games for more than a decade now, you can compare this to that franchise all you want. I also have only played about half of Far Cry 4, only played the first Mordor, skipped the third Tomb Raider, etc. I space these sorts of things out enough that they remain one of my favorite style of gaming experiences.

I do just love this sort of game design still since I really only play the big tentpoles that seem truly remarkable and not just every open world action game with an 80+ Metacritic. God of War, Spider-Man, Horizon are all games in the past four years that I've not only beaten, but replayed on the hardest difficulties just to re-immerse myself in the world and have more fun with all the cool overpowered gear I'd unlocked near the end. Sony just knows what buttons to press with me when it comes to story, world, collectibles, all of it, they've knocked it out of the park year after year with this specific style of game and I expect no different.

The combat, again, did slightly worry me. But I haven't had my hands on it so who knows how that comes across personally rather than in a brief demo.

Samurai-Red Dead Redemption meets Farcry. Not interested in this one bit anymore. Way too much shit on the screen for all their "follow the wind" talk. Not what I'm looking for right now.

These are my sentiments as well. I'm more optimistic because you were pretty fragile in Infamous Second Son. Encounters in that game could go bad really quickly, and you had to retreat to recover health fairly often, so Sucker Punch should be able to do the ninja fantasy justice.

It seems like a mix of Assassin's Creed and BOTW, but i only really say BOTW because the environment looks kind of barren.
I'm sure the game will be good but it's not really showing well.

The reveal of this game actually ended up being something I wasn’t expecting, to be honest.

My initial thought was that this game would end up being more unique, in a God of War “fresh” kind of way. Instead, it looks like a highly polished action adventure type game, similar to Assassin’s Creed as mentioned here.

That’s not a detractor from Ghost of Tsushima, but I think it may be missing a “unique” factor (based on what they showed) that pushes it past being a highly polished action adventure, open world game.

I will say I’m very much looking forward to it still because that style of game is 100% my jam and it looks like a more focused, less bloated open world experience. I also appreciate the lack of HUD and following the wind/animals to go towards main checkpoints.

I’m really looking forward to playing it, but I’m not sure if I’ll be there day 1, $79.99 CAD is a hard sell for me to buy games day 1.

The Witcher was obviously a huge influence on Origins, but they were also fairly different in key ways: Origins had actual stealth systems, climbing and pretty different combat; The Witcher was a much deeper RPG with a very strong narrative focus. Of those two, GoT seems much more aligned with Origins.

And when people compare Ghost of Tsushima to Assassin's Creed, they're not talking about Origins or Odyssey to begin with. They're comparing it to all the titles that came before those. The ones with counter based combat and proper instakill stealth takedowns, which the gameplay of Ghost of Tsushima seems to map pretty closely to.

Yeah, the enemies appeared to line up in a very Assassins Creed 2 - 6? manner.

@abysswalker: I'm not a fan of the freeze animation before every killing blow. It really breaks up the flow of the combat. The game seemed like Samurai Red Dead, not that that's a bad thing but it's not what I was expecting after the initial reveal. I was expecting more deliberate one on one fights with deeper combat mechanics.

A well timed parry lets you perform a killing blow, Jin will change how he fights based on the number of foes and has multiple combat stances, the armour you wear also alters what Jin can do. The combat resembles Bloodborne/Nioh more than anything else, and GoT has multiple difficulty options.

@hippie_genocide: That doesn't bother me. It's something about the way he moves in combat while he's focusing on an enemy. It seems stiff. It also feels like his attacks are lacking impact. Still very interested in it and these aren't big deals at all, just expecting more polish from Sucker Punch.

Watching the gameplay reveal made me realize that I didn't actually know what this game was until now. I'm not sure why exactly, but I think maybe because it was one of the four games Sony chose to showcase at E3 2018, and the fact that it's coming out at the end of the current generation, made me think it was going to be something more than it actually is?

As others have said, it didn't look bad, just kind of ordinary.

The ragdoll on the bow and arrow headshots looked preposterous

It looks fine. It's one of those games that I am not that excited about, but assume I'll probably play anyways since it does seem to be relatively high quality. Glad they cleared up whether there was going to be a Japanese voice track, which I am happy about because it'll make for a more authentic experience to me. Sword combat looks decent, but I think the death animation from that first arrow hit (at 10:33 in the video) was kind of bad and exaggerated, and that can affect the enjoyment of combat/stealth.

Watching it, I can imagine this getting a mixed reception. It may be another Days Gone. Also worth noting, anyone catch how the title is pronounced? I thought it was 'Suesheema', but he said 'Sueshima' without the double ee sound. Also, I've heard at least one other use the T in Tsushima, which I don't think is correct either? It's kind of funny to me that both this game and Sekiro were shown at the same time, and at that time, people were loving the look of this but there wasn't that much talk of Sekiro, and now Sekiro has been out, many people loved that, and the talk of this seems to be 'uh, it looks alright I guess'.

It looks good to me, I dunno that there was ever a big expectation that it was gonna seriously shake anything up.

I will never turn down an open world game in a cool setting.

@ntm: The 'tsu' is one of those melded sounds. It should come out as a mix of a T and S. Much like a Japanese L/R.

Game still seems rad. I'm been pissed at Ubi forever for not making a feudal Japan AC game, and this looks like it will scratch that itch. Having skipped the last several AC games has me about ready for one again, so I don't share the fatigue many seem to have with typical open-world trappings. I also appreciate that they've found other ways like the wind and animals to guide you if you want rather than the typical obtrusive HUD and icon barf. That should help it feel more immersive and lean into one of the game's obvious strengths with the setting.

I will say I'm slightly bummed at the visuals. While the blowing grass, falling petals, etc. still looks awesome, the game looks washed-out the way RDR2 did (which infamously lied about having HDR and patched in half-assed HDR way later). I can't seem to find any confirmation that GoT supports HDR, but I really hope it does and that it's just a calibration/capture issue. I know that sounds like a nitpick, but good HDR is jaw-dropping and lacking HDR is extremely disappointing when it comes to games like this where the atmosphere and game world are a large portion of the draw. If they're not making the PS4 version in HDR so they can sell a PS5 version that has it, that's some bullshit.

I'll wait for previews and Reviews.