For years people have been desperate for Ubisoft to set an Assassin's Creed in feudal Japan—but Sucker Punch beat them to it. Ghost of Tsushima is set on the titular island during the Mongol invasion of Japan in 1274, and is basically an Assassin's Creed game minus the modern day sections and sci-fi mythology. Jin Sakai is an honour-bound samurai who reluctantly embraces the role of an assassin, using subterfuge, stealth, and medieval gadgetry to drive the Mongols out. It's a fictional story loosely rooted in real-world history, and Jin learning how to become a master assassin mirrors the stories of many Assassin's Creed protagonists.
Jin's legend grows and he takes on the mantle of the Ghost—the fabled warrior freeing Tsushima from Mongol tyranny, whispered about over campfires. It's also a personal story about his internal struggle with leaving his old way of life, that of a bushido-obeying samurai, behind to become someone who kills from the shadows. It's a compelling structure, both in terms of player progression and character development, and could easily be transplanted into other time periods. Jin Sakai could be the first of many Ghosts throughout history—or just one in a long line of them—who emerge when a country is invaded and people are oppressed.
I can imagine a world where 'Ghost of…' becomes a series of historical open-world epics to rival Assassin's Creed, with chapters set across various time periods. Sucker Punch has established a solid formula here, and I'd gladly play a game with the same structure, but set in another interesting corner of history. Ubisoft has already claimed some of the best ones, but that doesn't mean Sucker Punch can't put its own spin on these periods—showing them from a different perspective, or further back in time. Assassin's Creed Origins was set during the twilight years of Ancient Egypt, but a Ghost game could show us it in its prime.
With Origins, Odyssey, and especially Valhalla, Assassin's Creed has slowly mutated into a Witcher-inspired open-world RPG—which leaves a neat gap for this hypothetical Ghost series to fill. Ghost of Tsushima feels like classic Assassin's Creed in a lot of ways, with its more focused mission-based structure, 25-hour length, and a greater emphasis on actually assassinating people. So for anyone who misses what Assassin's Creed was before it veered onto its current path, Sucker Punch could provide that experience. Based on Tsushima's sales, there's still a market for it.
Sucker Punch will have to come up with some new ideas, though. Ghost of Tsushima is a great game, but desperately unimaginative. It plays like a greatest hits of the last ten years of open-world games, with very little in the way of innovation. That was fine for one game, but not a whole series. It suffers badly from a lack of mission variety, rarely giving you the opportunity to engage with the world in a way that doesn't involve carving up hordes of angry Mongols with a glinting katana. By the end of the game and the Iki Island DLC I was really sick of storming forts.
Ubisoft is great at drawing you into its historical settings by showing you many different sides to them—not just war and conflict, but the everyday lives of regular people too. Ghost of Tsushima sorely lacks historical context, throwing you into the midst of the Mongol invasion without giving you any real idea of what led to it. It's excellent at evoking the mood and feel of this period of history, but pretty terrible at fleshing it out.
It’s not all that accurate either—neither the katana nor the haiku existed when the game is set. If Ghost of Wherever is to become a series, I'd want a lot more effort put into the historical side of things, because it ultimately makes for a better, richer world. But whatever happens next, whether it's another Jin Sakai tale or a new Ghost we haven't met yet, I can't wait to see what Sucker Punch comes up with.
